Plan, Focus, Results

Busy people often struggle to be effective. Their energy and drive works against them because they attempt to solve every issue by working harder. By working longer hours. In the extreme, their energy and drive conspire to make them ineffective.

Plan
Smart people plan their time and mentor their team to plan effectively. By planning effectively, people find it easier to avoid the distraction trap and to focus their time on the tasks and initiatives which are aligned to the business goals. The creation of an effective operating plan, which is derived from a complete and honest strategic plan which, in turn, is aligned to the business vision and goals is a straightforward task that many intelligent senior managers and directors manage to avoid. With an effective plan, it becomes possible to focus limited resources on to the highest priority tasks and to ensure that the scarcest resources are being managed to deliver maximum effect.

Focus
The management art of keeping the team on track. Focus will ensure that people are working on the agreed priorities so that there are no surprises at the review meetings. The objectivity which is required to ensure that the review process works properly can on occasions be elusive. This is especially true if the focus is allowed to shift from facts and data (usually the basis of the plan you spent so much time writing and agreeing) to the emotions and opinions that arise from assumption and a complete lack of detachment.

Results
If you create a realistic and complete plan and then focus your team on working to that plan, the results will follow.

Objective Review
If you struggle to create a review process which includes the objectivity and detachment from the day-to-day struggle, consider hiring an external advisor. It may cost a lot less than you expect to engage a non-executive director (or business manager if you prefer) who is able to help the whole team to focus on the data. Hire the right help, and you will see the improvement in the performance of the management team in a number of areas.

Communication Breakdown

People make assumptions.
We all know we should not do it, but we keep on making them.
Consider the mathematical relationship:
Probability of misunderstanding leading to upset is =f(Number of people involved x history x complexity x change) x assumptions made.

In other words, the more people who are involved in “the issue” or the “event”, the longer it has been established (as a habit, tradition, pattern of events or as an event in itself), and the more complicated it is, the more greater the likelihood that people will make assumptions about some aspect. And the more chance there is of that combination leading to some misunderstanding and upset.

Misunderstandings and upset people always take longer to resolve than the few extra minutes that avoiding the problem in the first place would have taken.

When some change is involved, then there is an even greater chance that somebody will become upset – often because they hear something unfounded or assumed and proceed directly to righteous indignation without pausing at “check for facts”.

Suggestions

• Brief everybody – together
• Ask for questions
• Talk to people one to one – so that they do not have an audience and are more likely to raise concerns
• Check and double check that everybody has the same understanding of the “changes”
• If you are new to the team, ask people about the history – you do not need to know all the gory details, but it might be helpful to ask about who has been involved in your “Event” in the past.

The Right Plan

How do you know if you are working to the right plan? In 1977, when the government of the time recruited Michael Edwardes to run British Leyland, BL was trying to implement the wrong plan. The Ryder report had led them down the path of brand unification and the ultimate abandonment of the traditional BL brands (Rover, Triumph etc). The mistake that had been made was to create a plan based on operational expediency rather than building on the existing strengths of the organisation.

Planning Pitfalls

• Rushed, incomplete or over-optimistic (dishonest?) SWOT analysis
• Unbalanced business goals
• Failing to take a proper account of the past
• Becoming wedded to past glories
• Ignoring the wider business environment (political, economic, social, technological etc)
• Sales targets plucked out of the ether.

Best Practice

• Use a proven process to create your plan
• Test your plan - conduct a sensitivity analysis on the numbers; Talk to your sales channels; Talk to key customers; Talk to other stakeholders
• Reflect on the big changes
• Get objective input - Accountant; Adviser; Analyst

Further reading:

• "Back from the Brink" by Michael Edwardes, published Collins 1983 (ISBN 0002170744)

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.

The Plan

I have recently read "Back from the Brink" by Michael Edwardes. It is a fascinating insight into the problems faced by BL in the late 1970's and the turn-round that was achieved. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and reading this knowing that all that work was to end in failure was rather sobering. However, it remains a classic lesson in:

1. Make sure you have the right plan for the right reasons;
2. Make sure that your plan is complete and fully bought into throughout the organisation. Deal with dissent (the chapter on Derek Robinson - "red robbo" is fascinating!);
3. Implement your plan with passion and efficiency.

PS: When was the last time you saw an Austin Montego on the road?

Stay With It

Many of the initiatives that we use in business take time to become effective. This is most often true in Sales and Marketing. It is imperative that we put measures in place and then keep things running. Nothing is more destructive in business than starting two new initiatives each day and then abandoning them.

Remember the post on consistency? A large part of the consistency in our businesses derives from taking an objective approach to planning and then staying with the new initiatives. That does not mean that we ever ignore failure. It does mean that you must establish appropriate measures of success and then be in a position to refine and tune initiatives.

In other words:

• Plan
• Prepare
• Act
• Measure
• Refine
• Persist
• Have a plan to control cost and time - so that you can cut your losses if you need to.

Health warning: If an initiative is costing a lot of time or money, it is vital that all the risks are identified and controls established to ensure that precious resources are not wasted. It pays to test, refine, test and refine and test again.

Refine

In a recent post, I blogged about consistency. One common misconception is that consistency means staying the same or is an excuse for never changing. On the contrary. Consistency is vital. Consistent refinement of your proposition is also vital. Staying true to the messages you have already communicated to the market whilst refining the message and the offer to take account of the changes in your customers and prospects.

Your offer to your market should be constantly reviewed. You must take soundings from customers and prospects as well as from people who choose not to spend money with you. Use the insight that you gain from this process to refine details of your value proposition and to ensure that you stay ahead.

You already have a process to ensure that you gather insight from customers? Take that insight that you already gather and make it work for your proposition. Check that you have updated your offer to take account of the continuous learning that your customers and prospects will be undertaking - just from working with you already. Make a conscious effort to refine your products and services when the time is right.

If you are channelling your sales efforts in a new direction, are you using standard products or have you customised the offer in some way to better meet the needs of your new target customer?