Do you have a Hovercraft?

I enjoy the recent Orbitz (the travel company, not the gum) commercial, where an average guy watering his yard is interrupted by a landing of the Orbitz Hovercraft.

The pilot emerges to hand the guy a refund check, because after he booked his flight, the prices dropped and he was entitled to a refund for the difference.

“Why didn’t you just mail it?” the confused homeowner asks.

“Because we have a Hovercraft!” is the reply.

And so it got me thinking. How many work processes exist because they can?

The "Magic" of Getting Things Done

I am continually amazed at how often people fail to demonstrate the ability to “get stuff done”.

Some call it a failure of leadership. Some say it’s due to a lack of organization. Or maybe it’s simply poor implementation skills. Or a lack of a coherent strategic vision.

Truth is, it could be any (or all) of these things.

I am not an expert, but I have learned a few things over the years.

The first, is. If you have ten #1 priorities, you don’t have any priorities at all. You simply have a list. And the problem with an unprioritized big list, is that it allows those responsible for the list to “touch” each task, without ever moving any single one forward significantly. The “overhead” it takes to juggle ten initiatives soaks up valuable time you could be spending on completing a task.

So, prioritize. If necessary, trim the list to a few key items. The rest can wait. Truth is, you’re not making much progress on them anyway, so where’s the harm?

The second rule is to assign ownership to each task. If a “team” is responsible for the completion of a task, no ONE person owns the outcome. And so each team member gains comfort in the thought that a lack of progress is probably someone else’s fault.

Thirdly, ask yourself, “Have I engaged the right resources?” For example, if you’re undertaking a revamp of your Job Costing processes, do you include shop floor supervisors who collect and assign labor costs? Is purchasing involved? Receiving? Accounting? Do you need someone from payroll to verify that labor hours assigned to jobs balance to payroll hours? Identifying all the process “touch points” and securing the involvement of expertise from all areas, is a basic requirement to move forward in any substantive way.

Fourth, “paint the picture”. Help your team understand why this initiative is a priority. Paint the picture of what the future process might look like – what the business benefits of improvement are. Establish buy-in from the team. Remember that these people already have full time jobs. Just because they’re on your team doesn’t mean you have their support or buy-in. At the end of the day, each participant should be able to understand “what’s in it for me?”

Fifth, parse the project. Large change initiatives are scary and daunting. If you can break up your project into manageable and easily understood milestones, you improve team understanding of each task and can easily measure progress. I always think of the old joke: How do you eat an elephant? (Answer: One bite at a time.)

Sixth. Spend your time executing the tasks, not managing the project. Use tools that allow for simple collaboration and project updating (SharePoint, Basecamp, Google Docs) – whatever works for you. This will allow you less time in meeting updates and more time to address issues and make decisions.

Careful observers of these rules will have, by now, understood the “magic” of getting things done. Design your project by providing answers to the questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How?

The Power of Tempo

I’ve always struggled to restrain my internal “sense of urgency”. In business, my personal bias has always been toward action. And lots of it.

Some may argue that my approach resembled; “Ready, Fire, Aim!”.

I think that’s a typical response to someone who really wants to see things happen quickly. The reaction is “Not so fast!” or “We’re being too reckless!” The danger in eliciting these responses is that it creates the opposite effect.

Instead of increasing the pace of work, people “dig their heels in” and resist, rather than getting on board and fast tracking a solution.

The business challenge works just like a Chinese finger puzzle. When you insert your fingers in each end of the tiny tube and then try to pull your fingers free, the puzzle grips your fingers more tightly. What seems like an obvious solution to the puzzle is the wrong one.

I’ve learned a more effective approach is to gently increase the tempo of work. Think of it like a metronome. By gradually increasing the tempo over time, your team will work at an improved pace – something they might have resisted, had you attempted the increase in one big jump.

Try breaking the habit of weekly progress meetings. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of meeting on a regularly scheduled basis. Sure, meeting every Friday at 9am is easy to remember, but it imposes a certain pace on the project.

So break the habit.

Try meeting on Mondays and Thursdays. Set the unconscious expectation that the same work will happen before each meeting. What was once a ten week project, becomes a five week project. Simply meeting more frequently to report on progress, sets the expectation that progress should be made.

You begin to break that old college habit of starting the term paper the night before it’s due. With weekly business meetings, the work usually gets done the night (or hour!) before the meeting.

