Helping you succeed despite relentless change
Saw this referred to recently – a great example explanation of guiding principles for a business:
https://polyfacefarms.com/guiding-principles/
Just having words as values or principles is helpful … even more helpful is defining what the words mean for that business along with examples of how applied.
Convene colleague Ken Stewart noted this recently after watching a company’s workers successively fail at backing up their company trailer:
One of the most overlooked and easily dismissed elements of business process improvement and employee development falls squarely in this space: We fail to give our people the proper education and training needed to succeed.
Agreed.
It’s also a reminder that we have often solved similar things in the past but forget about them or discard them because they are not “new.”
For training, “Training Within Industry” or TWI is one of may favorite “forgotten” examples.
In the United States during World War II, many of the factory and other industrial workers were sent to the war zones. This left huge numbers of jobs open that were still critical to the war effort and needed to increase, not decrease, to supply allied war needs (ironically, supplies and equipment so those who vacated the jobs would be able to fight).
The problem: how to rapidly train and make productive people (mostly women) who were willing but usually had no background in the work whatsoever. Enter TWI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_Within_Industry as an example summary with some extracts below).
The program was structured based on the needs of every supervisor involved in training:
“Each program was based on Charles Allen’s 4-point method of Preparation, Presentation, Application, and Testing” … similar to the “Apprentice Method” process Ken included in his post:
I do. You watch. We talk.
I do. You help. We talk.
You do. I help. We talk.
You do. I watch. We talk.
You do. Someone else watches… (the learning process continues)
The training was usually done in the workplace … not in some classroom, other than for maybe introductory information. This is still largely ignored, and why the $100 billion invested in organizational “training and development” in the U.S. is largely wasted.
Also, workers were taught to “objectively evaluate the efficiency of their jobs and to methodically evaluate and suggest improvements” … i.e, the people who did the work were expected to be a primary source of improving the work. That should sound familiar to those in lean, agile, and related circles today.
Another key TWI aspect was that workers were to be treated as individuals … also ignored today when policies and procedures treat workers more like machine parts.
Where did TWI survive after the war? Japan … and incorporated into lean approaches and industry-specific examples like the Toyota Production System. The lean community still has a subset of folks who keep the TWI tradition and relevancy alive elsewhere, but TWI is rarely a topic you hear in discussions outside those areas.
Don’t have a good new supervisor training program? TWI is one place to start if you develop your own.
It’s also one of the aspects of our training programs, and why our programs can show ROI and pay for themselves. Let us show you how.
A good discussion on LinkedIn recently about experience vs. inexperience … along with another scenario that needs to be considered.
👉 Reducing cost by getting rid of experience is not usually a good idea, as it will lead to more cost through ineffective activity and mistakes (comment added by Kevin Martin)
👉 A small, experienced team can run circles around any number of inexperienced people (original post by Dipl.-Ing. Lars Behrendt)
But how do you get experienced people?
Typical methods:
For a small team on its own, then the first method is usually common.
For a larger organization, the second may be possible but depends in the impact of departing from the original role.
Development is an option and takes time AND people with experience to bring the less-experienced along.
No matter the route or combination, planning for succession is critical to organizational sustainability.
Don’t leave it to chance.
… or hoping that the hordes of inexperienced people (like the players in the video) will pick up *meaningful* experience by osmosis.
Our programs can help you develop people AND get ROI that pays for the program.
One of the leadership mistakes I’ve made in the past is to have a great vision … but do one of these things:
* keep it in my head
* communicate it just to a few people
* communicate it just once
* not align the culture, processes/systems, hiring/developing people, etc. with the vision or vice versa
Mark Firth’s LinkedIn post highlights the importance of vision to an individual … and it applies also to any organization: https://lnkd.in/e8w_-JKF
Just don’t keep it to yourself 🙂
And if company political circumstances create a hostile environment for your overall vision, try making interim vision/milestone steps visible while working to gain allies to offset the danger. If the danger is too great for even that, then the questions are:
If a strategic plan is really a change plan … what does that mean?
In the last post, we looked at three significant implications.
This post looks at a fourth:
Are those expected to change able to change?
Change capability isn’t often considered during strategic planning. It may not even be visible at that level.
However, it has a BIG impact at the implementation and worker level. And on whether the change is effective or even achieved at all.
Change capability, then, has a big impact on strategic plan results.
Changing processes and behaviors is not something that everyone knows how to do or do well.
Training is usually terrible at helping people change behavior and results. “Training” programs – or anything “learning and development” related – is about change. The point of those programs is for something to be different afterward … otherwise, why do it?
A 2019 HBR article (https://hbr.org/2019/10/where-companies-go-wrong-with-learning-and-development) resurfaced recently in social media feeds about why “learning and development” doesn’t result in learning and development.
An effective learning and development process includes:
Sustainable learning and related change doesn’t happen in a few classroom hours. Learning needs application in the workplace and feedback to survive and produce results.
Do programs like this cost more? Sometimes.
The decision, though, isn’t about what program costs more or less.
It’s about whether the program investment is *wasted* or not.
Traditional training and learning & development programs waste the investment. Little learning and even less change.
Strategic changes go nowhere relying on traditional training programs.
👉 Want real change? For over 20 years our program framework has produced just that.
👉 Want ROI? Our programs can also produce direct, positive ROI and pay for themselves.
👉 Want to learn more? Contact us to discuss how to apply in your situation.
A strategic plan is not a strategy.
A strategic plan implements, maintains, or modifies a strategy.
Implementation and modification mean changes to the status quo.
Therefore, a strategic plan that is anything else other than maintaining the status quo is a change plan.
Do you think of strategic planning and plans that way?
Incorporate change planning?
There are at least four significant implications:
❗ First: If the strategy needs work, then THAT is part of the strategic plan.
❗ Second: How have major changes gone in the past?
Well? Not so well? Mix?
Factor in past change success change when setting expectations for future change.
If past change success has been mixed, then one strategic plan item might be getting better at change 😉
❗ Third: How do the strategic plan items affect work capacity?
For the plan to work, is there an expectation that people maintain current workloads (usually “full”) AND make changes?
This is a recipe for both not getting stuff done and frustrating people. Not to mention leaders looking out of touch with reality.
Changes require workload “room” to make the changes.
Also, implementation and modification imply time and effort that may not be immediately produce results. Have you factored that into expectations as well, especially timing?
Fourth implication in the next post …
