Do not get tempted by the firefight

by Larry Coté

Is the recession over or is it just on pause? The dollar is up; foreign investment, profits and sales are down. Low cost Asian competition is eroding our market share. Corporate scandals and governance issues keep flaring into the headlines. Major disasters such as terrorism, SARS, and war continually reshape the world in which we work and live.

There are so many big global issues, so much apparent chaos, our minds are often distracted from the day-to-day jobs we do leading our businesses.

The world changed, economically and socially. What hasn't changed however, is the customers' insatiable appetite for more value, faster delivery and better service.

Business leaders are eager to return to their pre-recession profits and growth. But even if this recession is over, we may find the bounce back to previous profit levels is not a slam dunk, in spite of a revived and thriving economy.

During the past couple years, while business executives made short-term decisions to survive, customers and markets continued to change at a rate never seen before.

If we blame currency fluctuations and Asian competition, it starts to sound like the same old blame game with different players.

It's easy to fly high on adrenaline when you look at these global issues and threats. But, for a moment, let's step back and look at our business challenges from a lower altitude and a more local focus.

In doing this, we need to disregard the factors affecting our businesses we can't influence and begin to look at those we can. The ones we have little or no influence over are things like the recession, currency fluctuations and major disasters. The area we can influence is our own long- and short-term strategies for transforming our companies, making them more competitive and customer-focused.

The bottom line: Let's stick to our knitting, do our jobs and focus more on our roles as organizational leaders.

In North America, we've proven we can provide products and services competitively through innovation, inspired product development and comprehensive efforts to eliminate waste. But it requires a prolonged and concentrated effort. Leaders aren't hired to cry wolf when chaos threatens. The terms of employment are to use our leadership talents and drive improvements that will be seen and sustained on the bottom line.

We need to readjust how we use these talents and not be distracted by global factors, which are out of our control for the most part. We must accept the role for which we were hired and focus on the business operations where we can have real impact.

We are leaders, so let's lead. Most activities, whatever the company, can be classified as waste of one kind or another once you start to see it. As leaders, we must set the direction and motivate our staff to understand how to remove this waste properly from the system as a whole rather than making incremental or point improvements.

Our key task in ensuring competitiveness, no matter what the circumstances, becomes understanding how to remove that waste effectively by developing and leading the strategic implementation plan to remove it. This requires seeing and analyzing the process from end to end, not just at points or segments of the process.

That becomes your Future State Map, your road guide to success.

The implementation plan will guide your team to remove the waste at the level of the whole system. Properly done, in conjunction with your Future State Map, beneficial change happens in a very structured, sequential and organized fashion.

Your teams aren't caught running around chasing bottlenecks or low-hanging fruit while creating what we call exciting chaos. When everyone rushes reactively to improve their individual areas, they feel virtuous. After all, they are helping the company, aren't they?

In fact, they are only improving their areas or departments, often at the detriment of the entire process. It's your leadership and your measured Future State plan that will bring order to chaos. Reactive flurry kills profits faster than any big external threat.

Striving to improve competitiveness by providing customers faster and better products or services will accomplish more than worrying about the next global crisis looming just around the corner.

The only futures game we need to be in is the one that cuts waste so the customer sees more value. It can't be repeated often enough. Get that piece of knitting done and the profits will look after themselves.

Let's work together and plan our future state rather than worry to the point of insolvency over perceived chaos. As scientists point out, nature likes order; it's the human agents that generate most of the chaos.

There are things that we can control - so let's get busy and do it.

Larry Coté and Lean Advisors work with organizations of all sizes, from all sectors, including: healthcare, service, manufacturing, mining, aerospace, food processing, continuous process industries, job shops, high tech, medical technology, and government organizations. Visit Lean Advisors' Web site at www.leanadvisors.com. 

Back to top

Back to Web-exclusive articles archives