September
1999
To
POOGI forum members,
The
solution (continued)
My
last e-mail ended with: "But this e-mail is already too long so I
will continue next week. In the meantime, I need your observations:
"
As
you have, no doubt, noticed it took me six weeks to continue. No, this
considerable delay it is not due just to my ingrained laziness (I am the
master of procrastination), it is mainly due to your valuable responses.
Your feedback has highlighted a slew of important issues and I needed
the time to check (and in one case even to reconstruct) practical, yet
generic, answers.
1.
The first issue concerns cases where most top management of a business
unit have seen the satellite program. As I had hoped, there was a consensus
that it is the way to go; a satisfactory confirmation. Alas, in too many
cases only sporadic initiatives (in my eyes) have been taken. Exchanges
of e-mails clarified that the reason was that top management didnt
know what process can lead them to construct, as a group, the strategy
and tactic of their company. Being eager to proceed they launched local
initiatives.
2.
The second issue was no surprise: How to reach all top management? What
was a surprise to me was the extent of middle managements disbelief
that they can get the attention of top managers, and that even if they
can get their time, the disbelief that top management will listen and
act. I deduced that I have to construct a more robust solution to this
problem.
3.
The third issue regards cases where, objectively, it looks hopeless to
reach top management. What should be done then? Is no action better than
a pocket of improvement? I gave it a lot of thought. I went back and re-examined
the cloud and maybe I have an answer. Let me make some checks before opening
my mouth.
Since
it will take me sometime to be ready with my answer for the second issue,
and more time until Ill be ready to answer the third issue let me
devote this article to issue one.
The
challenge is to bring all top management to agree on the strategy and
tactic of their organization. No just any strategy but a strategy that
will guarantee that the organization rapidly embark on an ambitious and
lasting Process Of OnGoing Improvement.
To
reach a true consensus my experience is that it is not enough for each
top managers to agree with the outcome. It is not even enough that each
top manager will feel that hes (his/her) concerns have been adequately
addressed. To ensure that the resulting plan of actions will be aggressively
implemented each top manger should rightfully feel that hes (his/her)
contribution was vital; that the outcome is hes baby.
This
is a very ambitious target. Never-the-less, unless the president of the
organization is exceptionally charismatic, it is mandatory.
There
are many obstacles that stand in the way of achieving our ambitious target.
The first group of major obstacles is:
1.
Many times the strategic direction, that is contemplated by a top manager,
is based on concentrating only on one side of the existing core conflict.
Of course, this direction will be opposed by other directors who are concerned
more with the other side of the conflict. As long as we dont prevent
such erroneous directions the chance of reaching a meaningful consensus
is negligible.
2.
Many times some top managers are so "bitten" that they take
the existence of the prevailing conflict as given. Their starting point
is that these conflicts are here to stay and therefore the direction of
the strategy that they contemplate is along the lines of polishing the
existing compromises. Such an attitude blocks the possibility of constructing
a valid strategy.
3.
To meaningfully contribute to the construction of a good strategy, a person
must be familiar with the erroneous prevailing assumptions that are at
the base of the false paradigms that currently hamper the performance
of most organizations. Without such familiarity it is unrealistic to expect
that the direction of the good strategy will naturally immerge from the
group.
4.
To meaningfully contribute to the supporting tactic a person must have
a comprehensive understanding of all the major cause and effect that govern
the organization. Without it s/he will be unable to adjust the required
tactic that can carry out a strategy which is based on changing some of
the fundamental assumptions that guided the organization in the past.
The
experience gained in the live broadcast of the satellite program and experiments
done since then clearly shows that all the above obstacles are successfully
removed by watching the program. Preferably in a group. Preferably with
a facilitator.
The
video-tapes of the GSP (Goldratt Satellite Program). enable for the first
time to embark on our ambitious target without the need for an outstanding
knowledgeable and charismatic facilitator. The door is open for organizations
to do it on a major scale. This is the base for my proposed process. I
call the process the "4x4".
The
first "4" stands for the time - four net days - it takes to
watch, as a group, all the eight sessions of the GSP (Goldratt Satellite
Program). These four days can be done consecutively but my recommendation
is to take it slowly; people need time to digest, contemplate and internalize.
The best rate is probably one four-hours meeting per week. It is enough
time to allow for stopping the video-tape wherever needed to discuss or
debate the applicability to the organization and still finish one topic
(a session) per meeting.
If
(when) at the end of viewing the video tapes there is a consensus that
conceptually it is the direction that should adopted, the strategy and
its supporting tactic should be built. As your feed showed, for most top
managers it is not clear how to do it. A clear indication that there are
still many obstacles that have to be overcome.
