SAN ANTONIO -
That was the message from an educational session at the Texas Credit Union League's recent Leadership Conference here. George Pavelek, owner of Colleyville, Texas-based Performance Adventures, said his work exists because "performance gaps" exist.
He defined performance gaps as the difference between the expectations of work and the actual execution of work.
"We all have performance gaps, even though we try our best to do the things our mamas taught us to do," Pavelek explained.
One of Pavelek's clients is Education Credit Union in Amarillo, Texas. Gregg Bynum, CEO of Education CU, joined Pavelek for the session. According to Bynum, "the only way for our industry to truly thrive is to improve business practices and control operating expenses. Factors such as loan growth are market driven-the only thing we have control over is operating expenses."
Of course, credit unions have training programs. But too often, Pavelek said, management finds itself caught in a trap of introducing a new program every year. This can lead to cynicism among employees the next time an initiative is introduced.
A truly powerful performance improvement program begins with an examination of what causes the actual execution of work to be less than the expectation. Pavelek said the International Society for Performance Improvement has developed a list of six human performance factors:
* Goal-What am I expected to accomplish?
* Standard-How will I know when I am successful?
* Opportunity-What time do I have available to me to accomplish my work?
* Means-What do I have available to me?
* Competence-What do I know how to do? What skills do I have to accomplish my work?
* Motive-Why do I want to do this?
"These six factors are highly interactive and can't be taken in isolation from each other," he said.
According to Pavelek, the "Standard" should be set very high: "Meet member expectations the first time, every time."
Why so lofty? Is such a standard so high as to be unrealistic? No, he responded, because people expect to be served a meal free from disease-causing bacteria every time they go to a restaurant.
Why should they not expect their credit union to credit a deposit to the correct account every time?
Why should they not expect their credit union to take perfect care of their life savings?
"To improve a process, the first thing is to measure the current process," said Pavelek.
Pavelek suggested creating a large poster with each of the six human performance factors given space. The poster is placed on a wall.
Then, the people going through performance improvement training will write recent failures they have experienced on Post-it notes and place them on which factor they believe was the cause.
In some cases, a failure might have two or more causes, meaning participants can divide the Post-it.
"If a credit union does this and the majority of the Post-its end up on 'Opportunity,' then management will be able to see people are overworked and overcommitted," said Pavelek.
Even though he believes the standard should be set high, Pavelek acknowledged humans have a finite capacity to produce.
"People can't do everything for everybody all the time. Even Superman has Kryptonite. The key is for each person to know his or her Kryptonite."
