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Troubled waters require capable leaders at
the helm
By Larry Coté, President
- Lean Advisors Inc.
The rumbles on our economic outlook are troubling. The dollar is still
up, foreign investment, profits and sales are down. Low cost Asian competition
is eroding our market share. Financial scandals and corporate governance
issues keep flaring into the headlines. Disasters such as terrorism, possible
pandemics, and war continually reshape the world in which we work and
live. There are so many "big" global issues, so much apparent
chaos, that our minds are often distracted from the day-to-day jobs we
do leading our businesses.
The world as we know it has changed - both economically and socially.
What hasn't changed however, is the customers' insatiable appetite for
more value, faster delivery and better service.
Most business leaders are eager to return to their pre-recession profits
and growth. But even when the economy is robust again, we may find the
bounce back to previous profit levels is not a "slam dunk" in
spite of a revived and thriving economy. During the past couple of years,
while business executives have been making short-term decisions to survive,
customers and markets have continued to change at a rate never seen before.
If we turn our worries and blame for new shortfalls to the currency fluctuations
and Asian competition, it starts to sound like the same old "blame
game" with different players. It's easy to fly high on adrenaline
when you look at these global issues and threats. But, for a moment, let's
step back and look at our business challenges from a lower altitude and
a more local focus.
In doing this, we need to disregard the factors affecting our businesses
that we can't influence and begin to look at those we can. The ones we
have little or no influence over are things like the recession, currency
fluctuations and major disasters. The area we can influence and affect
is our own long and short-term strategies for transforming our companies,
making them more competitive and customer focused. The bottom line is
let's stick to our "knitting," do our jobs and focus more on
our roles as organizational leaders.
In North America we've proven that we can provide products and services
competitively through innovation, inspired product development and comprehensive
efforts to eliminate waste. But it does require a prolonged and concentrated
effort. Leaders aren't hired to cry wolf when chaos threatens. The terms
of employment are to use our leadership talents and drive improvements
that will be seen and sustained on the bottom line.
We need to readjust how we use these talents and not be distracted by
global factors, which are out of our control for the most part. We must
accept the role we were hired for and focus on the business operations
where we can have a real impact.
We are leaders, so let's lead. Most activities, whatever the company,
can be classified as waste of one kind or another once you start to see
it. As leaders, it is our responsibility to set the direction and motivate
our staff to understand how to remove this waste properly rather than
making incremental or point improvements.
This requires seeing and analyzing the process from end to end, not just
at points or segments of the process. That becomes your road map to success.
Beneficial change happens in a very structured, sequential and organized
fashion. Your teams aren't caught running around chasing low hanging fruit
while creating what we call "exciting chaos." When everyone
rushes reactively to improve their individual areas they feel virtuous,
after all they are helping the company, aren't they? In fact, they are
only improving their areas or departments, often at the detriment of the
entire process. It's your leadership and your measured future state plan
that will bring order to chaos. Reactive flurry kills profits faster than
any big external threat!
Striving to improve our own competitiveness by providing customers faster
and better products or services will accomplish more than worrying about
the next global crisis looming just around the corner. The only futures
game we need to be in is the one that cuts waste so the customer sees
more value.
Science tells us that nature likes order - it's human agents that generate
the chaos. There are things that we can control - so let's get busy and
do it!
| Larry Coté is well known for
his penetrating analysis and creative energy. He was employed by the
Lean Enterprise Institute in Boston for almost two years as C.O.O./E.V.P.
He was the Founder and President of the Lean Enterprise Institute
Canada. Larry has worked with 100's of companies at various stages
of their Lean journey in many different business sectors. He is particularly
skilled at working with senior executives in the boardroom to plan,
problem solve and create Lean corporate strategies. His r&d work
along with his past 'hands-on' experience has led to new ways to spread
Lean throughout North America. You can reach Larry by email at: lcote@leanadvisors.com.
For information: www.leanadvisors.com. |
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