1.
To develop a good strategy and tactic the group must answer in sequence
the three fundamental questions: "What to change?" "To
what to change?" And
"How to cause the change?". In spite of watching the GSP and
agreeing with the necessity to follow that sequence, people are not used
to it. Rather they tend to make intuitive jumps that lead to confusion,
to the drop of some (many) members from the group effort and to an incomplete
plan of action.
2.
In most groups there are few people who are dominant. These dominant people
usually tend to "take over" when they find themselves in an
environment of indecisiveness. As beneficial as this is it does prevent
some others from fully contributing sometimes to the extent that they
feel that the interested of their areas of responsibility were ignored
or even compromised. As a result the implementation in these areas will
lag behind or, much worse, pockets of resistance might develop.
3.
The answer to the first question "what to change?" is usually
provided through building of the cause and effect diagram called the Current-Reality-Tree.
The answer to the second question "to what to change?" is usually
provided through building of the cause and effect diagram called the Future-Reality-Tree.
These methods are not appropriate for a group effort; an effort to build
a current or future reality trees usually turn quickly to a finger pointing
and power match. Moreover, mastering the skill of building these trees
takes a lot of time and determination.
Constructing
the strategy and tactic and converting it to an action plan is the purpose
of the second 4 days. The process that should be used is designed to smoothly
overcome all the above obstacles*. Read it while checking if it does completely
overcome the obstacles.
_____________
* Special thanks to the group of TOC experts in AGI South Africa headed
by Doug Renecle that contributed a lot to the formation of the 4x4 and
has also done a lot of the real-life checking of its validity.
The
first step, as we said, is to identify the core problem; to answer "what
to change?". And every one should contribute to it. A contribution
that, from the point of view of the contributor, is the most important
one. To achieve it, we should start building the list of UnDesirable Effects
by asking each top manger to contribute the most important UnDesirable
Effect that impacts hes area of responsibility.
Under
each undesirable a whole "Pandora box" is usually hiding. To
expose the full story each manager is asked to detail hes contribution;
to turn the "title" into a meaningful half-a-page description.
An method it is to try and cover the following aspects:
1.
Why is the UnDesirable Effect undesirable or bad?
2. In what way is it undesirable?
3. Why do you put up with the undesirable Effect?
4. What is being jeopardized by the undesirable Effect?
5. Is there a specific action resulting from this undesirable Effect that
you find yourself complaining about?
6. Or maybe an action causing the undesirable Effect?
7. Does this UnDesirable Effect ever put you into a conflict? If so, describe
the conflict.
Next
each top manager is asked to turn hes "story" into a cloud.
The cloud can be easily built by answering the following five questions:
D:
What action do you find yourself complaining about?
D:
What is the desired opposite action of D?
B:
What need is being satisfied by the action in D, or why do you put up
with D?
C:
What need is being satisfied by the action in D, or what is jeopardized
by D?
A:
What is the objective achieved by having both B and C?
Once
everybody has finished, each top manager, in turn, presents hes undesirable
effect and hes resulting cloud to the group. God forbid that the story
will be read before the cloud is presented - the almost unavoidable result
will be the start of fierce finger-pointing. The cloud, as we all know,
does not put the blame on anybody, instead it highlights the fact that
we are caught between a rock and a hard place. Due to that, experience
shows, that the attempts of the group to polish a presented cloud are
not rejected but are welcomed by the manager how presented it.
It
is gratifying to watch such a process. In all cases that I witnessed the
resulting ah-ahs pulled the group together.
Now,
the individual clouds are used by the entire group for constructing the
generic cloud. This is done by listing the Ds of all the individual
clouds and looking for a single statement that describes them all; a statement
that each individual D is one of its specific cases. The same process
is repeated in order to generate the generic D, then A and lastly
B and C.
Then
all the resulting components are displayed in the cloud form and the group
does the needed adjustments so that the result is a legitimate cloud (B
and C are necessary conditions for A, D is for B, D is for C and
D and D are in direct conflict).
It
is actually much easier than it sounds. For an illustration of a generic
cloud build from generalizing the components of several specific clouds
see the specific and generic clouds used in GSP session 3 on the subject
of project management.
The
intuition gained by this process is so deep that experiments showed that
there is no need to invest the time to explicitly writing the Current-Reality-Tree.
Each member of the group does internalize that as long as the generic
cloud is not evaporated hes specific undesirable effect, as well as all
other undesirable effects appearing on the list, will continue to exist.
A true consensus is reached on the core problem.
Reaching
this point usually absorbs the better part of the first day. A lot is
accomplished so it is better at this stage to close the day.
