I’d like to talk to you about how you could avoid the One-Hit Wonders in your improvement work. I’m standing here by my studio. I have been recording new exciting training programs that will be out in a couple of weeks and I hope you will be as excited as I am recording them because it will be awesome stuff when it comes out.
Creating Improvements and Hope They Implement Themselves
Anyway, regarding the one hit wonders then, and today’s video. I see three things that happens in improvement work that are covered under the One-Hit Wonder umbrella. The first is that organizations do improvement work; they analyze the current situation, they design something better, and then … nothing.
It’s like they hope that it will implement by itself automatically, but that won’t happen. It is like you have a house, you’re designing your dream house and then you just leave the sketches, the blueprints, on the kitchen table of your current home, and hope that the building will build itself on your new lot. But that isn’t going to happen either.
Creating Improvements but Wait too Long to Implement
The second thing that I see is that people do the analysis, the design and then they intend to implement, so in their mindset they’re going to implement, but they hesitate … they hesitate … and they wait and then they wait some more.
And then they waited so long so when it’s time to implement, all the original enthusiasm fades. Everyone who was excited before begin to have doubts and now they will not actually do the implementation due to that.
People begin questioning the original improvement work. They’re doubling back and say, wait a minute: “Did we think right” and “things have happened” and so on. And that I addressed in an earlier video. I think it was back in June that I released that video where I addressed only that particular issue.
Managers Don’t Manage the New Processes
The third issue is that people do the analysis and design, and the implementation. But what happens then? Yes, the management team is not following along with the new improved business, so they manage the business in the same way as they manage the old business.
This means that there’s a gap between management and what’s happening the in the process. You’re not managing your new process, you’re managing the old process.
So how to then do something about these problems? My tip for today is then to look into the improvement model that you have and make sure:
- Your improvement model covers implementation of your improvements
- You model covers continuous improvements
So there’s two more phases that usually don’t follow along. Some models – those models – approach only to look on how you analyze and do the design, but not the implementation and the continuous improvement that you need to do in your business as well.
Shaper of Business Excellence Improvement Model
My model is called Shaper of Business Excellence and offers you a 360 degree solution for managing your improvement work. It takes you all around from going through the analysis phase, where you look at the situation in your current business. You then design it in a better way, then you implement it and put it into use. And then the last phase is how to run the new improved business and how to continuously improve up on it so it takes you full circle. And it will guide you through all these steps and that is what your model needs to do as well.
Because then you will avoid these one hit wonders that I titled this video, because otherwise it will be as a shooting star and people say, “Oh hey, we have something great” and nothing will happen. And I don’t want that to happen to you. I want your improvements to be implemented, and to serve your customers and the organization in a better way. Okay. With that said, I’m heading back into the studio to record some more training videos.
Stay tuned, those will be out in a couple of weeks or so, and until then, good luck and let’s go and shape our businesses for excellence.
