Perfect Develop plans to monitor and improve all of the above, to actively pursue excellence and to stimulate and harness the creative enterprise of the organisation in that. Companies that have established a real ability for continuous improvement and organisational learning tend to establish a strong focus in a number of the following areas: Seek Learning They seek out best practice and emulate or improve on it Budget for Improvement They ensure improvement through integrating the costs and benefits of it within the budgeting process Ensure Consistency They ensure local improvement programmes are consistent and supportive of the overall strategy, and phased to allow progress to be sustained Perfect by Process They ensure learning arising from all activities is formally reviewed and incorporated into the business Promote Excellence They promote the concept of excellence and continuous improvement through word and deed Broadcast Success They add value through broadcasting their success within and outside the organisation To understand these in more detail please click on the relevant image above, or scan through the explanations below Seek Learning Seek out best practice and emulate or improve on it How many new ideas do you assimilate each year? What do you do to ensure your people are continuously challenged by the learning from other people’s ideas and experience? Principle Business is in many senses founded on confidence. But that confidence can be a real barrier to learning when it is manifest as “we’re better than others”. Confidence is important, but it needs to be a deep confidence, borne out of successfully learning from others - a confidence that it is alright to be “behind, but catching up”. Shallow confidence turns a blind eye to those things that might dent it, but deep confidence seeks to find all those areas where others have got it more right than we have, and to learn from them eagerly. Seeking Learning is about setting up processes that keep you informed of where others may have taken a step ahead of you. Benefits An active programme of ‘Seeking Learning’ provides a wealth of understanding and opportunities. Where ideas fall in line with your own plan and aspirations, the learning of others can provide you with shortcuts to the solution without too much of the pain of trial and error, and it can give you the confidence to continue. Where the ideas of others fall outside of your thinking it provides you with the opportunity to challenge your paradigms and to strengthen or renew your own ideas and thinking. ‘Seeking Learning’ can also ensure you keep pace, and have a realistic perspective of your position in the competitive race. Approach Learning can be sought in many ways. At the very least there should be some mechanism for sharing learning on the company’s own experiences of problems and finding solutions. However this should be augmented with learning from other businesses and the management press. Many valuable books and articles are written every year, and more and more companies are willing to share their learning with others, at only the cost of time and fellowship. One mechanism to ensure that all this valuable information is usefully sifted and assimilated is to assign each manager an aspect of business learning that is important to your company - an area for them to study and keep abreast of by the above means, and against which they will be appraised. In parallel to this the company can ensure that the salient features of of these areas are presented annually by establishing a programme of discussions to coincide with monthly management meetings. [Return] Budget for Improvement Ensure improvement through integrating the costs and benefits of it within the budgeting process How much of your investment is specifically targeted at improvement? And how will you ensure/manage the financial benefits of those improvements as they come to fruition? Principle Asked about how he was so successful, a man replied “I see what I want, I work out what it will cost, and then I pay in full”. So often we are unsuccessful as businesses, and as individuals because we don’t follow those three simple steps. We are often optimistic about the last two and try to make do with what we have, rather than what we need. Budgeting for improvement is about making a formal financial contract (budget) with those who will make the improvements: that they are clear on what they want; that the resources they need will be available to them in full; and that they will ensure the rewards and achieved and fully utilised. Benefits Ensuring that all improvement effort is clearly budgeted, both in terms of resources and benefits, has a number of advantages: - Full responsibility is clearly passed to those who want to make the improvement - Excuses for failure are largely removed, and people are driven to think far more clearly about the costs, the benefits, and the risks - The budgeted expectation of return ensures the project is managed to time and performance, and does much to negate the effect of Parkinson’s Law Approach The technique of developing contracts between operating groups and senior management for the budgeting of improvements is sometimes called Hoshin Planning or ‘Catchball’ Essentially the process is one of setting top level improvement targets and getting the operating groups to say how they could meet these and what the costs and implications will be. The management group then renegotiates or contracts by means of the annual budgets. Ownership is clearly deployed. It is important that the budgeting process clearly identifies all the costs of pursuing the improvement (physical costs, resource and support costs, management time, loss to other initiatives), and all the benefits (efficiency savings, added value, market share). Flagplans are a useful means of monitoring and managing the returns from an early stage of the project. [Return] Ensure Consistency Ensure local improvement programmes are consistent and supportive of the overall strategy, and phased to allow progress to be sustained How well are the best approaches disseminated in your organisation? How do you develop levels of consistency which ensure learning is easily transferable, and teams can work well with each other? Principle People, particularly those who wish to maintain their independence, often confuse consistency with conformity. Inter-dependence thrives on consistency. The principle of consistency is one of seeking to develop common practices where such practices will aid the work, and development, of the company and its people. Consistency is about common practices, common policies, common cultures, common language; all things which break down barriers between people and groups, and help to build teamwork. Benefits The value of consistency is partly outlined above. Essentially consistency can have the following benefits: - Improved teamwork within and across teams because of common language and approach - Improved learning and adoption of best practice, because common processes and mechanisms