paired comparison analysis

Working Out the Relative Importance of Different Options.

Paired Comparison Analysis is a good way of weighing up the relative importance of criteria, which may be conflicting.  It is useful where you do not have objective data to base this on or when priorities are not clear, or are competing in importance.

Follow these steps to use the technique:

1. List the options you will compare as rows AND columns in a table.
2. Assign a letter to each option.
3. Block out cells on the table where you will be comparing an option with itself or where you will be duplicating a comparison
4. Within the remaining cells compare the option in the row with the one in the column.  For each cell, write down the letter of the more important option in the cell, and score the difference in importance from 0 (no difference) to 3 (major difference).  You can also use 0 to 5 or 0 to 10. .
5. Finally, consolidate the results by adding up the total of all the values for each of the options. You may want to convert these values into a percentage of the total score.

Example

A group of marketers wanted to rate the criteria by which they evaluated their brokers.

They agreed the following criteria:

• The size of their business.
• The number of applications they submitted per month (average of the last six).
• How easy they were to work with
• The growth of their business
• Their knowledge of the market
• Their knowledge of the clients products

The grid looked like this:

	Business size (A)	Apps / month (B)	Ease (C)	Growth (D)	Market Knwldge (E)	Product Knwldge (F)
Business size (A)		A,1	C,4	D,1	A,1	A,2
Apps / month (B)			B,2	B,1	B,3	B,1
Ease (C)				D,2	E,4	F,2
Growth (D)					D,2	D,1
Market Knowledge (E)						F,3
Product Knowledge (F)

Adding up the A, B, C, D, E and F values, gives these totals:

• A = 3
• B = 8
• C = 4
• D = 6
• E = 4
• F = 5

OK in reality I don’t remember the criteria they selected and I have set up the grid so that the weightings aligned with my previous posting on Grid Analysis.  But do you get the idea?

grid analysis

This is a mechanical, way to prioritise a list of possibilities against a set of cirtieria.  This can be used to facilitate decision making in a workshop.

Use the following steps:

1. List your options as rows in a table.
2. List the factors that are important for making the decision as column headings.
3. Decide on weightings to show the relative importance of the deciding factors.   If the weighting is not obvious, use a technique such as Paired Comparison Analysis to estimate them.
4. Work through the table, scoring each option on how well it satisfies each factor,  from 0 (poor) to 10 (very good).
5. Now multiply each of your scores by the weightings.
6. Finally add up these weighted scores for each option and rank the options accordingly.

Example:

I have used this to help a marketing house prioritise the brokers who supply them with client applications.  They could not supply the same level of service to all the brokers and wanted to create two or three groups each to receive a different level of service.

The prioritisation criteria were:

• The size of their business.
• The number of applications they submitted per month (average of the last six).
• How easy they were to work with
• The growth of their business
• Their knowledge of the market
• Their knowledge of the clients products

3. They listed about 15 brokers but in the example I will use Brokers A to D.

Criteria:	Business Size	Apps /month	Work ease	Business Growth	Market Knwldge	Product Knwldge	Total
Weights:	3	8	4	6	4	5
Broker A	6 = 18	10 = 80	7 = 28	4 = 24	6 = 24	8 = 40	214
Broker B	2 = 6	3 = 24	4 = 16	2 = 12	5 = 20	4 = 20	98
Broker C	5 = 15	2 = 16	3 = 12	7 = 42	3 = 12	2 = 10	109
Broker D	4 = 12	5 = 40	8 = 32	6 = 36	4 = 16	7 = 35	171

From this abbreviated analysis you can see that Broker A is the most promising person on the list.  My client used the prioritisation to create three groups of brokers.  They offered the top group a fuller service than the lower and used this as a reward and incentive to their brokers.

If you do this exercise and find anomalies in your results it is a good time to reflect on the weighting you give to your criteria and why.

And now the confession:

I really don’ t remember the weightings they used.  Actually I don’t even remember the criteria.  But I do remember how relieved and energised they were when the picture emerged.

