What’s the Top Line Here?

Many readers are familiar with the  Applications of Performance Management Technology class conducted by Aubrey Daniels International, Inc. During the advanced training, since many of the participants have already had previous training in Performance Management (PM), we often discover some finer discriminations in our use of that technology. For example, participants sometimes press us to consider more carefully certain things that we do and say about PM. Although, on occasion, the discriminations they point out are academic, at other times they spawn very practical and important improvements in the application of Performance Management. This article and future ones will be devoted to sharing those discriminations and improvements with the readers of Performance Management Magazine. In this way we can document and keep you up to date on the new developments in PM.

The first thing we do in any attempt to improve performance is to specifically (and in a measurable way) identify the result we want to accomplish. Even though, eventually, we will get around to reinforcing behavior, we should start by asking ourselves what result we want. On a written Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), we write that result on the top line (see figure). No argument there...right? Wrong. There’s no argument about where we should write the result, but in practice, things other than results frequently show up on the top line; that is, some things people label as results, really aren’t. If a true result in not on the "Top Line" then the approach designed to achieve it will very likely not affect the "bottom line." If that happens often in an organization, PM becomes just another program that carries no real impact. Improving the Top Line In the advanced classes we complete a personal development PIP.

The following are some examples of pinpoints that participants try to put on the "Top Line"...pinpoints that aren’t acceptable as results.

• To increase the number of pages read.
• To increase the number of times I exercise.
• To increase the number of times I communicate with my kids.

Do these look all right to you? Well, they aren’t...not for the "Top Line" anyway.

What about these work-related pinpoints?

• To increase the amount of reinforcement delivered.
• To increase the number of times a manager tours his/her area.
• To increase the number of preventive maintenance checks performed.

Do some of these sound okay?

They may well be good pinpoints to apply positive reinforcement to, but they don’t belong on the top line of the plan. Why? They aren’t results!

They are measures or counts of behaviors-measures of things we do (or want people to do) to achieve some, yet unnamed result. However, there must be a reason why we want ourselves or others to "tour the area" or "to perform preventive maintenance checks." That REASON, stated in good pinpointed form, is the result that belongs on the top line.

Why Do We Make This Error? We make this error for two reasons. First, many of us have said that once you count something it becomes a result. This is not true. Even though the behavior is over when we count it, that doesn’t make that count a result. It makes it a count (or a measure) of the behavior. That’s all. Looking at it this way may help: There are behaviors and there are results. Anything can be measured...so, we can measure behaviors, and we can measure results. Once we do, then what we have is a measure of the behavior and a measure of the result. The previously-listed pinpoints are measures of behavior because they count the number of times a behavior is performed. They don’t deserve top line status because they tell us nothing about what we are really trying to accomplish by increasing the behaviors.

Another reason it is easy to make this top line error, is that often the real result isn’t presently measured, or appears to be unmeasurable. Consequently, we (too readily) settle for a measure of behavior on the top line. Let me give you an example. In a consulting session a maintenance supervisor told me he wanted to increase the number of times his maintenance people performed a preventive check on machines. The top line of his PIP said exactly that. I told him his project was a good one to tackle and then suggested that "making a check" was a behavior which belonged in the list of behaviors on his plan, not on the result line. I further suggested that counting that behavior didn’t make it a result and did not give it top line status. What belonged on the top line was the reason why we do preventive checks. That’s the real result. And what is that?...Total machine "up-time," or possibly the number of machine minutes available per day, or perhaps the percent of machines in working order. This particular organization had over 200 machines, so we settled on a result of "the percent of machines in working order at the beginning of each day." We still measured the number of preventive checks, but that measure didn’t appear on the top line of the plan.

Top Line Communicate?

In a recent class, a father wanted to improve his communication with his son as a personal development project. What should his top line (result pinpoint) be? He suggested "the number of times we converse." He stated that his main problem was that he didn’t take enough opportunities to talk to his son. I said, "Great thing to work on, but is isn’t a top line result; it is a count of the behavior." (At this point I had no idea what should go on the top line, but I was confident it would be worth the struggle to figure it out-rather than give up by using a measure of behavior.) To determine the result he was seeking, we repeatedly asked the question, "Why do you want to communicate more with you son?" The closest we came to an answer that seemed potentially measurable was, "To improve the quality of our communication." Another possibility was, "To improve the quality of our relationship." These pinpoints aren’t measurable as they stand, so we developed a checklist that would measure the quality of their communication. The score on that checklist went on the top line as, "Increase the score on the ‘quality of communication’ checklist." We might have discovered a simpler indicator, but we enjoyed the challenge of measuring the "quality of communication" with a checklist of several different items. Compare the improved top line or actual result pinpoints to the ones listed earlier. After determining why the performer wanted to read more pages, the first top line item of "to increase the number of pages read" became "to increase the number of (a specific kind of) topics I am capable of discussing." Then, "reading pages" moved down into the list of supporting behaviors. "To increase the number of times I exercise" became "to reduce my percent body fat." Exercising was then listed as one of the behaviors. "To increase the amount of positive reinforcement delivered" became "to increase the overall average score on the employee job satisfaction survey." And, "to increase the number of times a manager tours his/her area" became "to increase a manager’s score on his/her performance appraisal." This is not to say that these revised top lines are the exact ones everyone should use. These particular ones were chosen because they were the actual outcomes these clients were interested in...their answers to the question, "Why do you want the performer to do this?"

Why Go To The Trouble?

If a real result isn’t on the top line, the probabilities are slim that a good data or feedback system will be subsequently developed. If a real result appears on the top line of a Performance Improvement Plan, it will also be displayed or what we call, "on the wall" for the performer to see. Therefore, if it isn’t on the top line, the result may never show up on the wall. Performers may measure only the amount of the behavior and never really know whether that impacts the real reason they want that behavior. A side benefit of making his effort is that clearly measuring and giving feedback on the true result helps employees, children, team members, etc. understand and accept the effort to increase certain behaviors. That is, they understand why the behavior should happen. When we made this shift toward higher top line accuracy in the advanced class, we noticed a marked improvement in the remainder of the PIP; the data, feedback, and reinforcement systems. So what do you say? Let’s stop calling a measure of behavior a result, and see what we can do about improving the "top line."