Process Improvement and Implementation for Education

28th June 2006

posted in edtech, leadership |

APQC’s Process Improvement and Implementation for Education (PIIE)

By Jack Grayson, Chairman, APQC
Closing keynote of CoSN/Texas CTO Council conference, 28 June 2006

APQC is American Productivty and Quality Center, a non-profit
- helped create Baldrich award
- http://www.apqc.org

Ran price controls in 1970 and 1971
- George Shultz asked him to run price controls for Nixon
- Asked him to do that because I know you believe in the unplanned economy
- I got an education there in politics, economics, and the flexibility and dynamics of a market system

It was alarming to hear about the rigidity being built into the system here in Texas
- in our exhuberance to improve the system, we may impose
- I think the 65% rule is absolutely wrong, it harms the ability for districts to flex and adapt as needed to meet the needs of children

Our educational center, which is non-profit, works all over the world
- we recently had a meeting in Las Vegas
- joke about canoe race, where Japanese team had 7 people rowing and 1 steering, US team had 7 people steering and 1 rower
- we have got to pay attention to the idea that we have to let this system flex and move, the processes that drive the system

4 agenda items
1- tell you about APQC and a project called PIIE
2- move your district more toward “Total Process Management” (more away from function to process mangagement)
3- Conduct professional development on “processes” and “statistics” at all levels for for all employees
4- get started!

my perspective: the student is the customer, not the product

my definition of quality is whatever what the customer wants

We are in Houston, I created APQC, have staff of about 85 people
- founded in 1975 as nonprofit
- mission is simple: improve productivity and quality

Don’t just work with business-only
- major businesses, and school districts
- Cobb County in Georgia
- Miami-Dade co
- Spring Branch ISD here in Dallas
- Lots of major businesses

The transference of learning across sectors is very important

Process evolution
- 77: Productivity: competitiveness
- 83: quality (Baldrige award)
- 91: benchmarking
- 94: transfer of best practices (tacit knowledge)
- 95: knowledge management
- 96: knowledge sharing-CoP
- 99: education (
- now: pie project

Movie clip from “The Graduate” on “Plastics”

Traditional model: steering by inputs
- inputs: payroll, expenses, equipment, facilities

NCLB model: steering by outcomes
- outcomes: test results, achievement gap, AYP, graduation rates

What is missing: what’s in the middle, the PROCESSES
- assess student achievement
- recruit teachers

www.processrenewal.com

It is more complicated when you do map these stuff, because it shows you how ridiculous many of your internal processes are

APQC project called PIIE:
- districts agreed that for 2005 they would really start talking about process maps, metrics, and what they are going to do about it
- Total students: 3,225,000 around the nation

Exposed these leaders to a taxonomy that has been missing
- you have to have a common definition or else you can’t compare
- we created this taxonomy 15 years ago with business
- everyone we know uses this as a taxonomy so they can talk to each other, so they can compare if they are using a common definition

12 points: adapted this with some education words

How PIIE Pilot Worked
- very granular questions, down almost to the task level
- asked detailed questions about how you measure something, do you have a map, what are the outcomes, etc
- Got 23 individual reports, then sent reports back to districts to show efficiency and effectiveness in processes
- Mock reports are in the handouts (I agreed not to reveal the actual numbers of each district)
- Each district got one on IT (comparisons on major dimensions)

AP and NAPE scores, and other things defined “highest performer” in education

Potential cost savings analysis
- I think there is a tremdenous amount of improvement we can have if we benchmark processes

Key findings
- most successful recruiting sought candidates locally, nationally, and internationally
- more….

A few districts DO FOCUS on selected processes
- most don’t focus on processes, they focus on functions, inputs, and outcomes
- most don’t map, or measure processes
- most don’t benchmark processes
- few keep time records
- costs are allocated by functions, not processes
- most districts don’t compare efficiency or effectiveness with other districts, or with business
- no process taxonomy is used
- few have organization structures to manage and support process management

New benchmarking studies planned
- professional development for teachers
- financial management
- facilities and land management
- we have virtual site visits now, including international sites

4 measures
- cost effectiveness
- cycle time
- staff productivity
- staff efficiency

next 5 years: is to spread “process management” throughout the entire K-12 system
- I think this is transformative, not incremental
- We are not going to meet NCLB or international competitiveness if we don’t transform

5 year plan
- complete the PCF in 12 categories
- collect data from 2000 districts
- involve 20 states
- create an APQC “education process management center”
- research links: process and outcomes
- expand internationally
- be financially self-sufficient in 5 years

One of these days, politicians should ask for PROCESS data, not just outcome data
- I have got to establish more than correlation, go further to see if there is causation or just accidental
- You will find systems all over the world that are exemplars

Need to look at value and cost, as well as outcome
- you need instruction with IT designing the system
- need to include end-to-end processes in “education technology” – IT , teachers, principals, HR< administrators, facilities, finance, accounting
- Create “process owners” that cross functions with staff, dollars, time, authority, responsibility
- Align process with district, state….

