Are Formal Peer Reviews Valuable?

Are Formal Peer Reviews Valuable?

It depends. Do you think they are valuable? Or do you think they are a waste of time? In either case, you are correct.

If you think they are valuable, you will do them right. And they will help you find defects in important documents or source code.

If you think they are a waste of time, but are mandated to do them anyway, you will only go through the motions with a Checkbox Attitude. And they won’t be valuable at all. You will then notice afterward that they didn’t help at all, providing you "evidence" that you were right. A self-fulfilling prophecy. This will cause you to resist peer reviews even more next time, and do an even worse job next time. A positive feedback loop.

The same is true of any process improvement tool.

Which is why I believe that:

1) Management should never force employees to use a process improvement tool they don’t believe will be helpful, because the employees will end up being right!

2) Instead of mandates, management should focus instead on convincing people, using evidence, that such tools can be helpful.

NUMMI No-Layoff Story

Several years before Toyota shutdown the NUMMI plant, I took a tour there.

One of the workers showed us a video of how great NUMMI is and that there had never been a layoff there.

Later the worker told us it was his last day because he was being laid off.

I raised my hand and pointed out the contradiction. He then explained there's never been a lay-off of permanent employees.

I later wondered if Toyota's large temp force was their way of solving the Layoff Dilemma (how to get employees to co-operate with process improvement when that could lead to their own obsolescence and layoff).

Temporary employees might be motivated to cooperate with process improvement if that could lead to permanent status.

Permanent employees are not demotivated to cooperate because they are never (or rarely) laid off.

Just a thought, not sure if that's what they do.

Process Improvement and the Layoff Dilemma

I have a friend who is a manager at a large corporation, which, like the company I work for, and many others throughout the world, has dabbled in process improvement. And like many other companies, they have found that it is difficult to overcome resistance by employees. Companies eventually learn that without employee cooperation, no amount of cajoling, nagging, process improvement activity quotas, etc works. Eventually the company will give up and it will be remembered as just another management fad that had it's day in the limelight.

But why do employees not want to cooperate? Well, I believe that there are three main categories of employee attitudes towards process improvement. 1) "It is kind of boring and an annoyance, especially when it is imposed on me. Just stay out of my way and let me do my job". 2) "If I cooperate with management with process improvement, the company will be able to get the same work that is getting done now with fewer people. How do I know that by cooperating I won't end up getting laid off?" 3) "I believe that process improvement is a good thing, but have trouble dealing with other employees who are resistant to it."

I will dispense with category 1) for now by just saying that I think it is a mistake to ever impose process improvement on someone who clearly doesn't want to cooperate. And I'll dispense with category 3) for now by saying that that's the category I'm in and if you’re reading this blog, you probably are too. But I have to admit that I have category 2) thoughts from time to time.

Regarding the second category, fear of layoffs, I think such a fear is valid and should not be simply dismissed by category 3 people, employers, or process improvement consultants as irrational. If you think about things from the employee's perspective, many or most generally have nothing (or little to nothing) to gain from process improvement and potentially everything to lose (their very livelihoods if their fear of a layoff actually occurs). On the other hand, the company has everything to gain by it: increased quality, fewer customer complaints, and higher throughput; all at a lower cost. I believe this is why it always seems to be management that introduces process improvement campaigns, and employees who resist them. And without employee cooperation, any process improvement campaign will eventually get abandoned because it simply doesn't work without it.

But suppose that employees were rewarded financially in such a way that the more they practiced process improvement, the more money both the company AND the employees made? More on this in a future post ...