By Michael Moller
Do you want to be sharp to see the problems much earlier than you do today? And solve them while they are small? Would you like to find the right solutions even faster? Do you want to be even better at sharing experiences and creating learning? Would you like to create even better results with your employees?
Yeah right? And the answer is found in an effective improvement culture. A culture that you must create together with your colleagues.
You can start by asking yourself a few simple questions:
What opportunities for improvement did I see last week?
What improvements did I contribute last week - which will increase performance in the company going forward?
Do I have a system that helps me see the opportunities for improvement and solve them systematically?
Isn't the answer quite clear? Or do you doubt the quality of your colleagues' answers? Then you should direct your attention to creating an even more effective culture of change.
The journey starts at your office. Open the door and come out among your employees. It is you as a manager who must take the lead in order to strengthen the culture of change. You need to spend even more time together with the employees to get the problems solved and drive a culture of improvement, rather than in meetings behind closed doors. Every day you must be able to answer loudly and clearly "yes" to the fact that you have contributed to increasing your employees' capacity to choose the right efforts and create improvements that make the organization stronger tomorrow.
In order for the improvement culture to be effective, it must be systematized, because there will always be things that can hinder the work with improvements. I-have-to activities rob you of time to improve your part of the organization. Mails, unnecessarily heavy administrative tasks, participation in recurring weekly meetings, which steal valuable time from the current business challenges. Just a thought. If the calendar is full of meetings 3 – 4 weeks ahead, when did you see that you make improvements on the biggest challenge of the day/week? Are you really so sharp that you can predict 3 – 4 weeks ahead how you will create the most value?
Too many managers have become firefighters. Between meetings, there is just time to put out a fire and so on to the next meeting.
Too many managers have become firefighters. Between meetings, there is just time to put out a fire and so on to the next meeting. There is no time to find the cause of why the fire occurred in the first place and make employees more skilled.
You must therefore find out what kind of behavior you and your employees must have in order to improve the organisation. Which behavior will support you to have the industry's strongest improvement culture, where you become even more skilled every day to the delight of your customers and users. The fire-fighting culture must be turned into a culture that does fire prevention activities to a much greater extent. You can find good help from the travel companions..see, solve and share.
As a manager, you must be even better at seeing (SEE) and identifying the problems as early as possible. This is done i.a. by means of performance boards at the various management levels and by means of a coordinated calendar in the organisation. A coordinated calendar where, for example, there are no-meeting zones from Monday to Thursday to work on improvements. In other words, time must be set aside for the daily work of improvements. The time must include used to identify problems in collaboration with employees, prioritize the day's activities and get the problems solved (SOLVE).
As a manager, you must drive a systematic problem-solving culture (SOLVE) and remove the root of the problem. This is done i.a. through the selection of problem-solving tools. Tools that everyone in the company must know and be able to master.
Finally, as a manager, you have a central role in being a role model in relation to sharing (SHARE) the learning your employees receive. You must be even more aware of spreading the nuggets of gold - all your experiences - and saving them for later use.
Set the ambition. "We will be in the Champions League when it pleases our ability to continuously improve our services/products. We want to create a system and a culture that ensures that we see our problems even earlier, solve the problems so that we don't see them again and ensure systematic learning in the organization.”
Coordinate with your management colleagues. Which systems should help us see the problems faster? Which problem solving tools should we train the organization in? What behavior do we need to have to succeed? And finally, where in the calendar should the improvement work be?
It will be great to be on your team.
See more about the improvement processes in Michael Møller's videos on the subject here
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