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Identifying Latent Capacity
This is the first of a series of articles where we will explore some of the successes people have had in significantly improving their businesses as well as examining some of the most common mistakes that we have helped organizations overcome when executing a business improvement plan.
Typically, most organizations have a latent capacity of 20-30%. This is in addition to any capacity that is visible or acknowledged and applies to companies small and large and regardless of the nature of the business. A statement like this is naturally greeted with skepticism in the first instance. There are many well run businesses that have the best staff, loyal customers, great products and the latest systems that refuse to believe there could be such an opportunity.
Confusion between systems, infrastructure and people with capability, management and culture is the root cause of this latent capacity. Like any tool, the results of it being wielded by an amateur are incomparable to the results when handled by a skilled craftsman. When we examine the tools that we give our front line managers and the training and support they have in the use of them, it starts to become apparent that we are typically ill equipped at managing capacity and capability.
The front line supervisor, the person that plans, controls and organizes the work for the employees is the most crucial person in the organization when it comes to the execution of an efficient and productive business. They are the people that make daily decisions around how best to distribute the work, what constitutes a reasonable workload and how to determine whether performance issues need to be addressed by coaching, training or other means. Yet when we look at the path these critical managers have taken to get to these roles, they have generally come from being an operator and their progression through the organization has been a reflection of their technical skill. While we may have given them a few workshops on conflict resolution or effective management and supported them with a few hours a week of one-on-one coaching, they have arrived at this position relatively poorly equipped.
What they do know about the business and its people has been gleaned from being a good participant and team member. What tools they have to manage with will be a legacy of the previous incumbent or the company’s overall approach to management. This is often as basic as a headcount that they must remain within.
The reality of most businesses is that daily, weekly and monthly fluctuations in volume are common and often significant. This is completely at odds with a fixed blunt instrument to manage capability with such as headcount and is especially true in highly variable environments such as a contact centre. The result is typically a siege mentality where high volumes become battles with all hands to the pumps – including the newly minted team leader or manager - and periods of lower volumes are an opportunity to conduct housekeeping and catch our breath.
What these managers lack is the thing they need the most – tools to help them balance workload and set reasonable expectations for their staff. This is not a piece of software or a management theory but a tool that they can used on a daily basis to judge performance, identify issues and plan for tomorrow.
What happens then, without these tools and without the training on how to best plan, organize and control the work, is that they fall back on what they are most comfortable with and that is typically doing work. Combine this with the increasing burden of self service being placed on the front line for HR and payroll functions and you wind up with people spending the majority of their day doing activities that add little to no value to the organization. In fact, it creates a need for a significant buffer to deal with peaks and troughs due to the lack of active management.
We have used the terms front line manager, supervisor and team leader interchangeably in this article, as how this first line of management is described seems to vary from organization to organization.
We have conducted interviews with over 900 front line managers and found that less than 5% of their time is spent doing the thing they are primarily there for – active management. While they recognize that they should be spending more than half their time actively managing the work place they instead spend the bulk of their time, 70% of their day, either doing work due to poorly scheduled resources or doing administrative tasks that while necessary are inappropriate for the front line manager.
What is needed is to train them on their roles? Have the business embrace them as a critical part of the management infrastructure and equip them with an appropriate toolset to deliver results. This will reduce the need for them to ‘do’, improve their confidence, allowing them embrace their responsibilities as managers.
Our next article will look in more detail at the role of front line managers and the tools they need to excel. In later articles we will look at how to set expectations and targets, additionally we will explore the indicators in place in most organizations to measure quality and service and explore the flaws in most current measures for each.
-- Andrew Cronan is a Director at The Spencer Partnership
(The Spencer Partnership provides solutions to clients who want to improve the way they do business. Our focus is on maximizing profitability through increasing revenue and reducing expenses while improving customer and staff satisfaction levels. For more information, visit www.spencerpartnership.com )
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