The problem with handing over the answer
Imagine a company struggling with recurring delivery delays. Consultants investigated, identified weaknesses in order processing and recommended better coordination between sales and production.
The recommendations made sense. Management approved them.
Six months later, deliveries were still late.
What happened? Perhaps nobody had established who should change what, the departments had different priorities, or the people doing the work had never really accepted the proposed solution.
The consultants had found something worth fixing. They had failed to create the conditions for fixing it.
Start where the work actually happens
My approach has always been with the people, through the people.
When I enter an organisation, I want to understand what is actually happening, what the business should be achieving and what stands between those two conditions.
That means working with the people who know the operation, tracing the problems through their causes and establishing which ones really matter.
And I want those people involved in the discovery. They need to see the evidence, challenge the explanations and recognise what is happening in their own work.
There is a considerable difference between being told what is wrong and discovering it yourself.
That difference is where ownership begins.
Follow the chain all the way to the beef
Finding a cause is only part of the job.
We need to establish what resources and conditions are required, what activities must change, what those activities should produce and how that will affect the business.
Consider the delivery problem. If the underlying cause is an unreliable order handover, we work with the people involved to establish a better arrangement.
But completing a new handover form is merely an activity. Even getting every order processed correctly is an operational output.
The real question is whether those changes produce more reliable deliveries, fewer disruptions and ultimately better business performance.
Change Activity or Intervention created with and by the people who actually do the work, would drive planned Output, which would yield an expected Outcome, which in turn, leads to the desired Impact in the organisation. Planned change. Simple, eh?
That chain keeps everyone focused on why we are making the change in the first place. It also exposes the missing links before we spend time and money on activities that look productive but achieve very little.
From participation to ownership
There is a learning curve in every improvement.
Initially, people may follow a new procedure simply because they have been told to. As they understand why it works, they begin using it more confidently. Eventually, they recognise how to benefit fully of it’s use and improve it themselves.
The interesting point comes when the new way of working becomes their way. Now we are getting somewhere.
This doesn't happen through presentations or instructions alone. It requires involvement, practical experience, feedback and management support.
My role is to drive that development, helping the organisation move from understanding the problem to changing its behaviour and achieving the intended result.
Management makes the necessary decisions, but the direction has already been developed and tested through the organisation's own involvement. By the time we reach the formal findings presentation in a form of a “Toolbox” or Quality Management System manual or some other living set of documents, there should be very little left to debate about where we need to go.
And I continue working with the people to help them to make it happen.
So what should the consultant leave behind?
I want to leave behind an operation that works truly better, people who take ownership and responsibility for keeping it that way and an organisation more capable of solving its next problem.
Any reporting only documents what the entire organisation discovered and agreed and now own. Of course, with my little help. The business result tells us whether the assignment was worthwhile. Do it this way and it usually is.
One little comment from many of my clients still rings in my head: “I am not sure why they hired you in the first place!” It is their system now. That's where the beef is.
Let's talk
If previous consulting assignments produced recommendations but little lasting improvement, perhaps we should examine how the people concerned were engaged.
I work with client organisations from discovery and diagnosis through practical improvement, building ownership with the people who make the business work.
Send me a message here on LinkedIn or visit www.baleteworks.com to arrange an initial conversation.
No strings attached.