Scaling up Excellence | Chapter 1 take-home

#Scaling up #Excellence | Chapter 1 takeaways

The problem of more - one of the biggest challenges in an organization is scaling excellence. Business leaders know that there exists pockets in their organization where excellence exists - only that there isn’t enough of it. The Problem of More, or the scaling problem, is trying to figure out how to replicate or spread the few pockets of excellence to MORE people and MORE places.?

One of the universal decision point is making the right trade-offs between making new people and new places exact clones of the tested, original model (A ‘#Catholic’ approach) OR giving more latitude to new people and new places to #experiment , customize and adopt what works best in their setting (A ‘#Buddhist’ approach).?

Organizations that #spread and #sustain #excellence are relentlessly restless - they are driven by a nagging feeling that things are never quite good enough. They’re constantly #implementing better ways, new thinking - and fusing the old and new corners of the system.?

It’s impossible to spread excellence without the will, skill, effort and #imagination of every single person in the organization. Not just the senior leaders. Everyone.?

So, where should we start? ‘Start with yourself, where you are right now, and with what you have and can get right now’, advises Claudia Kotchka, former P&G executive.?

Organizations that scale well focus on moving a thousand people a foot forward at a time, rather than moving one person forward by a thousand feet. It makes sense to go slow so that you can scale faster and better later.?

#Spreading #excellence is also about spreading the early wins that gives the teams energy and sets them up for future victories. These victories fuel optimism and excitement, create memorable stories and get the message out that you’re scaling something great and feasible. This also instills confidence and gives the team fortitude to weather future storms.?

SCALING MANTRAS

1. #Spread a #Mindset , not just the #Footprint - this requires relentlessly sharing the beliefs, and living the behavior. Then doing it again and again and again. An organization rarely loses a healthy mindset and excellence all at once. It takes time for it to degrade and chip away.
2. Engage all the senses, literally - use of different cues sometimes might look trivial but studies show that our beliefs and behaviors are influenced by the images we see, the sounds we hear, the things we taste, the objects we touch. Do you know that we use sight, music and smell to influence your buying decisions in supermarkets??
3. Link short-term realities with longer-term dreams - A tricky balance for us human beings because we’re always caught in the perpetual never-ending now. One way of doing this is ‘Building for Scale’ thinking. This means testing your processes and ways of doing things would work at scale. For example, while as a startup with 500 customers you can easily call each one of them, it’s impossible to replicate this when you have 100,000 customers. So you want to test and simulate the systems that would work efficiently at scale. For every decision, don’t just adopt what is working great now. Always ask yourself, ‘how will this work when we’re 10x or 200x bigger?’
4. #Accelerate #accountability – This means that the organization is packed with people who are custodians of excellence and are committed to spreading it to the rest. They are able and willing to spot where help is needed and step in. The goal here is to create constant pressure for people to always do what is right.?
5. Fear the #Clusterfug - This is actually the euphemism for ‘Clusterf*ck’, which refers to a complex and utterly disordered and mismanaged situation. In instances where scaling had turned horrible, failed big and later instead of early and cheaply, three elements were noted: (a) #Illusion – where decision makers believe that what they’re scaling up is far better and easier to spread than available facts can tell, (b) #Impatience – decision makers rush to a roll-out before the product is ready, they’re ready and the org is ready because they believe that what they’re scaling is so good and easy to spread and (c) #Incompetence – Decision makers lack the requisite knowledge and skill about what they’re spreading and/or how to spread it.?
6. Scaling requires both #addition and #subtraction – In most cases organizations talk about additions and multiplications (expand, replicate, accelerate…). Successful scaling also involves subtractions. As organizations grow and expand, the once useful roles, titles, products, policies, rituals become not useful and a hindrance to growth and progress. To create a way for excellence to thrive and spread, these unnecessary friction must go away. ‘What got us here’ but will ‘not get us there’ has to be identified and removed. Let’s not get stuck with what worked in the past if it will not work for us in the future. Strategic subtractions clears the way for people to focus on the right thing. This also points to the fact that scaling is not only a problem of MORE. It's also a problem of LESS – subtraction is key.?
7. Slow down to scale faster (and better) – learn when and how to shift gears from high to low speed – slowing down to sit back and think about what you’re doing and why. Force yourself to pause rather than plow ahead. Sometimes you just need to stop doing anything and think. Sometimes it’s a risk to keep racing down a familiar, seemingly less risky path – but this can impair your ability to see better methods, spot and spread excellence.