Friday, May 26, 2006

Sustainable Does Not Mean Forever

An interesting concept that has raised its head this week is the idea that some organisations are looking to 'fix' their change - and are turning to the concepts of Sustainable Change as a way of achieving it.

Whilst Sustainable Change does ensure that organisations get the most benefit out of their improvement activities, motivate their people effectively and also ensure they maintain their position in there market, it is different to 'fixing' change in place.

To fix change would imply a rigid system - a winning formula that once developed was never changed. But what would this mean when the circumstances changed and the world, the market or individuals moved on?

Look at McDonalds, for years they had an almost winning formula; Burgers, Beverages & Breakfasts, but over the last few years they have recognised that society has moved on and demands more variety - especially healthier options.

Sustainable Change ensures an organisation remains 'best' for a period of time, but also leaves them with the capability to move on when circumstances change.

So, the idea is not to 'fix things forever', but to fix them and flex them as the requirements change - and this is the basis of Sustainable Change.

By the way - our new book entitled 'A Beginners Guide to Continuous Improvement' is now available.

Visit my Ecademy profile and then drop me an email for further details.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Surviving Change

More organisations lose money on their change programmes than gain benefit.

This is a true whether they base their approach on Lean, Six Sigma, Concurrent Design, Kaizen or something else......

To combat this, I would like to extend a personal invitation to the Surviving Lean Conference on the 18th May (Right Click & Download the brochure HERE)

Look forward to seeing you there!

Friday, May 05, 2006

Best is only a moment in time......

In addition to running one of our regular masterclasses for the public sector in how to sustain change and running a two day strategic planning programme with a 'running' client, I also had an evening meeting with a potential manufacturing client this week who said they felt they were 'best in class'.

When I explored this statement it appeared that they felt this way because they were profitable and because they had relatively low customer churn. They did not know how they matched to their competitors in terms of price, quality, options, flexibility etc. In addition, they had not done anything to improve their internal operations for a number of years because they were 'too busy' everyday to make the changes.

These were interesting responses - surely, you cannot be 'best in class' without knowing the details of who else is in the room? Also, being 'best' is only a moment in time and things move on. Being profitable today does not mean profitable tomorrow and being busy today and not focusing on tomorrow almost guarentees that profits will drop over time.

Perhaps it is counter-intuitive but the best time to improve what you are doing is when you are busy and profitable as this is the moment when you can be best without worrying about the worst!