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You Make a Difference: Showing Appreciation to Staff

January 24, 2012 by Daniel Lock

Saying “You make a difference” is one way of showing appreciation to staff that have done a good job. Surveys on the motivational effects of financial bonuses have indicated that showing appreciation for a job well done is more effective than money in motivating staff over the longer term. This is the case irrespective of the type of work carried out or the type of organization.

Here are some ways in which you can show appreciation of work in your organization, although, as will be explained later, this need not come only from the top down.

1.  Simply Say ‘Please’

The effect of saying ‘please’ is amazing.

People feel they are valued and genuinely contributing, rather than just doing a job.

If somebody ever said that word to you, how did you feel?  Well, why not pass it on and use it regularly and habitually: “PLEASE” – it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t cost anything and it achieves a great deal.

2.  Say ‘Thank You.’

Along with ‘Please’ comes ‘Thank You’ – “Thanks for that. . . ” is just as effective.

These two small words said every day will achieve a great deal more in terms of showing appreciation to staff than any annual bonus. Have you ever been thanked for anything – I bet it made you feel good and ready to doing the same again next time.

3.  Be Impressed and Show It.

When people make a special effort, when they persevere until they get the job done, when they show some ingenuity or imagination to achieve a goal or simply stay on for a few minutes after time to complete a task – let them know you noticed. It’s very important to them if the boss notices a special effort and shows appreciation of work well done.

Say “WOW: Thanks for that – how did you manage to . . . “

Let them know their effort has been noticed and has impressed you. It’s all the thanks they need. Don’t overdo it – that’s all you need say: “WOW. Thanks.”

4.  Ask for their Opinion

Asking for their opinion makes them feel part of the team. It lets them know they are valued and have a contribution to make. Only ask them if you are convinced they can genuinely contribute or you might embarrass them.

“What do you think. . .?”

“What’s your opinion on. . .”

“What do think would happen if . . . “

Their opinion is important to them, and to be asked to provide it is even more important.  Who knows – you might just learn something. After all, that’s why you are asking isn’t it?  Isn’t it . . . ?

5.  Bend Down and ‘Pick it Up.’

Be polite to your staff sure, but go even further than that. If they drop something and their hands are full don’t just look disdainfully at them but bend down and pick it up. Ask if you can help them carry something. It doesn’t hurt and makes you human in their eyes – it also makes them believe they mean something to you.  Which they should.

Walk forward and hold the door open so they can get through without dropping any more. Don’t just look at people in trouble, but bend down and pick it up.

Not Just From Above

Showing appreciation to staff should not just come from the top – it should come from supervisors to those they supervise and even from peer to peer:  here are some examples

6.  Can You Help Me?

“Can you help me” means that you trust the other person’s abilities, but works best when the other person is a team member. You might lead the team or just be another member like them – asking for help is a form of appreciation of work and for their ability to give you help.

People respond well to being asked for help – though not if it is to help you move office when you are promoted.  A request for help in the context of teamwork is one way of showing appreciation to staff for their abilities.

7.  “Thanks for Your Help”

“Thanks for your help” indicates your help is appreciated, and it is valid between peers, from the top downwards and even upwards.  After asking for help, or receiving it voluntarily, thank them for it.

If the boss helps you, thank him or her for it. If your employees help you, you should thank them.

If your company or department hits or exceeds budget, thank your staff for their help and the part they played.

Showing appreciation to staff and simply telling them “You make a difference” will earn you more respect and motivation than an annual bonus.  It is ongoing, offering continuous and immediate benefits that will be of advantage to the company in general and to you in particular, as a manager or leader.

Keep in mind that you are staff too – as is everybody that contributes to the success and profitability of a business, and you too would respond to appreciation of work you carried out well.

 


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How to Streamline your Business and Reduce Process Complexity

January 17, 2012 by Daniel Lock

You can streamline your business and reduce process complexity by using process maps to identify the critical and the unnecessary areas in the maps. By identifying steps that add no value, or that lead to errors, you can remove or improve these to streamline your business and improve profitability.

To streamline your business you must first reduce process complexity. Process complexity is an exponential factor in that for every step involved in a process you multiply its complexity by the square of the number of steps. Two steps involve a complexity factor of 4 and 5 steps of 25, 10 of 100 and so on.

