Oct 14, 2020 | Governance, Leadership, Management
A key part of managing activity is to record it as necessary to be done, check it off when done, and make any observation necessary for next time.
This holds true from the development of a strategy down to the daily activities on the shop floor, and everything in between. The only difference is the scale of the things that are being recorded, discussed, and allocated to a responsible person, and perhaps the time between reconciliations.
Years ago I obtained a private pilots licence. An essential part of the training was to have a list of items to be checked off prior to take-off. In that case, it was not a written checklist, as when you are filling in a written checklist yourself, it is too easy to just run down the list and tick all the items as done. In that case the list was physical: my hand went to the item being checked off in the plane ‘walk-around’, and then in the cockpit, touching the item concerned. This addition of the physical to the memorised and written list ensured it was done. In the cockpit of a commercial airliner, where there is a co-pilot, the co-pilot has the written checklist, which he reads out to the captain, who checks the status and reports back for recording by the co-pilot.
Checklists serve a number of purposes:
- They serve as a specific reminder, as our memories are faulty, and prone to taking the easy way out.
- Repeating a list builds memory and habit, and when a habit is broken, we become uncomfortable, our ‘survival’ 6th sense kicks in.
- It provides assurance that the item has been done in an accountable manner.
- It provides the opportunity for specific feedback and immediate remedial action. In a factory this may be to complete an unfinished run from the previous shift, deliver preventative maintenance to a piece of machinery, and a thousand other things.
- It acts as a training profile to be followed by newcomers. Theoretically this should enable someone with no knowledge of the specific process to be able to complete it, simply by following the checklist.
- It allocates responsibility for actions to be done. During the resurrection of Ford by Alan Mulally, he had a daily meeting with his direct reports, in which they reported on the activities they had been allocated from the previous day. Clearly this process is not just for the factory floor.
- During those meetings Mulally also had the daily Ford cash balance calculated and shown, which underlined the importance of cash to the business during a time when they were losing money at a huge rate.
- Lists enable the allocation of priorities, so that resources can be allocated in the most impactful manner.
- Lists act as ‘grease’ for collaboration
Have you ever noticed that those who have the discipline to do daily and weekly checklists for themselves, and stick to them, appear more productive than their peers?
That is generally because they are.
Header photo credit: NASA
Oct 5, 2020 | Leadership, Strategy
Over 45 years I have seen all sorts of strategies. Some work, some fail, some are elegant articulations of a vision and mission, some are a few words on a sheet of paper. Some are data driven, some full of a breathless accounting of what they will make the world look like, and everything in between.
They come in all shapes and sizes.
The common denominator of those that are successful is none of these.
That common success element is that they have been driven by someone who has a bias to action.
They implement.
While others look for more information, watch what their competitors are doing, lobby the government, spend more on developing the next iteration of that great product, the action oriented leader implements.
It will never go completely to plan, there will be mistakes, uncertainty and anxious regret that more care was not taken, and sometimes hordes of naysayers. Nevertheless, the only strategy that has a chance of delivering is the one that gets implemented.
A strategy document that sits on the shelf, gathering dust as information and consensus is accumulated, is the one that never works, because it is not a strategy. It is an excuse for surrendering to the status quo, to the concern about being seen as being wrong, and therefore excluded from the herd.
Oh, by the way, this works not only for a strategy, but in microcosm, at the smallest detail level.
When someone on a production line sees something that could be made to work better that is within their scope of power to change, they take action and change it, observe the results and adjust when necessary. For the leading hands on a line responsible for the running of the line, having a culture in place that encourages and rewards this bias to action, is like having manna from heaven.
Stop talking and start doing!
Header cartoon courtesy of Scott Adams, and the wisdom of Dilbert
Sep 28, 2020 | Leadership, Management, Small business
Every business starts small. The biggest on the planet all started somewhere, in a garage, dorm room, lab, somewhere between the ears of the entrepreneur.
Most fail, or at best deliver a return that would have been dwarfed by the interest on the same investment in a bank account.
Some however, do succeed.
We all see the ones that do, they are shoved down our throats all the time as the heroes, the ones who made it, and we are asked the question, if they can, why can’t you?
There seems to me to be a pretty consistent sequence of growth, a sequence that holds true across all sorts of products and services, geographies, technologies, and circumstances.
Cheering.
This is the first stage, it seems to be all enthusiasm, cheering from the sidelines, jumping up and down, wishing for stuff to happen. What it is really about when you are in the midst of it all is hard grind, chaos, and cash.
At the beginning, you work your arse off, seemingly 24/7, with no letup. Everything that gets done depends on you doing it, you don’t do it, it does not get done. Simple. It is messy, usually chaotic, as pressures come from every direction, your attention is demanded by each, which is why the 24/7, and still there is little forward progress. Then there is cash. As you start, nothing is more important than cash. More start-ups go broke for lack of cash than every other reason combined. Managing your cash is simply the most important thing you must do.