Teams: five conditions and three outcomes

I have just read the book “Leading Teams” by J Richard Hackman and am in the process of working through it in more detail to incorporate his thinking into my offer.  Here is a diagram to summarising what I have found so far, which aligns with my previous post on the work:

1. The first question to settle is whether this is indeed a team or simply a group of people who happen to work in the same area.  Do they have a task?  Do they have specified authority to manage their own work processes? Are the team boundaries clear and is the membership stable over a reasonable period of time?

2. Authoritatively setting direction energises team members, orients their attention and engages their talents.

3. Well designed work team facilitates internal work motivation in individuals as they view their work as meaningful, feel personally responsible and receive trustworthy feedback on the results of their efforts.

4. Organisational context in which rewards, information availability, team education and resource availability are managed successfully allows the teams to give full attention to their particular responsibilities without distractions and the irritation of dealing with someone else’s responsibility.

5. A compelling direction, an enabling structure and a supportive organisational context provide the foundation for superb team performance.  No amount of coaching can compensate if these are badly flawed.  However, if these conditions are in place, coaching can significantly enhance team performance in terms of identifying opportunities and vulnerabilities in managing member effort, selecting performance strategies and using member talents.

6. When these five conditions are met, the team will have an opportunity to operate as an effective team as compared with three criteria:

- The ability to understand, shape and exceed client expectations.

- The inclination to grow as a team, detecting and correcting errors in their team process.

- The group experience, on balance, contributes positively to the learning and personal well being of individual team members.

1. The first question to settle is whether this is indeed a team or simply a group of people who happen to work in the same area.  Do they have a task?  Do they have specified authority to manage their own work processes? Are the team boundaries clear and is the membership stable over a reasonable period of time?
2. Authoritatively setting direction energises team members, orients their attention and engages their talents.
3. Well designed work team facilitates internal work motivation in individuals as they view their work as meaningful, feel personally responsible and receive trustworthy feedback on the results of their efforts.
4. Organisational context in which rewards, information availability, team education and resource availability are managed successfully allows the teams to give full attention to their particular responsibilities without distractions and the irritation of dealing with someone else’s responsibility.
5. A compelling direction, an enabling structure and a supportive organisational context provide the foundation for superb team performance.  No amount of coaching can compensate if these are badly flawed.  However, if these conditions are in place, coaching can significantly enhance team performance in terms of identifying opportunities and vulnerabilities in managing member effort, selecting performance strategies and using member talents.

When these five conditions are met, the team will have an opportunity to operate as an effective team as compared with three criteria:

1. The ability to understand, shape and exceed client expectations.
2. The inclination to grow as a team, detecting and correcting errors in their team process.
3. The group experience, on balance, contributes positively to the learning and personal well being of individual team members.

How to build a team

I have just ordered J Richard Hackman’s book “Leading Teams” after reading an interview with him in Harvard Business Review.  In the article he offers five basic conditions leaders should consider if they want to set up and sustain effective teams:

1.  The teams must be real

Everyone must know who is on the team and who is not.  It is the leaders job to make this clear.  It is sometimes a difficult call and JRH talks about a CEO who kept a CFO in his role because he was good at what he did, but would not allow him to join the executive committee because he was a “team destroyer”.  

2.  Teams need a compelling direction

Members need to know, and agree on, what they’re supposed to be doing together.  Unless a leader articulates a clear direction, there is a real risk that different members will pursue different agendas.  Any leader who has worked with a team of strong individuals will attest to this.

3.  Teams need enabling structures

Poorly defined tasks, the wrong members, wishy-washy values and agreed behaviours all lead the team into difficulties.  

4.  Teams need a supportive organisation

The organisational context, including structures, rewards and incentives and access to information must facilitate team work.  Have you ever audited your strategic objectives and reward criteria for congruence.  Are you (for instance) measuring customer support in your performance appraisals but rewarding only New Business enrolment in your financial rewards to staff? 

5.  Teams need expert coaching

Most executive coaches focus on individual performance, which does not significantly improve teamwork.  Teams need coaching as a group in team processes, especially at the beginning, midpoint and end of the project.  But team coaching is a specialist endeavour.  The coach should be able to distinguish between team coaching and facilitation as well as between team coaching and individual coaching. 