Let’s say you have a message to receive, and you ask another person to get the message and pass it on to you. That increases the complexity of the message-receiving process: the other person might delay, causing inconvenience or worse, or they might even pick-up the message wrongly. They may even translate the message into their own way of saying things, changing its meaning, so not only has the complexity increased, but so has the possibility of error.

The same is true of any process, so by limiting the number of steps in a process, you decrease its complexity and reduce the possibility of error, or things going wrong leading to waste and loss of money. Here are some suggestions how to streamline your business and reduce process complexity.

1.  Create a Process Model and Study it.

Can you see a way of simplifying the process:  are any of the steps in the process map unnecessary? Have an open mind, and do not be defensive if you own the process. If there have been mistakes made, don’t blame people but blame the built in process complexity. Can you remove or improve those steps leading to errors?

2.  Define the Problem

Define the problem, not just the steps arising from it. By tracing a current problem back on a process map you can often see the steps responsible, and by removing or amending these you can remove the problem. Human errors are frequently made possible because of the process steps themselves – remove the step and you may remove the source of the error. Be absolutely honest and objective when doing this or it will not be effective.

3.  Redraw the Process Map Eliminating Process Complexity

Identify the crucial steps in the process map. Identify the CVA (Customer Value Add), BVA (Business Value Add) and NVA (Non Value Add) sections of the process. The CVA sections are essential since they add value that the customer will pay for (e.g. product creation). The BVA sections are important because they must be carried out in order for your business to operate (e.g. financial transactions, paying taxes, meeting regulations). The NVA sections are unnecessary and complexities that can be removed.

4.  80/20 Your Processes

Identify those areas where responsibility for either 80% of your problems or 80% of your opportunities comes from 20% of the causes. This is a very common relationship, and you can redefine your processes to take more advantage of these areas or eliminate them, whichever is relevant. Make this a continuous improvement project and not just a one-off action. 

5. Use People and Equipment More Efficiently

Utilise technology where it will carry out tasks more efficiently and productively than people, and redeploy people to where they are best used by the company. An investment in equipment can have a very short payback period, though some firms use technology that creates bottlenecks where human intervention would be more productive.

6. Simplify and Reduce Process Complexity

By eliminating all NVA activities you will reduce process complexity and streamline your business. Reduce or eliminate bottlenecks and redundant steps, and those steps in the process that do not add value and are not essential to the running of the company, and you will reduce complexity. 

7.  Control Your Processes and Performance

Introduce means of controlling each process and measuring its performance using KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and Statistical Process Control (SPC). Unless you control and monitor your revised processes you may lose all you have gained as people slip back into the old routines. If things go wrong you will be able to identify where and fix it!

Do this with every process used to run your various business procedures and then start all over again when market changes require it. By eliminating unnecessary process complexity, you will not only streamline your business but set up another process: one to control and measure your new streamlined business and to ensure that it stays that way.

The above tips can be applied to any part of your business from approving vendors to despatch and customer service. However, also look outward from the organisation to how you deal with changing markets and trends. These processes can also be improved and unnecessary process steps removed, so do not fall into the trap of looking inward too much: there is a big changing world out there that you must be prepared for.

Reducing process complexity can have a profound effect on process times, quality improvement and profitability. They are not difficult to apply, so get started now before your competitors do.


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Strategic Agility and the Lean Approach to Business

January 13, 2012 by Daniel Lock

Strategic Agility, the ability to respond rapidly and accuracy to change, can be a significant business asset. Applying the Lean approach to business and focusing outward from the organisation can identify opportunities that can be used to increase profitability and growth.

Strategic agility involves being able to use agility as a business asset in responding rapidly to changes in factors that affect the potential success and management of the business, such as market changes, varying customer needs and other factors that arise outside of the organisation itself.

Having the ability to think and respond to change as it happens is a quality that will benefit any organisation, although too many executives focus inwards on the business rather than outwards towards external change and emerging opportunities.

This type of agility cannot be achieved if only senior managers are able to make decisions, and the empowering of people to make decisions and act themselves is a critical aspect of strategic agility. To enable this it is important that internal communication is optimised, since to make decisions correctly people must understand the strategic objectives of the business.

