Keys to Becoming World-Class

November 18, 2010 in Leadership, World-class with 0 Comments

If you’ve been running your business for more than 20-minutes, you have at some point thought about what it takes to develop into a great company. Often we refer to these great organization as world-class. Regardless of whether you lead a division in a 25,000 person multi-national company or you’re a microbusiness, you want to perform at your best.

So what do world-class companies do that the rest of us can learn from?

1. Use coaches/mentors/consultants. Ok, this may sound self-serving, but it’s true. From sports figures and actors to Fortune 100 companies, world-class performers seek out people and firms that help point out what they don’t do well and help they become better. These “outside” eyes can be outside firms or an internal department. When I was at GE, in addition to the outside firms we hired, we also had Corporate Audit Staff (CAS). CAS operated like a consulting firm inside the company to the different GE businesses. If you don’t have someone providing this role to you, you need it. Go find someone or a firm that can help you identify your blind spots.

2. Use Feedback. Solicit performance feedback from your customers. Pay attention to those areas you could improve upon. It’s those minor tendencies and weaknesses that are stopping you from getting to the next level.

3. Be Deliberate. Once you identify where your organization is weak or has blind spots, stop running on autopilot! Consciously make different choices and be super aware of what you’re doing until the new behaviors become ingrained in your culture.

4. Develop Un-natural Skills. Sometimes what you need to do to improve may seem counterintuitive. Realizing what needs to be done, even if it goes against what you would have done in the past, and doing it is a characteristic of world-class performers.

One of my clients that was hit hard by the recession in 2009 took a very different approach than many in their industry. When other companies were laying off people and scrambling to get any order they could, this manufacturer didn’t. Instead, they kept all their employees and reduced everyone’s work hours, stopped raises and bonuses, and invested in their lean and quality initiatives. They reduced their cycle times, improved the quality of their product, and slashed their scrap rates. By early 2010, they were hiring people, back to three shifts five days a week, and wining new customers.

5. Develop an Action Plan. After identifying your weak spots, pick just one or two – no more – and develop a plan to improve. Make sure your action plan is documented, communicated well, and measurable. Once you’ve made significant improvement in those areas, pick one or two more and develop those.

By following these steps, you can build your organization into a world-class performer as well.

If you have other ideas or examples of how your organization improves, please post it in the comments section, I would love to hear about it.

Get Bigger or Better?

October 23, 2010 in Leadership, Managing with 5 Comments

There is a great story about Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy. When the company faced it’s first real competition from, now, Boston Market, the young executives started furiously working on how to grow Chick-fil-A bigger. They wanted to open more stores to compete with Boston Market. After working for about a year or so on how to make the company bigger, the staff was in a meeting discussing the subject. Truett Cathy, who was then in his 80′s, began pounding on the table. Everyone else quieted down and looked at the founder who said “I’m tired of hearing all this talk about how to make the company bigger. Focus on making ourselves better and our customers will demand that we get bigger.”

There are a couple things about this story that I love and think are quite applicable to all organizations.

1. Don’t Let Others Drive Your Strategy. In the Chick-fil-A story, the young executives allow Boston Market’s strategy of opening lots of stores to shift their focus away from their strategy. As a result, they become fixated on trying to open more stores than their competition.

When you look at your own business, understand what your goals are and stick to the best strategy that will get you there. Don’t ignore your competition; you should monitor what they are doing. However, you should not mimic what they are doing in an effort to gain more market share.

2. Don’t Lose Sight Of Your Corporate Values. Part of this story involves the Chick-fil-A executives seeking out investors and looking at lines of credit to expand quickly and open new stores. This strategy was completely contrary to the company’s values up to that point. The company had very little debt, if any, and was owned by the Cathy’s.

As you evaluate different marketing and business strategies, make sure you consider how they align with your corporate values. Don’t get caught-up in the urgency of the short-term, instead consider the long-term implications.

3. Bigger Isn’t Always Better. Truett Cathy recognized that if the company focused just on getting bigger, they may lose ground in their quality, hospitality, customer loyalty. Instead, they needed to maintain their focus on becoming better, and as a result, their customers would demand they get bigger.

We’ve seem plenty of examples of companies that expanded too much too fast and then had to shutdown operations or even ended up going out of business. Really evaluate if bigger is better. For some companies staying smaller is better, look at 37 Signals for example. They are a phenomenal company that is focused on not getting bigger for bigger sake. Instead, focus on how you can make yourself better in all aspects of your organization. Then you can let the market demand you get bigger. Isn’t that what we  want?