JRH finishes the article by commenting that there are cases where collaboration is a hindrance rather than a help.  Part of the leader’s role is to find the most effective applications for individual autonomy and collective action.  Every team needs a deviant.  The person who challenges decisions or the status quo.  But, as he points out, challenging or speaking the truth in a team can be a dangerous role to play.

How to develop team work and communication through team games

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a tribe knew they had to change the way they worked together.  But experience had shown that any fluctuations in their daily operation could cause irreparable damage to their life support systems which in turn would cause wide-spread loss of life.  What could they do?  

At last a hero from the tribe came forward and agreed to undertake the perilous journey to the cavern of the three wise hags…

…The oldest hag said “Go back and assemble your tribe.  They are to pretend they are in a galaxy far, far away on the third rock from their star, called “Sun”.  They are working on machines that organise logic to run the way they live.  The programmes they used to make are no longer way better than anyone else’s.  They must work together to make a plan…”Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (no not that one), a tribe knew they had to change the way they worked together.  But experience had shown that any fluctuations in their daily operation could cause irreparable damage to their life support systems which in turn would cause wide-spread loss of life.  What could they do?  

At last a hero from the tribe came forward and agreed to undertake the perilous journey to the cavern of the three wise hags…

…The oldest hag said “Go back and assemble your tribe.  They are to pretend they are in a galaxy far, far away on the third rock from their star, called “Sun”.  They are working on machines that organise logic to run the way they live.  The programmes they used to make are no longer way better than anyone else’s.  They must work together to make a plan…”

A place to practice team dynamics

Yes, the hags were using a powerful team building technique to help the team solve their own problems.

Teamwork takes practice. 

In sports, drama and music the best performances only happen as a result of hours and hours of practice.  But to practice new skills and behaviours we need to first let go of those now inappropriate.  And in learning the new, we make mistakes which apart from being embarrassing may cause significant damage to what our organisation is trying to achieve.  Implementing new tools and processes without allowing significant learning can be very destructive.

So how can you create an environment where there is real pressure to deliver but in which members of the team feel free to take risks, generate new ideas and make mistakes from which they can learn?

The best learning environment draws on imagination.  Suspending reality allows participants to engage with new skills, attitudes and behaviours without having to manage the complexity, inertia, history or responsibility of the real organisation process.  Fantasy provides a fresh start and a clear deadline within which participants can focus their energy.  As their motivation to prevail in the scenario increases they will be more willing to try new team oriented attitudes and behaviours.  

There is a band of moderate stress, where optimum learning happens.  Below this learning band, our brains are dull and nothing is absorbed.  Above the band our logic centre is flooded with coping chemicals preventing us from reasoning or learning.  Adjusting the scenario allows the facilitator to keep the team in the learning band: 

- “Oh dear, a virus has blinded the whole team, please put on these blindfolds…”

or

- “One of your scientists has discovered some information that will help you greatly…”

So fantasy games can provide excellent learning opportunities, but how do you go about setting up a game.

How to run a successful team game

Setting up a scenario may include the following steps:

Contract

The facilitator and sponsor understand and agree exactly how the team must benefit from the intervention. 

Design

The game should include the key learning issues without any of the elements from the team reality (send the accounting team on a journey through a dark and dangerous swamp).

Plan

The facilitator should have a clear idea of how the game should unfold, where it could change direction and what the possibilities are.  There must be no logistical surprises.

Test 

The facilitator MUST test each game before using it with a team.  Testing prevents the game from being either too easy or too difficult for the team to complete.

Psychological preparation

The facilitator’s role at the start of the game is that of story teller, creating the drama, the fun and the tension within a safe reassuring environment.

Brief

Here the facilitator gives a concise, clear and crisp setting of the scene, the rules, the roles and the action.

Start the action – handover control to the team

The participants take control and the learning begins.  This is the part where the real team learning happens.  The facilitator tells a story to take the team out of the everyday.  This should balance the playful nature of the games with sufficient pressure to succeed.  From the background, the facilitator should allow the build up of a healthy level of stress for learning, maintaining the tension.  The facilitator may be tempted to give clues.  We usually ask “how” questions when we are not keen to engage our own creativity and intelligence.  And the answer to “how” is “yes” (i.e. get on with it!)

