May 2, 2011

Get Rid of This Stuff NOW

BE DiFFERENT YOU Shout the Change
Don’t Give Customers What They Expect
Your Brand: Listen to the Conversation
Here are Ten Non-strategic Activities that are practiced in most organizations. They produce little. They take up a copious amount time and drain the organization of emotional energy. How many of these occupy your time?

1. Committee Work. How many Committees do you have working on stuff? What would happen if you reduced the number by 50% and empowered folks to make a decision and get on with execution? Committees are charged with the responsibility of coming up with recommendations that satisfy everyone. The result is watered-down decisions and forgettable results.
2. Analysis. Analysis can paralyze an organization and is a symptom of being afraid to make a call. Don’t over analyze. Do the amount of study that is consistent with the decision to be made. A $10 Million decision will need more than a $100K one.
3. Seeking the last 5% improvement. Read this as trying to get it Perfect. Crazy quest. Will never happen. Get it just about right and execute flawlessly.
4. Co-ordinating. What VALUE is there in this? When teamwork fails or systems are deficient, we need a coordinator. Rubbish!
5. Consensus building. You can’t satisfy everyone. Make the call.
6. Following rules. WOW! A great way to stultify creativity and innovation. Sure, some rules are necessary. But some are also Dumb. What if you reduced the number of Rules by 50% over the next 30 days? Do you think it would open up the possibilities for people to do NEW THINGS?
7. Punishing failure. Another great way to beat innovation out of a person. If you’re not failing you’re not moving forward. Failing is a necessary component of success. Honor failure and those who deliver it.
8. Giving orders. Managers do it. Change Leaders don’t. Do you really believe people won’t do the right thing? If not, you haven’t prepared them. They haven’t grown. You have failed. Learn from it.
9. Benchmarking. Sure, this may help you improve your performance but copying will never make you ReMARKABLE and DiFFERENT. Consider Best in Class as the highest bar to BE DiFFERENT from. If you stop at Best in Class you are like every other organization in the Herd.
10. Doing what the Job Description says. Don’t do what is right; stick to your job responsibilities. “It’s not my job”. “I’ll pass you over to Customer Care”. Customers love this one don’t they? Screw the formal Job Description. We need people to Spot Opportunities and do whatever it takes to create maniacal raving Fans EVEN if it means going beyond their formal job limits. We do want people to step out don’t we?

This List of Ten is a product of the past. It represents a Control Management Era. Successful organizations today find a way to break away from as much of these as they can as quickly as possible. Do you have the jam to do it?

Cheers,
Roy


Join me on Twitter
Connect with me on LinkedIn

 

Strategy Creation | Permalink
Posted 5.2.11 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment