Both from a personal and organizational perspective high performance is integrated with the overall maturity of both processes and behavior.

Today’s post explores these concepts in a little more detail, still at a high level.  More detail and examples to come in future posts.

Behavioral Maturity

Maturity is about responding to your environment in an appropriate manner.  The higher the level of maturity the more closely aligned and effectively integrated are both response and environment.

Process Maturity

Processes maturity can be described as a ladder of increasing effectiveness in the employment and practice of the associated activities.    Using high level descriptors a five level maturity model could be defined as:

• Level 1 –  Chaos  (processes are not documented, inconsistent and mainly adhoc focusing on whatever works.)
• Level 2 –  Superman (processes existed but are scantily documented and not consistent.  A few practitioner are found to get things done – somehow.  These super people (trying not to be sexist) drive the performance and results.  Given they focus on “getting it down” this can leave a pile of dead bodies (metaphorically) in their wake.
• Level 3 – Institutionalization (one clearly documented process exists for each activity and controls exist to ensure they common processes are followed consistently by all.  Communication of where the process library is confirmation everyone knows about it is key to ensuring standardization.
• Level 4 – Continuous Improvement ( the institutionalized processes are constantly reviewed and improved)
• Level 5 – Ongoing Measurement (confirming process effectiveness through defined metrics while practicing – e.g., continuous checking of the quality of a product being created while it is being created.

Performance

And topping it all off, where do high levels of behavioral and process maturity get you?  Intuitively is your actions are fully aligned with the goals (environment) and the tools exist to support execution of these actions efficiently (clear processes) the overall outcomes (performances) will improve.

Think about it, give it a try!  More details to come in future posts, comments and questions will be responded to.  ( The processes are in place here at Kerrzone and the behavioral maturity is high).