Intro to Lean Six Sigma Seminar

September 1, 2010 in Lean, Six Sigma with 0 Comments

Operations Strategy and the NWIRC are partnering again to offer an Intro to Lean Six Sigma one-day seminar.
The event will be held on Thursday, Sept. 30th at the Hampton Inn & Suites at the Grove City outlets. The price is $179 per person and includes lunch. For more details and to register, contact the NWIRC.

Client Feedback Needed

September 1, 2010 in Updates with 0 Comments

Over the past 18 months, many businesses have undergone changes and as a result, their needs have changed. We exist to support businesss and help them grow. We are in the process of re-evaluating our offerings in relation to client needs and need to hear from you. Please take a few minutes to answer the following four questions. You can send your responses by email (info at OperationsStrategyLLC dot com), fax, mail, or post in the comments section. Feel free to share any other feedback you would like to give at this time.
1. How important is improving your company’s operations?
N/A
Very Important
Moderate
Not Important
2. What training course(s) are most important to you and your organization? (Lean, Six Sigma, ISO, Project Management, etc.)
3. What delivery method for training do you prefer:
Live, in-class, company sponsored
Live, in-class, open enrollment
Live, on-line
On-line, self-paced
4. What are the three biggest challenges facing your business today?

Stop Reading Books

August 23, 2010 in Leadership with 0 Comments

We are spending too much time just reading books. We live in the information age and have more information available to us that any other time in history. We are practically drowning in information. And we need to stop it, NOW!

Please, hear my heart on this. I absolutely love to read because I love learning. I love reading books, articles, and blog posts. I listen to podcasts on business, entrepreneurship, and leadership during my morning runs. I’m just as much an information junkie as the next person, but we are really missing it here folks.

What are we missing? The application.

Chances are you’ve heard the saying “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” And with good reason. When you read you expose yourself to new ideas, ways of looking at things, and new information.

Unfortunately, it’s almost becoming a competitive sport. How many books have you read in the last year or month? I’ve fallen into the trap myself plowing through two or three books in just four or six weeks. It wasn’t unusual for me to be reading at least two books at once.

Here’s the problem: We read a new book, say that was good, toss it aside and dive into the next one. Yet, look at books like Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, Linchpin and Tribes both by Seth Godin, Crush it! by Gary Vaynerchuk, Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, and Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. These books are a culmination of the authors’ struggles, successes, and resulting experience and we graze through them like a summer novel.

I think we need to stop reading so many books. Instead, we need to start applying what we are reading. It’s in the application that we are falling so woefully short. So what if you’ve read 12 or 15 books this year or even 5 if you’re not doing anything with the information in those books. The person who reads just two or three books a year, but studies them, takes notes from them , and then actually goes out and applies what she has learned will be much further ahead at the end of the year than the person who read 12 books but didn’t apply any of it.

In an effort to help walk this out, I’m going to start blogging on how to apply the principles in these books in addition to my usual blogging. Want to join me? I’m going to start with Seth Godin’s book Tribes. (I just picked this book up a few days ago.) Go get the book from the bookstore or the library and start reading with me. Next week, I’ll have a post on how I think businesses and entrepreneurs should apply the concepts covered in the first few chapters. You need to give me some feedback on how you are going to apply the concepts in your work environment in the comments section.

Let me be clear on what this is NOT. First, this will not be a book review – book reviews are for sissies, we are getting our hands dirty here folks. Second, this is not going to be some let’s sit around, sip wine, and discuss the theory of these concepts book club. Now, I may have a glass of wine while reading, but we are going to be applying what we read and talking about what works in which environments and what needs tweaked. I want to hear about your successes and what you’re struggling with. That is how we are going to change and transform our businesses to be better tomorrow than they are today.

EntreLeadership Announcement

August 20, 2010 in Leadership, Managing with 0 Comments

We are pleased to announce that Operations Strategy Consulting is hosting Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership simulcast on November 5!

The event will be held at Living Hope Church in Whitney, PA (near the Arnold Palmer Airport in Latrobe, PA).

The Simulcast will begin at 9 a.m. (doors will open at 8:30 a.m.) and wrap up at 3:30 p.m.

Tickets for this event are $39 and may be purchased through Operations Strategy or online. Tickets will be available until October 22 or they are sold out.

Learn more about this event including lesson overviews.

What’s Your Why?

August 10, 2010 in Leadership, Managing with 0 Comments

This blog entry is focused mainly on business owners or companies that are still privately held. However, if you’re in a publicly traded company, the concepts will apply to your department or function just as easily.