Increasing the meeting frequency also allows you more frequent opportunities to reset expectations.

“Guys, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to BE!”

Let’s get our prototype up and running, set the right expectations with our internal customers (let them know it’s a prototype), allow people to use it. Then improve it.

Our goal is to make version 2 bug free. Let’s not try to architect perfection. Let’s built it based on user/customer experience.

The longer term benefit of increasing the pace and NOT trying for perfection, is that you begin to develop a learning organization. Expect some mistakes and begin to see them as improvement opportunities. “Blame” is expunged from your team vocabulary. And as the rapid prototype mindset takes hold, you begin to see other incremental improvement opportunities in every process you use.

By looking at each opportunity as a challenge to improve through “tweaks” and multiple iterations, you slowly empower your team to identify opportunities on their own. Not all changes have to come as a result of a big project. Teams can make a big impact my making incremental progress on lots of smaller projects too.

Finally, remember that Teams Win and Coaches fail. If the result of one of your accelerated projects is less than expected. Take the heat for your team. If you’re asking them to take a risk by developing 90% solutions, you had better provide “cover” for them. And when the team has success, give them ALL the credit.

I think you’ll be pleased with the results.

Here are the Cliff notes:

1. Gently increase the tempo.

2. Aim for a 90% solution.

3. Pilot and improve.

4. Migrate to a learning organization.

5. Take the heat, when necessary.

The Paper Herd

It was only recently that I’ve come to notice the herding instincts of paper.

Almost as soon as it comes through the network or desktop printer, it seems to search out others of it’s kind.

Printing on paper, is just usually the first step in a long process of non value adding activities that seem to attach themselves to that innocent, first piece of printed paper.

Once it’s printed, then

• it is collected from the printer
• it’s fastened, sorted, stapled, folded
• it is physically transported around the office
• it waits in in-boxes for work to be done to it,
• in a serial process (only one person can work on the piece of paper at a time), then
• it is wrapped in a file folder
• which is stored in a file cabinet
• which is contained within a file room, where
• it’s retention must be managed, after which,
• it is stored in an offsite facility, where
• it is utimately shredded, discarded or recycled.

So much non value adding activity surrounds EACH piece of printed paper, that one wonders why we haven’t tried harder to achieve the “paperless office”.

Are our customers really willing to pay for all of this? I don’t think so.

I think the reason is, I.T. guys like myself, push paperless technology, rather than making a case that printing paper launches a series of non-value adding activities that are really expensive in aggregate.

What we failed to do, was make the cost benefits case.

Businesses understand costs pretty well. And if they are to change behaviors (like printing), there had better be a good reason for it.

Want to go paperless? Try demonstrating the herding nature of paper to your company.

The Journey to Lean and Agile

When you search Google for images using the keyword “Agility”, Google returns tons of pictures like the one at the left.

Lots of dogs running through obstacle courses. The other general image is of athletes running a tire drill.

What the search doesn’t return are pictures of businesses or processes.

Perhaps it’s difficult to convey the concept of an agile process or an agile business in an image.

Or perhaps, examples are difficult to find.

I’m currently doing some work for a family owned manufacturing company who want to investigate lean manufacturing. Like every business that has contemplated change, the potential rewards (less waste, faster processes, less process cost) will be challenged by past success (always been profitable) and a stable long term workforce, who have always done things the same way.

It’s a classic struggle – one that EVERY company goes through.

Judging by the fully booked schedules of the Lean Process consulting companies, our company is not alone in the desire to be lean.

(Aside: If you’re a consulting company who claims to be an expert in Lean Processes and can’t find a way to return a customer call, perhaps your processes need improving?)

The journey will be exciting, scary and hopefully beneficial. Over the course of the next few months I’ll document our progress, challenges and successes and perhaps we can share learning experiences along the way.

20 Tactics to Survive the Coming Recession

With a looming recession on the horizon, what can your business do differently to survive the economic slowdown?

Here are twenty things you could try. All of these suggestions could work very well during good times, it’s just that we seem a little more motivated as the threat increases to our bottom line.

Obviously this isn’t a complete list and applicability and circumstances differ in every company.

Here they are (in no particular order.)

1. Re-evaluate employee performance. When times are booming, average and yes, sometimes below average performance is overlooked. When times get tight, you really need to get more done with fewer people.

