Will your airplane fly?

Recently, on a flight from the USA to Europe, I enjoyed a meal while watching a movie. The ambient temp was around 72F. Very comfortable.

... And then I considered that less than a foot away from me, on the other side of the window, the temperature was -50F and the air was rushing past at 500 mph! I'm sure that I would not have been able to enjoy my dinner and movie in those conditions.

This Airbus 330 in which I was flying was designed to take people long distances at high altitudes. A single engine Piper Pawnee certainly would not have done this job. But then again, I would not expect the A330 to do a great job of crop-dusting!

The design of these aircraft had taken external factors into account.

How well do businesses take external factors into account?

When you consider that most small businesses do not survive 5 years, the environment in which they operate is as deadly for them as it is for a human outside a plane traveling at 500mph at a hieght of 36,000ft.

Many businesses look outside of their four walls with rose-colored glasses. Seeing the opportunities and planning how to exploit these. This is not a bad thing (in fact, it is essential). However, in our desire to see the positives we often miss the external threats to our survival and do not take the measures to counteract these.

External threats include competitive activity, changing market/consumer patterns, and advances in technology. Your people with valuable skills could also be lost to competitors. The business model that worked when you were operating out of your basement, will not work when you have 200 people working for you. How have you aligned your people, systems, technologies, processes and policies to adapt to these external factors?

How will you ensure that your plane does not break up when you climb to an altitude of 36,000 ft?

Three Phases of Continuous Business Improvement

Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

Richard Feynman

US educator & physicist (1918 - 1988)

After an improvement has been made to a business - through a system implementation/ enhancement and/or a process change - many companies struggle to keep the momentum going to drive continuous improvement. In my recent publication in Techlinks about driving business benefit from an ERP implementation, I outlined the 3 phases of Continuous Business Improvement. Below, I have adapted these for process changes as they relate to Organizational Change.

Phase 1: Adopt
After the change, most teams focus on supporting and/or rolling out the changes with little or no attention to the formalization of these changes. The objectives of the Adopt Phase are:
• The establishment of effective leadership/ ownership of the new process/ system.
• Making changes part of the day-to-day business process.
• Clearly documented new processes and procedures.

This will result in business ownership of the changes. This ownership is a key requirement if you want to ensure that improvement is not a once off event.

Phase 2: Sustain
Once the initial improvements have been made, you can put process controls in place to ensure that you don't go back to they way you were before. In fact, process control is part of and Six Sigma implementation. However, it is just as improtant to get the organizational side of this equation right too. Thus the objectives of the Sustain Phase are:
• The establishment of end user competency programs.
• Process support and capability.
• The retention of employees with portable business process skills.

This phase must result in a competent resource base and a formal process for managing issues and defects.

Phase 3: Exploit
Apart from driving value for the business, process improvement intiatives also build capabilties for additional imprvements. How? The experience of going through an improvement project builds valuable experience in your people. Also, with systems implementations, the full capability of the new system is fully exploited in the begining. Thus, the objectives of this phase are:
• The formalization of the process for identification and prioritization of exploitation opportunities driven by business value proposition.
• A structured process for planning and execution of continued improvement initiatives.
• The organizational alignment of resources.

This phase must result in well managed improvement initiatives and resources that are aligned to effectively exploit opportunities.

RELATED ARTICLES:

• Driving Business Benefits from your ERP Implementation
• DFSS: Monte Carlo Simulation in Business Process Design