means that the solution is widely applicable - Improved flexibility and development due to common training programmes and the ability to move people round easily - Improved culture and satisfaction from a sense of fairness and one-ness. Approach The approach is largely one of improving communication. People will do much to become more consistent if the purpose and value is explained clearly to them. And they will adopt consistent ‘best’ practices if they understand them and can trust that others are understanding and adopting their own best practices. However, consistency in practice is just one part. Consistency in management is key to the success. Common interpretation of policies is key to a feeling of fairness, and Management will be a key part of the communication explained above. [Return] Perfect by Process Ensure learning arising from all activities is formally reviewed and incorporated into the business How efficient is your approach to change and improvement? How do you identify, prioritise and address the need for change? And can the performance of this process itself be improved? Principle Often people are unclear about how improvement should/does take place. It is often ad-hoc and reliant on personal values and dedication for its success. ‘Perfect by Process’ is about developing a clear mechanism for business improvement of all types, and it is about 'expecting' that mechanism to be used. Companies use consultants because (by and large) they are effective at making improvements. The reason for their effectiveness is only partly that they are clever people (you have people just as clever working for you). The biggest factor is that they have a clear process to work through, and companies that learn from this fact will get the biggest benefit. Benefits Developing and using a clear process for identifying and making improvements has a number of clear benefits: - The process of improvement can itself be refined and improved thereby ensuring that change will take place most efficiently and effectively - People can be trusted to develop the right conclusions and effect change by themselves without having to double check their conclusions - The business can take a greater responsibility for its own success without being dependent on outsiders (consultants). It can also motivate and inspire its own people more by harnessing them in the process Approach The first step is to define clearly the process of improvement, and to ensure each step* is clearly explained along with the options (eg for simpler application in simpler cases) The second step is to make sure the process is used. The best way to do this is to only sanction change (even change driven from the top) that has been developed through this process. The third step is to improve the process based on experience and feedback, until it is a process that people actively seek to use on all occasions. *The most common steps are: Clarify the goal; Determine the gap from current practice; Plan to close the gap; Review the learning. [Return] Promote Excellence Promote the concept of excellence and continuous improvement through word and deed What do we mean by “Excellence”? Do our people have a common view of what the company means by “excellence”, and how do we develop and promote this? Principle ‘Promoting Excellence’ is about developing a clear picture of what ‘excellence’ means to your company, and illustrating it clearly by means of examples. In some ways it is a more “in your face” version of ‘Seek Learning’ and may be the best way of publicising and assimilating the output from that principle. Benefits All too often companies fail to articulate exactly what it wants from its people, particularly on the softer sides of attitudes and behaviours. The consequence of this is that those companies live with behaviours and attitudes that they find unhelpful. These are a major cause of inefficiency in all of the foregoing, and can cause your progress to stall in all areas. ‘Promoting Excellence’ gives a way of establishing clearer standards in those softer areas. Through this the situation becomes more clearly polarised, and it becomes easier to identify and address the behaviours and attitudes that the organisation does not want. Approach In one sense the approach is very easy. It is simply a matter of identifying and communicating, by word and example, the standards and behaviours you want your people to work toward. The difficult bit comes in handling the inevitable reactions to that. Because the ground you are trying to gain is subjective, cynicism has a lot to offer those who you most want to address, and you will find yourselves in a battle of propaganda where you are at the butt of other’s quips. The problem arises because we typically can see the downsides of change before we can see the upsides, and cynics exploit this easily. The solution to this is to weather the reactions until a new ‘normality’ develops, and people can see the upsides. At this point reactions become more polarised and you can ‘deal’ with those who are in opposition. Your confidence is key, so be very sure of your ground and take steps that you can be sure you can sustain. [Return] Broadcast Success Add value through broadcasting your success within and outside the organisation How does success get celebrated in your organisation? Do your people get regular opportunities to feel that they are part of a team that is winning, and will keep on winning? Principle In many organisations success often gets overlooked, or worse, taken for granted. The result of this is that success is not always seen as important - certainly not as important as putting out fires. The alternative is to demonstrate how important success is to your organisation. Rejoice when it occurs - make it an event and celebrate - publicise it widely and recognise those who brought it about. Benefits Organisations get the behaviours they reward -and if the only people who are celebrated are firefighters… Broadcasting success has fourfold benefits: - The team involved feel rewarded and will be keen to repeat the experience, perhaps with even more effort & forethought - Those who are not involved will recognise that putting real effort into improvement is a good thing for their careers - People will be able to learn from the conclusion of the team and make practical modifications to their own work - The organisation feels that it is ‘winning’ Approach Celebration should come easily to us - we do it naturally in our families and in our leisure interests. And it is this ‘naturalness’ that is all important. People can detect insincerity easily and it is better not to start than to put up a sham. Better to think through clearly exactly what there is to give thanks for, and then give them without restraint. Lose your own cynicism and worldly ways, and take simple pleasure in what has been achieved, and then share this with others. [Return]   Home - Load frames - About us - Resources - Contact us © Tesseract Management Systems Ltd 2003

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