The Business Recipe

There are a lot of organizations out there really struggling not because of effort but because of simply a lack of planning, leadership, and daily actual versus plan discipline so I thought it would be helpful to write a short article on how to run a successful business.... recipe style.

Ingredients:

1. A strategic plan developed from the mission of the organization. What is the mission? Why are we all here every day working so hard? The mission is the compelling reason for why an organization exists, why employees feel like a team and have a passion for what they do. The mission is the universal purpose for the company that every believes in and fights for. You are correct if you are thinking that not a lot of organizations have one that every employee could recite let alone recite passionately. Elements of a good strategic plan are a mission, vision, goals, strategies, objectives, and tasks. Done properly, this is a collaborative process that includes everyone in the organization. A lot of information is cleanly housed in the X-Matrix, if you use the Hoshin Kanri version which I highly recommend, and has the agility to allow the organization to adapt as a living document as market or business conditions change. The process also provides flexibility at the process level allowing teams to collaborate on the best ways to achieve annual objectives using a structured disciplined change management system. (It isn't as ugly as it sounds, it is pretty easy one you have gone through an iteration). In short, every employee knows the plan, believes in the plan, was involved in the development of the plan, and feels like a unified team all pushing in the same direction. No chasing shiny objects daily! Hoshin Kanri translates to compass needle direction. Stay focused on true North!
2. People. Very carefully select employees to bring into your organization based on their desire to be part of a team and adhere to what we call the Leadership Principles. Experience is nice, but give me someone with great character and a great work ethic and I will make them a technical expert. Give me the opposite and I risk poisoning my culture and nothing is worth that risk. Next, ensure the individual's personality profile both matches their job description and compliments the team they will be collaborating with the most to ensure good balance. Decisions should be made collaboratively, with cross functionality and balance in personality profiles led by a great, well trained coach (supervisor, manager, director, VP, C..). We don't have nearly enough effective leaders which we address in our leadership seminars.
3. Now that the people are in place and they are unified in the strategic plan, carefully train them in the right things at the right times allowing them to apply that knowledge so that they can "study their job like a science and continuously and forever improve the methods" - Deming paraphrase. The biggest opportunity for improvement is always going to eventually require a new skill so employees never stop learning to the point that they become passionate about it. At this point we have developed what is commonly referred to as a learning organization.
4. Confirm progress where the goods and services are produced. Don't manage the organization from a tower or a board room. Spend that time in the process, with the employees that are producing the goods and services being sold to your customers. Engage those employees, provide them with consistent reward, recognition, and accountability when needed. Everything you need to know about the status of your organization should be within sight of each employee. Red, yellow, green along with all of the improvement and problem solving to boot. This issue is also addressed in a previous article entitled We have forgotten what the role of our leaders actually is ... if you would like more details.
5. Be relentless with the consistency of your leadership by deploying Leader Standard Work and ensure consistency with reward, recognition, and accountability. When someone has excelled to the point they have become a SME, delegate more responsibilities to them. If someone is trying hard but struggling to perform, coach them through it and help them find a solution. If someone just doesn't want to be part of the team, help them find another team, but don't allow the rest of the employees to suffer because it is easier to avoid a troublesome employee than to deal with them and come to a resolution.

Ingredients 1&2 - Plan

Ingredient 3 - Do

Ingredient 4 - Check

Ingredient 5 - Act

Hopefully that sounds familiar to you. If not, google PDCA... at this point you have a unified team passionately marching toward a common mission, they collaborate on all decisions with cross functional balance (department and personality profile) and are trained in the tools to ensure continuous improvement of all business processes. The performance and team dynamics are carefully monitored in the process with the employees constantly reenforcing that we are all a team here for a greater good, a mission that everyone passionately believes in. This recipe never misses, it works every time, it just needs top level leaders to believe in the process and allow the process users to be respected as process experts and have the authority to continuously improve the methods of the job they do every day. "Winner winner chicken dinner" - Early Las Vegas Nevada

If you would like to attend one of our leadership seminars we would love to have you. December is NC/SC 3 locations. Sign up here!