CSI: By design or default?

Continual Service Improvement; love it or hate, we all need to be doing it and probably are, all be it “by design or default”.  Approaching such tasks by design, with planning and forethought, always produces the best results and ensures the “Big Picture” remains in focus throughout.

The following will hopefully provide you with a useful analogy when communicating with non-initiated-staff regarding Service Improvement projects; it is a further excerpt from my recent talk in Manchester at the #SDIevent “Leading from the front”.

The following are the three fundamental questions that I believe need to be asked when considering any change/improvement:

Where are you now?

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Lao-tzu

You’ve arranged for someone to meet you at your office and you’ve given them the address; they’ve put the details in their SatNav and are about 10 minutes away, checking their watch, the traffic, etc. when they hear those dreaded words, “You have reached your destination”…Inevitably, they call asking how to get to your work place and the first thing you ask them is “where are you now?”

Why? Because if they cannot answer this, you have no frame of reference with which to guide them through the process required to achieve their end goal – reaching you!

You do this by asking questions to enable you to Measure and analyse their current situation:

You: “What do you see?”

Them: “I see a large water feature”

You: “OK, we have a water feature in the city, it’s 2 miles long! What else?”

Them: “A parade of shops and pub called ‘The Red Lion’”

You: “Great; are you on the same side as the pub or opposite?”

Them: “Opposite.”

You: “Right, now I know where you are, let me guide you…”

As seen, some data is less helpful (water feature), whilst other data is key (pub, relation).

 Where are you going?

In Stephen Covey’s book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, he cites “Habit 2” as being “Begin with the end in mind”.

Simply put, if you don’t know the destination, and it may be just a stage in a larger project or a large project within a programme, how do you know when you’ve got there?

Covey says “If your ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.”

 It is in the same vein, Best Practice asks us to consider and identify the following key elements of any improvement plan:

• What are our Critical Success Factors (CSF): 
• (What is the goal to be reached e.g. benefit realisation)
• Key Performance Indicators (KPI):
• (What specific balanced information must be gathered to identify success? e.g. travelling at the correct speed in the correct areas to ensure timely arrival, etc.)
• Metrics
• (What raw data is needed to ensure success? E.g.: starting point, speed, direction, etc.)

By considering these factors in this order, we ensure we do not end up drowning in a sea of data available to us but never being able to identify the specific information required to assist us in getting to our end goal.

How to get there?

Ever had a holiday where you rent a home or caravan off someone for a week and you find a sandwich bag containing a jigsaw? Guaranteed, the more pieces there are, the more complicated it will be!

As per the “lost” example, once you know the answers to where are you now (how many pieces should I have!?) and Where are you going? (what’s the picture on the box), the how to get there becomes much simpler;

Final thought:

Don’t allow your fires of today to consume your potential for tomorrow!

Raymond Paxton

Simply put; if you’re in a crises situation, don’t expend all your energy putting out fires, work smarter not harder – use CSI to recognise the long-term gain over the short-term pain and work towards to bigger goal.

Managing vs. Leading

I believe the most important resource in any organisation is its people;

I would further propose, knowing how to lead and manage this resource is more challenging than any other resource available; be you a cleaning agency, stocking up on bleach and buckets or Nasa, shipping plutonium and studying the planets.

During a recent talk in Manchester at a Service Desk Institute Event focusing on “Leading from the front”, I shared the below observations on management versus leadership.

I started by asking the question;

Q. How many of you here today are in a position of leadership within your current organisation right now?

I would estimate over 80% of the room raised their hands. I followed up with;

Q. How many with your hands raised are managers by title?

Again, approximately 80% of the attendees who had identified themselves as being in a position of leadership were also managers by title.

“What’s in a name?”
I believe many organisations fail to correctly identify the difference between a manager and a leader.

I have observed numerous organisations tending to assign “team leaders” as being responsible for “managing the day to day running” of business as usual and “department managers” the task of providing “direction and vision”.

It’s all about focus:
I believe the primary difference between managers and leaders can be found in the 80/20 rule:

Managers:
The role of a manager should focus 80% of it’s time on the immediate and 20% on the future.
Managers are primarily responsible for managing the day to day business; what’s happening now and communicating this with their staff but also being informed of what changes are coming around the corner and managing this transitioning through further communication to their staff to ensure the “new norm” of day to day business is maintained.

Leaders:
The role of the leader is to focus 80% of their time on the future and 20% on the immediate.
Leaders are primarily accountable for casting the vision, asking questions like; what is tomorrow going to look like for the business in one, five, twenty years time and how are we going to get there?
Their thoughts are of Continual Improvement; something can always be done more effectively (better) and more efficiently (faster/cheaper). The leader’s role is in quantifying this, ensuring appropriate Consultation takes place and Informing those Responsible for implementing the changes required.
Ideally leaders should only get involved in the day to day running when problems occur outside the tolerances communicated to their managers – good leadership applies the PRINCE2 principle of “Manage by Exception”.

Moving forward:
If we wish to have an organisation with better leadership and management, we surly must start by identifying a clear leadership and management structure; how about we start to name our roles and positions in line with what we actually do?

Raymond I. Paxton