2. Re-organize activities. Is your company filled with under utilized specialists? Could some positions be combined or tasks be reallocated so that the work previously done by 4 people could be done by three or two? Do your processes require many approvals to complete? Are they all really necessary? Do approvals add control or get in the way?

3. Prioritize. Does your company have a dozen different projects underway? If so, at least half of them will be “pet projects” – whose benefits, if ever realized will end up under the “nice to haves” column. Focus resources and your attention on the “must have” projects and get them done faster.

4. Play offense not defense. You can’t “hide in your shell” and wish your way through a recession. What are some things you could be working on now, that will put you in a strategic advantage when the economy improves? Take advantage of your competition, if they’ve decided to “wilt”. A compelling mission can keep everyone focused during dark economic days.

5. If business gets slow, perhaps now is the time to think about re-investing in your employees. Think about professional development courses or certifications (if you can afford it). Better to improve the calibre of your players when they aren’t 100% distracted with daily business activities.

6. Make a list of things you should stop doing, and kill initiatives which are delivering questionable (or unmeasurable) value.

7. Improve a process. Pick a poor process and use lean principles to elinimate waste (inventory, time, rework, QA, approvals, transit/travel time, defects). What you should be left with are activities that your customers are willing to pay for! Focus on customer facing processes first (order taking, quotes, returns, service calls).

8. Cross-train. The more flexible your workforce, the better you’re able to cope with surges in activities.

9. 5S your workplace.

10. Conduct an inventory cycle count when business is slow.

11. Bring the auditors in “off-cycle” when you can afford to spend time with them, making the audit process less of a burden.

12. Brainstorm how your company will be remarkable. (So different from your competition, that people will be talking about you!)

13. Think about deploying technology strategies that allow people to spend less time in meetings and more time doing projects, tasks. Building an intranet organized by department or line of business fed by RSS feeds, will eliminte those communication meetings that suck up so much time. Try cheap, intuitive, web-based 3rd party project management tools (like Basecamp) to enable groups to communicate better, manage group task lists and auto-communicate progress.

14. Find faster, more effective ways to train employees, customers, suppliers, by learning to use video, instead of replicating one on one meetings, classroom training or worse yet, writing another user manual that no one will read.

15. Visit key customers and suppliers. During tough economic times they may be more receptive to different ways of doing business, new products or services or partnering to reduce friction within your supply chain.

16. Think about that major system upgrade. Your vendors will likely have higher caliber resources available during tough economic times and pricing will never be better. Also, the internal resources needed to really embrace the new system, may be more available now than during booming economic times. You may be able to negotiate deferred payments or beneficial financing during downturns. Better to work out the process and transaction kinks during a slower business cycle.

17. If you’re unfamiliar with Web2.0 marketing concepts, buy a Seth Godin book and start a company blog. Show off your company passion for what you do. Demonstrate how you’ll make your customers better (or happier or whatever). Provide free value adding information. Begin to establish or reinforce a bond with your customers. Be authentic. (Or if you can’t do that, just Don’t be Fake!)

18. Find a way to stand out from the crowd. EST yourself. BiggEST, fastEST, coolEST, bEST, cheapEST, hottEST, spicyEST, easiEST, fatEST, thinEST, brightEST, sharpEST or most expensive (costliEST?) in the world. If you have a product or service that stands out, chances are people will start talking. And when people start talking, the word spreads and when the word spreads you begin to draw crowds. And within those crowds, the most passionate people will open their wallets.

19. Experiment like never before. Try lots of new things. Fail often and learn from your mistakes.

20. Find a way to empower your workforce. Ask them for ideas. Listen to them. Tobasco sold more hot sauce when a factory worker suggested making the bottle opening a little bigger! Great ideas are everywhere, waiting to be discovered and developed.

Have I missed some obvious ones? Feel free to add to the list!

Owning Outcomes

It seems to me that great I.T. organizations go beyond solid infrastructure management and on time, on budget project completion.

These things are important, but don’t matter if the people using the new processes and transactions aren’t effective.

Business outcomes matter.

It’s the difference between installing technology and meaningfully improving business process outcomes.

It’s ironic that every major system project is ascribed big business benefits – more anticipated sales, reduced expenses, more inventory turns, reduced cost purchasing transactions, more accurate or faster accounting.

