Game in the Brain

As I’ve finished C in Dr. Arthur Hill’s Operations Managmeent Encyclopedia there are a lot of ideas and ideals I wish we could have in our company but its not just unfeasible but its also not just practical.

Listening to the Encyclopedia got me thinking about if there was ever a name for the most basic level competence in an organization. A name for the profile of the seed attitude and habits that will develop into these self sustaining organizations.

There was the exposure to Capability Maturity Model and then there is the Data Envelopment Analysis in D which I am currently listening too. There are a bunch of certificating bodies mentioned like Six-Sigma, and American Organizations that are far far from what would be practical for us.

I wish there was some catchy name for the various Seed strategies. Some label to identify, differentiate, and sell the kind of attitude and habits  

An example of something that was discussed that I wish I could figure out better was: Crosstraiing. We need crosstraining in our Prodution since we a project based furniture manufacturer that has seasonal manpower. But how much crosstraining or training should there be in the worker’s day? How much time do we devout to Training, Self Improvement, and these other tasks? When do we make time for them when there is always firefighting?

Thats the thing about Lean Manufacturing Theory (acc to Creating a Lean Culture David Mann), that when there is a Crisis they document as they go, and proceed to correct the processes while running the corrective plan.

Thesis of the “Four D”s.

Discipline. Self control, effortful approach to consistency, and doing the needed work. Discipline can be irrational as we use it to keep to pesky habits like Documentation that isnt really needed but we do it for a longer term view on our improvement.
Even in Crisis, there will always be discipline. When things are good, the discipline to train and improve. 

Documentation. we make time to keep track of our activiies, goals, and issues. We document so we have memory of what we did, how we did it, and so that there is a way to improve on what we just did. We may take time to write things when we feel like there are “better” things to do and more money to make. We write not just for ourselves but for anyone in our place who have to make future decisions in light of what we did or if anything happens to our memory.
  
Data Driven.  This is for the reports, logs, and dashboards that inform us on the circumstances.
Politics, Firefighting, BS-Talk, Circumstances, Crisis, Distractions all occur to make it harder to make decisions and remember our goals, and reasons. We act on Data, even data we wrote down ourselves, and data we can observe and document. Discipline and Documentation gives us DATA to work with, and data to act on. Every step of the way we have our data and if anything happens to us there is material for the other person to work with in our place.
 
Deepwork. The carefully managed time and distractions to do challenging and deliberate work. That everyone (or most of everyone) can have some time in their day for deep work. That they are not in a distracted anxious haze most of the time.

There is going to be a need to communicate what ever Ideals we have and its going to be stop being ours and everyone will have buy in if they can see their contribution in what ever Label we put in the culture we want to make. There is going to be a Plan and it needs Catchball.