Sitting in the airport in Frankfort waiting for the plane to Dubrovnik, I was thinking about all the steps that must be executed flawlessly for me to safely board the plane and arrive, without incident, in Croatia. We expect all airline travel to be executed flawlessly. And, there are so many systems and checklists that are followed exactly to make that happen.
Sytems and checklists. How are yours? How much institutional knowledge in your organization is not documented? Creating checklists requires us to verify with everyone that the way we think it is done is actually how it is done every day.
One of the reasons good systems fail is that all the efffort to create them results in good compliance for a few years. Then, individuals decide they like their way better and stop following the system. There is no discussion of making changes or the requested changes are not followed through and soon the systems don’t work so well.
Who in your organization is responsible for making systems run better? Is there even an individual who is designated as the champion for process improvement.?
This week, look at your execution critically. Be tough. Your customers certainly are.