Focus & Alignment

Achieving Significant Improvement through Customer Focus, living the Brand, maintaining Zero Defects and Profitability

Culture change takes as long to implement as the senior management team want it to take.  A team of highly committed senior managers can easily install a culture of improvement if they have the 'will' to do so.  It's the same in any sector and any industry.  There are no special cases.

 A determined manager can drive change whilst his poorer performing counterpart is still thinking about the difficulties rather than the opportunities that will quickly evolve, and the benefits that will accrue when the change is installed.

What works – what doesn’t?

No special system will work more than another.  What is important is that the change is brought about focusing on these core issues, the technical issues, the system and process issues, the people and the culture.  Change has to be integrated.

Quality Improvement & Zero Defects

I was told that ‘Lean Thinking’ would not work in the Health Service. Nowadays, we see it working right through the NHS.  Others claim that developing metrics for assessing costs of product quality and setting up cross functional Zero Defect teams would not work.  But now we see them working in all variety of organisations.

The initiatives work – not because the system or process is special – but because the foundation upon which their operate was prepared before the ideas, concepts and the people were introduced.

Living the Brand

Change requires that those who market and sell a service or product are aligned with those who manufacture, distribute and deliver the service or product to the consumer or customer.  Living the Brand is about ensuring that Quality Improvement, Productivity and Zero Defects permeate all silo's and functions uniting all in a common language and mission.

Fourteen Steps to Success vs. Commitment

No matter how many steps your continuous Quality improvement process entails, if you fail to get the commitment right at the start it will never reap the rewards for which is was originally designed.

If we fail to energise the people through the existing Leadership team the benefits will take longer to accrue – so what’s the answer.  That is simple, start earlier!

Ready, Fire, Aim is not a Strategy for Effective Change

I’m not suggesting that this is typical as a change strategy but I have captured new business, won new project management roles after projects initiated by others had failed.  After creating a firm foundation based on athentic communication and honesty in dealing with issues of change, it was soon possible to embed a planful and preventative culture,

Because we won people's commitment early on in the process, Problem Solving Workshops were welcomed and enjoyed, creative ideas were ignited, and the training sessions buzzed projects were implemented.

Readiness for Change

Unless the Culture is ready, the change will never be installed.  There is no point initialising change if the system, the people and the culture are not fully primed and willing to accept those changes. 

It’s much better to create an acceptance of change through a willingness to participate and get actively involved.  We have to assess the readiness for change with the way the culture is right now.

Change Does Work

Change works if you prepare people beforehand.  This is about engaging people and selling them the benefits on a personal and organisational level.

Change is about working with people and anticipating issues before they arise.

Over the coming weeks, I will be adding selected chapters of two of my books on TQM and Culture Change to this site.

In the meantime you may be interesting on clicking on these links below to read through my articles which are particularly relevant.

The Economics of Culture Change

Lean & mean: A Cultural Issue

A Down to earth Approach to Implementing the Balanced Scorecard