I’ve been known to borrow a few lessons from professional racecar driving instructors and apply them to organizational transformation projects. (For the backstory on this, read Maxim #48.)
As you navigate your change initiatives, I’d like to suggest one of them. Take time to “walk the track” to gain a proper respect for the curves and the obstacles that lie ahead. Improvement initiatives and organizational transformations always have moments when problems surface, momentum begins to wane, and old habits creep in. All of these make it difficult to maneuver the change.
Here are a few things you can do to keep your strategy on track for continuous improvement:
1. Check Your Biases
Human perception is a collection of biases. We tend to ignore evidence that doesn’t support our established point of view. We see patterns in random data based on what we expect to find. We give more weight to the first piece of evidence than the ones that follow. Our actions are sometimes subconsciously motivated by external or peripheral goals.
Given these tendencies, it’s important to periodically step back and carefully think through some of your basic assumptions. It’s sometimes helpful to seek an assessment from a third party who may be able to study your processes with more objectivity.
2. Streamline your data.
Managers are inundated with data, but much of it is not very useful, either because the data is based on plans that aren’t trusted, information arrives too late, or the data is based on outdated or inaccurate performance standards. Reports often provide information on the status of activity but fail to result in clear action plans.
Streamlining data and performance measurement tools early in the change process will provide you with more time, better information, and greater clarity.
3. Focus on the Key Constraint
There are times when productivity improvements don’t translate into financial gains for an organization. This can happen when improvements are made in the parts of a process that don’t govern its output.
Organizations are structured into vertical functions, but processes flow horizontally, which can result in improvements in one department simply shifting costs to another department. The key to generating tangible bottom-line results is understanding the full process, and identifying and addressing the “key constraint,” the part of the process where work tends to bottleneck.
By increasing the flow of work through this area, the entire process’s capability can be enhanced, potentially leading to both operational and financial impacts.
4. Reinforce Effective Management Practices
Comprehensive change requires consistent communication. Strategy, planning, and goal setting will only be effective if your managers successfully align employee performance with new expectations. It’s important to understand how managers plan work, how closely employees follow those plans, and how a team’s collective output flows into the work of other teams.
Managers tend to focus on planning what needs to happen, and reporting on what did happen, but don’t always manage the point at which things actually happen. When this occurs, employees create workarounds to the problems that come up. Recurring problems, over time, often become adopted as part of the process.
Do your managers have the necessary tools to achieve the results you expect? Are they setting clear expectations and then following up with employees? Are they managing the point of execution?
5. Develop a Solid Results Strategy
Having a clear idea of where you want your business to be is always a good starting point. Determining what must happen to get your results to align with your expectations is much more difficult. A results strategy should outline how your transformation will materialize across functions, who it will impact, and how and when, it will improve key operating and financial indicators. It zeroes in on potential complications and what you’ll need to do to remove those obstacles.
Your results strategy also sets expectations for all who are involved and impacted by clarifying work activity, focus, timing, and participation.
Peter Follows CEO, Carpedia International Bestselling Author of Results Not Reports, A mindset shift requires that you internalize these principles and make them routine across several operational areas. It also requires that the manager coach their teams to think the same way.
