The Harvard Business Review published a blog article this week entitled Keep Your Eye on Process Improvement which explores the fate of so many process improvement programs, such as Total Quality Management, Business Reengineering, Lean, and Six Sigma.  Anyone who has worked hard on implementing one of these programs can appreciate the difficulty in keeping the organization invested and focused on the effort.  The energy which fuels the inception of the program can be quite exhilarating because it usually comes in response to a major event in the organization, such as new leadership or a threat to cut back. But eventually, the program has difficulty “sticking” and the question is, why?

For his part, the author states that in his research, he has identified five factors that have gotten in the way of sustained attention to process improvement:

1. Competing demands for attention (as with Honeywell’s potential deal with GE)
2. Competing mindsets and behaviors (such as work harder vs. work smarter)
3. Strategic irrelevance (other more important levers for competitive success)
4. Traditional management processes (e.g., Legrand’s cost accounting)
5. The pain of disruption

While the answer is different for every situation, my own experience has shown me that the learning curve advanced during a concentrated period in an organization will in fact likely have long term positive impact on the organization, even if the program eventually slides from view.  I know this to be true because I have seen programs come back to life, and the difference is a much shorter learning curve (experience, knowledge and skills were retained but simply not being used) and I have also seen a re-generation of process improvement concepts and learning come alive in new programs developed with clients I have met again in later stages of their profession.

The key point here is that process improvement is itself, a process, not a program, and so long as employees are engaged in the activities associated with it, improvements are going to take place, whether management measures these improvements , or not. Critics may quarrel with this assumption that employees could be self-motivated, but I remain faithful to the principle that employee development, through experiential training and education brings about the ability to analyze what works and doesn’t work critically, and process improvement, through its focus on employee involvement, is a way to change the way people think and act in their jobs, permanently.

If the current state of our workforce is an indicator of how well equipped we are to respond to the difficult challenges of an economic downturn, then, we have some work to do.

The Conference Board recently reported that U.S. job satisfaction is at its lowest level since they began tracking two decades ago[i]. Talent Management magazine[ii] reports that research generally finds that 75 percent of employees in organizations are not engaged in their jobs, and of this group, some 15 to 20 percent are “so disconnected they work against the organization’s interests.” And this state of affairs is not confined to any particular group. According to TM, Research by Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries at INSEAD finds this disconnect in the executive suites as well.

And we are talking about people who actually have jobs! 

We know we are in trouble, but are we aware of how our management model impacts the ability of the organization to regroup, rebound and reconnect people to the core mission?  

Yesterday I participated in a webinar sponsored by Orgdyne (www.orgdyne.com) and led by Dean  Robb, PhD, of the Center for Corporate Renewal[iii]. The topic was organization renewal, or the way in which organizations can continue to build and renew through periods of difficult challenges. One of the key points of the presentation delineated the differences between linear and the cyclical models of growth which impacts the way management responds to challenges from the environment.

In a linear model, management envisions a straight path of growth. The model supports “capturing” and institutionalizing what works.  As the organization matures the focus shifts to preserving structures and processes to support a steady path forward. Unfortunately, this mental model is not only unrealistic, but has many hidden traps, one of which is that any deviations from this straight path caused by difficult challenges are viewed as threats and the typical management response is to hunker down and “protect the castle”.  

The cyclical model differs in that the path forward looks more like a series of loops that move the organization back and forth between performance plateaus and adaptive periods where performance dips to re-adjust and re-organize structures and processes to meet shifting demands. It resembles the natural flow of life where we encounter mini cycles of birth, death and rebirth in marriage, jobs and family relationships. We have our peaks, but also valleys in which, ideally, we discern the way forward.

You will know if your organization is working from a linear model because you will feel the tension from the “survivor” or “defender” mode.  As Dr. Robb says, the castle defends its position, erects walls, and this has the effect of disconnecting the organization from the challenges it must face. People are less engaged and connected when they are required to “freeze” their creative, innovative side to conform to a rigid structure imposed on them. Think of the strategy the Chinese used when fighting Ghenghis Khan. Rather than adapt new strategies to overcome a mighty foe, they were forced to build bigger and bigger walls and moats and each time Ghenghis cleverly found ways to penetrate them.