Yet if you look how your company measures their I.T. function, how many of you provide bonuses or raises based upon whether the initial project benefits were achieved?

If you’re like most companies I’ve seen, the answer is not many of you. I.T. is generally measured on two things. Helpdesk (how quickly you fix things that break) and Project Management – delivering the project when you said you would (and for the price you quoted).

I.T. is in a unique position to really help achieve business benefits and yet we seldom volunteer (or are called upon) to do it. Your I.T. staff knows which users “get it” and which don’t. They know which sites are trying to work around the system “to make thngs more efficient” and are actually doing the exact opposite. They know how many P.O.s are being automatically three way matched and how many are overidden.

They know who is entering data accurately and who doesn’t. They can tell from the Helpdesk calls. They can tell by running simple queries against the system. They can provide this information to line managers and they can provide comparative reports, so one site can be placed “in competition” with another for process excellence. They can easily see how purchases are being coded and classified. They have visibility into each sites accounting practices and can tell whether they’re using accounts as planned.

But it isn’t done that often. And too many times, process outcomes fall short of initial expectations.

Ask your Project Managers what they might do differently if their salary increases or bonuses were based on achieving original justification improvements.

Their answers might surprise you.

“Owning outcomes” places I.T. in the same lifeboat with the business. They’ll start thinking about post go live reporting metrics (how well we’re using the system). They begin to address more effective training, instead of writing user manuals.

To paraphrase Johnny Cochran:
“The project don’t stop ’til the benefit’s got.”

And that’s a good thing.

A Generation of Cyber-MacGyvers

I don’t know how many of you remember the TV show MacGyver.

(From Wikipedia)

“The series revolved around Angus MacGyver (known to his friends as MacGyver or “Mac”) who favoured brain over brawn in order to solve desperate problems.

Angus MacGyver’s main asset is his practical application of scientific knowledge and inventive use of common items—along with his ever-present Swiss Army knife and duct tape and the usual coincidence of being locked up in a room full of useful materials. The clever solutions MacGyver implemented to seemingly intractable problems—often in life-or-death situations requiring him to improvise complex devices in a matter of minutes…”

Well, hold on ladies and gentlemen, because the next generation of kids to enter the workforce are cyber-MacGyvers.

To find an example, I needed to look no further than the room upstairs that my son occupies.

A friend of mine wanted to upgrade a very old (circa 2001) iMac and dropped it off to have my son look into it. It had 256k memory, a decent (600mhz) processor and a slot load CD drive, but it was running an old OS and had an outdated browser.

Since newer software comes delivered on DVDs, (and no CD versions of the OS could be located) we decided to order a DVD slot drive for the iMac.

Within just a few minutes my son had located the appropriate memory on the web and had sourced a slot loading DVD drive for the iMac.

My friend purchased the parts and had them shipped to my house.

Once the memory arrived, it took just a few seconds to learn how to crack the case and install the memory (done in 60 seconds). We couldn’t install a newer OS because the DVD reader hadn’t yet arrived.

Then somewhere in the back of his mind, my son remembered (he still doesn’t know where he learned it) that you could boot an iMac as a “target” of another Mac. A quick trip to Google validated his recollection and provided the “how to” instructions. We connected the two systems via Firewire. Then using his Mac Mini DVD reader, he began loading my friend’s OS X (Tiger) onto the iMac.

About 90 minutes later, the whole process was completed.

Lesson learned? Its not what you know. Its how quickly you can source the answer. Growing up in an internet world is equipping our sons and daughters to compete on speed – leveraging the knowledge of others.

This changes the rules.

No longer will knowing the answer count. Sourcing the information and leveraging it will matter most. And beng confident in your abilities doesn’t hurt either.

We’re raising a nation of cyber-MacGyvers. And that’s a good thing.

Disagreeing with a Hero

I recently read a column in Expert Voices at http://www.cioinsight.com/ called CIO as Chief Process Officer, not Strategic Leader.

It’s a summary of a conversation with Dr. Michael Hammer – a hero of mine, who invented the word re-engineering and along with James Campy, wrote a terrific book called Reengineering the Corporation. I’ve seen Dr. Hammer on several occasions, listening to his advice on How to Succeed with SAP. Believe me, he knows what he’s talking about.

The latest article is a continuation of his thinking about Process reengineering, and he espouses a new theory that CIO’s should become CPOs – Chief Process Officers.

