Have You Allowed Empires to Prosper?

In today's climate, I am sure that the instant answer should be an emphatic "NO". None of us would admit to supporting "Empire Builders". So have you looked around your organisation? Really looked? Are there parts of your organisation where team size is a power metric? You may even be fostering this by the way in which you select members of the management team for new initiatives.

Are there departments with a few too many people? Perhaps in operational areas where costs are scrutinised but as long as margins are in line with the annual operating plan (or budget) nobody looks too closely.

If your annual operating plan is based on past years performance with the simple factor of "10% better than last year" applied, you may well have cost inflation creeping in. It is worth-while checking to make sure.

If head-count reduction is an option and you are targeting areas outside those where traditional methods may lead to dodgy decisions being made, how do you go about making sure that your business is as lean as practicable whilst still being capable of delivering to plan?

There are a number of approaches that have been proven to work. There are also a number of pitfalls.

Crude time and motion studies can be extremely damaging to morale and to productivity. I learnt today of a large global organisation who has employed a renowned consulting firm to help with a cost reduction project. Very bright people are being ticked off with cartoon glum faces if a task takes too long. To make matters worse, the renowned consulting firm has deployed people with a tinge of acne to implement the project. Morale is falling. The only good news is that the one-off costs of the project are being reduced by the deserters who are taking matters into their own hands. These are probably the people who are crucial to the next phase of the plan but being the brightest and best are the most employable by others.

So what can you do?

Option 1: Take two people who know the process concerned and to task them with a series of projects (A detached person may be required to act as a catalyst):

1. Document existing processes
2. Re-engineer the processes to remove duplication and waste
3. Re-design the organisation to match the new processes
4. Roll out the new processes and organisational structure
5. Run the mini-project teams which add the detail to the new processes

Option 2: Go looking for a benchmark organisation and then to take the best ideas for processes and apply them to your own firm. Again, some degree of detachment is helpful to minimise the impact of "Not Invented Here".

Option 3: A combination of 1 and 2 has been known to work well in my own experience.

Conclusion

It always pays to take stock - to ensure that your delegation has not been allowed to become abdication. It also pays to do plenty of research. Networking events and sales meetings can be great sources of anecdotes and information which you can then use to stimulate your theoretical research. You could always engage an interim project manager for your change project - there are many people available today with real experience of successful change programmes.