Is your organization a six-pack or a beer gut?

by Pam Mitchell

Is your company a lean and muscular organization where everyone knows what the marketplace values and works harmoniously to position it as a market leader? Or, do you have cellulitic layers of beer gut managers that are more worried about who gets to control purses, projects and people than they are about serving the customer?

Here’s a little test.

• Do cross-functional managers easily turn things over to each other? Or, do they seem to be gathering power like squirrels gathering nuts for the winter?

• Do line managers and customer contact people have the authority to solve problems and implement their ideas, or does everything take a signature or a meeting with higher levels in the organization?

• How often to people use the phrase, “This is the way we’ve always done it?”

• Do supervisory people have at least five or six people reporting to them? If the span of control is smaller than that, managers might be spending too much time hovering and controlling.

• If you need information several layers down in the organization, do the sandwich layers feel obligated to attend the meeting also?

• Do meetings last more than 45 minutes throughout the organization?

• Do you hold large all-day meetings where hoards of people make presentations?

• Do you receive far more voice mails than people when you make phone calls, because there are so many meetings?

A “yes” to most of these questions is a warning flag. Your organization may be a candidate for organizational weight-watchers. But where does one start? 

Surprisingly, micro-management is the best way to start. Few executives can admit that their organization is a beer gut, or that they or their executive staff members are control freaks. So the best place to start is with a specific process.

Create a flow chart of one important process in your organization, (customer pricing, design changes, parts acquisition etc.)  Choose one process that makes your organization tick.

Define your customer for that process. It may be the end user. It may be a group within your organization.

Define the value stream of that process. The value stream includes anything you do that makes the output more valuable to the customer. The waste is everything else. 

Let’s look at the manufacture of a plastic pen, for example. The value stream would include extruding the plastic, forming the metal parts, filling the ink, assembling the parts, etc. The waste would include: receiving functions, moving parts around the factory, placing purchase orders, expediting, all approval and signature processes, etc.

Highlight the value stream in your flow chart. Observe how many steps are waste.

Ask the people that participate in the value stream portion of the process, what part of the waste could be eliminated and still service the customer?

Eliminate several steps. Does the process still work?

If yes, go to the next process. If no, revise again.

Once waste becomes more obvious and “waste hunts” become more commonplace in your organization, you may be able to agree where it is without the flow chart.

Once you start eliminating approvals and meetings with superiors, you may find that your middle and senior management employees are freed up for more creative and strategic thinking.

How to get them thinking strategically is the next step. The first is to create an organization that understands that the value stream is what matters. Not all waste can be eliminated, but the goal should be to understand where it is and how to minimize it.

Now, you have begun your journey to create a workforce dedicated to understanding what your customers value and to delivering it better than anyone else. This is the essence of market leadership.

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