You Don't Know What You Don't Know

I did a short course yesterday about making a bigger impact with your blog and found it fascinating as I was introduced to topic after topic and site after site which I had no idea existed.

This workshop has led to some fundamental changes to the things I write in the 'virtual world' and in turn this will make my efforts more effective and it set me thinking about all the things that people don't know (or don't know how to find out about) which are holding them back........quite worrying when you think about it!

What do you feel you don't know enough about that you would like to know more of?

Management Involvement

Having facilitated eight improvement events over the last week I was able to compare the differences between the teams. We were focusing on one group (Medical Secretaries) across two NHS Trusts - so technically the same types of people doing the same time of activity.

In one trust the managers were deeply involved in the process, attending the opening briefs and helping set the scene for the team. They also helped overcome any emotional blockages felt by the team. The teams therefore made leaps forward and improved the service significantly.

In the second, of the four teams involved two were led by an exceptional manager who provided inspirational leadership whilst the other two teams were led by a manager who I only saw in passing - and they did not even arrange for their deputy to attend despite being insisted. As such, two teams achieved great things and two achieved next to nothing - and I bet you cannot guess which two failed to deliver anything!

I cannot believe that organisations invest so much time in organising improvement activities only to see them fall by the wayside because of poor management decisions.

If you would like to find out if your organisation is ready to make a significant improvement in performance drop me a line and I will mail you back a free diagnostic. My email is markeaton(a)amnis-uk.com.

Helping the drowning man

A colleague and I were working with a group of organisations who are in desperate need of making improvements about 10 days ago. The following is the background to this exercise......

1. We have been brought in because the main body responsible for these organisations has recognised they need help.
2. The people who attended were asked to rate how important making improvements their organisation were on a scale of 0-10 (0 being completely unimportant and 10 being the only way of avoiding disaster) and no-one scored below 8.
3. The team admitted they had tried many things to improve performance in the areas concerned.

Now, putting these three things together should give a really good picture that the lead organisation wanted it, the team felt it was important and it was time to try something different.

However, when we started to try to help them to think differently the resistence grew to a crescendo and in the end they agreed to do nothing (well actually, to commission a report to look into setting up a project that would consider options).

The lead organisation representative was horrified that they had (as a group) agreed to do nothing and that nothing would happen - and we had to reassure her that it is impossible to help a drowning man (or team) if they do not want to be saved.

What do you think?

Is every organisation unique?

I was chatting to a potential client earlier this week and they were talking about all the things that made their organisation unique. From the specific 'cultural' issues to legislation to client needs etc etc

Now, I have met many, many people who believe that their situation is absolutely unique and that no one else has the same set of issues and I was wondering why this was the case and propose the following answer.

We know our organisations very well - every lump and bump, every problem, opportunity and threat. Therefore, we can speak with authority about our own organisation.

As for everyone else, even closely aligned or similar organisations we have to make broad generalisations about them and in this process of generalisation much of the detail about the problems and issues faced by others are forgotten. This makes us believe that our activity is unique and that the situations faced by others are different.

This is then used to explain why our performance varies from someone else, it also explains why we feel more stressed than others 'appear' to be and it also explains why something that has worked in thousands of other organisations won't work here.

Perhaps this sort of behaviour is needed - especially if it helps to reinforce how 'good' the organisation is and therefore motivates staff, but for many it just acts as a barrier to making changes.

What is it like in your organisation?

Groundhog Day

I was watching the 1990's film Groundhog Day today whilst at the same time reading the book 'We All Fall Down' by Russ King and Julie Wright.

The story of both are about people trapped in a repeating cycle, working very hard to stand still and failing miserably, until a 'major event' or step change in their behaviours or environment occurs.

For many people working in the public and private sector every day is just about 'coping' and whilst people want to improve they find themselves unable to commit any additional time to the problem.

For some (the Firefighters) this way of working becomes a way of life and they find great professional pride in being seen as the person who 'sorts out the mess' when the 'chips are down.'

However, for the majority it is a tiring, stressful existence that many wish could be made different.

But what if the world tomorrow was not the same as today? What if things were not as chaotic as today and more importantly what would you be prepared to give to make it happen?

If you could see a way out of the hole, the Groundhog Day situation, is that something worth investing just a little more effort in?

It is fair to say that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the epitomy of insanity!

Delay what you don't understand?

I had an email today from a client asking if we could postpone some activity we were going to start in early September because there was nervousness amongst the team that they would not have the time to invest in turning their lives around.

Most of them are swamped by work and cannot afford to lift their head up and therefore the thought of even giving up a WHOLE DAY (let alone the full programme of activity planned) was beyond them.

Instead, they wanted to replace the proposed focused and high impact programme with some work to create a PID (Project Initiation Document), recruit and appoint a Project Manager, develop an implementation plan and really look to get going 'sometime in Quarter 2 of 2008' with a series of bi-weekly hour long meetings.

