Organizational Improvement Requires Alignment

In a recent leadership development workshop, participants discussed ways to improve operational efficiencies and effectiveness. There were any number of time-tested approaches, tools, and techniques shared including technology solutions designed to collect and distribute meaningful data that can be used to identify areas for improvement. This requires that operators enter data in real time, including errors and omissions which cause work to be done incorrectly or to miss deadlines.

In order for the promise of the technology to be realized, people must “own up” to their mistakes, record them and chart corrective action so they won’t be repeated. But will they? In the words of one participant “we’ve now seen what the technology will do, now let me tell you what the people will do.”

In a hyper-competitive environment, the marketplace will punish inefficiencies, poor quality and missed deadlines. Even the most satisfied customers will become former customers if disappointment becomes the norm. So it naturally follows that organizational leaders seek continuous improvement in processes, procedures and systems. However, even the most advanced, sophisticated, easy to use technology will fail businesses if the people and the organizational structure are not aligned.

In the classic HBR article “Staple Yourself to an Order,” the authors encourage executives to do as the title suggests. Not literally, of course, but to track an incoming order from inception, to creation, delivery, and payment. This process can be revealing and often brings to light areas of duplication, redundancy, and outdated steps being followed by team members. It can help organizational leaders to surface poor linkages between departments where handoffs are anything but seamless. And it can demonstrate the common but faulty assumption made by managers that the job is completed when it moves to the next department.

This wholistic look at the flow of work through the business can provide a clear-eyed view of where the real bottlenecks are and whether they are caused by faulty structure, poor communication, lack of training, distractions or just plain carelessness.

My first experience with this exercise was with an important activity that I guessed involved four or five team members (I’d never counted, but that seemed a reasonable estimate). Imagine my surprise to find that eighteen staff members “touched” this program somewhere along the way. About half of them were doing something that someone else had already done, at least in part, or could have done with little additional time or effort.

Continuous improvement is a thought process that, at the highest level of effectiveness, embeds itself in the belief system of every team member. This becomes a cultural standard where each employee monitors, manages and maintains these principles in real time.

For information on ways to measure and improve your organization’s structure and culture, contact me at joe@ajstrategy.com.