This document outlines six key organizational dynamics for a TBLS business strategy: 1. Establishing an organization chart with clear roles and reporting structures 2. Training employees in the TBLS strategy, ideally pulling training as projects are identified 3. Regular monitoring and reporting of projects and initiative metrics through weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings 4. Recognition of employees that considers both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation but avoids subjective evaluations 5. Periodic assessment of initiative quality and acceptance to evaluate performance 6. Ensuring effective communication to promote continuous improvement as part of the organizational culture

1. Organizational dynamics in the TBLS
strategy
Ricardo Anselmo de Castro
ricardo.anselmo.castro@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
Abstract
This paper intends to state the minimum set of items
from which upon a continuous and disruptive
programme will evolve in time, helping to improve
the system’s performance. The six items stated in
the paper are intrinsic to the TBLS business
strategy.
Key-words: TBLS, organization chart, training,
monitoring, recognition, assessment,
communication.
Besides all the technical aspects of the TBLS
strategy, in order to be in an ever-flourishing
company the owner has to guarantee that a certain
minimum of practices are in place. This will
prevent that an evil inertia and entropy will be of a
higher magnitude than the actions we are trying to
promote for improvement. Therefore, we must
develop an improvement mechanism that self
perpetuates in the future. I claim that any company
will need six independent points:
• establishing a new organization chart
• training in TBLS
• monitoring and reporting
• recognition
• TBLS assessment
• communication
Organization chart
The TBLS strategy is built on an organization chart
that corresponds to the minimum needed resources
to obtaining sound results. In a nutshell, one can say
that: lines link different functions whether full
reporting (solid line) or partial (dash line). The
strategic component of the TBLS initiative is
composed by the system owner and the blue
entities. The champion deployment is accountable
for the success or failure of the initiative. He also
makes sure that the needed resources are available
and is constantly communicating the TBLS purpose
to his peers, suppliers and customers. The
horizontal process owners are the ones who use the
«eyes of the customer», and are accountable for the
results of that process. Any company that fails in
studying horizontal processes can’t be customer
oriented. For instance, if production is composed by
four areas, the production manager is the most
likely candidate for this new position. At a tactical
level we have the remaining entities. Project
champions are department managers who host and
sponsor improvement projects. A master in TBLS
has the highest knowledge in this area of expertise.
He gives training, coaching and helps prioritizing
projects. The TBLS experts are the projects’ team
leaders. This is their main role.
Please note that due to high focus that is given in
TBLS, the number of experts is low by nature. In
smaller companies a champion deployment may
accumulate the role of a master in TBLS.
Training in TBLS
Most of the time, training should be pull; not push.
First we identify improvement projects and only
then we establish a well customized training plan.
This prevents training that doesn’t translate into
results, saves people time and company costs.
It’s only when a specific project is coming towards
its end that employees who are in project’s
scope vicinity should receive training. The
goal is to maintain the gains and the new level
of performance recently achieved, in many
years to come. Project by project the company
creates poles of training so that a TBLS
thinking snow ball starts to increase its inertia,
more and more. This is in opposite direction
of doing everything at the same time,
everywhere. For me that’s not strategy. It’s
lack of it.
Putting this aside, all other training bullets,
although not a novelty, must be carefully
planned: training goals, its content, who
participates, in what way training is given, its
duration and so forth. The system should also
SYSTEM STRATEGIC COMMITTEE
System
Owner
Horizontal process owners
Champion Deployment
Master(s) in TBLS*Champions
Team Leaders
(TBLS expert)
Project Team
CFO
CHRO

2. cross employees’ role with the minimum
knowledge one must have in TBLS.
Monitoring and reporting
Monitoring and reporting are a must if we want to
maintain the system’s level of entropy low. They
are used to projects and to the whole initiative as
well. Here are some important features:
• 30 minutes weekly meeting – team leader
and project champion.
• 2 hours monthly tactical meeting – project
champion and horizontal process owner.
• 2 hours every three months for the initiative
strategic meeting – executive committee.
