Achieving High Performance in Facilities Management – Step 3

As a facilities management organization strives to reach high performance, the third self-assessment question presents itself.  

What improvements should we focus on right now? 

The answer to this question is the topic of the fourth in our series of posts about high-performing facilities management organizations. Our model offers a straightforward approach, which becomes the building blocks for high performance.

The first two questions covered some essential policy, inventory, organizational, technology, and systems questions so that by now, the Facilities Management (FM) leader will have a good idea of potential improvements. Creating, capturing, and implementing these opportunities is the big payback to this exercise.

They can typically be classified into five key “improvement vectors”:

• Organization –
  • How consistent are our decision-making processes?
  • Is our approach to managing our property centralized, with clear strategic roles?
• Policy –
  • Do our people collaborate informally, producing inconsistent results, or do we have integrated, repeatable processes in place to improve consistency?
• Technology/Systems –
  • Are we still using manual templates and checklists, or have we moved to work order management with a CMMS?
  • Are the facilities systems fully integrated with the financial systems?
• Recruiting and Training –
  • Do we have a formal program to recruit and train employees? 
  • Have we baselined essential skills and training needs?
• Communications –
  • Are we operating on an ad-hoc, as-needed basis, or do we have a strategic communications plan with a formalized program and standardized tools?

Once an area for improvement is selected, likely, some work has already been done in this area; in other words, implementation doesn’t have to start from scratch. In one of our past engagements, we developed the continuum shown below, to guide a phased implementation of improvements across the full range of the vectors:

Working with FM leaders on this project, we were able to assess which level the organization had achieved on each of the vectors and develop a plan to achieve the next level. Our long-term plan looked at the levels above the immediate goals, to capture cumulative value from each successive initiative and investment.

It’s very popular to metaphorically refer to organizational improvement efforts as a journey these days, and it’s easy to see why, as these levels form a sort of road map to high performance. The key is to complete an honest self-assessment at the start of the effort, which ensures clarity for navigating the challenging way ahead. Performance metrics, which we’ll discuss in a future post, become the checkpoints to measure progress as each improvement is implemented.

Our next post will take a look at how FM leaders can use their resources–the people assigned to the department and the budget that has been provided–to improve short-term planning. This is summarized by the question, “How can I make sure that the correct facilities are available to meet my organization’s immediate requirements?” We hope you’ll join us for that post next month!

If you missed a previous post in this series, click the Facilities Support Services tag below to view them.