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.  I proved that team wrong.  I was told also by other bodies that developing metrics for assessing costs of service and product quality and setting up cross functional Zero Defect teams would not work.  Again they are proved wrong.

 

The initiatives work – not because the system of process is special – but because the ground was prepared before the ideas, concepts and the people were brought together to make them work.

 

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 functions and unite 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 joined projects after an initial failure and found that a failure to embed a planful and preventative culture before the Quality Teams were formed, Problem Solving Workshops were ignited and the training rooms buzzed with excitement so that at last the changes were going to be welcomed and 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 primed and willing to accept things. 

 

It’s much better to create an acceptance of change is a willingness to participate and get actively involved.  My job is working positively with the client.  We have to assess the readiness for change with the way the culture is right now – not the way we would like it to be.

 

Change Does Work

 

Of course it works if you prepare people beforehand.  This is not ‘tree hugging’ – it’s 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