• After-project finance results traceability
(finance owns this process).
• Process and system audits usage as tools to
control and improve the system.
• Projects inserted in a specific database.
In respect to finance, the TBLS strategy stands for
the following (these are alligned to Throughput
Accounting):
• Monthly throughput from projects results
are directly and financially measured. As a
second option they can be indexed to an
operational metric, as long as there’s proof
of high causality.
• Throughput is the result of projects hard
benefits less totally variable costs.
• As long as the rise of complexity doesn’t
compensate for itself, investments due to
project actions are accounted in throughput,
in one moment in time.
• Throughput is tracked until the project is 4
years old. After that period a decision is to
be made.
• Analyse on a case-by-case basis if there are
changes in the process where the project
took place. This is important to assess
correctly finance figures.
• Operational expenses such as TBLS
manpower, trips not related with a specific
project and so forth are yearly calculated in
absolute terms, without any relationship to
the number of projects deployed
whatsoever.
• Throughput and operational expenses
(cumulative and non-cumulative) are
summarized so that one can calculate net
profit, productivity and its performance
angle.
Recognition
This subject is as relevant as polemic. Psychology
studies show that mechanical work is sensitive to
the old «carrot and stick» approach. On the other
hand, there’s also evidence that works that benefit
from the right brain side follows different
assumptions. While these two worlds are maybe in
contradiction, history suggests that it’s rare to
escape from a punishment/reward system rules. For
this matter, there’s the arena of good intentions and
there’s the arena of how ideas are put into practice.
If the rewarding system is vulnerable to injustices
some perverse effects will take place harming the
system. Some of the difficulties lie in a system that
is not solely focused on measuring short term
results; avoiding local optima if that doesn’t
translate to global optima and measuring solely on
quantity terms despising quality. Some examples to
follow: 1) if the minimum number of medical daily
visits by a sales rep is 8 (a policy), what will be
his/her behaviour? Planning nice and thoroughly
each visit in order to understand each doctor, or just
playing a touch base-visit like “hello doctor,
goodbye doctor”? 2) If every year it’s only possible
to recognize three employees as “outstanding” soon
enough the human resources department / system
are undermined with mistrust. 3) “One gets a good
rating for fighting a fire. The result is visible; can
be quantified. If you do it right the first time, you
are invisible. You satisfied requirements. That is
your job. Mess it up, and correct it later, you
become a hero”.
According to Deming it’s not possible to establish a
ranking of people’s performance. At least one
which is fair. Performance is the result of several
combination forces – the person, the people who he
works with, the job itself, the material, the
equipment, his customer, his management, noises,
poor food in the company’s cafeteria, and so forth.
The sum of these forces will produce large
differences among employees. Management may
think that these differences are due to people, when
most of the time it’s not. In the pharmaceutical
industry there may be high bonuses every three
months. A sales rep can have up to 10000 Euros
bonus if sales in the area he’s accountable for go
above a predefined value! Another sales rep that
didn’t achieve his quota will ask what’s wrong with
him when, in fact, the whole team is, without
knowing, in a big lottery. A remarkable
performance (either very good or very bad) can be
only assignable to someone if after appropriate
calculations it falls beyond the limits of variation of
the system, or creates a pattern. Imagine that in the
last 9 months sales in a predefined region was 10,
15, 11, 4, 17, 23, 11, 12, 10 in each month (in

3. thousands of Euros). If this values follow
approximately a normal distribution the system’s
lower and upper control limits are 1,9 e 23,2
respectively. This is the band width that one should
be expecting to see, according to the nature of the
system (sales process). Only if sales from a rep is
outside this interval it is legitimate to say that an
extraordinary event took place (if above 23,2 he
should be rewarded).
As Deming says, the problem is not the lottery
itself, as long as it is called that way and seen that
way. The problem arises when management talks
about meritocracy but the way a person gets a
bonus is nothing but a lottery. One should once
again emphasize that this creates attrition and kills
morale.
