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<\/a><\/p>\n1. A clear purpose and an outline strategic plan.<\/p>\n
2. Tactical measurement of performance-over-time.<\/p>\n
3. A generic Improvement-by-Design framework.<\/p>\n
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These are necessary minimum requirements to be able to safely delegate the day-to-day and week-to-week tactical stuff the delivers the “what is needed”.<\/p>\n
These are necessary minimum requirements to build a self-regulating, self-sustaining, self-healing, self-learning win-win-win system.<\/p>\n
And this is not a new idea.\u00a0 It was described by Joseph Juran in the 1960’s and that description was based on 20 years of hands-on experience of actually doing it in a wide range of manufacturing and service organisations.<\/p>\n
That is 20 years before\u00a0 the terms “Lean” or “Six Sigma” or “Theory of Constraints” were coined.\u00a0 And the roots of Juran’s journey were 20 years before that – when he started work at the famous Hawthorne Works in Chicago – home of the Hawthorne Effect – and where he learned of the pioneering work of\u00a0 Walter Shewhart.<\/p>\n
And the roots of Shewhart’s innovations were 20 years before that – in the first decade of the 20th Century when innovators like Henry Ford and Henry Gantt were developing the methods of how to design and build highly productive processes.<\/p>\n
Ford gave us the one-piece-flow high-quality at low-cost production paradigm. Toyota learned it from Ford.\u00a0 Gantt gave us simple yet powerful visual charts that give us an understanding-at-a-glance of the progress of the work.\u00a0 And Shewhart gave us the deceptively simple time-series chart that signals when we need to take more notice.<\/p>\n
These nuggets of pragmatic golden knowledge have been buried for decades under a deluge of academic mud.\u00a0 It is nigh time to clear away the detritus and get back to the bedrock of pragmatism. The “how-to-do-it” of improvement. Just reading Juran’s 1964 “Managerial Breakthrough<\/em>” illustrates just how much we now take for granted. And how ignorant we have allowed ourselves to become.<\/p>\n Acquired Arrogance is a creeping, silent disease – we slip from second nature to blissful ignorance without noticing when we divorce painful reality and settle down with our own comfortable collective rhetoric.<\/p>\n The wake-up call is all the more painful as a consequence: because it is all the more shocking for each one of us; and because it affects more of us.<\/p>\n The pain is temporary – so long as we treat the cause and not just the symptom.<\/p>\n The first step is to acknowledge the gap – and to start filling it in. It is not technically difficult, time-consuming or expensive.\u00a0 Whatever our starting point we need to put in place the three foundation stones above:<\/p>\n 1. Common purpose. Then the rubber meets the road (rather than the sky) and things start to improve – for real. Lots of little things in lots of places at the same time – facilitated by the Junior Managers. The cumulative effect is dramatic. Chaos is tamed; calm is restored; capability builds; and confidence builds. The cynics have to look elsewhere for their sport and the skeptics are able to remain healthy.<\/p>\n Then the Middle Managers feel the new firmness under their feet – where before there were shifting sands. They are able to exert their influence again – to where it makes a difference. They stop chasing Scotch Mist and start reporting real and tangible improvement – with hard evidence. And they rightly claim a slice of the credit.<\/p>\n And the upwelling of win-win-win feedback frees the Senior Managers from getting sucked into reactive fire-fighting and the Victim Vortex; and that releases the emotional and temporal space to start learning and applying System-level Design.\u00a0 That is what is needed to deliver a significant and sustained improvement.<\/p>\n And that creates the stable platform for the Executive Team to do Strategy from. Which is their job.<\/p>\n It all starts with the Three Essentials:<\/p>\n 1. A Clear and Common Constancy of Purpose. \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are three necessary parts before ANY improvement-by-design effort will gain traction. Omit any one of them and nothing happens. 1. A clear purpose and an outline strategic plan. 2. Tactical measurement of performance-over-time. 3. A generic Improvement-by-Design framework. These are necessary minimum requirements to be able to safely delegate the day-to-day and week-to-week tactical … <\/p>\n
\n2. Measurement-over-time.
\n3. Method for Improvement.<\/p>\n
\n2. Measurement-over-time of the Vital Metrics.
\n3. A Generic Method for Improvement-by-Design.<\/p>\n