Meandering Mind - Eva Dillner [20]
If Henry Ford had been practical we would not have had his automobiles. He had a good paying steady job so why should he pursue this crazy dream? If Bill Gates had finished college and got his degree like a practical person he never would have started Microsoft. There are many examples where being practical will not fulfill your dreams. There is no value judgment here about visionary or practical types being better or worse than the other. We simply need to recognize that each one excels at different things.
When you prioritize you look at all the ideas and try to put them in order of most to least important or most to least interesting. Then pick one, two or maybe three at the top to focus on. This is another key to long range success. Focusing on a few key projects instead of trying to manage a whole lot gets you farther in the end. Not all projects have the same importance or long-term value.
Moving along in the re-engineering process we're now ready to analyze. Here the bean counters are very useful. See, each and every one of us has a very important job to do and each and every one of us is essential for the whole - from the person who does the janitorial service to the CEO of the company.
Each and every one of us is essential to the whole process. See it's Divinely planned that way. The key is to understand ourselves and each other well enough to know who would do what best. Learn to work with the life energy so that the structure and flow are optimized.
Of the ideas prioritized as most interesting there are a number of factors that can be analyzed. In the warehouse clubs process we analyzed potential sales and production figures, recalculated manufacturing costs, re-evaluated supplier and vital supplies processes. Each project is unique. There is something about going through nuts and bolts calculations that help to clarify the best alternatives. Life is part winging it and part dollars and cents.
It has to make “cents.”
Now we get to the plan and organize step. Whenever you re-engineer an entire process you have to essentially go back to the beginning and start the planning process all over again. It's like when you're computerizing a whole process, for example material resource planning. You don't just take the existing process and dump it into the computer. No, you look at it as if you were to design the process today from scratch. Ask yourself, “what would the process look like today, if I utilized the tools available on the computer? What is the actual information flow? How is the product put together?”
The actual, or informal communication chain is seldom the same as the organization plan calls for. Whenever you can align the business with the de facto communication chain, you will benefit.
When you have learned about all the existing ways of doing things, when you have brainstormed new ideas and analyzed them, you can proceed to organize the whole shebang into a new whole. The key here is to let go of the way things have been done. Let yourself think outside the box.
In the warehouse club project the changes were gradual and iterative. We tested our way along, tried some ideas, discarded some, talked about it, and then continued the improvements. So the reduction in development cycle time evolved in due course. Your project is likely to be the same way - you won't go from 1 to 10 in one step, you will iterate and go through steps 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 on the way and not necessarily in that order. You may do 4 then 3 then back to 7 and so on but in the end you get there.
But remember it's a journey. If we could only keep that in mind when we get so focused on a goal that we lose sight of living here and now.
Last but not least we get to implement by putting all those ideas into practice. The new processes, the revised order system and the new contract packager brought on line.
One of the major contributions to our success was the involvement of everyone in the entire