While I agree with much of what he says, I have a hard time completely swallowing the concept. Yes, CIO’s are generally very familiar with company processes. Their departments support the technology that support the processes and they have an extremely good “under the hood” view of how things work together – or not. And it’s for this reason, that Dr. Hammer believes they should become process champions within their organization.

Good reasons all, but it rings a little hollow with me. Here’s why.

Once you anoint a Process Guru, almost instantly, you excuse others from the responsibility. “I don’t have to worry about process – that’s Dave’s job” – is a sure path to failure. We tried the same model with the CIO role…before the advent of I.T. Steering teams. Steering teams brought in other executives into the technology decision making process.

And overall, companies use of technologies, investment, project selection/prioritization and execution benefited as a result.

Dr. Hammer points out that successful processes require strong leadership, the right metrics and commitment. But he’s a little vague on how to get there.

It’s a little like the old joke: “How do you make a million dollars in Real Estate?”
Answer: First, start with two million dollars.

I think that answer may lie in Process Steering Teams. Senior executives need to agree which processes need improvement, determine the success metrics, provide the necessary process training/education and dedicate the bset resources to help redesign the processes (usually achieved through value stream mapping exercises). They determine where the pilot should begin and who should be involved in the process. Compensation plans need to be aligned with process improvement goals.

To me it’s exactly the same challenge as Change Management. Successful efforts are driven by all top leadership. It’s a priority for the company – not just a project of the week. The ultimate goal of the Process Steering Team shouldn’t be to refine derelict processes. It should be to turn mid and lower level managers (in fact, all employees) into process champions.

The ultimate goal should be to have everyone at your company focused on process inefficiencies – not just a CPO.

Toyota is generally regarded as the platinum standard for manufacturing efficiency. Their processes are no secret. The huge challenge in imitating Toyota’s success is that lean processes are part of Toyota’s culture - ingrained through decades of process focus. The other huge benefit that Toyota garners is standardized processes. Everyone uses the same processes. To accomplish this, everyone must understand the process, why it works and what the success metrics are.

Process innovation can’t be sustained by one person.

It’s everyone’s job.

And until we recognize that making and executing lean processes is everyone’s goal, new CPO’s may suffer the same fate as many early CIOs – very short tenure.

Business Led or You’re Dead

Somewhere in the midwest, storm clouds are brewing over yet another ERP implementation project. In about six weeks, when the project is expected to go live, the ABC company (name changed to protect the guilty) will learn that many of the process decisions they’ve made are wrong. The new automated processes will actually be slower and more cumbersome than current processes. Their staff will be completely unprepared. Things will grind to a halt.

It will be an unmitigated disaster.

How do I know this? Unlike the company, I spent an hour or so listening to the Project Manager.
His client company is a leader in its industry. Their past success is making them “hard of hearing”. “Just make the system do what we’ve always done.” they say.

Which should beg the question; “Why not stick with the legacy system?”

What they don’t understand is that to achieve meaninful improvements, you actually need to change something.

ABC’s expectation is that by simply installing a world class ERP system, their processes and operational performance will improve as a result. Nothing could be further from the truth.

That same reasoning would have you purchase a pair of Air Jordan basketball shoes with the expectation that you’ll be playing guard for the Chicago Bulls.

Not gonna happen.

Operational excellence is achieved with three ingredents; great people, great processes and the right tools. A new ERP system is just a tool. Just one componant.

Installing a new system is an opportunity to re-examine the way your company does things. A chance to simplify, to optimize, to take a fresh look at the way things are done. It’s a chance to re-educate yourself in how your company processes work. If you don’t do this on a regular basis, you’ll be surprised at the difference in the way you think processes work and they way they’re actually done.

Reviewing processes takes a big investment in time and resources – business resources. Unless the project is business led, you simply can’t pry loose the key people who can make a big positive difference in the outcome. Everyone is too busy “doing their regular jobs” to devote any time on the project.

It’s the Number 1 reason ERP projects fail.

(Shameless plug) If your company is contemplating a major I.T. project in the near future, may I suggest you check out my e-Book entitled; “Lessons Learned from the ERP Frontline”.

It’s available by either clicking on the Lulu link on this website or by going to http://www.lulu.com/ and searching on my name or the title.

And best of all, it’s free.