Be Different or be dead

July 4, 2011

How worthless activities in your business can be removed in a simple way

Source: Unsplash

How worthless activities in your business can be removed in a simple way.

So you have developed a new business plan for your organization. You have communicated it far and wide. You seem to have buy-in. But progress to the brave new world is slower than you expected.

Your analysis of the situation produces the overwhelming feedback that people don’t have the time to take on any more work.

There are only so many hours of the day and they have no more to give. In addition, people are saying there are too many priorities. They don’t know what to do with so many demands of their time.

Sound familiar? Ever been here? Too much work. Too many number one priorities. The symptoms that CRAP abounds in your organization.

CRAP is work that is no longer relevant to the new strategy you have created but for some reason it continues…. and continues…. and continues. Sucking up energy and hours of the day that could and should be devoted to doing the new stuff necessary to progress the organization.

Some people like CRAP.

▪️ CRAP is comfortable.
▪️ CRAP is familiar.
▪️ CRAP is fun.
▪️ CRAP is the old world.
▪️ CRAP may have got you recognized and promoted.

CRAP needs to be destroyed in order to be able to take on the new challenges. The biggest source of resource to do new stuff is the time currently being spent on doing CRAP

There are three things you can do to eliminate it.

1. Assign a Cut the CRAP champion

You need one person whose sole reason for being is to identify CRAP and get rid of it. In fact their compensation plan needs to be based on how much CRAP they are able to dispose of. No CRAP; No PAY.
You say you don’t have any CRAP? You haven’t looked close enough.

2. Create a Cut list

Identify those things that are now active which are candidates to cut. Do a complete inventory of all projects on the table. Evaluate each in terms of consistency with the new direction. Build a criteria for the evaluation. And make the Cut list as long as you can.

There will be a tendency for people to rationalize everything as being necessary. don’t fall into this trap otherwise you won’t uncover new available time. Be sure to record the people working on the CRAP because they represent potential resources for re-deployment or exit (if they are unwilling to accept a new assignment and the new strategy).

3. Create a Keep list

This list must be kept small in order to get new bandwidth for new things. Be brutal on what goes on this list. If a project is less than 80% aligned with the new strategy put it on the Cut list.

The Keep list must only contain No Brainer Work that is so obviously necessary that it attracts no debate whatsoever. It’s ok to move a project from Keep to Cut easier than from Cut to Keep. Pressure must be on resourcing the critical few things that are necessary to have an 80% impact on the new strategy.

You now know what you have to do.

STOP the Cut stuff and reassign to the Keep Stuff..

And tell everyone in the organization what you have done and the new time you have found for them to be able to implement the NEW.

And keep the Cut the CRAP champion on stand-by for an audit in 12 months to make sure the CRAP doesn’t creep back in.

Cheers,
Roy
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• Posted 7.4.11 at 11:00 am by Roy Osing
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