Fast-growing companies face constraints due to the lack of ability to effectively execute. As a result, instead of focusing on the big picture of sustaining growth, leaders get bogged down in the day-to-day operations, micro-managing staff and systems that cannot adequately adjust to increased customer demands.

Leaders too often lack confidence in daily decisions due to a deficient operational process. As the leader, you cannot do everything yourself. You must empower your employees and properly invest in your operational systems to increase production capabilities. Typically, the operational systems that got your company to existing performance levels are ill-equipped to effectively deliver at increased volumes.

It is possible to operate smoothly in times of rapid growth by developing people and implementing change initiatives.

Pain Points Executives Experience during Rapid Growth

Many executives want to succeed at all costs in taking advantage of favorable market conditions. However, if their existing operational capabilities are not nimble enough to meet the new demand, they invariably get involved in ramping up production. Immersing themselves in the day-to-day has the unintended consequence of taking their focus away from the critical aspect of continually positioning the business in a highly competitive marketplace. If a leader has less time and energy for future growth opportunities due to operational distractions, the enterprise will suffer in the long term. At a minimum, leaders must devote 80 percent of their time on growth initiatives, otherwise the company is essentially running in place. Furthermore, the personal toll of getting involved in every aspect of the business leads to long hours, increased stress and lower personal productivity.

Dealing with These Pain Points when Addressing Operations

You must create a sustainable system by simplifying, standardizing and automating your operations. In today’s market conditions, operations must efficiently ramp up production and conversely ramp down. If business activities are expected to increase, you want to meet the increased volume through your existing resources by improving your productivity.

Effective process improvement efforts are built in three fundamental steps.

Step One:  Simplify your process through proven lean principles and tools by engaging your front-line employees. Collaborate to remove all unnecessary steps and eliminate wastes that are a drag on productivity. Challenge them to come up with ways to improve operations. Leaders cannot come up with all the solutions; by communicating your expectations, you empower employees to take ownership in the outcomes.

Step Two:  Standardize the process throughout the functional areas of your business. Standard procedures allow people to respond faster to upticks in production levels. Establish performance goals and objectives. Trust but verify; keep the improvements coming by keeping score.

Step Three:  Automate your process by leveraging technology. Many companies are tempted to install a new computer system, because they are under the impression that doing so will automatically streamline their business. However, automating an inefficient system wastes an excessive amount of time and resources.

Monitoring Operational Performance during Rapid Growth

Develop measurement systems to track real-time status; do not simply rely on lagging financial indicators. By measuring key performance indicators you can make adjustments on the production floor sooner instead of waiting for a monthly or quarterly report. Make sure your measurements are driving the right behaviors for cost, delivery and quality. Do not get caught up in perfecting a measurement system prior to implementation due to variations or difficulty in acquiring data. The worst thing is not to measure, because learning and improvements will then be delayed. Experiment with your measurement system; just make sure you properly evaluate and modify it to drive improvements.

Developing Employees while Meeting the Operational Challenges of Growth

If you have a work force that is ingrained in how things have always been done, you need to shatter that paradigm to transform operations in order to capitalize on existing opportunities in the market. Tell employees that changing and adapting is essential in realizing the full growth potential for both them and the company. Build momentum for implementing change by realizing quick wins that increase employees’ confidence in the new way of operating.

Reward employees for driving change. Develop a system of reward and recognition for the behaviors that you seek, including being held accountable for outcomes, the ability to adapt and contributing new ideas to sustain improvements. Most employee engagements are driven not so much by monetary rewards but by being allowed to contribute to success. People want to be work for a company that is not going to settle for second best, but rather for one that will continue to get better and leaves them with a good feeling about long-term potential.

Mistakes Executives Make about Operational Improvements Initiatives

One of the biggest wrong assumptions leaders make is thinking that operational improvement is a single event rather than a collective mindset and continual process. Be sure you are investing in people’s on-going skills and knowledge of lean principles through continual training; do not make it just a one-time expenditure.

Another mistake is spending too much time trying to develop the ideal solution. Being paralyzed to over engineer the “perfect” system keeps you from taking action. Instead, you need to have an exchange of ideas that starts with rapid implementation and is followed by an evaluation, which allows for necessary adjustments to continue to be made.

Interviewed by Sue Ostrowski. Smart Business Atlanta. August 2009. Page 18.

Embracing change is never easy and it’s even more of a challenge when a company is focused on continuous improvement. But Ed Robinson, managing partner, Southeast division at Definity Partners, says the best companies make ongoing change a priority.

