To C or not to C, that is the question!

 

Congratulations! You've spent the last 6 months implementing a new change project that will improve ways of working, increase efficiency & productivity and increase profitability. Phew, it was hard work but it will be worth the effort when all these benefits are realised.
However, a further 6 months down the line and people have drifted back to the old ways of working or found 'work-arounds' for the new ways, efficiency & productivity have at best stayed the same and you're yet to see any financial improvement in profits.

Sound familiar? It is surprising how often an organisation never really obtains the full benefits of the improvement they spent time, effort and resource implementing. It's not because it was a poor idea and often it's not due to a poor implementation, though there are always things that could be done better. One of the biggest challenges to sustaining a change is the Control measures organisations put in place after implementation.

Those of you who follow our Blogs will know we love to follow the DMAIC process (Define Measure Analyse Improve Control) and in our opinion, key to embedding change is the Control step. We are always told to spend a significant amount of time in the planning phase of a project (Proper Planning Prevents P#!s Poor Performance) but often neglect to spend an appropriate amount of time thinking about what needs to be done to ensure the improvement is embedded and sustained.

So less rambling and more "How the hell do I do it?"

The first and possibly most important step is to ensure you have clearly defined the New Standards. What was once OK is now history and your new ways of working will require you to define New Standards. Involving staff in the creation of these will go some way to ensuring you have buy-in and in helping in the communication process. It's no good redefining the Standard if you then fail to effectively communicate it to staff AND ensure they have clearly understood what is required (message transmitted does NOT always equal message received!).

Here's another point for consideration - do people understand the impact of the change not only to their part of the process but also to their colleagues; customers; suppliers etc upstream and downstream? This becomes critical when they want to start improving or 'tweaking' the new process or ways of working - understanding the impact on the other parts of the chain.

OK so your New Standards have been clearly defined and communicated but if you want it to stick then you need to have the appropriate Metrics - What gets measured, gets done. Now it is very important that you get the right measures in place as all too often we see badly designed metrics driving the wrong behaviour and ways of working. Again get the staff involved in defining these so that you get ownership (after all they are going to be the ones filling in the data) and also to ensure that the Metrics are relevant. They must mean something to the people using them and they should feed in to higher level management Metrics (See Diagram below). And as we are always fond of saying: make sure your Metrics are Visual! Get them up on the wall, use tables, graphs or charts and keep them simple.
The final element of your Metrics is to ensure that whatever you are measuring, you are measuring it in a relevant time frame that allows you to intervene BEFORE you get a problem.There is no use logging a report is late, better to monitor it's progress against deadline so you can intervene BEFORE it becomes late.

 

With Standards and Metrics in place you are well on your way to embedding the change or new ways of working. All it now needs (and this is good Leadership practice anyway) is some Coaching. We're not just chucking this in as it's the latest craze to sweep business, we really believe in the power of effective Coaching by your Managers. We use a phrase "Gemba Coaching" which means Managers getting off their butt's and getting out on the shop floor or office every day and having real Coaching conversations with staff - "Where are we against the standard?" should be a frequent question asked. This is a fantastic opportunity (yes it really is!) for Managers to find out what is going on, how people are performing, what issues they face or what support they need. It is a chance to recognise and reward the right behaviours and where people are not meeting the standard, use Coaching to improve performance. It is important that Managers cast the right Shadow - remember people do as they see not necessarily as they are told!

So now you have some suggestions to help you ensure the next change you instigate is not only successfully implemented but becomes embedded and sustained providing you with the benefits you expected.

In-Place AND In-Use is the way forward!

If you find this article interesting please feel free to share it with colleagues. if you'd like to discuss more then get in touch, we're always happy to talk and help where we can.

In Place AND In Use - The Key to Successful & Sustainable Change

Following on from our April Newsletter we thought we'd focus a bit more on this idea of In Place & In Use.

So what do we mean when we say something is In Place & In Use? Imagine you have a written procedure that clearly details how to perform a task. It has been approved and authorised and trained out to people so everyone knows it exists and is there to be followed. The procedure is In Place.

Now if you were to audit people against the procedure and you found they were following it to the letter and it had become a natural part of their normal working routine then the procedure is In Use.

However, what we often find is that people find work-arounds or don't follow the procedure to the letter, instead finding subtle ways to do things differently. Often this is for a good reason; the procedure may not truly reflect what they do; they may have found a better way to do something.  But equally it may just be because they prefer the old ways, drifting back to their comfort zones as no-one checks up on them or police's the new ways of working.

Imagine 2 security personnel at the entrance to a metro station. One is there to ensure you put your rucksack or luggage onto the conveyor belt through the x-ray machine, the second watches the monitor to ensure the luggage does not contain anything illegal. Here we have a process In Place.

You then notice that the majority of people completely ignore this process and walk past without having their luggage x-rayed. Neither security person acts to prevent this. Our process is clearly NOT In Use. (This might sound a ridiculous example but I actually observed this on my travels!)

So if we have procedures, rules & regulations  but fail to follow them or comply with them (for whatever reason) then we have In Place but NOT In Use.

So why is this important?
If no-one is following rules or processes then why have them. It requires time and resource to create them, approve them, train them etc and to what gain!
If people are doing things their own way we immediately introduce variation and non-robust processes. Errors are far more likely to occur. Standard Work is a key foundation for efficient, high performing Organisations.
By allowing people to ignore processes and rules you are sending out a message that these are not important things. Thus people may start by ignoring the 'little' things but can eventually end up deviating from the important things. (Think back to our April newsletter on the Shadow of the Leader!)

Many issues we encounter with Organisations can often include this In Place & In Use model. It often links directly to the culture of an Organisation and is at the root of a myriad of other issues they face.

 

So the $64m question - how do we get things In Place & In Use?

There are a number of things you can do to help including:

• Involve the right people in defining processes and ways of working. Get those involved who actually use it, they often know best.
• Don't be afraid to update / amend things once you've got them In Place. Review what you've done to check it is working. If people aren't following procedures ask why; is there a better way, have you made things more difficult; is it a training issue.
• As a Leader get out and check people are doing what you think they should be, do it often, be visible and take action when you see deviations. What you do & say send out very powerful messages.
• Be pragmatic - you don't need rules for everything! Focus on the critical aspects and get them standardised and agreed

So when you are out and about take note of things around you, you'll be surprised by how many things you spot that are clearly In Place but so obviously being ignored and therefore NOT In Use.

If you want to find out more about this or Culture Change in general then please feel free to contact us. We'd love to help your Organisation stand out from the rest.