Clearly stop the action

When the task is complete or when a hazardous situation is developing the facilitator signals the end of the game takes back control of the intervention.  

Debrief

This is where it all comes together.  Consultation with the team after the event then allows the team to reflect on the parallels between the imaginary situation and the real world waiting for them back at the office.  There may be a temptation to rush through the debriefing.  But this is where the learnings are bedded down and the team have an opportunity to transfer these learnings to their work environment.

The hero returned and carried out what the hags had suggested.  Pretending to work with “computers”, “customers” and “programmes” helped the team to deal with the real issues facing them as a team without endangering the operation of the gravity-balanced zygomorphic bifibrulators so essential for their survival.  

Life would continue.  

Things would be different but now they knew they would cope with the changes.

How to start strategic planning through workshops and coaching

Are you ready for a strategic plan for your business?  Do you know where to start?  Defining and implementing a strategy is an exciting step for any organisation.  Perhaps you have a great idea that has exploded beyond the capacity of your start-up group.  Or maybe you have all the skills and resources but, especially in the current economic conditions, you just are not getting the attention from the market that should be beating a path to your door.  Is it time to take all that you have and create a foundation of clarity from which to step forward?

A clear strategic plan is powerful tool for success.  When your team have a clear picture of what you do and how you work and where you are headed this can bring great relief and energy.  And when you are all clear on who should do what, there can be no stopping you.  Furthermore, when you all know specifically what you are NOT going to do, you can avoid energy, resource and time draining pitfalls and red-herrings.

Success in goal setting begins with an understanding of the strategic planning process.  It is easy to think that setting strategy is for large corporates, supported by the big five consultancies.  And the jargon itself can be off-putting.  A brief reading of the index in any strategy publication can be quite disheartening.  Perhaps this is not the first time you have considered this approach but, because you have not found out how to start, you have dropped the issue and decided to push on with what you know.

The strategy process begins with a conversation.  A conversation supported by frameworks to raise the right questions.  You know you must do something.  But where are you now and what big issues do you face?  What does the future hold and what do you have to bring you success?  When I help teams with planning conversations I use a structure to cover:

• your offer and how you are perceived in your market
• your processes and what you do to deliver your offer
• the resources you muster to deliver these processes right
• the financial targets they will use to measure success  

This questions form the heart of the strategic plan.  And the plan is guided by a conversation about the purpose of your organisation, where you want to get to (your vision) and how you work together (your values).

Stephen Quirke (that’s me) has been helping clients gain clarity on their plans through coaching and facilitation for more than ten years.  If you would like to find out more about the models I use in conversations to set strategy please have a look at this site.  I can help you through coaching your leadership and by facilitating conversations within in your teams.  To find out more about how you can bring clarity to your current situation and how you can focus the energy of your team on clear goals you can also visit my StrategyWorks website.

strategy – a context for different approaches

Have you ever wondered about all the different approaches to strategy out there? Ever since I have been facilitating strategy workshops I have been looking for a view to pull all of the different views into a single view. Well I have found a good one. I am reading “Strategy Safari” by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel, who collectively bring massive experience to bear on the question. They define 10 schools of thought which they describe and critique in the book. I am finding this an enjoyable and enriching read. The writers offer a model to relate the 10 schools of thought that I want to share here.

In the centre they show strategy formulation as a black box. This is how most of the schools view the creation process; a mystery or irrelevant.

Only the Cognitive School try to figure out how strategy is formulated, from a psychology perspective, though without much success.

The Positioning School, stepping off a foundation of economics and military history, looks back at historical data which it analyses and feeds into the black box.

The Planning School looks ahead using systems theory and urban planning, but just ahead to schedule strategies created in the box.

The Design School uses a deliberate process, vested in the CEO to create an explicit, simple and clear view of a strategy to be implemented, without recourse to changes from emerging insights.

The Entrepreneurial School looks beyond the immediate to create a unique vision of the future through an intuitive process.

The Learning and Power schools look below, at what underlies strategy, focussing on particulars rather than universals. The Learning School looks on the ground, sometimes in the grassroots for learnings to guide an emerging view of strategy. The Power School looks lower (but not deeper), under rocks or underground into the places organisation don’t usually want to look, at the power and political games.

