Vision into Action Part 3 – Execution
It’s easy to believe that, once you have your plans in place to deliver your improvement goals, it should — to shift my metaphor from the usual hills and mountains to the sea for a moment — be pretty plain sailing from now on, shouldn’t it?
After all:
You have defined your long-term Vision for Operational Excellence.
You have identified a small number of 3-5 year “breakthrough” goals that will move the organisation towards the vision.
You have involved your teams at every level to identify local goals that will both contribute towards the achievement of the breakthrough goals and address local issues.
The plans the teams have created are robust and detailed, recognising their strengths, development needs, challenges and need to engage other stakeholders.
However, it’s rarely that simple. I frequently ask groups I’m working with, “how often have you had a plan that has worked out exactly as you’d written it.” Very rarely does a hand go up!
“No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy!”
Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke the Elder - Prussian Field Marshall, Waterloo
The harsh reality is, no matter how thoroughly we plan, the plan will never be perfect. There will be some aspect that has been missed, other activities that “interfere” or changes in external circumstances that mean some aspect of the plan won’t work out the way we expected.
This is particularly true in the case of planning to tackle big improvement goals. Because achieving these goals is almost certainly taking the team or the organisation into unknown territory, so much is unknown and unknowable.
Some elements of the plan are either vague or a good guess at best. So it’s not a failure of the planning process that it doesn’t work out, more a characteristic of the task we are undertaking.
There seem to be some project managers that choose to ignore this uncomfortable truth. They seek to deliver every plan exactly as written — driving completion of all of the actions on the date they were intended. So the plan is delivered. Great!
But has it actually delivered the improvement that the goal was intended to achieve? Most likely not.
So what’s the point of planning?
“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless,
but planning is indispensable.”Dwight D. Eisenhower
At this point you may be asking yourself, “if all this is true, why plan at all? Wouldn’t we be better just getting on with it and dealing with what happens?”
And, at one level, I’d agree with you. Too much planning, too far ahead probably is unnecessary detail given that:
Due to the level of uncertainty, things may go worse or better than planned.
The team’s actions may have unintended consequences — good and bad.
There will be changes in other aspects of the “external environment” as you move forward.
You will learn things along the way or even spot opportunities you never knew were there.
None of these will be included in your plans, so you will have to revaluate and make what may be significant changes.
On the other hand, the planning process ensures that you are far better prepared for any of those events. You have the skills and resources required. You have prepared to deal with obstacles and so will be less deflected by them. You have a well-developed sense of how the journey will go as a frame of reference.
Moreover, you have a clear “aiming point” to guide you even if you end up taking a slightly different route, rather than getting lost or turning back defeated.
Remember that making big “breakthrough” improvements is like exploring unfamiliar territory. You need to go well-prepared and expect the unexpected. This is reflected in the nature of the plan that you will have prepared using the guidelines in previous articles.
The plan assumes — and requires — not only an adaptable mindset but also agility and flexibility in execution rather than the more rigid approach associated with carrying out routine, daily activities.
Intention into Action
With the above in mind, carrying out the plan also requires a very different approach to that used when managing a project where everything is known. Here are some tips that I’ve found useful and may help to navigate your organisation’s improvement journey.
Travel Light
Nothing kills the energy of improvement projects quicker than too much bureaucracy. With a considerable number of improvement goals being worked on across the organisation, it can be very tempting to create a comprehensive system for reporting and consolidating results.
And don’t get me wrong, some level of report and review is necessary. Just keep it simple and aim to minimise the amount of work the team has to do.
Remember, what you are aiming to create here is an environment that encourages initiative and creativity. This requires a number of elements:
Local decision-making: as far as possible, local teams should be enabled to make their own decisions without having to refer upwards. Think special ops more than set piece battle.
Freedom to fail: exploring new territory requires trying new things, not all of which will work out. Recognise the intention, not the result. Ask “what have you learned?” rather than “what went wrong?”
Support when needed: where teams need additional support, they need to be able to call for it knowing it will be provided. Of course, there will need to be some clarity of expectation on the way this should be done and how requests will be actioned.
With this in mind, reporting and formal management should be aimed at little more than giving confidence that things are on track or highlighting that they are not and where support may be required.
I‘m a huge fan of “single sheet” reporting with a small number of items for each goal area and an “at a glance” indicator:
Current status — a one line summary and RAG (Red-Amber-Green) status for “at a glance” assessment.
What the next step is.
Any escalation required.
This simple reporting structure will enable leaders to rapidly identify where they need to take action and where to trust the team to get on with it.
Go as far as you can see
If you have read previous articles in this series, you’ll know that this image has long been a frame of reference for me. In this environment we can rarely plan too far ahead in detail — we don’t know what might be over the next hill.
