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STEP TWO: MAKE SURE THE PROBLEM IS REALLY WORTH SOLVING

As the saying goes, "There are problems and then there are problems." No matter how irritating or frustrating you may find a particular employee's behavior, that behavior you dislike may or may not be a problem for the business. Changing an employee's behavior takes time and effort, and costs the business. Some behaviors you personally dislike may not be worth changing simply because they don't have a significant impact on the bottom line results of the business. Many managers, to their ultimate regret, have created more problems for the business than they solved by focusing on behavior quirks of employees that, while personally irritating to the manager, caused little if any problem for bottom-line performance. We have seen managers get involved in morale- and performance-destroying confrontations with good employees over such issues as hair length, dress codes, the arrangement of office furniture, and a host of other issues that, in fact, had little to do with performance. While in some jobs hair length and dress may have an impact on performance, in many occupations such matters are irrelevant. Just make sure you focus on results when deciding if a "problem" is really a "problem."

Thomas Gilbert, in his book Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance, tells the following story of a budding entrepreneur who succumbed to the trap of focusing on a problem with employee behavior that turned out not to be a problem at all. The story, which Gilbert maintains is true and only slightly embellished, concerns one Barton Hogg, who had secured a military contract to salvage lead from spent bullets on a Fort Jackson firing range.  Hogg anticipated extracting over $100,000 of lead by employing day laborers to sift through the sand on the firing range. He had even worked out the most efficient method for shoveling the sand into hardware-cloth boxes, sifting out the spent bullets, and dumping them into milk pails. Hogg's first group of sixty laborers worked out well. They followed his instructions to the letter and soon were working at an organized and steady pace. It was Hogg's second group of fifty college students that gave him problems. Gilbert described the scene as follows: "The truck (carrying the students arrived annoyingly late, and the platoon poured off in shouting disarray. ...They listened to Hogg's instructions with the same blank inattention they had learned to give their professors - and they followed his instructions just as poorly. ...Soon the shovels were discarded, and they were scraping the sieves directly into the sand. Jokes and ribaldry poured out faster than the lead." Hogg tried shouting at the students to follow his instructions. He appealed to their sense of responsibility. He did everything he could think of to get them to follow his carefully worked out instructions for performing the job they had been hired to perform. All of his efforts were to no avail. The students simply would not listen.  Finally, angry at their inattention and irresponsibility, Hogg fired every single student. It was only later as he collected and counted the lead the students had collected that he realized his mistake.  The students had actually collected nearly three times the lead per labor hour as had the cadenced work force. Try as he might, Hogg couldn't get the student crew - the really productive crew - to return to work. Eventually, Hogg lost his contract and spent the rest of his life working in an assembly plant.

How do you ensure that a problem is really worth solving? How do you make sure that what you think is a problem is really a problem?  Here are some questions to ask to determine if a problem is worth solving as suggested by Robert F. Mager and Peter Pipe in their book Analyzing Performance Problems.

1. Does the problem behavior cost the company money either directly (such as when an employee gives a customer the wrong change) or indirectly (such as excessive use of supplies or raw materials)?  Calculate exactly how much you think the problem behavior is costing the company per year.

2.  Does the problem behavior result in people wasting time because it results in materials shortages, lateness, slow service, or defective work that has to be redone? If time is lost, calculate how much time would be lost in a year and what that loss in time costs the company.

3. Does the problem behavior result in waste or scrap? What is the value of that waste or scrap?

4.  Does the problem behavior result in damage to equipment?  If so, what is the cost of that damage in repairs or replacement of the equipment?

5.  Is there a loss in production as a result of the behavior? If so, what is the value of that lost production?

6.  Does quality suffer as a result of the behavior? If so, what is the cost t of that loss in quality (in rework, scrap, lost orders, warranty costs, etc.)?

7. Will the problem contribute to an increase in insurance costs as, for example, an increase in insurance premiums due to accidents? What is that cost?

8.  Could the behavior result in an increase in accidents or injury on the job? What would be the costs associated with that increase in lost work time, hospital stays, damaged equipment, etc.?

9. Could the behavior result in lost business? If so, what is the estimated value of the business that could be lost?

10. Does the behavior result in duplication of effort? For example, do extra quality checks have to be performed or does it result in two people having to do the work one should be able to perform? What is the cost of that duplication?          

11.  Does the behavior result in the need for extra supervision or increased administrative support? What is the cost of that extra supervision or support?

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