Deadly disconnections

In this article I want to talk about something that is really close to my heart. It's the secret behind Operational Excellence. When you get this one, you can do fantastic things. Keep on reading.

This is very important to me, and I realize from studying and thinking about it more that it's something that I've been working on my entire life. That is, the problem of disconnection. I can see it in companies today and also in the society as a whole that we get more and more disconnected to each other. Organizations, for example, have a problem where management struggles to get the organization to understand what they want to do, what directions, what wishes they have, and communication is not necessarily getting out to everybody, so rumors start because people are disconnected somehow. 

The people who are working in the front line of any business is kind of disconnected to what management want to do, but also somewhat disconnected to the customers. They don't have the full understanding of what the customer really wants. They might have known, but over time, they might start thinking that you already know and don't have to ask. Functions within companies are disconnected from each other, so they become silos. A lot of companies struggle with a silo mentality. They could be between sales and operations, within operations, within sales and marketing etc. 

If you think about it, there's a lot of disconnections going on, and also even scarier is that people are also often disconnected to themselves in a sense where they don't really know what they can do, what abilities they have. If you don't know your own abilities, how would you move on? How would you take on a challenge and so on? They could be conditioned over time because if you get to know you're not good enough you might believe that. If you're not connected to yourself, understanding your own abilities and your own personality and strengths, much more than weaknesses, strengths are the one that makes you win. 

You don't win by being less bad at something. You win because of what you're really, really good at, and when you understand what that is, that's when you can really rock and roll, and that's for sure, but also, people are disconnected to their future. They don't have a vision, they don't have a drive, and they don't see that. All these deadly disconnections disempower us, slowly it is happening. I don't really know why it happens and what purpose that would serve, but I do know it's very, very damaging for organizations, for societies, to be disconnected, to have an outside enemy to unite the inside. That's what I call fake unity, it's not real at all.

It's not unity when you have to dislike somebody else to kind of like the people you're with, because what makes you like with them is only because you don't like the others, right? So, it's not real in that sense. Just imagine for a second. What if you could get all the front line troops, all the back-up support functions to them, all the management in a business, to really aim for a same direction? Feel the purpose that they have and connect to their future, connect to themselves between each other, to really build on each other's strengths. 

That's a hidden dramatic change that could happen inside an organization. I'm sure if you think about it, you can feel that. What if you really were connected to each other? What is possible then? What do I want instead? Well, here's what I think. I believe that there's not a lot of systematic changes that can happen from front line to support functions to management, and unite all of them together and understanding the customer, suppliers, the society, etc. I know one system and that's called Operational Excellence, because this system is focused on the entire organization. It's not supposed to be the other ones who don't know how to work yet and they need to improve. That's not operational excellence, that's something else. 

But if you look at it, there's so many layers in operational excellence and it has one hidden secret behind them all: UNTIY and connection between everyone in the organization and to their common future. I think that this is the way forward for organizations. Operational Excellence 2.0 is what we call it where you actually allow people to be human beings and not human doings, where you connect to each other and your common future.

I want you to like and share this. I want you to spread the word. I also very much like for you to contact me and talk about this and see if I can help in any way.

Johan Majlov, CEO Lean Dimensions International

[email protected]