There are very few occasions when you will find that just one group of people affect how well a performance is carried out. In virtually all cases you will find that several groups of people are involved, directly and indirectly.
The first thing you must do when analysing a performance problem, therefore, is to identify each of the groups involved in the performance. You do this by asking such questions as:
- Who does this job?
- Who do they report to?
- What happens after they have completed the job?
- Where do they get that information from?
- Who makes decisions about that?
As you do this, you will start to build up a list of the different groups of people involved. This can become complicated or confusing, so the best thing to do with this information is to present it in a picture, which we will call a system diagram.
For example, imagine that you have been asked to look at why people within the organisation are not using the newly installed intranet to the extent that was originally envisaged. Your research would have identified the following groups as being involved:
- Users
- IT Department
- Marketing Department
- Senior management
- Web design staff
- Corporate Communications Department
The first step with creating your system diagram is to identify the influences that each group has on each other. In this example, it might look like this:
The arrows connecting the different groups indicate the directions of influence
or control. So senior management make decisions that influence Corporate Communications
and Marketing. In some cases you may find that the arrow points in two directions,
indicating influencing in two directions.
Drawing such a diagram might make you think that there should be a two-headed arrow where only a one-headed arrow exists. For example, should the Users be influencing the Web designers? Your analysis of the causes behind the performance problem is starting here.
You can now make a decision about who the key groups involved in the performance are. Indicate these by drawing a line around them, as shown. These may then become target groups for learning activities.
Having identified the people with an involvement in the problem, you can now build a picture of what they are like. This will help you to identify appropriate solutions.
|
|
(C) Bryan Hopkins, 2005