When it comes to light that things are not going well a common reaction from the top is to send in more inspectors.
This may give the impression that something decisive is being done but it almost never works … for two reasons.
The first is because it is attempting to treat the symptom and not the cause.
The second is because the inspectors are created in the same paradigm that that created the problem.
That is not so say that inspectors are not required … they are … when the system is working … not when it is failing.
The inspection police actually come last – and just before them comes the Policy that the Police enforce.
Policy comes next to last. Not first.
A rational Policy can only be written once there is proof of effectiveness … and that requires a Pilot study … in the real world.
A small scale reality check of the rhetoric.
Cooking up Policy and delivery plans based on untested rhetoric from the current paradigm is a recipe for disappointment.
Working backwards we can see that the Pilot needs something to pilot … and that is a new Process; to replace the old process that is failing to deliver.
And any Process needs to be designed to be fit-for-purpose. Cutting-and-pasting someone else’s design usually does not work. The design process is more important than the design it creates.
So thus brings us to the first essential requirement … the Purpose.
And that is where we very often find a big gap … an error of omission … no clarity or constancy of common Purpose.
And that is where leaders must start. It is their job to clarify and communicate the common Purpose. And if the leaders are not cohesive and the board cannot agree the Purpose then the political cracks will spread through the whole organisation and destabilize it.
And with a Purpose the system and process designers can get to work.
But here we hit another gap. There is virtually no design capability in most organisations.
There is usually lots of delivery capability … but efficiently delivering an ineffective design will amplify the chaos not dissolve it.
So in parallel with clarifying the purpose, the leaders must endorse the creation of a cohort of process designers.
And from the organisation a cohort of process inspectors … but of a different calibre … inspectors who are able to find the root causes and able to guide the improvement process because they have done this themselves many times before.
And perhaps to draw a line between the future and the past we could give them a different name – Mentors.