Establishing a purposeful daily routine to deliver exceptional results
One of the most common things operational leaders say to me when we start talking about what’s needed to work towards operational excellence is “I’m too busy dealing with the day-to-day to have time to work on improvements!” Have you ever felt that way?
“I’m too busy fighting fires to work on fire prevention!”
For me, it takes me back to my early days in a production environment not long after I’d changed role from one purely focussed on new products to take on oversight of product supply of body structural components to Land Rover just before a challenging new product launch in the mid-1990s.
It was, to put it mildly, a nightmare. The production tools weren’t yet able to produce quality parts and the systems to schedule supply correctly were sadly lacking. Pretty much all of my days – not to mention those of three of my new team – were taken up dealing with irate phone calls from our customer and chasing part shortages internally. Given my lack of production knowledge, I felt like I was drowning and had no idea what to do.
Fortunately, my boss was supportive and did two things that helped me to turn things around.
Firstly, she “gave me permission” to walk away from the constantly ringing phone for a period each day – she suggested 15 minutes initially – to work on making things better. “After all”, she said, “it can hardly get much worse and yet those 15 minutes can start to make a real difference.”
Secondly, she assigned a mentor to me. Ron had seen everything and was one of those people who was unflappable in a crisis. Moreover, he had been part of team studying Japanese manufacturing methods. So, unlike many of his contemporaries who knew no other way than “firefighting” (more about them in the next article), Ron could see how things could be done differently to give us more visibility and control with much less effort.
A powerful daily routine
The secret of your success is found in your daily routine
John Maxell, Author and Leadership Coach
One of the first things Ron did was to establish a simple “start of day” routine to help us get visibility of where we were on supply. Initially this was little more than a “stock check” of all required items against a target of two days’ supply. Simple as it was, this enabled us to have focussed conversations with each manufacturing unit, highlight where there were challenges and then take appropriate action.
Over the years, I’ve come to believe that this can be one of the most impactful ways to get a team into the “operational excellence” way of working. Such a simple daily routine can help a team to focus on their “core purpose” in terms of a result they are trying to deliver. It might be, for example, adhering to a given production schedule or maximising the utilisation of a hospital operating theatre.
At the start, the routine may be as simple as a well-structured 15 minute “team huddle” at the beginning of each day*, much as Ron did with my team. However, in my experience, this is normally only the start of the adoption of a set of other routine practices that bring more focus, structure and effectiveness to a team’s working day.
In our case, we soon organised a daily meeting with the planners in each production area to go through the requirements and a schedule of “check-in” calls at key times of the day to keep things on track and deal with any emerging challenges. This allowed everyone to go home on time at the end of the day confident that everything was in hand to meet our customer’s needs.
In a very short time, we also found that we had more time during the day to work on fixing the issues that prevented supply working smoothly. We weren’t out of the woods yet – that would take several months of hard work and there were still tricky situations to manage almost every day – but we knew we were no longer spiralling down out of control and gradually making our way upwards. We had a prioritised list of short-, medium- and long-term actions to address and were progressively working our way through them.
Over the subsequent years, I’ve worked with many teams to establish similar routines and have drawn together a series or principles and practices that I believe can make a huge difference to almost any team.
Clarity on PURPOSE
The first thing to remember is that the PURPOSE of creating such a routine is not the routine itself, it’s what it represents. The routine is part of the foundation of a high-performing culture that delivers exceptional results for customers/clients, the organisation itself and its staff. It focusses attention on what really matters and ensures that actions are both consistent and deliver the desired results.
A great question to ask here is “what are we trying to achieve and how will we know we are getting there?” The answers will keep the team focussed on what is important and establish the right measures to show the results of their hard work.
The meetings themselves help to build productive relationships within and between teams, driving continuous improvement and ever better results as opportunities to improve are identified and acted upon by everyone in the team and, over time, the whole organisation.
Of course, such a routine is not established overnight. It requires:
the right mindset and appropriate behaviours from all involved, so we have to create the right conditions for the routine to operate – the PEOPLE dimension.
a clear structure and method to guide the conduct of the meetings and other elements – the PROCESS dimension.
Above all, the routine needs to be established on some clear PRINCIPLES. That’s where we’ll start, coming back to the PEOPLE and PROCESS elements in subsequent articles.
Powerful PRINCIPLES for habitual excellence
A regular rhythm builds great habits
“We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”Will Durrant (from Aristotle)
I’ve gained two hours a day!
I’d started working with the recently appointed Operations Director of a mid-sized manufacturing organisation.