So only plan in detail the next steps — to the top of the first summit — then, as progress is made, future actions to move towards the goal will become clearer.
Establish a regular rhythm
Making time to work on improvement goals alongside working on routine daily activities is always challenging and it can get squeezed out. After all, most improvement activity, while really important, is almost never urgent. It is too easy to allow the urgent to take over the time in even the most positively-intentioned organisations.
It can be as simple an issue as getting everyone together. I suspect most of us know how difficult it can be to arrange group meetings at relatively short notice – comparing calendars or Doodle polls rarely identifies a suitable slot as soon as you need one, so the rate of progress inevitably slows.
The best way I’ve come across to ensure that improvement goals are worked on is to set aside regular time – could be daily, weekly or monthly. I always remember that, no matter how much pressure we were under in the Mini factory with an order book way above the number of cars we could produce each week, there was still a 30 minute line stop on every shift, every week, to allow time to work on improvements. That sent a powerful message to everyone that making improvements was as important to the business as boosting the numbers. Week-by-week, small changes built up to make a big difference.
So get those regular slots in the calendar as a way of ensuring that the good intention to work on improvement goals becomes part of “business as usual”. It may take a little while for everyone to prioritise their attendance, then the session will become a part of the regular routine and you’ll start to see results.
Plan-Do-Check-Adjust
In terms of process, my recommended approach is to adopt the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust(or Act) cycle from week to week.
So far, we have addressed the initial ‘Plan’ stage and are moving into ‘Do’. As we start our regular meeting cadence, the meeting process then becomes one of ‘Check-Adjust-Plan’ for the next time period and so on.
It’s important to note that these meetings are very different from typical operations meetings where the focus is primarily on performance and problem solving.
Instead, this regular meeting is a time of reflection and learning more than accountability. I normally use a simple question structure for each area of activity within the plan:
What did we intend to do this week? [PLAN]
What actually happened? [CHECK]
What improvement/difference are we seeing? [CHECK]
What have we learned? [CHECK]
What action do we take as a result? [ADJUST(ACT)]
What’s the next step? [PLAN]
Part of the ADJUST(ACT) step may be to identify where help is needed and where items need to be escalated. Where a team lacks confidence, it may be tempting to escalate any aspect where there is uncertainty. One helpful method is to limit the number of items that can be escalated upwards. This both encourages the team to think clearly about where help is really needed and keeps the level of work at the next level up manageable to the point where a timely response is achievable.
It may also be prudent to ask, “how well on track are we to reach the goal?” This question ensures that the team does not lose sight of the original objective and considers any more significant adjustments to the plan that may be required to ensure that the goal is achieved.
It should very rarely be necessary to adjust the goal. Set well, the goal should be a clear requirement for the business going forward. If the goal is questioned, it typically suggests that either:
The team is struggling to make progress, so may need additional coaching or support.
Something was missed in either the goal setting or planning process. In this case, the whole process and assumptions made should be carefully re-examined to see where adjustment is required.
“When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal;
you do not change your decision to get there.”Zig Ziglar - author, salesman, and motivational speaker.
Bearing in mind the idea of “expect the unexpected”, when difficulties occur a well-rehearsed issue resolution process should kick into action (remember “we fall to the level of our training”). This is intended to ensure that obstacles don’t become barriers and that the team find a way over or round the obstacle to maintain progress towards the goal.
A full description of such a method is beyond the scope of this article and merits a problem solving programme in its own right. However, as a guide, a simple “4C” sequence can form an easily understood and applied framework:
Concern: clearly define the issue in factual, evidence based (and, where appropriate, measurable) terms. Avoid jumping to conclusions about cause or corrective action at this stage.
Cause: establish what is at the root of the issue. Dig beneath symptoms to understand what is really happening.
Corrective action: consider a range of options and select the one(s) most likely to resolve the issue.
Confirm: has the corrective action achieved the intended result? If yes, make sure it is firmly in place. If no, time to go round the loop again.
This is PDCA in action!
Steady progress in a consistent direction
A bit like eating an elephant, even big “breakthrough” improvement goals are rarely achieved in one huge leap, more a series of small steps.
Planning to achieve them is far more about preparing the team to head off into “undiscovered country” towards a distant summit than mapping out a route “turn-by-turn” through challenging, yet familiar, territory.
Yet we can have confidence that a well-prepared team will respond positively to every challenge. They will keep their eyes firmly fixed on a goal that has real meaning. They will not be deflected from that goal by obstacles that block their path. Rather, they will apply a well-rehearsed process to get over or around them and press on to reach the goal.
To accompany this series of articles, we have prepared a guide and templates to take you and your team(s) through a series of workshops to set vision, identify goals at organisation and team level then put in place plans to achieve them. If you would like a copy, totally free of charge, please get in touch.