Actions and Plans

All below are of Reasonable Possibility

You can try to steer an organization, or Improve a process, but the odds are without some of they key Heuristics/Rules of thumb I talk about below – would mean its mostly by Luck or the Problem is so easy that maybe its one of those Organizational Blindspots (why no one else was able to act on the opportunity).

I would put a 20% chance of success if some of the key conditions was not met. I would put a 50-80% success chance if it was met.

Steering Organizational Inertia.

You can only steer an Organization with Weekly small wins that edge towards your target direction. If you believe a Memo would fix Everything – your sadly mistaken. A piece of information that fits a memo is no sufficient for an Organization as complex as a 400 person entity that tries to make a living.

People should not expect to steer a 400 person company on a whim. THey should not expect that a MEMO or Process is enough to direct such a huge group of people and the Inertia they have. When you look at a really bad Month in operations – you look at what was done 2-6 months ago.

Imagine a Company to be a Large vehicle being pushed like a bus or a car. You can only push it and it very slowly accelerates, and to act on it to redirect it takes as much energy and that slow acceleration you experienced getting it going.

You cannot steer a Group of People the way you steer yourself. You can say “FUCK IT” and do something but you cannot be the same when it comes to Organization and Systems – consequences are beyond one individual – in an organization you can do a lot of Harm with “FUCK IT”.

You cannot Just Improve a System you Cannot Document

If you cannot document the system, then you cannot measure it. You cannot communicate it. You cannot have many people Agreeing about what the System is or isnt. If you cannot Document the system then you cannot Improve it with reasonable certainty.

You cannot show it to the Management and Agree on a course of action. You cannot show it to the End Users to get their appreciation of their work or roles. You cannot systematically plan how to deal with all its moving and dynamic parts.

Action and Plans

Its not enough to know and document what is wrong. It needs action and a plan. ANd your plan is a sign of who you are in the Organization. This is one of the most interesting things in my work that makes me wonder – Who in the Company makes plans and Has a Plan?

Who is acting on a Plan? Who is making plans? Who is testing their Plans? Who in the company is THINKING and not merely reacting? Who is communicating and making plans?

Its one of those serious things I’ve noticed. If you went and simply asked everyone to submit their plans and their monitoring systems for their plans you’ll notice something seriously wrong.

I won’t go into the Planning 101. I’ll just point out that how you act and how you think can be simply measured by the PDCA cycle and its evidence in your personal process and methods.

Game in the Brain