Did you ever play leapfrog as a child? If you did, you
probably landed just beyond the other child. But if you
had used a springy trampoline to launch yourself, you could
have gone a large distance beyond. Wouldn't that be fun?
What if you could use a rocket-assist pack on your back to
fly like you were on the moon hundreds of yards past the
other person? I think that would be even more fun, don't
you?
Let's look at how you might get a similar advantage over
your competitors by shooting way past their future
performance before they get there.
The steps for creating a 2,000 percent solution
(accomplishing 20 times more with the same time, effort,
and resources) are listed here:
1. Understand the importance of measuring performance.
2. Decide what to measure.
3. Identify the future best practice and measure it.
4. Implement beyond the future best practice.
5. Identify the ideal best practice.
6. Pursue the ideal best practice.
7. Select the right people and provide the right motivation.
8. Repeat the first seven steps.
This essay looks at step four.
Jump Past Where Everyone Else Wants to Go
Successful leapfrogging the future best practice (the best
anyone will do in five years) requires that your best
change leaders unify efforts. These leaders must commit to
this challenging objective and shift the organizational
culture to support them. Those working on the
implementation must become masters of understanding the
subprocesses needed to make the successful change.
Triage for Maximum Effect
Narrow your focus to a few areas of highest promise so that
you do not water down your potential for results. Begin by
segmenting those aspects of exceeding future best practices
into three categories that:
1. Can be implemented almost immediately with little effort.
2. Can be implemented within two years with effort and
attention.
3. Can be implemented over more than two years.
In your triage agenda, you can probably do most things that
fall into the first category easily, quickly, and with
little help except where the activity stymies a
high-priority item from the second category. The challenge
comes in selecting from the second and third categories.
Here's an important limitation to keep in mind: You
probably cannot make more than three or four changes at the
same time that involve the same people. You'll make the
most progress when you pick the best balance of near- and
intermediate-term benefits while placing the least strain
on your people and resources. To that mix, add anything
else you can do through aggressive use of outside resources
that doesn't increase the internal burden. Within that
agenda, give high priority to actions that will give you
the most benefit over the next two years. Organize your
efforts so that some significant benefits will be realized
every six months or so to keep everyone motivated and
working effectively.
We're Almost Done-In
Since the thinking involved in steps five and six (finding
and approaching the ideal best practice, the best anyone
will ever be able to do) will suggest other outstanding
choices, beware of setting too many firm projects at this
step. After all, you may be ready with better ideas from
step six within just a few weeks. But if completing step
six will take more than a few months, you should begin to
implement some of what has been identified in step four.
In this case, my recommendation is that you reserve some
change capacity (such as time of key people, analytical
resources, and budget) beginning around the time that you
will have some new projects to add. This approach may mean
that you will choose to mine category 1 from the triage
list more heavily for now than category 2.
Outsourcing for Outstanding Possibilities
To estimate how long it will take you to put a new practice
in place, look at the experience of those who preceded you
in implementing those practice elements. Then consider
whether your organization will be a faster or slower
learner and integrator than they were. As you consider your
choices, be open to having the company you studied or some
of its former employees be an outsourcing provider to speed
your progress. Simply because you want to employ a certain
subprocess doesn't mean that you need to become the world's
expert in that area.
Go Where the Benefits Are the Greatest
Beware of taking quantifications of likely benefits too
literally. One project may appear to offer ten times the
potential of another project, but the former project may
also be a hundred times more difficult. Instead, emphasize
places where you can effectively concentrate your resources
while facing little resistance from any stakeholder or
competitor. Choose a project that seems to offer more
benefits, however, when two competing projects present
similar difficulty and degrees of opposition.
STALLBUSTERS
Understand Your Track Record for Implementing Beyond Future
Best Practices
Organizations vary widely in their ability to exceed future
best practices through assembling new combinations of
subprocesses. Many overestimate how well they will do in
bringing groundbreaking new directions to an industry. Ask
yourself these questions:
• What significant attempts has your organization made to
improve over the last five years?
• Which attempts achieved their purpose on budget and on
schedule?
• Which attempts did not?
• What were the apparent causes for the two types of
results based on discussions with those who worked on the
attempts?
• How many successful implementations were key individuals
able to work on at once?
• What could you do in the future to improve your
organization's effectiveness in such implementations?
Develop Project Plans to Exceed the Future Best Practice
Your ideas for projects to exceed the future best practice
will usually come from research into what others are doing
and planning to do. To test the direction you should take,
check out what's involved by developing project plans based
on the answers to the following questions:
• Which projects have a favorable cost-to-benefit ratio?
• Which projects have an affordable cost compared to your
resources and limitations?
• Which projects have a reasonable likelihood of success?
Compare Your Plans to Past Results
• Which of these potential changes look like your past
successes?
• Which potential changes look like your past misses and
messes?
• Do the opportunities to use your strengths in
implementing future-best-practice-exceeding changes provide
you with enough benefit to exceed the future best practice?
• If not, what are the simplest, most effective ways to
enhance your organization's ability to provide or
absorb more valuable improvements?
• What is the risk of failing to succeed?
Looking Ahead
Remember to keep some time available to look at the
opportunities you will develop from considering steps five
and six. Ideally, pick projects needed to surpass future
best practices to mesh with the projects that will come out
of your work with steps five and six.
Copyright 2007 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of six books including The 2,000 Percent Squared
Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, and The 2,000 Percent
Solution Workbook. You can find free tips for accomplishing
20 times more by registering at:
=========> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .
No comments:
Post a Comment