The Cultural School gazes down from above, enshrouded in clouds of beliefs.

High above all this, the Environmental School looks at the process from an even greater elevation, as in a reversed telescope.

The Configuration School looks at the whole process and categorises the organisation in terms of life-cycle and change process.

I like this model because it creates a context for the strategy material I read.  As I think about it I have a sense that I would like to change it around a little to suit how I implement strategy with my clients.  But first I am reading to integrate the richness of the information behind the model.  I think it would be a good idea for me, in subsequent posts to reflect on my understanding of the key points of each of the ten schools.

Learning, delegation and empowerment

There is a shift in the balance of power in a typical coaching, mentoring or managerial relationship.  Here I use the terms, ‘coach’ and ‘client’.  At first the coach may need to manage the client, having power ‘over’.  As the work progresses, the coach hands back power, sharing it with the client.  Towards the close of the work, the coach leaves the stage but remains in the wings, on call for assistance, having power ‘under’.  

Paul Hersey’s Situational Leadership model provides a process for delegating responsibility and power.  He plotted the amount of structure a manager would give to a subordinate against the closeness of relationship the manager would exercise.  He then described growth in terms of a passage through these quadrants.

In the first quadrant the coach tells the client exactly how it should be done, what it will look like and when it will be complete.  This low relationship and high structure is reassuring. 

As the client grows in their understanding, they enter into the second quadrant.  The coach asks open questions about how the client will deal with the task at hand.  “Where have you seen this before?” is a good generic question which may be followed by “OK so what is your plan this time?”

The third quadrant requires patience and attention.  The client assumes responsibility for initiating a task.  The coach listens out for questions.  As the questions come the coach can steer the client towards a way forward.  The wisdom is required to evaluate a situation where the client does not ask.  The client may have slipped back into the previous quadrant, in which case the coach should go back to asking open questions.  Or the client may have grown into the next quadrant.

In the final quadrant, the client may share a little about how they are dealing with a situation.  But this will be to humour you as coach or may be politeness.  They will not feel inclined to give details and may seem impatient or even annoyed when prompted for feedback.  Part of letting go as a coach is realising that the client may not even respond positively to the feedback from the coach that they have reached this level of maturity.

I believe empowerment is taken rather than given and this model may help you to gauge the level to which your client is taking on the responsibility and freedom of accountability.

Dealing with the client in the wrong quadrant can be disorientating and frustrating for both parties.  Also we may have a tendency to leave out quadrants.  Some managers do not know how to exercise ‘High Relationship’ just as some managers do not know how to leave their charges to get on with the job.  And of course some managers only know how explain everything in great detail and others could explain how to do a job if their lives depended on it.

So, look around.  Who are you working with?  Which quadrant are they in?  How best should you work with them there?

Organisation purpose

Why does your organisation exist?  Do you have a clear purpose?   Does everyone in your organisation have the same view of your purpose?   If the purpose is not crystal clear, people will not understand what kind of knowledge is critical and what they have to learn in order to improve performance.  

But just what is meant by “purpose”?  John Browne, the CEO of British Petroleum described purpose as, “who we are and what makes us distinctive.  It is what we as a company exist to achieve and what we are willing to and not willing to do to achieve it.”    Conversation about purpose is a powerful tool to focus teams on what to do and what to leave alone.  In “Good to Great” Jim Collins offers a model for defining the “business concept” for an organisation.  I find this model useful to initiate the conversation on purpose.  Here is how I present it:

Jim Collins gives a wealth of information on these ideas on his website, including downloadable excerpts from lectures and Q&A sessions.  This is well worth a visit.

The first question is “What are you passionate about?”  Not “what should be passionate about to succeed?” Or “what have we been told to be passionate about?”  But what ignites your passion?  If it is outside of the business of the organisation that is OK. Write it down and reflect on it. Then identify what it is about your industry or organisation that ignites a burning passion in your heart?  

This photo of Dane Petersen is from Longboard Magazine.  In an interview with Longboard Magazine he said, “…the way Malibu peels and bends down the point on an outgoing tide is absolutely flawless, and it’s got so many perfect nose-riding sections that it almost drives you nuts out of pure enjoyment.  I remember having little heart palpitations as a kid because I would get so amped.”  

