Fractured Planning Processes

In a report entitled Retail Merchandising: Buckling Down in a Tough Economy, authors Paula Rosenbaum and Steve Rowen of Retail Systems Research (RSR) tell us that nearly half (47% on average, but 55% of performing laggards in the survey) of respondents to their survey said that their leading business challenge was “fractured [inventory] planning processes.”

Unfortunately, in the published report to which I have access, Rosenbaum and Rowen do not elaborate on just what the respondents consider to be a “fractured planning process,” although the accompanying prose tends to suggest that this description relates to business processes tied to inventory planning that are not unified or even in good end-to-end communications across the enterprise and beyond.

A common problem

While this survey deals with retailers and inventory specifically, it does highlight a problem in small-to-mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that I have observed for nearly 30 years: that is, the lack of “planning” at all. For sure, most SMBs do develop plans for special projects. If they are going to purchase new or upgraded technologies, build a new or extend existing facilities, open a new location, or add a new product line, then they do prepare and plan in a more or less formal way.

What executives and managers do not do on a regular basis is develop a plan for making more money – both now and in the future. Most executives tend to get their business rolling and then set the “cruise control.” Then, with the vehicle barreling down the road, they spend their time fighting fires and trying to keep up the organization’s momentum with little or no thought about how the terrain (read: business environment) has changed until something big hits (like a recession or big competitor appears on the horizon).

So, what keeps executives from “planning” more frequently and more effectively for business improvement?

My experience suggests the some blend of following key components comprise the answer:

1. Many executives developed a business plan once, and now they have a business. It never occurred to them that planning for “improving” the business is required or would even help. Being entrepreneurs, they tend to manage by the seat of their pants and trust their “gut” for what will bring improvement.
2. You can’t drain the swamp when you’re up to your neck in alligators. Many executives spend the bulk of their time being reactive, rather than proactive. There time is spent taking care of things that others don’t get done or fighting fires so people can return to doing what they need to do to keep the business running.
3. Unless something big is happening, most executives don’t think time spent in “planning” – rather than “doing” – is a good investment.
4. Far too many executives do not know of – or know how to apply – a good “tool” for effective planning. In the absence of a good tool, most executives feel that time spent in planning is not going to be effective anyway.
5. Things are changing too fast. We just need to do the best we can to survive, right now. Of course, in good times, or when things were not “changing too fast,” these same executives used other excuses for not planning.

A POOGI: A Process Of On-Going Improvement

In times like these – challenging economic times – it is more important than ever for executives and managers in companies that hope to survive despite the economic upheaval to make a concerted effort at ongoing improvement. That is, to start a POOGI within their firm.

Why?

Because it is becoming increasingly difficult to compete for the consumers dollars.  If you are not improving your value proposition in a process of on-going improvement, then day-by-day your products and services are losing out. Dollars that used to come your way are now going to other businesses – and I don’t mean just businesses that you see as your competitors. I’m talking about dollars that consumers used to spend for your goods and services are now going, instead, to buy groceries, fuel, or pay off credit cards – anywhere but into your bank account. That’s why you need a plan to increase the value of your offerings in an on-going way.

How to begin

How should you begin a POOGI?

You should begin by figuring out your present situation. You need to unlock your organization’s “tribal knowledge” and understand your current reality. Naturally, the right tool for doing this is called the Current Reality Tree (CRT).

For more information on Current Reality Trees, including step-by-step information on how to begin constructing one, click here. If you would like to have help unlocking your firm’s “tribal knowledge” effectively and in constructing your CRT, then contact me directly.

Next steps

Once your CRT has given you and your management team a clearer view of what needs to change, the next step is to decide what should the change look like. In other words, if you and your team took steps to reduce or eliminate Un-Desirable Effects (UDEs – pronounced: YOU-dee-eez) revealed by your CRT, what would your organizational cause-and-effect flow look like? The Thinking Processes tool used to expose this future state is called the Future Reality Tree (FRT).

Other of the Thinking Processes may also be applied, including:

• Evaporating Cloud
• Prerequisite Tree
• Negative Branch Reservations

However, for your “planning roadmap,” the tool that will you and your team move from where you are today (your CRT) to your planned future state (FRT), you will want to build a Transition Tree (TrT).

Again, if you’d like to have assistance in effectively applying the Thinking Processes and in creating a POOGI in your organization, then feel free to contact me directly. But, whatever you do, do not sit and do nothing and let the recession drive one more enterprise out of business.