Planning & doing.
Assuming you survive the cheering stage, you will have come to the point where you have a little more head time to be used considering: ‘what next’. You probably have a very small number of employees, and perhaps some outsourced services, like accounting and IT.
Answering the ‘what next’ question will be eating at your guts, as for sure, you do not want to continue as you have been. Your kids are growing up without you, your partner becoming a stranger, you have not had a weekend with your mates for ages, so you look forward to a different future. So, you stumble into some planning. It is never as easy as filling in some generic template, of which there are plenty making alluring promises, it is more about the graft of figuring out how to accumulate and allocate the resources necessary to grow. While the game is still about cash, it has also become about profit, what is left for reinvestment at the end of the month, quarter, and year.
You plan your products and services, the foundation stuff you need to get right, like the legal and regulatory things that must be done, understand the financial and strategic pressures that are present, and settle for the moment on a business model: the means by which you will turn your chaos into sustainable profitability.
However, a plan, no matter how good it may be at telling the future, envisioning new products, markets and customers, needs one further ingredient.
It needs to be implemented.
Plans that do not get implemented are usually called dreams. You will also recognise the reality of the muttering of generals throughout the ages that while planning is essential, nothing ever goes exactly to plan, so you must be ready to be agile tactically, while consistent strategically.
Building & growing.
The essential ingredients to building and growing an enterprise, on top of the financial resources that enable that growth are twofold.
You need people to do the work, and you need processes for them to follow, and over time, optimise.
The task of being the entrepreneur has changed from one of management, to one of leadership. You are no longer as engaged in tactical activity. Tactical implementation is being done by others in a manner that is transparent to overview, and with KPI’s based on outcomes. The task now is about the people doing the work, from the daily tactical stuff to the functional management. Your role is to lead all these people, and ensure that the processes being deployed deliver on the plan. It is all about the productivity of resources deployed, people and financial, delivered via the processes that evolve.
Anyone who thinks this is easy has never done it.
Anyone who stands on the sidelines and cheers for you might be a cheerleader, supporter, and beneficiary, but they are not a coach. A coach delivers the models and means by which the success is generated, which is much more than cheering, as it involves getting dirty from time to time, being challenging at all times, and ensuring you are looking beyond the tactical that threatens to consume you at all times.
At each point in this growth pattern, there is a single question that you can ask that will give you an answer to the question of growth potential contained in any tactical decision:
‘Does this scale?’
Many small business owners do not ask this question, so end up selling their time for money: and there is only a limited time in any day. Therefore, if you are about to invest in tactical activity of any type, ask that simple question: Does this scale?
If the answer is yes, fine. If it is no, think again.
When you are looking for a coach with the scars to prove experience, browse through the posts on the StrategyAudit site, and then you might want to give me a call.
Sep 21, 2020 | Leadership, Marketing
Warren Buffets side-kick Charlie Munger repeats a story in his 2007 USC Law School commencement address which he tells often. The key part is from minute 28, that I think absolutely applies to the practice of marketing.
“I frequently tell the apocryphal story about how Max Planck, after he won the Nobel Prize, went around Germany giving the same standard lecture on the new quantum mechanics.
Over time, his chauffeur memorized the lecture and said, “Would you mind, Professor Planck, because it’s so boring to stay in our routine. [What if] I gave the lecture in Munich and you just sat in front wearing my chauffeur’s hat?” Planck said, “Why not?” And the chauffeur got up and gave this long lecture on quantum mechanics. After which a physics professor stood up and asked a perfectly ghastly question.
The Planck stand-in speaker said, “Well I’m surprised that in an advanced city like Munich I get such an elementary question. I’m going to ask my chauffeur to reply.”
The point is that knowing the name of something, does not mean you understand it.
As it is with the practice of marketing.
Many out there know the names, the jargon and new age tools with fancy labels. Unfortunately, that is not enough to be truly useful. You have to know how they work, how they interact with each other, and ultimately, how their use adds value to those with whom you are engaging.
Real knowledge and wisdom comes with doing the work, earning the right to make the claim of expertise over time gathering the experience necessary for insight.
The brother of this dictum is simplicity. Those who really understand how something works are able to go to the heart of it, and explain it in simple terms such that a non expert will understand. To quote, again, Einstein: ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, no simpler”
Albert was not the best mathematician around, he could not even get a job teaching at undergraduate level in a university. His enormous ability was imagination, and the capacity to explain hugely complex ideas in simple terms. He could sort out the important from the unimportant, determining what was necessary to an outcome, and what was superfluous, and come up with what he called ‘mental models’ that demonstrated the explanation in simple terms to others. The mathematics was a secondary skill to the creative insights that led to the need to develop the mathematics that explained it.