It is important that managers explain personally to employees what the objectives of the business are and how each employee can play their part in helping the company achieve these objectives. Avery Dennison, a paper product manufacturing company, did this, and was able to successfully apply the concept of strategic agility across the company.

Outward Focus and the Lean Approach

They found it important to maintain an awareness of client’s needs and not to become too inwardly focused when optimising processes and procedures. Outward focus enabled them to identify opportunities that could be developed to the advantage of the company. Inward focus should be to become leaner and identify those processes that add value and generate waste.

One way of making such improvements to a business is to apply the Lean approach and value stream mapping. By using the Lean approach, a common process of problem solving can be applied, and value stream mapping enables those intimately involved with processes to maximize value and reduce waste in any given process. This is not something that can be done by managers without an intimate knowledge of the processes themselves.

Project teams can be implemented to address priority issues that are seen as affecting the business as a whole. A cross-functional approach, where project teams are responsible for issues covering many aspects of a business across a wide range of functions such as design, development, implementation and manufacturing, enables teams to own the project and its results.

Importance of Leadership Development

Although Lean is a very useful tool, it will not in itself lead to meaningful results. That requires good leadership, and leadership skills analysis and training is an essential part of the overall improvement process. It is important that a range of skills are developed within an organization including leadership if strategic agility is to be nurtured and become useful as a business asset.

Lean is an approach that is ideally suited to cross-functional cooperation and processes, and is an excellent place to start where the same business approach is required across a range of different projects. However, without good leadership it will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve meaningful results. 

When carrying out value stream mapping, it is important that project leaders are chosen from each process, such as those related to clients, manufacturing and administration. Avery Dennison found it useful to extend the mindset of everybody to include the entire supply chain with the business so that thinking wad not restricted just to confines of the company itself.

Change is Important

Adopting the lean approach often requires a step change in thinking, and it is often necessary to change staff to enable this. However, making significant changes in personnel does not necessarily resolve this problem, because while you do get fresh minds and attitudes, you also lose experience and knowledge that can become problematic during a period of significant change.

Often it’s the enthusiasm of new people can help to make change happen, and a good compromise may be to retain sufficient skills and knowledge to ensure that corporate memory is retained along with new blood to help drive change and promote strategic agility needed at such times. It is very important not to lose what has been learned, but also to ensure that that minds are not resistant to change.

The Results

The results of applying the Lean approach to business and promoting strategic agility among employees is frequently growth, increased profitability and improved communications and engagement with employees. By switching your business focus from inward to outward, you can identify and develop opportunities as they arise. That is strategic agility in action.

 


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13 Tips for implementing change in your organisation

December 14, 2011 by Daniel Lock

Keep in mind these 13 tips when implementing a new initiative in your organisation:

  1. Keep the workshops positive and fun. Tweet this!
  2. Remember the scientific method. – Plan an idea, test and measure the idea, make adjustments accordingly and roll out more broadly. Tweet this!
  3. Avoid paralysis by analysis. – Learn lessons from direct experience rather than waiting to develop the perfect solution on paper – this is fundamental to continuous improvement. Tweet this!
  4. Have patience – Some initiatives need some time to work before stepping in to refine them. Tweet this!
  5. Be empirical – Use as much data as possible to make decisions, identify trends and confirm benefits of team initiatives (consider manual stats collection, be it temporary or permanent, where required).Tweet this!
  6. Be collaborative – Encourage ideas from all team members, and ensure all participants have an opportunity to voice their opinions. This helps create buy-in.Tweet this!
  7. Communicate  - Ensure meeting outcomes are shared with all affected across a given business.Tweet this!
  8. Leadership  - Ensure you complete any post meeting activity assigned to you in a timely fashion.Tweet this!
  9. Follow up –  Hold people accountable for the actions agreed to. This will help build momentum and communicate that you are serious about this working.Tweet this!
  10. Look for the root cause –  Ask “Why?” at least five time until you get to the bottom of the problem.Tweet this!
  11. Maintain a positive attitude –  Don’t lose focus from resistors – focus on what you can do, and gradually bring the team along.Tweet this!
  12. There is no such thing as a dumb question.Tweet this!
  13. Make it up, make it happen.Tweet this!