This week, I just have a challenge for you. As you go through the week, pause before each activity you must do or meeting you attend and ask why are we doing this, or why is this important. You and your team need to know and understand the why behind what you’re doing. Why? Because human beings innately need to believe that what they are doing has meaning, otherwise, they will give up on the activity.

If you are the business owner or founder, why did you start your business? It’s not just to make money. Starting a business is really hard work and there are easier ways to make money. So what was your why?

Now, do the other people in your company know, understand, and believe in your why as much as you? If they do, great! You’re in a very elite group. If not, you need to make a commitment to change that.

Ask your self, how much time do you spend talking with your team about your company or department’s vision, where you are going, and why.

When taking on a new initiative, do you share the reasoning behind it or simply declare the new direction?

Do your actions reflect what you say is important or do they send a different message. For example, we care about quality, but the product better ship by the end of the day or there will be some explaining to do.

Your “Why” for being in business needs to be personal and compelling for everyone on your team and in your company, otherwise, it’s just another job to earn a paycheck. And as a business owner, do you want people working for you that are just looking to earn a paycheck?

The Number One Productivity Killer

July 26, 2010 in Employees, Managing, Operations with 1 Comment

I’ve been reading Rework by 37signals founders Jason Fried (@jasonfried) and David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh) this month and they have a short section titled “Interruption is the enemy of productivity.” The entire premise of the section is the reason you don’t get enough done at work is because of interruptions, which is why we can accomplish so much at night, early in the morning, or on a plane. These interruptions break up the work day into work moments. Thirty minutes and then you have morning break. Fifteen minutes and then you have lunch. An hour later, you have an afternoon meeting. The next thing you know the day is over and you haven’t gotten much accomplished. It’s difficult to get key tasks done when you’re constantly starting and stopping.

In an office, these interruptions are easy to pick out. All those little impromptu get-togethers, chatting with colleagues, and phone calls break the flow of people’s work. But those are not the only interruptions: email, meetings, and instant messages distract people from their task at hand and cause them to shift focus to something else, then mind-shift back to their work. To increase productivity, we need to find a way to eliminate or minimize these interruptions.

In case you think this is just an office problem, it’s not. This is just as applicable to your team members who work on the shop floor as those who work in an office. When you have an assembler or machinist that has to stop working to go find the right material, get the correct tool, or replace a cutter or drill, they have to mind-shift between these tasks and you lose productivity. Not only does this slow them down, but then they often have to recheck or inspect the parts produced once they begin working again to ensure they are in tolerance.

To get the most accomplished, we need to find ways to eliminate all these interruptions. For those in the office, the guys at 37signals suggest instituting no-talk Thursdays instead of casual Fridays. Or set work rules that from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., people can’t talk to each other (except during lunch). Or make the first or last half of the day your alone-time period. Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing (@MichaelHyatt), tweeted that they have “No Meeting Fridays.” One of the changes I made at the beginning of the year was to only check email twice a day at noon and 4 p.m. Most of my clients and colleagues know that if something is urgent and cannot wait until those times, they should call me. This helps me to not live in my inbox and stay focused on the project at hand.

What about the shop? What can you do to help your production team get more done in the day? Keep production meetings to the start or end of each shift. Talk with your team. Watch and understand the process. Do they have all the materials, tools, fixtures, gauges, and prints they need to finish the job at their work station? I once had a client that discovered out of the 7 hours and 15 minutes it took to change over one of his presses, 2 hours and 21 minutes were spent just going to find things and dealing with interruptions! Do you know what interruptions are costing your company?

Start eliminating interruptions today and see your productivity increase.

Have a great idea or are doing something to eliminate interruptions in your business, share it with us in the comments.

8 Reasons Continuous Improvement Programs Fail

July 15, 2010 in Lean, Managing, Quality, Six Sigma with 0 Comments

Lean, Six Sigma, TQM, TPS, Agile and ISO are just a few of the initiatives companies embark upon to improve their performance and reduce costs. Unfortunately, many of these companies fail to achieve all the benefits from their efforts.

The reason most improvement efforts fail is not because the company chose the wrong program or initiative, they just got tripped up in the execution. Here are the eight most common mistakes I have seen companies make with their improvement programs and how to avoid them.

1. Flavor of the Month: In an effort to be on top of the latest and greatest, you launch three different continuous improvement programs in eight years. Employees fail to take the newest initiative seriously, because they know it will change in a couple years. The best way to avoid this mistake is to pick a program and stick with it – don’t chase the trends. Consistency is key with change programs.

