Workplace Reconnaissance

Gathering pertinent information to make informed decisions leads to greater likelihood of success. I call this task "Workplace Reconnaissance".

Lets look a common scenario.

The leader of a business is in the middle of working on something important for the future of their company. They are interrupted by a team member who throws a fire into their lap that requires immediate guidance. The leader gives a quick answer that helps put out the fire. The fire is put out and things resume to normal.

The fire was put out. Things are normal again. Until the next fire...

This situation is scary and frustrating to the leader. What would have happened if they were not available to put out the fire? Who created the fire? How could this fire have been eliminated before it started? These are the standard questions the leader would ask. They are important and should lead to improved processes and training that help lessen the frequency of the fires. But this is not enough.

The other necessary question, which often goes unasked, is "What would I have done if I would have had more facts and a few more minutes to think this through". The results of these snap decisions often do not get reviewed as thoroughly as other decisions. Management does not hold itself as accountable with these situations. It is these decisions, though, that they should be held most accountable for. Managers have the built-in excuse of the circumstance, but that excuse does not show up in the Balance Sheet.

This is why Workplace Reconnaissance is so important. Getting facts together for your leader so that they can make intelligent decisions despite the conditions. This helps limit downside risk, and lets the leader start at a higher point then ground zero. This builds the habit of making informed decisions.

The important process for gathering Reconnaissance should be part of the training program of all direct reports of company leaders. The impact can be significant. It can include saving time, money, and raising the overall level of the company.

Home Run - Defined

Many breakdowns within a company are related to communication and delegation. With "Project Perspectives", I demonstrated my approach to building an improvement initiative. With "What Does a Home Run Look Like", I am demonstrating how to ensure that the initiative gets completed.

Once the topic is run through "Perspectives", you will have a lot of information that needs to be organized into tasks to be completed. In order for the initiative to be graded, we need to have a set of measurable goals. To develop this list, we build "What does a home run look like".

It should specifically state each part of the project. For example purposes, lets use "Blood From a Turnip". Here Resicom wanted to drive down costs without cutting people, so we created a contest. A Home Run checklist for this could include:

1. All entries to be submitted by... (must have a deadline so that you can have closure)
   
2. Each participant shall prepare all of their entries in a single Microsoft Word document using Helvetica font and 12 point size (consistent format will help limit editing down the line when building a report)
3. Each entry shall have a name that summarizes the initiative
   
4. Each entry shall have a clear description of what your plan would be to get the initiative started (ensuring that more thought is put into the idea and the recipient has some sense of direction for the improvement)
   
5. Each participant shall email me the .doc document by the due date (method for submittal)
6. No entires can involve cutting staff as a method of driving down costs
   

Now each of the people that are participating in the contest have something to be graded against. Not their ideas, which comes later, rather their completion of the task of generating the ideas. I can ask: were they submitted by specified date; were they in the right format; were they submitted with a name and description; were they sent to me in the proper format; were they within the parameters set (anything except cutting people/salaries).

If the answer is yes to all of those items, then the delegation of the tasks was successful. If the tasks were delegated to the right people within your organization, then the quality of the entries should be good. The focus of this posting is the delegation piece, a future posting will be on training, which will focus on the quality piece.

Project Perspectives

When faced with an improvement initiative, it is important to look at the topic from many different perspectives in order to develop a comprehensive approach to the executing it. I have created and successfully utilized the following five step approach, which I have named "Project Perspectives":

1. Identify the intents and purposes of the initiative
   
2. Establish a how to process to achieve each of the intents and purposes
3. Establish a list of the time requirements and deadlines needed to execute
4. Establish a list of resources required to execute
5. Establish follow up protocol to ensure the initiative has taken effect and is being executed as desired