A Simple Equation - that all leaders need to understand....and act upon!
Dave Evans
Leading, Coaching & Delivering - Cultural Change, Business Improvement and Planning & Control ….and transferring the capability to you!!
1996 was a big year, Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorced, the Spice girls released their first single .....and George Eckes was hired as the primary consultant supporting the GE six sigma implementation....this perhaps low key event, led to the development of an extremely simple but effective equation - that is critical to understand the role change management plays in any programme.
GE had made a huge commitment and investment in 6 sigma - they trained a significant number of black belts and master black belts - they had defined the problems properly - and yet their improvement programmes were not effective.
The issue was wonderfully described by the Eckes equation which can be applied to any programme/improvement/change activity
Q X A = E
where Q is the Quality of the technical solution
A is the cultural acceptance of that solution
E is the overall effectiveness if the solution
Imagine the following scenario
Q X A = E
8 X 2 = 16 (out of a possible 100!)
The company may well recognise the programme is not progressing well so puts more effort in .....on the Q ....
9 x 2 = 18
Still totally ineffective
The organization may start to question whether the programme is for them. The company may give up the effort and return to their old ineffective and inefficient methods.
Even a little more impact on the cultural acceptance would have a large impact on the effectiveness of the programme
9 x 5 = 45
- in GEs case they introduced their Change Acceleration Programme - which has stood the test of time, and directly addresses the cultural acceptance 'A'
Other companies initiatives often continue to follow one after the other with little evaluation of the lack of impact being made before organisations progress to the next ....no attempt to learn - serial failure!
I am not a rich person - but I am willing to bet my entire monetary worth - that if you carried out an analysis of reasons for poor impact of any of your programmes 90% + of the reasons would fall on the 'A' side and would not be predominantly technical issues.
I may not be rich - but neither am I stupid, the confident statement was based on a large amount of feedback sessions where reasons for lack of programme impact where analysed.
A classic example is Lean - where a lot of organisations place too much focus on the lean tools and nowhere near enough on culture and leadership behaviours.
Organisations usually flirt with change management - they may think they are doing change management - but invariably they fall woefully short ....and the programmes invariably fail as a result.
Most programmes when properly scrutinised are change programmes - and would benefit from not just programme management but effective change management - if you really want to succeed you need to know what this means.
I will be sharing a series of short articles on change management over the coming weeks that I hope will be of practical use to you.
Klare Ausrichtung | praxisnahe Umsetzung | stabile Abl?ufe | Beratung · Training · Coaching
4 年Thanks for the insights Dave, I realy like the simplicity of this logic. Looking forward to reading your next acticles!
Six Sigma Consultant - Helping your organization bridge the gap between the Lean/Six Sigma tools and effective business results.
4 年Change Management....
Board Trustee and Non-Executive Director
4 年So, so true Dave. Thanks for sharing.
Helping people achieve better results for their business through improved supply chain management
4 年Awesome article Dave - This my go to equation whenever North Star Projects starts an engagement with a client. The importance of making sure the people involved with a change feel part of, and accept, the change is often lost in the hulabaloo of KPI's, business cases and "people will just have to get on board because I say so" - without people accepting and supporting change, there is no change! Looking forward to your next instalment! #changemanagement Daniel Barry
Manufacturing improvement Leader at Rolls-Royce
4 年I remember the first day I met you as my new manager Dave, this is when you picked up a flip chart and wrote this exact equation on the paper. It changed the way I looked at improvement and failure to sustain, You’ll be happy to know that like yourself in this post, I tell this story in the Lean simulation training I have been facilitating lately whenever the questions or statements arise of ‘ We’ve seen this all before’ or ‘We’ve tried this it doesn’t work so why do it again?’