“We need your help. Can you develop a workshop on customer service? “

The director was distraught. One of his departments continually received poor patient satisfaction results.

I looked through the results. They were pretty bad. While there were some opportunities to improve on service, that wasn’t the real problem.

The problem was extremely long wait times. Patients were scheduled in fifteen minute intervals but the average visit lasted twenty-three minutes. Every day as soon as they finished with the first patient they were already behind schedule. Then, the problem just built throughout the day.

All of the “customer service” training in the world wasn’t going to calm a patient who had been waiting two hours for his or her appointment. And, regardless of the training, a receptionist who is yelled at all day by angry patients might not continue to provide service with a smile.

They needed to fix their process. I later learned that the training department had already conducted two customer service workshops in the prior eighteen months. The problem wasn’t going away.

AIM for Performance

Individuals and teams perform best when they have ability, information, and motivation (AIM). Any performance issues that you face will be driven by one or a combination of those three things.

I’ve found that about 80% of the time an organization’s knee-jerk reaction to a performance problem is to focus on ability. There seems to be an assumption that if a person isn’t performing well, it’s because he or she doesn’t have the right knowledge or skills. The organization provides training, coaching, knowledge management, and other interventions to improve people’s knowledge and skills but often the problem doesn’t go away.

There are two problems with this approach.

First, improving ability tends to be the costliest, slowest, and most difficult way to improve performance. Creating a meaningful change to someone’s knowledge, skills, and beliefs is hard work.

Second, and more importantly, in many cases the problem is motivation. People often know what to do and how to do it. However, for some reason (intrinsic or extrinsic) they just don’t want to do it. Given the low levels of engagement in most organizations, this is a far more plausible explanation. You can’t train people to be motivated.

In one non-profit service agency, leaders were concerned that their counselors weren’t spending enough time with clients. The counselors knew how to properly engage a client. They even preferred to spend time more time with the clients to address their problem. However, their performance was evaluated based on the number of clients they saw per day. The agency’s performance management systems contradicted both the agency’s and the individual’s desires. Once the performance management system was modified, the problem went away. This was a case where the lack of motivation came from extrinsic rather than intrinsic sources.

The good news is that motivation doesn’t usually cost much or take a lot of time. A good manager, through effective personal interactions can make a huge difference in his or her team’s motivation.

However, motivated employees don’t always succeed.

Sometimes the issue is that people don’t have the information they need. Information can be operational data about a department’s functioning, the company’s goals and priorities, latest news, policies and procedures, lessons learned, or details about your products and services.

In the case of the department with the poor patient satisfaction scores, the department manager had never been given the full report of her customer service results. The director would give her the overall score and tell her to improve it. Once she saw the responses to individual questions, she knew exactly what the problem was and how to fix it. Here was a person who had the ability and motivation but was missing the information upon which to act.

And of course, sometimes the problem actually is ability.

It’s important to remember that ability comes in two parts: internal and external.

Internal ability includes knowledge, skills, and experience. This is where training and similar experiences can be helpful.

External ability includes processes, tools and equipment, software, and other organizational resources. Don’t overlook these. A well trained, informed, and motivated person will still fail without an effective infrastructure.

I recently applied for a life insurance policy. It took five months to get a decision. I then applied to a different company. I had a decision in three weeks. Both companies are large, well known insurance providers. I would guess that their underwriters are equally competent. One company clearly had better processes and systems. The difference in performance was staggering.

AIMing for better performance

Leaders are under increasing pressure to deliver more with less. In many cases the people you have could rise to the challenge. You just have to ensure that they have what they need, know what to do, and most importantly, want to do it. The biggest mistake you can make as a leader is to assume that if people aren’t doing what you want it’s because they don’t know how to do it. Often, that is not the case.

Five tips for AIMing for better performance

1. Take time to understand the root cause of your people’s performance problems. It might seem faster to implement a “quick hit” but you won’t get the results you need.
2. Don’t take motivation for granted. It’s probably the single biggest driver of poor performance.
3. Make sure you have all three elements: ability, information, and motivation. Performance is like a three-legged stool. It will fall unless all three pieces are in place.
4. Provide context – a key piece of “information” that is often missing is context. Your people want to understand the big picture and the end to which they are contributing. It will help focus them and it will also help motivate them.
5. Use training and workshops sparingly. Training is good for building skills. You can’t train someone to be motivated. You also can’t “train” them about information. They’ll forget it. Find alternative ways to motivate people and provide information.

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Brad Kolar is an executive consultant, speaker, and author with Avail Advisors. Avail can help you unleash your people’s potential. Contact Brad at brad.kolar@availadvisors.com