Category Archives: Systems

Progress

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“Does it ever end?” Conrad shook his head.

“How so?” I asked.

“First, I was dealing with Joe. Joe was weird. It took me a while to figure Joe out. And, finally, when I did, Fred came on the team. Not only did I have to figure out Fred, but now I had Joe AND Fred to deal with and how they work together. I finally get Joe and Fred in hand, then Sally came along. I have three individuals and six working relationships if you don’t count me.”

“That’s it?”

“No, that’s not it,” Conrad replied. “I now have eight people on the team. We finally figured out the best sequence, created a system in which to do the work. I thought I had it all figured out.”

“So, what happened?”

“We had the system working well, when we determined there was more than one system, lined up side by side. We have a marketing system, a sales system, a project management system, purchasing system, an operations system, quality control system. And, these systems no longer worked independently, they impacted each other with work handoffs and capacity mis-matches.”

“What have you learned, so far?” I wanted to know.

Conrad smiled. “As time goes by, you get to trade in one level of problems for another level of problems.”

“And, that, my friend, is progress.”

Multiple Paths

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“Stop with the frantic heroic efforts,” I said. “That is supervisor strategy. You’re a manager, now. Your strategy is a system focus. Stop working harder and longer and start working smarter. How can you see the work as a system?”

“You mean starting with when we get the work order from sales?” Paula wanted to know.

“That’s the way your team sees the work,” I disagreed. “As the manager, you have a larger scope than the team. You know the work starts way before the team gets it. The work starts back in sales, informal discussions about unsigned contracts in the hopper. Your system has to account for all the anticipated work volume AND the unanticipated variability in the work volume.”

“I can sit in on the sales meeting and get some visibility on projects in the works,” Paula nodded. “But, then what happens when the project gets delayed or completely scuttled?”

“Variability means variable,” I replied. “As the manager, you have to make contingency plans, multiple paths to the goal, anticipate what might happen and be ready to call an audible. A system not only has to account for the same characteristics of every project, but also has to account for the individual nuances that are different about every project.”

Go Find Out

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“So, what you are saying is that I am stuck with the team I have?” Paula floated, uncertain in her conclusion.

“Yeah, pretty much,” I nodded. “Unless you think you should fire them all and do the work by yourself.”

Paula huffed a little sigh. “So, if I am stuck with the team I have, where do I start? I mean, sometimes things get tight out there. We have deadlines and things going wrong. Sometimes, we need extraordinary effort just to get to the end of the day.”

“You seem to think it takes heroic effort to just keep up with the work on the schedule? That if you worked a little harder, or worked a little longer, you could stay above water?” I asked.

“But I can’t,” Paula protested. “I can’t yell at them any more than I already do and I can’t work overtime more than one hour per shift.”

“What if you could dispense with the heroics?” I wanted to know. “What if you could still meet your schedule, but things were dull and boring? What would have to change?”

“Not going to happen,” she put her hands on her hips. “We start the day, then get a priority rush job right off the bat, throws everything off schedule. I mean, if I knew we were going to get a rush job, I could have re-shuffled some of the work, pulled someone off another project. But, I never know.”

“And, why don’t you know?” I asked. “The day before, could you meet with the sales team and find out the unreasonable promises they were making with customers? You are the manager. You have the authority to re-shuffle resources to accommodate a rush order, if you only knew about it. So, get out of your office and go find out.”

Beyond Limits

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“So, you identified a situation that would stress-test your system. Your system is optimized at a certain volume with a standard lead time. Your team has the necessary skills, rhythm and practice to meet the expectations of sales. But, sometimes your system is stressed by the insertion of a large order, additional volume, at an expedited pace, tight timeframe. Your sales department has a sudden interest in this new customer, has overpromised and received your thumbs up, because even you don’t want to disappoint. Your apple cart is about to be turned over. You think if you work harder, dictate some unauthorized overtime, press your team to their limits of exhaustion, that you will be successful.”

Naomi quietly listened, picturing this chain of events. She had seen this before. The pictures in her mind created a simultaneous, imagined tension. Unfortunately, it was a familiar feeling. It was pressure, an undercurrent that occasionally erupted in short tempers, discourteous exchanges in her team, a contemptuous roll of the eyes.

“When all is within limits, things under control, your system within limits, tempers jovial, what could you do with your team, not to operate harder and longer, but differently and more effectively? How could prepare the team to add the occasional variable that leaves the apple cart firmly on its wheels? What can you do today that others won’t, so that tomorrow you can do things that others can’t?”

