Diagnosing Failure with DCOM
Amanda has submitted the report late and what's there isn't really up to scratch. Kathy reads it with her head in her hands, unsure how this could have gone so wrong.
"Last week, it was that Amanda wasn't following the process, and now this!" said Kathy, adding "I don't know what to do!"
Kathy and Amanda are obviously not real names, but this is a facsimile of a real scenario I was asked to advise on recently. All leaders and managers at some point face a similar situation: someone they're responsible for has, for want of a better word, failed to meet the objective. What I think is highly interesting is the range of responses that are available to this – from I've failed as a leader to Amanda is bad – and how easy it is to settle on the latter.
As Rands notes in his blog A Performance Question, this is a dangerous road which often leads to pain for everyone involved1. So what I want to show here is a different framework that leaders can use to analysis and diagnose why a failure occurred.
Introducing DCOM
DCOM is a framework originally created by CLG for performance management and can be applied to individuals, teams, departments, and whole organisations (I'll use person in this context). The acronym stands for:
| Initial | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Direction | Is the end state (vision/mission/objective) clearly understood? |
| Competency | Are the rights skills/experience in place to get to the end state? |
| Opportunity | Are there blockers to achieving the end state? |
| Motivation | The extent to which stakeholders are driven to achieve the end state |
We can broadly divide these into System Factors (Direction, Opportunity) and Individual Factors (Competency, Motivation). System Factors are defined by the organisation and largely outside of the control of the person, while Individual Factors are controllable by the person.
By looking at a failure through these lenses, we can arrive at a much more balanced take of how it came about.
Using DCOM
"Be curious, not judgemental" ~ Walt Whitman
So what did Kathy do here? Firstly, she put aside her judgement of Amanda for failing. The importance of this cannot be understated: good leadership assumes that failure is part of the process and looks to understand it, rather than judging those who've failed, because we all fail at some point.
Secondly, she put all other incidents of failure aside for the moment. By working through the framework, she might find links to other events which relate, but we have to avoid the very human trait of generalising/grouping things that aren't actually related. So, assume each failure is isolated unless you have directly evidence to the contrary.
The last thing Kathy did before picking up the phone was to draw out a set of questions using the DCOM headings. This started with looking at System Factors, before looking at Individual Factors. However, all factors should be considered and probed during a call. The list of questions looked something like:
* **Direction**
* Was the timeline that I set out here clear enough?
* Were the specific details of the report clear enough?
* **Opportunity**
* Have there been obstacles I've not seen that have prevented her meeting the deadline?
* **Competency**
* I think Amanda has done this report before, but how much experience does she have?
* How does Amanda think this has gone, what would she change?
* Were there any parts of this that were outside of her comfort zone?
* **Motivation**
* How is Amanda doing overall?
* Does she understand the issue at play?
* Are there things I'm not seeing for her which have demotivated her?
With this list of questions in mind, Kathy picked up the phone to Amanda and started the conversation directly and focused not on Amanda herself, but the situation and the solution:
"I have some concerns with the report you just sent me. I'd like us to discuss where this is and what we do next."
From there, Kathy used her question list to explore the problem and found the expectations of the contents of the report were not clear to Amanda, and that various other tasks had prevented her from dedicating her full attention to it. Kathy was able to better clarify what was required in the report, and helped Amanda to put in place tactics for dealing with her workload. This took Kathy from a position of "What do I do?!" to "Let's review".
Why Is This Better
Effective leadership is hard and dealing with situations like this are complex. Between egos and emotions, both of the leader and the employee, conversations related to failure are often anxiety ridden and prone to conflict. Therefore, it's important to get the emotions out of the way. A big part of that is coming in with the right mindset, focusing on the situation and not the person.
Too many new and untrained leaders when faced with this situation tend to either downplay their own contribution or over inflate the significance of the failure as a fundamental aspect of their charge2. Using DCOM forces a holistic evaluation, including the potential for failures of leadership. Starting with with a mindset of "lets trace the problem together" and looking at this holistically gives the leader a chance to:
- Find areas they need to improve on, like clearer goals and checking in more frequently.
- Find areas where an employee may be struggling and needs additional support; particularly with employees who may not want to confront that struggle.
- Have a significantly stronger case for looking at Performance Management, particularly with better HR protections, should the case really warrant it.
From an HR perspective, if there really is an issue, having a clear eyed analysis of the situation ensures that the right action can be taken, including new professional development objectives, the potential for a performance improvement plan, or disciplinary actions/termination. For the organisation, being able to show the workings of how we've got to a particular state with an employee reduces the risk of bias in their treatment and of tribunals down the line.
Scaling Up
I noted that DCOM can apply at the top of the organisation, all the way down to the individual contributor. While the specifics may change (SWOTs/PESTLEs as opposed to interview questions) the fundamentals largely remain the same. I plan to write a little bit more about applying this in the context of teams in the near future.
Feedback
If you have any feedback about this topic, as always, I'd love to hear it. You can find me here on LinkedIn.
This is usually (but not always) the exit of the employee either because they fail to meet a PIP or because they quit as a result of the process. Employees who stay on are more likely to be less motivated than they were before, even if they stay.↩
I've also personally done the opposite and been too forgiving. By focusing on my inexperience as a leader, I let a person with a clear case of Individual Factor issues to be excused for too long. This is what Radical Candor would describe as "Ruinous Empathy".↩