Windward Leadership is uniquely qualified to assist your organizational transformation in a way that yields durable results. Our credentials include:
- Certificate of Mastery in Designing and Implementing High Performance Processes, and Implementing the Process of Change, from the master himself, Dr. Michael Hammer.
- Certified education in Socio-Technical Organizational Design and Managing Through Teams by another master in his craft, Lawrence M. Miller.
- Certified education in Organizational Learning, Leadership and Mastery from the master himself, Dr. Peter Senge.
- Certification in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Advanced Leadership, directly from the legendary Dr. Stephen R. Covey.
However, while concepts and theory may look good on paper, we all know that does not mean they work in practice. Using a “Plan-Do-Check-Adjust,” or PDCA, cycle, we have taken those theories from the safe, predictable confines of the conceptual laboratory to the irregularities and ambiguities of real life.
Steps
Plan
1) Charter the effort: define the desired results; identify guidelines for its conduct focusing on “no-no’s” and avoiding dictating method; define the governance and accountability mechanisms to be used; outline the resources available to the effort; and articulate the consequences of the effort’s success and its failure.
2) Select and commission the teams to conduct and govern the effort.
3) Find the processes.
4) Name them.
5) Understand them.
6) Measure them.
7) Set goals (usually in terms of productivity, quality, speed and cost), and define measures of success and alerts of failure (usually in terms of statistical process control).
Do
8) Create the new design.
9) Implement the new design.
10) Execute the new design.
Check
11) Monitor the new design’s performance against the measures of success and failure alerts.
Adjust
12) Adjust the design, as warranted.
Iterate
13) Repeat steps 9-12, as necessary.
Alternative Tacks
Too often, organizations tackle process improvement using a “big bang” approach—they attack all processes in one fell swoop. For smaller organizations and those in an earlier lifecycle stage, this might be do-able and advisable. However, if the dimensions of your organization are larger and necessarily more sophisticated, or your organization is in a later lifecycle stage, then the probability of success for such a big-bang approach diminishes rapidly for a variety of reasons; examples include:
- The effort is launched and conducted with a lot of pomp and circumstance which only serves to exacerbate the jaundiced eye through which most employees have come to view such grandiose efforts (i.e., another management fad that they just need to endure until it runs out of gas).
- The sheer size of the effort dominates/preoccupies the consciousness of the organization to the exclusion of everything else, and disrupts the production of those outputs that customers value.
- The effort stretches the organization beyond its ability to manage.
- The effort stretches leadership beyond their attention span.
In the case of larger, more sophisticated, later lifecycle stage organizations, it often makes more sense to conduct the change effort in chunks that piggy back on customer “billable” projects. That is, don’t conduct your change effort as a project unto itself. Rather, conduct your change effort as one of the desired outcomes in how a customer billable project is conducted.
And while you don’t want to be covert about it, neither do you want to conduct it with a lot of pomp and circumstance, banners and slogans. Durable change is the kind that people notice 6-12 months after it has happened. As they look back they won’t be able to cite any particular causal event, they’ll just notice that things are better now than they were 6-12 months ago—perfect!
Team Composition
More important than the process steps is the composition of the process improvement team, as well as the leadership team providing governance and busting obstacles. In all cases, we look for teams comprised of people who possess high integrity, the courage to create safety to risk, the courage to tell truth to power, pertinent subject matter expertise, analytical skills, an innovative spirit, and either have no political agenda or are willing to put all of their cards on the table (i.e., politically agnostic or no hidden agenda).
The leadership team providing governance and busting obstacles should consist of those leaders who have the most to gain or lose if the process improvement effort is done well or poorly, and who possess the personal courage and organizational wherewithal to bust any obstacles that get in the process improvement team’s way.
In regards to the process improvement team, the best situation is where there is high trust among and high confidence in the competence of those who operate, maintain, and manage the process. The process improvement team should be comprised of people from each of those roles: process operators, engineers, and managers.
Quite frankly, we have found that the world’s greatest experts in a process are those with their hands on the spot—the operators who actually execute the process, and the engineers who maintain the process. It has been our experience that these people know stuff, and for one reason or another, they either have elected not to share it, or have shared it but have been ignored. This is why it is also important the people selected for the process improvement team not only have strong technical knowledge, but also be held in high regard, and be politically aware but agnostic.
However, in those unfortunate, but not uncommon, situations where there aren’t enough process operators, maintainers, and managers with high trust in each other and high confidence in each other’s competence, or where their politics are suspect, then the process improvement will need to be backfilled with external parties. These can be internal personnel from elsewhere in the organization, or external consultants.
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