“You have to be committed to driving change in your business; you can never rest and determine that you are where you need to be,” Robinson says. “Leadership must constantly push their people to get better, even after they’ve achieved heights they never thought possible. There’s no checklist out there that makes change sustainable. It has to become a mindset and a way of thinking in an organization.”

Smart Business spoke with Robinson about how to create a company culture that embraces continuous change.

Where do you begin to create a culture that embraces change?

The most important thing to realize about change, or continuous improvement, is that it’s a cultural shift. It’s not a project with a deadline or an initiative for one area of your business. Continuous improvement requires your entire team — everybody in your organization, from top to bottom — to embrace change and focus on driving improvements in your business. You cannot allow it to rest on the shoulders of one area or one person in your business.

The biggest constraint to change management is that most people view continuous improvement as a project, with a beginning and an end. The most successful change management initiatives succeed because they are part of a culture that focuses on identifying ways and opportunities to make the business better.

How important is it to get everyone involved in the process of change?

The major constraint at many companies is limiting the vision by not including all the people that work and impact the business. It is critical to get everyone involved. You have to have a communications system that allows people to bring up ideas. Many times, the employees assigned to implement improvements are unaware of all the problems that exist. Thus, you have to find ways to get the people who are involved in doing the work to communicate and work closely with the people who are making the improvements.

Communicate with everyone about what is going on and outline the opportunities to improve. Leadership should actively seek feedback from the different levels within the business, especially in formal settings like huddles and meetings. They also have to be out there talking with the people who are facing the challenges every day.

How do you overcome people’s natural resistance to change?

Overcoming resistance comes down to results. There are a lot of things you can do in the present to allow people to get that temporary buy-in. Ultimately, it comes down to delivering on what you say you are going to do — whether that is an improvement, a tangible number, or just a simple commitment that you’ve made to an employee. You must deliver results. Results are going to drive the momentum, and the impact of momentum on a business can be amazing.

On the flip side, if you don’t live up to what you say you’re going to do, you create an adverse affect. Employees quickly begin to feel a lack of empowerment. Too often, leaders are quick to react negatively to something that didn’t work out the way they wanted. The biggest obstacle to change is a fear of failure. You have to create a culture that is open to things not working out the first time.

Be committed to seeing things through and be careful about disciplining someone for not achieving results the first time. Eliminating that fear of failure allows people to try new things. People on the frontlines and in non-leadership positions need to see that it’s OK to try new things. Those in leadership positions need to force themselves to be all right with people trying new things.

How do you get people to buy in to change?

Many companies implement change by trying to get people to buy in to their vision. Unfortunately, many people in the organization don’t share that vision or they struggle to see or fully understand the vision. If you’re looking to change, many times you have to start by communicating the behaviors you expect to see.

Take a clean workplace, for example. If you just go out and constantly preach about a clean workplace, many people may not share that same vision. Yet, if you identify key benefits of a clean workplace and work to develop complementary behaviors, people will start to see the value of changing behaviors on a daily basis. The team will eventually start to form the same value that you have.

Too often, companies attempt to get employees to share in a vision; instead, you need to start from the ground up and focus on driving the behaviors that support the vision.

Ed Robinson is Managing Partner, Southeast division at Definity Partners. Reach him at erobinson@definitypartners.com or (404) 304-1292.

One of the often underappreciated keys to a successful continuous improvement effort is getting off to a fast start. It is not a coincidence that in baseball the leadoff hitter is often very fast and a good base stealer. Baseball managers know that getting runners in scoring position early helps to build momentum and get runs on the board early. The same holds true in continuous improvement efforts.

Think of the projects that you have been associated with in the past that dragged on for months. Did you find yourself in long planning sessions? Was the team hesitant to implement until all the details had been flushed out and the perfect mousetrap created? When you finally did implement, did the plan come together exactly as scripted, or did you have to make adjustments along the way to get where you needed to go?

In my experience, speed is critical to your success on projects because of what it gains you. There are numerous benefits, but in particular I’d like to focus on four:

• Momentum in the Effort
• Early Wins on the Board
• Confidence for the Team
• Credibility to the Effort

Momentum in the Effort

Momentum in a project is critical. Inertia is one of those concepts we were taught in grammar school that has a lot of value in continuous improvement projects: “a body at rest stays at rest.” I have been involved in projects in the past that stalled and could not get restarted. When I look back at them now, I realize that we had not gained momentum early and, therefore, were fighting an uphill battle the rest of the way. At some point, those initiatives went away because they stalled. These projects may be referred to as “flavors of the month.”