Now, I know that this is natural reaction to stressful situations - we are so busy firefighting we have no time to turn off the gas - but there is also a lack of understanding implied by the response. They seem to forget that the investment of time in an appropriate, targeted and (most importantly) quick implementation will generate better returns (by several orders of magnitude) than 'death by a thousand cuts' (this being my latest term of weekly/monthly meetings that go nowhere!).

However, there is a lack of understanding implied by this (typical) response which is that the previous programmes have required lots of time investment (admittedly in hour long chunks) and achieved nothing so the thoughts of investing (maybe) 200 hours over several months would not seem a good return when compared against the old model of improvement.

Therefore, the art of bringing this programme back on track (which it now is) was to stress that the approach is different, the results are different and most importantly the returns are different.

What do you think?

http://www.amnis-uk.com/

When is the right time?

A common question I hear when dealing with clients is 'When is the right time to schedule in to do this project?'

The answer is simply that there is never a right time!

Some organisations know they need to make a difference to the way they deliver products and services but cannot or are unwilling to make the time investment required to make it happen.

There is always a reason not to do a project; a new building, service changes, a new contract, someone has left, someone has joined, someone has failed to join, a customer has complained etc etc etc

These are the realities of business - whether you are a Healthcare organisation or a Manufacturing business - there will always be something that makes this 'not the right time.'

In my former role running change programmes for the public sector we were often approached by organisations who were facing the abyss (they were about to close, go to jail or something similar). The common strand was that most realised there was a problem a long before the end came but were so tied up 'dealing with the critical issues' that they did not take time out to deal with the important issues that would have saved them pain, money or damage to customers.

If you truly believe that something needs to be done then it probably does need to be done, and if something needs improving then you had better get on with it.

There are two quotes that I think are great at this point, one is from Henry Ford and the other is from an unknown source:

Henry Ford - "I realised that when I needed a tool, if I did not get it I would end up paying for it anyway but not having it"

Anon - "Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results each time"

I will close by challenging you to make the first step towards improving the long-term health of your organisation today. It may be disruptive, it may be unpopular, it may just save your organisation or the life of your customers. Delay it at your own peril!

What do you think?

http://www.amnis-uk.com/

The inquisitiveness of children....

Have you ever noticed how children ask the 'daft' and obvious question that exposes gaps in your knowledge?

My six year old son was watching the news with me on the day that Gordon Brown became Prime Minister and he asked me what a Prime Minister was. I started to reply that the PM was the leader of the main parlimentary party when he interupted me and asked me why groups needed leaders and whether or not the people in the political party were capable of making decisions for themselves.

This was a slightly more complex issue and stopped me in my tracks for a few seconds. Of course, everyone in a group has intelligence and is capable of making decisions for themselves but they needed a guiding hand to set the overall direction of the party and to act as a mediator in the event of a dispute.

His questions set me thinking about the usefulness of asking questions from the viewpoint of a child and how it forces people to examine why things are they way they are, why certain decisions have been taken and whether there might be another way of doing things. You often find someone involved in an improvement project will ask what appears to be a simple (or even daft) question that unexpectedly exposes a real issue, threat, risk or opportunity.

Perhaps we should encourage child like questioning for our organisations as it will challenge whether the organisational paradigms are valid or could be improved.

Are you brave enough to try?

Management Commitment is key!

Is it enough for management teams to delegate improvement responsibility to others and then wait for the benefits to roll in?

I think not!

Active support for your change agents, active interest in the progress and achievements of your front line teams and on-going interest in the allocation of improvement resources (making sure people turn up for meetings and that the communication of what is going on is effective), make the difference between success and failure.

On a scale of 1-100, where is your level of commitment to improving your organisation?

Where do we start?

I was with an NHS Trust earlier this week who were interested in making improvements in the way they deliver services (specifically around the 18 Week Target) and the discussion was revolved around the previous improvement programmes they had led and how they had gone about selecting the first place to start.

I was relating stories from manufacturing companies who have tried to start an organisation wide improvement programme simultaneously and then found almost immediately that they cannot provide the required amount of management support and individual mentoring required to generate the momentum. This had quickly exhausted their ability to make progress and although a few areas ended up making isolated improvements, the overall impact was minimal.

I also related some stories from the service sector where they started with a small pilot project in one area that was 'low priority' for the business and almost disconnected from the main 'hub' of activity. The result was a very slow start and even though they did achieve something it did not generate the organisation wide response that the organisations were looking for.

My belief from various programmes of activity is that to make a successful decision about where to start an improvement programme you need to first understand why the organisation must change (specifically creating a Compelling Need for people to participate) and then look at an area that is creating 'pain' in the organisation (else it will be hard to generate excitement when something is achieved). A third issue is concerned with also ensuring that which ever area is tackled first is also looked at in the full organisational context by looking at the impact of changes upstream or downstream of the area.This latter point is normally tackled through something like a Value Stream Mapping Event or similar activity, but can also be achieved through a Risk Management exercise.

Anyway, it seemed to answer the question for the clients - what do you think?