Again, as it is with marketing.
Header cartoon courtesy Tom Gauld at TomGauld.com
Aug 28, 2020 | Leadership, Management
Have you ever noticed that problems are rarely solved by those who have not seen them first hand?
Core to ‘Lean’ philosophy is the Japanese term ‘Genchi Genbutsu’ which carries the meaning ‘go and see’.
In other words, when you have a problem, do not pore over spreadsheets, seek counsel from a friend, or check in with your boss. Instead, go to the source of the problem and see for yourself.
Few do this, and as management becomes increasingly isolated from the processes that support them, we become ever more creative with the reason why we do not down tools, and go and see.
Some of the usual excuses I have heard.
I am too busy.
If you are accountable for the smooth running of a process or person, you have no greater responsibility than to ensure the problem is solved. If it is not your problem, but it is no one else’s either, then take the initiative and go and see, take responsibility. You should never be too busy.
I do not know the source of the problem.
Often this is a legitimate concern, but it is not an excuse to do nothing. By contrast, it should be the best catalyst to set about determining the cause of the problem. Go and see, apply some critical thinking, peel back the layers of symptoms to properly understand the causes of the problem, and eliminate them.
It is not my problem.
Functional siloes and the mismanagement of KPI’s in bureaucracies of all types, are commonly the cause of this common refrain. We have complicated management structures and accountabilities so much in the past decades that everyone has the ability to point somewhere else, or simply walk away. Leadership and culture are the only antidotes. Built into the management culture must be the recognition that a problem somewhere in the organisation, ultimately impacts on everyone. Therefore, everyone has a responsibility, if not accountability, to call it out.
I cannot get there.
Again, often a legitimate barrier, especially in the corporate world where the location to be seen is distant, and there are travel approval processes to be navigated. Sometimes, you might be able to visit via the great video conference technology now available. However, technology is never a perfect substitute for a set of eyes, and the impact of someone coming from a remote location to examine the problem, and help find and implement solutions.
It is uncomfortable.
Yes, often it is, especially when dealing with a person. However, avoiding the conversation, embarrassment, confrontation, anxiety, or whatever it is that is stopping you, still does not address the problem. You just have to go and see.
It is not a problem, it is an opportunity.
The flip side of every problem is opportunity, for those who are able to see it. Where do you go to see an opportunity? The place may not exist. This should not stop you going to where it may exist and looking, perhaps building a ‘minimal viable product’ and testing it in the market. Some of the most successful products I have conceived and launched had their origins in conversations with consumers in supermarkets. Watching what they did, and asking why they did it is a source of ideas about all sorts of things, including identifying things that may not have been noticed as a problem to be solved.
None of these excuses hold any water, they are a cop-out, and are actively avoided in enterprises that have the potential to be great.
Aug 24, 2020 | Leadership, Management
There is rich wisdom to be found in fiction, although you might have to look hard to find it. There are some writers who have used fiction to deliver timeless messages.
For example, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had his protagonist Sherlock Holmes utter some really meaningful lines. Amongst these is the classic: ‘it is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Instinctively one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.’
This is confirmation bias at work. We see things that confirm what we already believe much more often and clearly than we see things that may erode or contravene our existing beliefs.
In digging for facts, data, you need to be able to ask smart questions, in some sort of order, to give some ‘shape’ to the way a problem is perceived.
- How and why is this issue a problem? Assembling observations, some informal information, input from customers, line workers, wherever the problem may be seen, to define that there really is a problem, not just someone having a moan.
- When does the problem show itself? Under what circumstances is the problem to be seen, are there patterns of behaviour or circumstances that seem to be correlated? Is there any foundation to see causation?
- Where is the problem showing up? This goes a step deeper to start defining the location of the problem, and the impact it may have.
- What are the impacts of the problem? What are the financial, cultural, value chain, and customer impacts of the problem?
- What is the priority in allocating resources to solve the problem? There are always more problems than there are resources to address them, and as a result, only a few get the attention they deserve. Make sure those limited resources are allocated in the best possible way.
- What return is delivered by solving? This is way more than a financial calculation, it needs to include an assessment of how the transaction costs may be moved around. What is the impact on workflow and stakeholder engagement as they see problems being identified and removed?.
- What other problems are uncovered by the consideration of the first one? Looking at a problem always uncovers others. Often in the process of understanding the problem, others that are the root causes show themselves for the first time. The ‘5 why’ tool is invaluable in understanding the root causes of problems, and should be in every managers toolbox.
Going back to Sherlock, one of the extremely useful observations captured the essence of Occam’s razor, when he said ‘ When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’
It is our job as leaders, to get at the truth, and communicate that truth widely, in a manner that it is clearly understood, and able to be acted on. So, the essential lesson, is to ask good questions.
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