Define and measure cost and value on the entire process
- I have a CPA and when someone asks “what does something cost” I can’t tell you—you have to give me a context, more info, I can’t give you value unless I ask the customer
- American management made this mistake 30 years ago when they were not involving employees in decisionmaking (movie in Roger and Me)
- Involve every employee in this, and the student to the extent you can (not anarchy, certainly we want to improve teaching but also improving learning)
- - process needs should be determined not “inside out,” but “outside in”
- obtain and measure customer definitions of quality

Use business tools in TCO-TVO-VOI
- six sigma: this is common sense put down with a little rigor (define the process and measure it, analyze it) – shared services, supply chain
- non-value-added analysis, lean
- process management
- benchmarking, communities of practice
- more…

If you are going to successfully use six sigma, I think you need to train everyone

Message: Dell is very process managed
- business has moved from functional management to process management

A district is a collection of processes
- it is how you organize those processes that is important
- need to shift away from functional management
- matrix management is process improvement in a functional-process matrix managed system
- process management: total or almost total process management across the entire organization

Benefits of functionally managed organization
- ever since Adam Smith wrote his book, we have thought of specialization of roles and division of labor
- - assigned responsibilities, authorities, and budgets clear
- more

Disads
- sub-optimization, low cross-functions
- waste, redundancy
- lack of customer focus
- silo mentality, bureaucracy, red tape, change resistance
- slowness, errors, and rework
- sub-systems often don’t work together

Toyota uses a system called “lean”

I think Toyota is the best managed company in the world, their management system can be adapted to education successfully

If we put a process thinker in a functional system, the functional system will win every time.

But many processes are cross-functional

Need to be process and outcomes focused

Mixed is not easy

Move toward a process management system
- I am a process, so are you
- Your body is a set of processes
- All processes have to be coordinated

Deere is doing this, moving toward a process system
- Air Products outside Allentown, managing globally using 1 process

Real learning comes from each other: from peers
- read the books, then go talk to the people who are doing (get the tacit knowledge that goes along with the book knowledge)

Checklist
- do you have maps of your key processes?
- Does your map include cross functions?
- Do you measure process performance?
- Do you have process owners that override…
- Do you use process improvement methodologies like Six Sigma, Lean, Root Cause, PDCA, SPC?
- Do senior leaders manage process owners?
- Do you have a change strategy to move functional management to one managed by processes?
- Are “customers” and or “suppliers” involved in the process flow?

Have to have a top management team
- if CEO is not committed, the CEO is going to have to adjudicate when you get into cross-functional process issues
- If the school board can’t understand this it is not going to work

Process owners have a long list of what they need to do

MY QUESTION: HOW IS A PROCESS OWNER DIFFERENT FROM A FUNCTIONAL OWNER

Is this worth it?
- if we just stick with functional management: we’ll just see incremental 1-2% change and improvement
- functional and process: 3-8% gains
- matrix: 10-12% gains
- total process management: 15-20% gains

Main gain is from non-value added time being squeezed out of the system, along with COLLABORATION

We need to get everyone informed about the use of statistics
- descriptive statistics: mean, median, mode, measures of dispersion, charting
- Probabilities, etc

Get started. Select a process to improve
- where do you start is a choice and often a problem
- you are going to be judged by your colleagues on how you do

Hardest thing to do is establishing the boundaries when you define the processes: where does the process start and stop

THIS IS THE REAL KEY: I THINK IT IS PROBABLY A LOT MORE DIFFICULT TO DEFINE THESE TYPES OF INSTRUCTIONAL PROCESSES IN SCHOOLS. IT IS EASIER TO DEFINE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESSES I WOULD GUESS. BUT LET’S TALK ABOUT TEACHING AND LEARNING. THAT IS PRETTY FUZZY IN TERMS OF PROCESS

Royal Bank of Scotland ad, business people debating how to do the hymlich maneuver
- difference in debating it and doing it

Friedman’s book is not perfect
- the intent of his book was good: awaken America, China, India, the Europeans offer the hottest race
- I subscribe to the worldwide competitiveness journal
- #1 in competitiveness: We are #1
- Venezuela is #1

Education is the answer: Just say KNOW

MY QUESTION: HOW ARE DISTRICTS MEASURING STUDENT LEARNING THAT IS MESSIER THAN NAPE OR AP TEST SCORES?
- Jack’s answer: we are not doing that yet. We are using AYP, standardized test scores, and in terms of process we are looking more at teaching than at learning

SO HERE IS A BIG OPPORTUNITY! IT IS GOOD TO THINK ABOUT LOOKING INTO THE “BLACK BOX” OF LEARNING, BUT THE KEY IS HOW WE ARE MEASURING THINGS. LEARNING IS MESSY! WE CAN GET SOME BENCHMARKS, BUT THEY MAY NOT BE AS STATISTICALLY PRESENTABLE AS WHAT WE SEE KNOW WITH STANDARDIZED TESTS THAT FOCUS PRIMARILY ON THE KNOWLEDGE / COMPREHENSION LEVEL.

Change, managing the change, thinking and daily behavior is the biggest challenge to moving toward process management

When you have a conflict over ownership of a resource, talk to the process owners, and then also go visit others who you think are “doing it right,” benchmark what you are doing and then compare that to what others are doing
- go to senior management
- and after that pray!

I think digitization can enhance movement toward a process management approach

On this day..

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