Talking with him about his successor as Production Manager, he noted that he was spending over half of his morning walking round to check-in with all his staff to see where they were with the production plan and what the issues were, then chasing his purchasing, logistics and maintenance colleagues.
I mentioned the idea of a morning production meeting as a possibility to improve on this way of working and was delighted to hear on my next visit that they’d started with it.
By gathering his supervisors and other department managers together for no more than 20 minutes, issues were shared and actions allocated, requiring minimal follow-up during the day.
He reckoned that this simple change had freed up over two hours a day and reduced the number of problems experienced, leaving him time to work on other improvements.
A regular routine, or cadence, of meetings and other activities builds great habits and establishes a rhythm whereby important activities happen with far greater ease due to the design of the routine.
Based on the idea of “acting your way into a new way of thinking”, they also reinforce the other principles and ideas that follow.
Before long, the routine becomes everyone’s “default behaviour” rather than a different way of working that requires significant effort. In other words, it becomes almost automatic.
Proactive not reactive
The intention of the routine is that we are managing performance proactively – consciously seeking to highlight problems and opportunities before they become troublesome rather than waiting for difficulties to occur - “prevention not detection.”
Such an approach allows everyone to address issues more calmly without the immediate time pressure to get a resolution. As a result, a more measured and well-thought-through approach can be taken to address the issues and make sure that this will eliminate the underlying causes to avoid recurring problems.
This in turn leads to fewer issues with customers, less disruption to plans and much more effective use of time. Beyond that it frees up even more time to think ahead and undertake further improvements.
Standardised work
“Standardised work” is an essential part of the routines. It ensures that everything is done “correctly” (the best way we currently know) and consistently by documenting the procedure and following it step-by-step every time so that nothing necessary is left out and there is no variation that will cause uncertainty in the results.
Most typically standardised work and standard work instructions are applied to tasks on a production line. However, the need and effects are essentially the same for any routine, repetitive task.
Ensuring that the regular daily meetings have a standard agenda and are conducted in the same way every time will ensure that nothing is missed out and everyone knows what to expect and what their role is.
Leader Standard Work captures those management activities that leaders carry out every day to ensure that their teams are keeping on track and are well motivated and engaged.
Linked together, they establish a set of powerful habits that ensure focus on ever improving performance that also requires less effort on the part of everyone involved – truly a winning combination.
Continuous improvement is routine
Identification and resolution of problems and opportunities for improvement is a key part of routine work, whether it is an element of daily team meetings or regularly scheduled time to work on improvements.
This ensures that continuous improvement becomes a habit too – a sense of “today is good yet tomorrow could be even better.”
With this mindset, standardised work doesn’t mean stagnation, more that there is a firm foundation from which we can improve, establish a new standard and keep pushing forward.
Everyone, everywhere, every day
You might think that this idea of routine only applies to those doing repetitive work. However, in the same way that a standardised approach to meetings is beneficial so a set of routine habits and activities can be powerful even for those in highly creative roles where no two days are ever the same.
What may change is the frequency and content of the routine activities and the proportion of each person’s work governed by the routines and standards. As much as routine and habits are powerful, they mustn’t be at the expense of the creativity that is essential in almost any organisation.
In this regard, I think of companies like 3M where setting aside “normal” work on a regular basis to allow anyone to work on ideas of their choosing has been part of their routine for many years.
A fully developed system of daily gatherings should involve everyone in the organisation. This will both:
ensure that everyone is well-informed about what’s going on, has an opportunity to contribute and feels valued.
highlight issues quickly and prompt action to resolve them.
Daily meetings will begin with a “huddle” of each production team at the start of shift and cascade upwards, ending with the Operations Director or CEO. At each subsequent level, there will also be an information flow downwards. Even in the largest organisations this is typically no more than four “tiers”, forming a highly effective and time-efficient system for keeping the organisation running smoothly.
All from a short and simple daily routine.
A radical transformation
You might be wondering what happened with my production control team.
Well, we got to the point where what had been the majority of my time and a full-time job for three of my team was reduced to a routine taking around two hours per day for just one team member. I was hardly ever involved unless there was a significant issue.
This, in turn, allowed us to devote considerable time to developing the team and working to put more robust procedures in place to ensure that the next Land Rover product would have a much smoother journey into production.
A total transformation incorporating all of the principles described.
What could it do for you?
* If you’d like to learn how to establish a start of day routine for you and/or your team, I have prepared a simple guide. Just get in touch and I’d be delighted to send it to you.