Of the 14 Deming’s management principles maybe
the 10th
and the 11th
are those which are more
disturbing or cause more incomprehension:
«Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for
the work force asking for zero defects and new
levels of productivity. Such exhortations only
create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of
causes of low quality and low productivity
belong to the system and thus lie beyond the
power of the work force. Eliminate work
standards (quotas) on the factory floor.
Substitute leadership. Eliminate management
by objective. Eliminate management by
numbers, numerical goals. Substitute
leadership».
In this field of knowledge the TBLS strategy adopts
the following thinking:
1. Intrinsic motivation is achieved through
good leadership. The partnership to
performance, claimed by Blanchard, is
three fold: planning performance, coaching
performance and its evaluation.
2. Extrinsic motivation is “putting the carrot
in front of the donkey”.
3. Local metrics are full of good intentions but
a faulty architecture in their construction
may strongly ruin the system. Every single
local metric must be subservient to the
system. Local metrics must be put under the
light of causality criticism (use the current
reality tree for that purpose).
4. One must recognize the importance that
statistics has beyond its role in process
improvement. If the company wants to
adopt an incentive / recognition system,
then its foundation can’t be built upon luck.
5. The company must clarify with great level
of effectiveness what intends to value. In
this way it’s vital to eliminate subjectivity
so that anyone can tell if he/she is doing the
right thing and thus having pride in his/her
work.
6. Decide if there should be a bonus process in
place. This may be created from scratch or
integrated in an existent HR plan.
TBLS assessment
This assessment should be performed every three or
four months, during the strategic meetings. G.
Eckes states a simple equation that takes into
account the initiative’s quality and acceptance,
E = Q x A. The higher the product the better the
system’s performance is. Each factor can vary from
1 to 10. This score is given by each attendee. It’s of
little value if Q is very high but A is very low or
vice-versa.
E Initiative’s level of Excelence
Q Strategic and tactic initiative’s Quality
A Initiative’s cultural Acceptance
Either factor Q or factor A can be decomposed in
five topics each:
Q1 Strategic TBLS quality meetings
Q2 Training
Q3 External consultancy firm
Q4 Project management – project’s
effectiveness and sponsorship
Q5 Infrastructure – right people in the right
place
A1 Level of commitment of top leadership
A2 Behaviours alignment
A3 Communication effectiveness
A4 Recognition system
A5 Level of TBLS thinking
Each one of these topics is operationally defined so
that the score is as accurate as possible. If, for
instance, the median of Q is 6 and the median of A
is 4, E  24 and, according to Eckes:
[0 – 20] Money totally wasted.
[21 – 40] Some tactical results. Initiative is a
dead end.
[41 – 60] Significant tactical results. The
focus of the initiative is project
based.
[61 – 80] Cultural transformation, but it may
take a while.
[81 – 100] Worlclass company.

4. Communication
The communication process must explicitly and
implicitly defend that continuous and disruptive
improvements are part of company’s culture.
Communication is a process where:
1. Is elaborated throughout the whole
initiative and defines what, how, by whom,
to whom, when and where to communicate.
2. Uses several media to communicate: face to
face, videos, newsletters, journals, intranet,
etc.
3. The first visible deliverable is the system
owner speech, during the initiative’s kick-
off. This speech must create a sense of
urgency, a vision, a summary description of
what TBLS strategy is, why use it, and
what the company is expecting to get from
it.
4. All the TBLS meetings take place, projects’
history and other initiative’s highlights
worth of spreading.
CONCLUSION
This paper shows six areas of concern that TBLS
takes into consideration, in order to produce best
results. These topics are not hermetic and each
company should adapt them accordingly.
References
[1] Castro, Ricardo A. (2014) Doubting. Leanpub.
[2] Eckes, G. (2001). Making Six Sigma Last –
Managing the Balance Between Cultural and
Technical Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
[3] Deming, W. Edwards (1982). Out of the crisis.
MIT Caes.
[4] Blanchard, K. (2007). Um nível superior de
liderança. Actual Editora