Be Different or be dead

March 19, 2017

How the useless clutter in your business can be taken out

Source: Unsplash

How the useless clutter in your business can be taken out.

If your new strategy development process does not deal with the CRAP you need to eliminate, it will surely fail.

Strategy is just as much about what you’re NOT going to do as it is about what you are going to do, but less attention is paid to the CRAP elimination activity.

CRAP is the enemy of progress. It’s the stuff that may have been a priority at one point, but is now no longer relevant to achieving our strategic goals.

If it isn’t expunged from your organization the ‘old’ will continue to have a significant role and the ‘new’ will be hampered. The major source of bandwidth for taking on new activities is the time currently being spent on thinks that really don’t matter.

CRAP will keep you stuck and prevent you from moving forward.

How to eliminate the CRAP?

▪️ Assign a Cut the CRAP Champion to be responsible for inventorying ALL projects and activities going on in your organization;

▪️ From this inventory, create a KEEP category. Make it short. Bear down on the projects to make sure each one of them is 100% aligned with your new direction;

▪️ Create a CUT category. Make it long. Gather all questionable projects. These will be the eventual source of bandwidth for new activity;

▪️ For each CUT project, note the person who is currently working on it. — the project prime. At the end of the day, people will have to be re-assigned to the ‘new’;

▪️ Have a CRAP critical assessment meeting. Involve the senior team responsible for the execution of your new strategy. Trot each CUT Project Prime into the room and have them explain in detail how their project relates 100% to the new strategy. Side benefit: you will see how well they really understand your new strategy;

▪️ Decide which CUT projects will be terminated and the resource savings that will result;

▪️ Develop a resource re-assignment plan. Be prepared to exit people who either don’t have the skills to take on a KEEP project or who don’t want to support your new direction;

▪️ Communicate the results of your work. KEEP Projects and CUT Projects and why certain projects were terminated. A great opportunity to talk about your new strategy. Involve the team accountable for executing your new course.

CUT projects have momentum. They need to give way for the keepers.

Tough work. Critical to your success. Get on it today!

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 3.19.17 at 06:18 am by Roy Osing
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March 13, 2017

6 ways a leader can easily kill innovation and creativity

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6 ways a leader can easily kill innovation and creativity.

Innovation is crushed.

Creativity is stultified.

Employees are reduced to cogs.

Fresh thought is constrained to a minimum.

Barriers to new ideas are erected.

These results are often the product of leadership behaviour even though they are completely at odds with what leaders openly espouse to employees as the culture and values they seek to establish.

These six actions will effectively kill any desire for individuals to freely express themselves; they will suck every morsel of originality from their bones.

▪️Constantly say ‘That’s not the way we do things around here’ whenever someone presents a new idea.
This is the hold-on-to-the-past move that will shut out people from even thinking about new ways of doing things. It’s ok for a leader to honour the past, but they must say goodbye at some point to enable the organization to continually renew itself and survive.

▪️Measure employees on how well they follow internal policies. If you manage performance and compensation on how well people ‘Colour inside the lines’ and conform to existing rules they will be be solely internally focused and unlikely to advance changes to keep pace with the dynamics of the external environment.

▪️‘De-reward’ people for making mistakes in the pursuit of excellence, quality and perfection. Emphasize the importance of ‘getting it right the first time’ rather than trial and error. Communicate examples of employees making mistakes to show what is not ok.

▪️Insist on arduous analysis of every change being contemplated regardless of complexity. Impose a strict business case process that emphasizes analysis methodology rather than enabling fast and easy decision making.

▪️Recognize people for the ways they relentlessly practice the internal rules of the organization. A ‘Best Rule Follower’ award program always gets the message across that doing what the rules say is more important than using individual judgement and expression.

▪️Never allow people to step beyond their immediate role boundaries. Focus everyone’s attention on their job description. Keep their blinders on; never allow them to think beyond to discover the NEW art of the possible.

Do you witness any of these actions in your organization?

If you do, you are witnessing the annihilation of original thought.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 3.13.17 at 04:16 am by Roy Osing
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