 


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Using a Business Process Model: 5 Steps for a Lean and Agile Business

December 8, 2011 by Daniel Lock

Business Process Model: Using Demming’s PDCA model in improving your business using SPC and statistical process control techniques.

A process model is the way to make your business lean and agile.  What does this mean?  It means you don’t make assumptions, but test.  Use the metrics and get the figures, and then change what isn’t right and put it back into your model. Being lean is being better at lower cost: effectiveness comes first and then efficiency.

Being agile is changing direction when your process model tells you. How do you do this?

1.  Plan, Apply it, Test it and Act on your Results

A business process model was introduced by DR. W. J. Demming in the 1950s.  After World War II he helped Japan get back on its industrial feet, and came up with the PDCA model: Plan, Do, Check, Act.

This means you come up with a theory – carry it out, check the results and act to improve it based on these results.  Iterate that sequence as often as necessary to get as near to perfection as you can get.  That’s how the PDCA process model works.

You might need a number of iterations, or changes to and reruns of the model, to come up with the best way of doing things, but the point is that it works.  Demming isn’t a big name in business textbooks for nothing!

You have to measure everything measurable. Metrics are critical to ultimate success, and you must use statistics, or SPC – statistical process control – to get the right information and control over your processes. Separate randomness from controllable parameters, and then control these controllable parameters as finely as you are able to.

Check each parameter change, and then make further changes based on the results until you can improve no more. That is agility:  the ability to keep changing rapidly to effect continuous improvement.

2.  Continual Measurement

No business process model can work without continually measuring everything you do. Target those factors that affect your business most: costs, sales, margins, profits. Measure every factor that can affect these parameters, and make changes to maximize each of these – other than costs!

A failure to measure on a continuous basis is likely to result in failure of your business.

3. Examine Causes – Not Blame

Find out why failure occurs – do not seek blame, but causes, and reasons that can lead to solutions.  There is system known as the 5-whys: ask why five times to find the root cause of why failure occurred. Bottom the problems and find out how to solve them: get to the root causes, not just the symptoms.

Solving these root problems will improve your business.

4.  Prepare for Change

Be prepared to make changes when your process model demands it.  You start out with one theory or idea of the way things should be done, but the model will rapidly point to a better way. Act on that, and assume that your first hypothesis will be wrong.

As you check and act, each succeeding hypothesis will get closer to where you should be. Never be reluctant to change direction.

5.  Large Organizations are no Different

In order to be agile, you must be able to change direction rapidly according to your business process model.  A big business can be just as agile as a small business if it separates into a number of parts. Each part of the organization should run its own models and apply the PDCA to its own part of the business.

Encourage this in your business: apply their own hypotheses and test them with multiple iterations, including an increasing number of customers with each iteration of the process model.

Cut those that don’t work – become leaner but more effective and efficient by removing processes shown not to work. Focus on those that do work.

Your major crime would be to focus funding on projects that have not been properly tested and that do not have the agility to change.  Set up a business process model for every iteration, and follow these five steps to achieve a lean and an agile business: effective and efficient, but that can easily change direction when the model requires it.

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3 ways to take advantage of luck

November 17, 2011 by Daniel Lock

Morten T. Hansen talks about how to embrace and on a blog post at the HBR.

He says to think about it from a zen point of view: Think of life as a flow of luck events. Imagine swimming in a river in which lucky events — good and bad — will flow your way and hit you. It’s neither good nor bad. It just is. When you start having this “luck flow” mindset, you can start managing those events to your advantage, but only then.

He notes a ways to take advantage:

1. Prepare for bad-luck events (they will come). This is about being objective, don’t allow hubris in good times to get the better of you, no downtimes to drag you down.

2. Spot good-luck events when they come. The flipside of planning for a rainy day is leaving a buffer to take advantage of opportunity.

3. Execute brilliantly on good-luck events. Enhance your organisations velocity by responding rapidly. Take customers out of the market.

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Psychology and why good looking people are more successful

November 16, 2011 by Daniel Lock

I am currently reading Daniel Kanheman’s, Thinking, fast and Slow. According to Wikipedia, “Kanheman is an Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel laureate, He is notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology.”