If your organization is working from a cyclical model, you will notice a sense of urgency and focus around task and purpose in order to spur the community to innovate, pull together, and give one’s best to navigate out of the woods. People are more engaged and connected because they are part of a community around which processes and structure are built.  Think of the classic movie Zulu, the account of the 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift, when 3000 Zulu descend on 119 Englishmen. Not only does every person in the community give his best, innovate and rise to meet the challenge, the final respect shown by the Zulus to the victorious English, as illustrated in the movie, confirms the wisdom of innovating and imagining new possibilities, instead of giving up. It also shines light on the courage and character of those who respect their enemy even in the face of defeat.

Whether it is our personal spheres, or our work spheres, once we identify the ways in which we impose linear models on our organizations, how do we begin to work from a more cyclical model?  ln the coming days, I will be writing about some of my experiences with using group process and management coaching to shift organization thinking. Supporting strategies include the development of competency models to expand personal repertoires, employee engagement tools to create feedback, and process improvement tools to connect people to their work. 

I am most interested to hear what works for others and hope we can learn from one another.

[ii] The Science of Engagement, Talent Management Magazine, February 2010, www.talentmgt.com

[iii] CtrForCorporateRenewal.com

Networks across geographical boundaries

As I plan for my business in 2010, I think about what has changed during the last decade in the way business is conducted. I think about the generation of young people who are embarking on their own business for the first time and the tremendous advantages the current environment offers them. We are in a time of change that is so dramatic that without reservation I can say, they have more to teach me about doing business than I do them. That is to say, everything has changed.

I am reminded of a young Winston Churchill who participated in a cavalry charge at Omdurman in 1898. By 1914, he was Lord of the Admiralty, presiding a highly mechanized war fleet in World War I. Just two decades later, Churchill led a country in a World War that concluded with an atomic bomb.  If nothing else, his leadership skills included an amazing ability to adapt and incorporate change into his world view.

Similarly, we are faced with unprecedented change in the way we do business. Personally, the past year alone has brought monumental changes because of the recession. Like many of us, I have had to think about moving out of my comfort zone of face-to-face business and into uncharted territories of social media and business solutions via technology.  Like it or not, opportunities are out there, but are part of a vast network that can be experienced as chaotic and overwhelming. 

If you came into your own in the last decade, this may simply be what you know, in which case you have an opportunity to lead the rest of us. What for us is new, for you is simply convention.

 Ten years ago we would have taught you about our conventions, and said…

• networking must be a face to face proposition;
• your status depends on what school you went to and what  company you work for;
• business proposals require hours of sit down meetings and lots of paper;
• you must keep business and personal realms separate;
• you must belong to associations to access information, and you must pay a premium to belong;
• business is primarily about “who you know”;
• You should expect to drive or fly for hours to attend routine meetings.

While all of the above is still present today, particularly in the corporate world, no one can dispute that the deep impact of the recession coupled with the urgency spurred by the world of technology and social media has changed all the rules. Just as in the time of rapid change in Churchill’s life, those who scramble and adapt today are going to lead the way in the future.

Young people entering business today will expedite the rapid change and those of us who entered the business world in the last century will see our ideas of doing business fade away or become vestiges, just as life in the late 1800’s underwent radical transformation by the second decade of the 1900’s.

New conventions, i.e., the fixed customs of today, are too numerous to count, but in my mind the most important include:

• we build our networks across geographical boundaries without face-to-face contact (although that will always be valuable, it is not required);
• we value merging our personal life passions with our business persona, i.e., bringing the “whole” person to work life;
• we can access information in real time, without reliance on gatekeepers, i.e., associations, news agencies, academic institutions, professional publications;
• experience confers status;
• etiquette tends toward openness and transparency, i.e., all are invited to events and we share what we learn.

If we can wrap our brains around this new way of thinking and acting (new for those of us who came into our own in the past century) we will be able to add value to the new age with our wisdom and life experience. If we refuse to let go of the old ways, we will not only miss the excitement of the current age, we will forfeit our own legacy.