Utter Disarray

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“But, don’t we ever get to a point where we are finally, once and for all competent?” Naomi turned her head and looked at me sideways.

“Just so, so, but then it changes,” I replied.

“I mean, we have been working on this new workflow for about a year,” she proudly proclaimed. “We shifted things around until we had the right sequence. There is zero idle time between work steps. Our expected output is right in line with our goals. I believe the team, myself included, is now competent in this new workflow. It took us a while to get here, but I think we made the grade.”

“Competence is not judged by looking at the past,” I said. “We think we understand the world that way, but we don’t live in the past, we live in the NOW. And, we live in anticipation of the future. We may have been competent yesterday, but today is a new day, with new challenges, problems and decisions. You believe your team, including yourself, is now competent in your new workflow. Until when? What could change that puts your fine tuned workflow into utter disarray?”

Not a Matter of Counting

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Duncan was temporarily reflective. “Yes, we did get behind on our efficiency project. I guess we do need to start over, collecting our metrics again, to see where we are. I think I can pull somebody off, after their shift to begin the count.”

“Do you really thinking counting is going to get the project back on track?”

“It’s a start,” Duncan shrugged.

“Starting the count is doing. Your efficiency project isn’t off the rails because you stopped counting. Your efficiency project disappeared because of the way you think. In the beginning, you were focused on daily improvement of throughput, finding out why things got stuck in your system, how to expedite an order without gumming up the works. Then, something happened that changed the way you think. You got busy. You may have thought that busy-ness was more important than efficiency. You thought that if you could just get all the projects out the door today, we could get back to our efficiency focus tomorrow. Free beer tomorrow never comes.

“Change the way you think first. When you get busy, think how much more important it is to look at your throughput. It is not a matter of finishing all the orders today, so we can get back to efficiency tomorrow. It is all about a focus on efficiency so we can build our capacity to get everything out the door today. It starts by changing the way that you think.”

What Changed?

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“But, this has worked, over and over for the past ten years. I am not sure why this project failed,” Jordan explained.

“First of all, the idea that originated ten years ago is not the same idea that has worked all along,” I replied. “You have modified and tweaked that idea each time there was a subtle shift in its application.”

Jordan was complaining. In this case, at this time, he would rather complain than consider a new idea he didn’t like.

“Each time you tweaked the idea,” I continued, “the shift was so subtle that you hardly noticed. And, your idea worked until it didn’t. Something has changed. Something has changed internally, externally or both. What was it?”

Little Boxes All Look the Same

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Most companies read all the books and hire all the best consultants so they can pursue the path to be the best. When I visit the offices of most CEOS, they have the same books on the shelf, the same slogans on the wall. It looks like a desperate attempt to be be as good as everyone else.

Your company can’t be high performing AND be like everyone else. To be a high performing company, you have to be different. What are the important differences between high performing and everyone else? What are the important differences that matter?

Calm

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“But, there were reasons that the team didn’t hit their output target. Materials were late, a machine broke down, and Fred didn’t show up for work,” Dalton explained. “Ever since I got promoted from supervisor to manager, it seems like everything lands on me.”

“Indeed it does. How does that feel?” I asked.

“I fell overwhelmed. There are so many more moving parts. And, my manager expects me to anticipate and prevent things going wrong.”

“So, what do you think is causing your distress?” I prodded.

“It’s my manager, all the stuff that is going on around me,” Dalton commiserated.

“And, how do you feel about that?” I continued.

“Frozen. I don’t know what to do next. When I was a supervisor, I just had to react and fix. But, now, fixing doesn’t happen fast enough. There is too much going on,” Dalton breathed.

“How do you find calm?”

Dalton stopped. “Calm?”

“Sometimes you have to slow down, so you can go fast. How do you find calm?”

Make Assets Productive

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Luis began an aggressive calling plan to get his money collected, put holds on new orders for customers who were past due and began requiring deposits on large orders. Nothing happened at first. Luis stayed off kilter for the better part of two weeks. Slowly, he calmed. Payments began to come in, not enough to have a party, but enough to breathe.

“Management is about making resources productive,” I repeated. The first thing to manage is capital. Next are your physical assets.

“Our building, our equipment?” Luis confirmed.

“The first decision is to decide what is necessary. You haven’t thought about that since this company was a start up. Back then, you thought about it a lot. You outsourced some production until you could afford your own machine. Then you bought a second machine. You moved into a new building so you could bring in a third machine.

“Now, you can’t keep the second machine busy. You tell me, what is necessary?”