Contrast those with the projects that have been successful, and I bet “a body in motion continues in motion” is a better description of that project. For example, with one client we were putting a tool crib in place. During the first day, we collected over 2,500 tool holders and had a skeleton layout in place. By the end of the first week, although not fully functional, we were already issuing tools out of the tool crib to operators on the floor. The project took off like a rocket, and we never looked back. Although there were hiccups along the way, the speed that we started with created such a tide of momentum that our team faced all challenges with an attitude that we could not be stopped. Once that boulder started rolling down the mountain, it was awfully hard to stop.

Early Wins on the Board

Early wins for your team are a natural by-product of speed. In the tool crib example, the visual change to the shop floor (removal of excess, cluttered tooling) and establishment of an organized area for issuing tools gained early wins for the team. People were able to see the results with their own eyes. The project began to get legs of its own. Everybody likes a winner; other people started to get on board and the effort continued to gain speed and momentum. I am not downplaying the necessity for planning. However, planning sessions too often drag far longer than necessary. The longer it takes to get into implementation, the longer before you see results.

Confidence for the Team

Fast starts breed confidence. Teams feed off success; thus, the early wins bolster their confidence. My experience with teams and organizations has shown time and again that confidence is infectious. Employees get a taste of success and they want more of it. These groups no longer hope to win but are now conditioned to expect it. They are more equipped to face adversity head-on and beat it than teams that have not yet tasted success.

Credibility for the Effort

Credibility for the effort is built around all the previous points. Early wins and confidence build a reputation for the team involved and the effort as a whole. This credibility is important up the chain of command, as well as within the group of people that we are working with on the effort who may not be part of the core team. People are more apt to get engaged with projects where they are seeing results. Equally as important, when we are faced with new obstacles that present challenges, our past credibility will help people believe that we can overcome them. After all, our previous wins have already demonstrated our ability to do so.

How do you get off to a fast start? Here are some techniques and approaches that have proven to be very effective with the numerous clients who we have worked with over the years:

1. Trystorming
2. Measurements
3. Huddles
4. Physical Changes
5. Action Item Lists

Trystorming

Trystorming is at the core of what we do at Definity Partners. It is a key component of speed and gaining early momentum that is crucial to success. Everyone is familiar with brainstorming: getting a group of people together and throwing out ideas. The concept is great; unfortunately, it is the rare brainstorming session that generates actionable items. More often than not, you find yourself in another brainstorming session covering the same ground as the previous meeting. Trystorming takes brainstorming to the next level. It requires us to flush out the ideas for improvement and implement them quickly. Test the merits of the ideas, and then tweak them as required. By doing this, you begin to reap the benefits immediately. For example, trystorming an idea that gets you 50% towards your goal right off the bat translates to a 50% increase over what you are currently doing.

Measurements

Measurements drive behaviors and creating the right behaviors will get the results you are after. The best measures I have seen are real-time, easy to calculate and located in the area where you are making the improvements. A white board and a dry erase marker are great for these types of measurements. Let the people doing the work update the board routinely. This gives them ownership in the process and also provides real-time feedback about how they are doing.

Huddles

Huddles are a great tool that only requires commitment and time. When running huddles, I routinely cover three things: measurements, what went well and what went poorly. A good huddle will typically last a short time period, often under ten minutes, and the results can be extremely powerful. It keeps what you are doing at the forefront of your team’s mind and, equally as important, how you are doing toward your stated goal. The discussion of what went well celebrates the successes of the team and highlights behaviors that we want to repeat. Discussions about what went poorly become the basis for creating the trystorming ideas that will take you to the next level.

Physical Changes

We have previously touched on what a powerful mechanism physical changes can be in energizing your effort and building that early momentum critical to long-term success. Most adults are visual creatures; therefore, visual improvements are an easy way to communicate that a change is occurring. Organizing a work area through 5S, setting up manufacturing cells and visual measurements in the focus area are all examples of physical changes that can be done quickly, in one week or less. The best projects that I have been involved with over the years have always had dynamic physical changes occur during the first couple of weeks.

Action Item Lists

Finally, action items provide a means of tracking progress and creating a roadmap to follow on the path of continuous improvement. I have seen hand-written sheets, white boards in war rooms, Excel spreadsheets and detailed project lists with gantt charts. The format is less important than documenting the items to be done. Ensure that you have the action item, responsible party and the date due. Do not allow TBDs; they are a recipe for disaster. Create a deadline and hold each other accountable to produce. Action item lists also provide a fantastic way to show the team where you have been and how much you have accomplished along the way.

Continuous improvement efforts are challenging under the best of circumstances. By following these simple but effective guidelines, you can ensure that you and your team get off to a fast start. Best of luck on your journey!