His latest book is very good; I’m just about half way through. However, it doesn’t fill me with a huge amount of confidence in the human condition. We are full of biases and cognitive errors. If any of us are successful at all it is, according to Kanhemen, more about luck [internal link] than skill. (Skill and talent does count, just not as much as we think.)

I don’t know what to make of it all yet. It seems according to the Freakonomics.com guys, that we are biased by beauty too. A researcher Dan Hamermesh, explains in his book: Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful. why says Good Looking people have more opportunity, and thus success than ugly people:

Here is some Q&A from the Freakonomics blog:

Q. I forgot to add I have seen studies claiming that more attractive men were more likely to be hired, but the opposite was true of women, possibly because the admin and recruitment departments of many firms have a higher proportion of female staff who may be jealous at another womans beauty. Could this also add to the disparity in the effect on income of beauty by gender? –Leon Y

A. The one study you quote was not of actual hiring, but of intentions to hire. In general, as you move up the looks scale, both among men and women, you do better.  I’ve only seen when case where that wasn’t true—on the odds of making partner in law firms if you are a truly gorgeous woman.

Like Kanheman, he says we are bad at evaluating ourselves, especially men.

Q. I would like to know how accurate are we when it comes to judging our own looks? Are we usually on par with with others think of us? Are men or women better at it? –Rever

A. One set of data had both others’ and our own ratings.  The correlation was extremely highly positive.  However, on average others tend to rate us slightly better than we rate ourselves. And women are slightly more accurate (more in accord with others’ ratings) than are men.

 


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4 ways to avoid the planning fallacy

November 15, 2011 by Daniel Lock

WHEN projects are commissioned, a business case is undertaken to establish costs, benefits, and schedule. In each of these domains there are probabilities of outcomes, so uncertainties must also be considered.

This business case is built on estimates given by experts. But people (humans) are notoriously over confident. And more often than not an exact number is given to which the team members will be held accountable and will have no control over the inevitable problems they will encounter.

To combat these problems, consider these 4 ways to avoid the planning fallacy:

  1. Take the outside view: Get outside information on similar projects. How long did they take, what were the costs, what were the risks.
  2. Avoid the best case scenario: There are many ways for a plan to fail. Explore then in detail, and examine other similar examples for the types of problems they had.
  3. Assume ignorance: Suppose you didn’t know anything about the particular project you are considering. What would be a baseline prediction based on similar base case projects.
  4. Avoid the sunk-cost fallacy: Many times we persist in the face of adversity when all the signs are we should stop and cut our losses. Investors are famous for this, holding on to losing stocks for far too long. Instead use zero-based thinking – ask yourself, “knowing what I know now, would I still make this investment?”

 


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The rules to remember for process improvement

November 14, 2011 by Daniel Lock

WHEN I began my career in business improvement I was trained in Lean Six Sigma. I quickly became a zealot, and was confused when people didn’t react the same way. “This is powerful stuff” I thought, “why wouldn’t you want to do it?”

In a study published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) in 2003, called “What Really Works” compared various management methodologies used by particular businesses and compared their results to shareholder returns over a five year period. They were looking at methodologies such as LEAN, Six Sigma, TQM and so on.

The study concluded there was no statistically valid improvement at all. The authors were surprised saying, “Most of the management tool and techniques we studied had no direct causal relationship to superior business performance.”

Managers have been trying to reduce costs and improve margins since Adam was a boy. The scientific method for problem solving has been with us been with since the renaissance, as has the trial an error approach to finding out what works.

Remember these three principles when it comes to an approach for improving your business:

  1. Lean Six Sigma, TOC, Re-engineering, BPR and BPM are all management fads for the tried and true essential of studying processes from start to finish with the aim of saving time and money and raising effectiveness.
  2. Never lead with methodology. Nobody cares about the latest theory. There really is nothing new under the sun.
  3. Instead, redefine quality standards.  Apply this to processes, products and services alike. However admirable performance may be it can always be improved.

 

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On management

November 9, 2011 by Daniel Lock

“A man should never be promoted to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people’s weaknesses rather than on their strengths.”

—Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management

The top post on this blog, after the home page, is: “Top Ten Ways to Show Appreciation to Staff.”

 

 

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