By John Carroll
Carroll on Work

If you’re trying to lose a few pounds, you may want to consider a biological truth before buying the latest weight-reduction formula: The human body is capable of losing only three pounds of true body weight per week. Any reports of more pounds lost in seven days are based either on a combination of body weight and water or are a fabrication.

If you’re attempting to make a significant change for the better in your business, consider an organizational truth before jumping into the latest management fad: Rarely will a new approach instantly fix problems that have persisted for years.

So why do companies purchase the latest fad, craze or theorist’s book instead of seeking quality help? Here are several reasons:

1. They hold onto the false hope that there really is a magic pill that will undo years of poor individual or organizational habits.

2. The same entrepreneurial spirit that brought them to this point is what they tend to rely on to get them to the next level. This is flawed logic; it was usually their “do-it-yourself” approach that created the situation they now desire to remedy.

3. It allows them to avoid the hardest work there is, which is truly thinking through the issue, challenge or problem.

4. They’ll try anything other than implement the discipline needed to solve the problem, such as releasing the non-productive veteran or shutting a perennially unprofitable part of the business.

The “do-it-yourself” approach

Are you ready and willing to remove yourself and your organization from a condition or situation that you may have inadvertently created? Going it alone can be hazardous to your organizational health.

Some of the obstacles to consider in this approach:

Too close to the action. We’re too often blind to the causative factors of a process issue, such as quality defects in manufacturing or distribution, because we’re right in the middle of them.

I’ll have another, please. We have a tendency to do what we’ve already been doing with a bit more elbow grease, hoping that just trying harder will save the day. In reality, we likely have people who are already making valiant efforts to improve processes and results.

If it worked for them. We borrow ideas from friends, pattern our approach identically and wonder why it didn’t duplicate the result. What we often don’t get is the full story of the small steps taken by the other organization, the challenges they had to overcome and how many people they involved in creating and implementing key changes.

Technology to the rescue. We’d like to believe that the proper technology or latest gadget will address and correct the situation. Considering that technology often speeds existing processes, we run the risk of delivering more undesirable results in less time.

Outside involvement

Your investment in involving outsiders in a process or system improvement can be considerable regardless of whether you’re paying a fee for the assistance. The impact of your time, energy and focus will likely be significant, let alone the ripple effect generated by an improvement process gone sour.

Paid or otherwise, the outsiders will stand a better chance of helping you if you follow these simple steps:

1. Be open in communicating the problem. This is no time to allow embarrassment to get in the way of sharing key information.

2. Be clear on expectations. Write out what is expected from the outsider as well as from you in the process that ensues.

3. Ask as many questions as you need for crystal-clear understanding. Don’t hesitate to ask for clarification on a point or approach. It’s better to measure twice and cut once.

4. Encourage widespread ownership of the solution. Buy-in among your team or across your organization can be your best friend in this process. The lack of it can be your mortal enemy.

5. Set regular review points to check progress. Shorter time intervals between checks at the outset can make a huge difference. This is true with early successes that build momentum as well as with initial setbacks that can provide great insight.

6. Appreciate the small victories. Steps toward improvement aren’t easy and can require heavy lifting on the part of team members. Reinforce and reward such behaviors and celebrate the early victories, however small, as a way of encouraging continued progress in the right direction.

Taking these steps to address and correct a flawed process within your organization can and will help you on the road to improvement. Remember that your condition didn’t happen overnight, so its solution will take time as well.

John Carroll is a business consultant, speaker, author and president of Unlimited Peformance Inc. in Mount Pleasant. E-mail him at jcarroll@uperform.com.

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