So what gives you heart palpitations?”

The second question is about what you can be the best at.  When you look at your industry and the capacities in your organisation, what can you be the best at?  Jim Collins asks “…in the whole world?”   But perhaps your universe of influence is smaller than this.  Perhaps it is your continent, your country, even your town.  This is question to plumb your intent but also to gauge your reality.    

• Looking at who you are, what is it that you can do better than anyone else around?  
• Looking around, what niche has been exists, that has not been taken and is not unassailably defended?

A local health care provider, Discovery, captured a massive slice of the market, in a short time, with financial services, assurance products and a wellness programme, backed up with a business model including a research programme.  To duplicate and compete with them on this Wellness Programme would be extremely expensive.  Many would say that their position is unassailable in this market.

Question three is about your economic denominator and requires careful consideration.  What single ratio describes the economics underlying your business?  What measure will cause you to look at your industry in a new way, highlighting new opportunities?  Jim Collins gives a number of clarifying examples in his book.  For example when retailers moved from measuring ‘profit per region’, to ‘profit per customer visit’.  This lead them to carefully evaluate what customers were buying the most, the most popular ‘baskets” e.g.  ‘milk, nappies and beer’.  By considering the possible circumstances leading to these baskets they were able to place items stratetgically in stores and offer other tempting items en-route between the items on the shelves.  I wonder how many ‘milk and nappies’ baskets now include flowers, chocolate or frozen meals in addition to beer?

So what is your purpose?  What concept describes where these three circles intersect?  Use your thinking to describe the area where the three circles intersect.  As you do this, you may wish to consider the questions raised by Tony Manning in “Making sense of strategy”: 

• Who do you serve?
• The value you deliver to those you serve
• Why do you matter?
• What is your ambition?

Deconstruction – the learning process that supports change

There are many models describing change.  Here is one offered to us on the I-Coach masters programme.  I used two pictures because the formal ‘four-box’ picture just does not get near to describing the confusion, frustration and despair that accompanied the learning process for me.  I would like to have extended the ‘despair’ block right down to the floor, but that would have been an over-dramatisation.

 

I think the steps are fairly well known so perhaps I should consult my notes on this … (nah!).  

In Unconscious incompetence we remain blissfully ignorant of what we don’t know.  Our denial systems work hard to keep us here.  But sometimes the situation demands our attention and we realise we are in..

Conscious incompetence.  We become aware of that our competence or skills are inadequate to the situation or the task in hand.  We may cling for as long as we can to what is not working anymore.  But for learning to take place we have to engage reality, acknowledging that we really don’t know.  At this point we are ready to haul out the books or call for help.  The learning process begins.  But learning requires ‘un-learning’ and this can be very difficult.  We need to make conscious decisions not to work the old way, even though we still cannot do the new way, or we just don’t know how.   In the learning process we may find ourselves double-guessing our ‘useful’ skills along with those we are working to change.   This whole affair can be totally disorientating.  

As we work with our inputs we decide on new approaches.  We apply these in the next phase of the process…

Conscious competence.  In this phase we apply our new skills, testing them out in learning or real situations.  This is where we make mistakes, we slip, staumbe and fall.  It is better if we can do these in learning situations, where we have contracted with the others involved, or we are working on our own.  But sometimes we find ourselves learning in the real world.  And I think that is when we need a support structures and mechanisms.  These may include a coach, mentor, good friend, our own reflective process, meditation and prayer.  Even though I have called this ‘joyful labour’ it can be very tough here.  

The model neatly shows the descrete boxes.  Perhaps this is how it works with small areas of learning.  But in larger, more complex areas I am certain that we move back and forth between conscious incompetence and competence.  Eventually the skill takes root and we find our selves in…

Conscious Competence.  We have the skills and we hone them here.  We carry out the tasks with confidence, vigour and applomb, till the next learning opportunity comes along (not forgetting Hubris).  Actually, with a solid reflective practice, I am certain we can become unconsciously competent at deconstruction.

So why is this called ‘deconstruction’?  Well for real learning to take place, we have to literally take apart the constructs we hold about reality and reconstuct them including our new learning.  Deconstruction is a non-trivial business.