The goal of any Rapid Action Team is to make improvements towards a stated mission. In many cases, they have an obligation to their Sponsor Manager, the organization and themselves to assess and document the results of their actions. At the end of the day, everyone wants to know “did we make a real difference?”

One of the ways Rapid Action Teams assess results is by examining the impact their actions had on Operating Performance.

The purpose of this blog is to help outline some of the ways teams assess Operating Performance Improvements during Wrap-Up Meeting #1 and how to link actions to specific goals related to a current baseline of performance.

1. Engage the entire team in brainstorming ideas for operating performance impact and capture ideas on blue slips using silent brainstorming. Review the team mission statement for goals/metrics that were originally targeted and ask champions to review their action accelerators. Writing in the following format also helps: “We improved (insert operating goal/metric) by doing (insert team action).”
2. Post ideas to the idea board and quickly consolidate to the 3 to 5 big operating performance impact areas. Don’t worry yet about measuring or level of gain – the key is to agree on the big impact areas.
3. Move to the Operating Performance Improvement Assessment Poster. Start with the area where the team made the biggest impact. Document the improvement in the first column in a clear, concise description that LINKS the metric to the actions that have caused improvement.
4. Move to the second column – gain assessment. Identify the metric to be used (when possible, use one that’s already in place). Confirm the baseline performance level of that metric (before the team started) by using existing data sources. Get the average or list a range. Estimate the new performance level and be realistic but not overly conservative. This is a projection. Proof will come. Confirm the time interval and calculate the difference in performance between the baseline and the improved level. Forecast out 12 months.
5. Use the last column to note assumptions in your calculations (like hours worked equals X dollars).
6. Repeat steps 1 through 5 for each of the consensus big operating performance improvement gains identified.