Marcia's Leadership Q and As: Continual Improvement is Not Enough
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Q. We believe in continually improving in our company, but we’ve become stagnant. What’s wrong?
A. Leading your company and accelerating its growth means having a foundational business strategy. It’s like using a three-legged stool if you want stability and growth. The three interdependent strategies are: quality, continual improvement, and innovation. In detail, quality is defined by the customer and made by the Board/Executive team. Be in continual contact with your customers to understand them.
Continually improving means working together to make the products, services, customer experiences, better and better. But only improving is not enough. We can make a better and better carriage, but that won’t get us to a car, or a flying car. New and creative ideas that are taken to market or made useful is innovation. And it is needed to survive and move into the future.
Q. What are the best management tools I can access to help my management team lead?
A. Once you have defined and clarified why you are in business and your mindset for serving your markets, your teams will create and implement the strategies and methods. There are both strategic and analytical tools that you can use. Find a good teacher to facilitate the use of the tools. The more complex the business, the more sophisticated the tools may need to be. Especially when using statistical tools for important decisions, make sure to hire someone with experience and knowledge. There are now thousands of data analytics tools being used that can result in poor decisions. Too much data science has now become a fad. Not everything needs to be measured, in fact very little does.
Begin with strategic thinking and the tools that support them: the Strategic Compass and system diagrams, and deployment flow charts. Management tools that help leaders focus and prioritize include the affinity diagram, Pareto chart, cause-and effect diagram, force-field analysis, control charts and run charts, the 5 Why’s, and histograms. Always use several tools because each contributes to showing you a different perspective. The tools together help you see the big picture. The caution is, don’t over-measure, or you’ll run into analysis-paralysis.
Q. Our teams believe communication is their number one issue and challenge. What can we do to improve?
A. Of all the leadership traits and capabilities, communication is one of the most essential. What do leaders of any team need to communicate to be effective? Clarity of the purpose and direction of the organization is mandatory. But repeating it 100 times a day in various ways so everyone understands it and how they fit in to it is rare—but that’s what leaders do. They share what customers need, modify the words so different people understand it fully, and then they listen. They ask people what help they need, what support they need, what resources they need. They ask, “what’s getting int. eh way of you doing your job? How can I help? What do we need to do?” People working together can also build trust and reduce fears that may exist.