The
morning of the second day is devoted to exposing assumptions on the right-hand
side of the generic cloud, and discussing which one can be challenged
and in what way. As it turned out the video-tapes gave people a lot of
relevant examples of prevailing wrong assumptions, so, in most cases,
the group doesnt have any problem agreeing on the best way to "evaporate
the cloud"; they agree on the direction of the solution. To
ease the work on the next step it is imperative to verbalize the assumptions
which are challenged and to precisely verbalize the agreed upon injection
- the direction of the solution that once implemented will remove the
conflict. Surprisingly, verbalizing the assumptions and the direction
of the solution takes more time than finding them.
Now,
we move from a group effort back to individual assignments. Each top manager
returns to hes specific cloud and reexamines it in light of the direction
of the solution. Although at first glance it is obvious that somehow the
agreed upon direction somehow breaks the specific cloud, exactly how is
not clear. The task is to turn the direction of the solution into specific
injections which, everyone agrees, will remove the specific conflict.
It
is best to illustrate the process on one or two specific clouds by asking
the group to do it. That is usually enough for people to develop the skill
and the confidence.
Then,
each top manager, in turn, presents hes work to the group. In almost every
case, the groups remarks force the introduction of additional (albeit,
less important) injections. There are two advantages to this phenomenon.
First, everybody justifiably fills that everybody have contributed --
not just regarding hes own areas of responsibilities but to other functions
as well. And it does polish the solution. So much so that experience shows
that after the group has finished scrutinizing the work on all clouds
there are no meaningful negative branches left. Therefore there is no
need to explicitly write the Future-Reality-tree .
Once,
the list of all injections have been assembled the group goes over the
first page of the generic Future Reality Tree (Page 185 of the viewer
notebook). They check that injection 100 has been covered and that the
ground has been laid to achieve injections 120 and 140. If not, they need
to add more injections. Which ones? Dont worry, at that stage it
is obvious.
The
group now has a real consensus on "to what to change to?" Another
satisfying day comes to its end.
The
third day starts with the group working to answer the last question"
"how to cause the change?" The target is implementing the list
of the injections constructed the previous day.
This
is straightforward and is done by building a prerequisite tree as described
in session 7 (managing people).
It
is important is to ensure that each manager contributes. The easiest way
is to use the "bridge game method." Going clockwise around the
table each manager is allowed to contribute only one obstacle (standing
in the way of implementing the list of injections) or to "pass."
Passing in one round doesnt prevent a person from contributing an
obstacle in a later rounds.
The process stops when everyone has passed; nobody can think of any more
obstacles preventing implementation of the necessary steps.
The
result is a list containing between 30 to 50 obstacles. Then every manager
supplies the Intermediate Objective(s) that, if achieve, remove the obstacle(s)
s/he had contributed to the list. No debate is allowed when the obstacles
are raised but debate is encouraged on the Intermediate Objectives.
Once
all obstacles have an agreed upon Intermediate Objective the group sequences
them into an IO map. Then responsibilities are assigned (from experience,
people are volunteering according to the match between the Intermediate
Objective and their area of responsibility) and time estimates are given.
The
IO map is converted to a PERT chart with the critical-chain highlighted
and appropriate buffers are inserted in the required place (as explained
in GSP session 3 - project management). Remember, putting an organization
on a Process Of OnGoing Improvement is a project, a major project.
The
fourth day is a buffer, and as in any case where a buffer in called for,
the time that you desperately need it is when you didnt schedule
the time for it.
What
about an expert consultant to facilitate the process? Well, if you paid
close attention to the Q&A section of the GSP you know my opinion.
In cases where the know-how is in the public domain (and in this case
the required know-how is in this document) a consultant is a luxury. S/he
can prevent the group from spending too much time wondering into blind
alleys. S/he can confirm what will probably work and what will not etc.
But as long as the required know-how is not proprietary a consultant is
a luxury and people which insist on luxury, know that they will have to
pay for it.
Next
article (and this time Im not saying next week) will hopefully be
on "how to convince top management".
Now
what I need from you
The
number of people I call experts in TOC, people who I know will bring to
the table plenty of experience of what works and what doesnt, is
very limited. If there will be a lot of demand I will face another challenge,
namely: how to turn an experienced consultant into a TOC expert in a relatively
short time.
So,
if you hold a management position where you report directly to a manager
of a business unit, or if your position is higher, please write to me
about the following:
In
the case that you succeed to convince all your peers to go on the 4x4,
would you ask for an expert TOC consultant to facilitate this effort or
would you use an internal resource? Im not just looking for a yes
or no answer, Im also looking for your reasons.
Thanks
Eli
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