©2010 Richard D. Cushing

Surviving the recession with breakthrough thinking - Part 3

 [Continuation]

As you and your management team will realize as you work through the Thinking Processes (TPs), this approach to achieving breakthrough thinking recognizes that each challenge you and your organization faces requires a unique approach and a unique solution. Unlike other methods of problem-solving, applying the TPs recognizes the distinct needs, interests, abilities, limitations and power of all of the stakeholders. This capability of the process helps achieve breakthroughs by maximizing the quality and the effectiveness of the solution. Furthermore, the fact the solution will be invented by you and your management team, the likelihood of full implementation is increased. After all, people seldom work against their own inventions.

Discovering the transitional steps

One of the dangers of adopting or adapting a solution from a previous effort or somewhere or someone else is that, in doing so, the “easy answer” too frequently leads your team to also accept an “easy implementation” in which the transitional requirements are never fully understood. Warning! If the transitional steps are not understood – and usually not even clearly articulated – then the transitional steps are never fully developed for implementation.

What your management team may have previously understood as “the problem” and “the solution” have usually been nothing more than cryptic images shrouded in a fog of language leading to lots of action but seldom (if ever) a real breakthrough in improvement. However, if you have undertaken to build and understand the Current Reality Tree (CRT), then you have in your hands a document that depicts clearly and logically what is constraining your organization from making more money tomorrow than you are making today. Chances are that, as a result, you and your managers have a clearer understanding of your organization as a whole than you have ever had previously. You may be feeling a sense of empowerment – a renewed sense of being in control – that you have been lacking as manager for years now.

However, the Thinking Processes have more to offer than helping you clearly understand the “root” of your problem – the one thing (or very small number of things) that is your bottleneck (constraint) to achieving more of the goal. The CRT you have built has helped you answer a critical question for good management: What needs to change?

But two additional questions need to be answered, as well: What should the change look like? And, How do we effect the change? Fortunately, the Thinking Processes supply powerful tools to help your team discover and clearly articulate answers to these questions.

By building a Transition Tree (TrT), your management team will go through a Thinking Process that will help you apply sound logic to determining the transitional steps necessary to move from your organization’s Current Reality to your intended Future Reality. When you are done, your team should have three Thinking Process logical “trees” – a Current Reality Tree, a Transition Tree, and a Future Reality Tree. These three documents represent answers to the three critical questions to which your management team needs sound answers:

1.       Current Reality Tree – What needs to change?

2.       Future Reality Tree – What should the change look like?

3.       Transition Tree – How do we effect the change?

Note that the TrT should become your “road map” to change. This document, you will find, should clearly define the necessary steps to achieving the desired change right along with the rationale for taking these steps. Without such a map it is easy to get lost or lose focus on the breakthrough your team has calculated for achieving more of the goal.

Don’t get derailed

Chances are, while you and your management team are building the Transition Tree, that there will be some that will step forward say, “We won’t be able to do that because….” There are a couple of important points to consider when this happens.

First, keep your focus on what happens most in making more money for your organization. If you can increase Throughput on 97% of your transactions, do not let the unpredictable 3% of exceptions keep you from achieving the breakthrough change for the vast majority of circumstances. Paying too much attention to these exceptions will likely distort your solution.

However, if there is an objection raised that needs to be evaluated and where it could have an impact on effecting the overall change anticipated by the FRT, then there is a Thinking Process for this, as well. Under such circumstance, you and your team should consider what Eliyahu Goldratt called “Negative Branches.” These are smaller logic trees that supply answers to questions such as: “What will we do if…?”

Don’t get stuck

Sometimes – in fact, with some frequency – management teams such as yours get caught on the horns of a dilemma. They find that there appear to be rational arguments for two mutually exclusive paths to the same interim objective in their Transition Tree development.

For example: A manufacturing manager is measured and rewarded on two different metrics – defect rates and equipment maintenance expenses. Of course, he wants to be a good manager and to be rewarded properly for being a good manager, so he wants simultaneously produce quality parts and hold-down the equipment maintenance expenses. He knows that he can reduce maintenance expenses by doing on-demand maintenance only. He also knows that he can achieve lower defect rates if he applies routine preventive maintenance on the equipment under his management. Which of the two approaches to equipment maintenance should he choose?

Fortunately, the Thinking Processes have an answer for this situation, too. The tool is called the Evaporating Cloud and is critical to actually achieving breakthrough solutions.

Summary

To my knowledge, no for-profit organization in the world has ever achieved ascendency in its industry through “cost-cutting” efforts. Companies that grow and gain market share are more likely to be those that have achieved breakthroughs.

There are three basic ways to reach a breakthrough in your organization’s thinking:

1.       By chance

2.       By hiring people who are intuitively breakthrough thinkers

3.       By finding and applying a tool that is proven in drawing out breakthrough thinking from ordinary executives and managers – like the Thinking Processes

Which will your organization choose?

©2010 Richard D. Cushing