2. Focus on Everything: Once you have a continuous program in place, it’s important to link those efforts to the business’ strategy. Prioritize those efforts, you can’t have 78 key strategic initiatives. Your continuous improvement efforts will be much more successful if the company prioritizes its initiatives and goals and you focus on just the top two or three.

3. Project Cure Cancer:A common mistake I see is defining the initial project scope too broadly. The project owner and team quickly become mired in all the processes and data and are overwhelmed. As a result, the project either stalls or dies and the underlying problems are never resolved. When scoping a project, focus on narrowing down the project scope to something that can be completed in four months.

4. Project Scope Creep: Closely related to poor project scope is project scope creep. What may begin as an innocent-sounding request to modify a project can spell doom to your company’s improvement initiative. By expanding the project’s scope, you add time and rework to the project, eventually, the project may never be finished – frustrating all involved. To avoid this, establish a formal sign-off of the project scope by the project owner and the champion.

5. “The Problem is We Don’t Have A Database.”: Frequently when a manager or executive wants to fix a problem, they define the problem by what they perceive the solution to be. This is natural to them, because they are paid to solve problems. The mistake is the project then addressed just the symptoms and not the root cause of the problem. You need to define the problem based on how it is manifesting itself, not the perceived cause or solution.

6. Not Committing Resources:All too often, I’ve seen managers assign people to projects aimed at solving major problems, then pull those people off the project to do firefighting! Just commit the resources to the improvement efforts and don’t give in ot the temptation to pull them back off the project to to the urgent.

7. Committing Poor Performers: The corollary to not committing resources is committing the wrong resources. If you can assign those who can be spared, are you really assigning the people who can make a difference? By assigning your high performers and those with authority or influence, your improvement efforts will have a greater effect than just committing resources that can be spared.

8. Lack of CEO and Leadership Commitment:This is the number one reason why continuous improvement efforts fail. If your company’s CEO and executive leadership are not committed to your improvement program, it will never succeed. Support is notsufficient – support is often just lip-service. The CEO needs to hold the executive team accountable for improvement efforts and results, be involved in project reviews and progress, and be trained himself. Similarly, the executive team must hold their own staffs accountable for the improvement efforts and results.

By avoiding these pitfalls, your company will see greater results quicker than your competition who fall into these traps.

Efficient or Effective?

July 8, 2010 in Lean, Managing, Operations, Quality with 0 Comments

I’m starting to get tired of listening to people talk about efficiency. That may sound strange for someone in my position, but hear me out on this. We read things all the time about how to be more efficient. People talk about being more cost-efficient, more efficient with their time, and tracking employee efficiency. Merriam-Webster defines efficient as productive without waste. In other words: doing things the right way.

But, I think we’re missing the other half of the equation. I can be very efficient at, say, photocopying documents and filing them in filing cabinets. But that is not the best way to make the information on those documents more organized and accessible. In addition to being efficient, we also need to be looking at effectiveness. Merriam-Webster defines effective as producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect. In other words: doing the right things. Back to my earlier example, if I want to make the information more organized and accessible, a more effective approach may be to scan the documents into a searchable database. Another option is to change the process so the information is entered electronically the first time instead of generating paper documents.

Too often, businesses are looking at “how do I take waste out of the process” and forget to ask “Is this the best process to achieve the desired output.” When you consider that everything we do is a process, from brushing your teeth, to writing a blog, to manufacturing a locomotive, the question becomes what is the desired output of that process. Why are we performing this process? What do we hope to accomplish by following this process? By doing this, you may discover that some processes can or should be eliminated.

After you’ve identified what the desired output is, then you need to decide: what is the best way to achieve that output? Guess what? It may not be the way you’ve been doing it. Sometimes, we can just optimize the existing process, but don’t be surprised if you need to create an entirely new process. Look at others within your industry and see how they are doing things. Then look at other industries that excel at that particular area. Whatever you learn from others, remember you cannot just copy the process. Each company has its own culture and a process that works in one will not produce the exact same results in another company. So learn from others, but be able to adapt.

Once you’ve identified the most effective process, make sure it is as efficient as possible. Look for any rework, complexity, or repetition and eliminate and simplify the process.

Now, test out your process. Did it work as you had planned or envisioned? Do you need to make any tweaks or adjustments? Once you have an efficient and effective process, you can implement it.

With that success under your belt, go out and tackle another part of your business so you can be just as effective as your new process!

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