The practice of management can be defined as analysis, development, and implementation of improvements in an organizational environment. We often find ourselves involved in improvement programs. Unfortunately, too often, the results of these efforts are disappointing.

There are roots of this disappointment that, if recognized, can be avoided if given appropriate forethought. These roots can be categorized in terms of the three basic questions faced by management -- What to change? To what to change to? and How to make the change happen?

What to change? Disappointing results come from failing to ask this question. Unless explicitly addressed, any benefit of the "improvement" is a matter of chance. Roots of disappointment associated with failure to clearly identify "what to change" include:

• Effort wasted on local improvements without gains in global performance.
• Improving symptomatic situations without addressing root causes.
• Jumping to solutions inappropriate for the specific system.
• Abandonment for a new "program of the month."

To what to change to? Even if appropriate understanding of the situation is developed, there are still pitfalls facing improvement programs resulting from the design of those improvements. Without the development of a clear cause-and-effect understanding of the improvement effort, results are lost to:

• Jumping to solutions without assessing their improvement potential.
• Focusing on "low-hanging fruit" but forgetting about the rest of the tree.
• Failure to consider implications beyond the target of the "improvement."
• Being successful but not taking advantage of that success.
• Allowing immediacy to threaten sustainability.

How to make the change happen? No matter how well thought out a target and direction for improvement, it becomes a matter of implementation. Putting in place a significant improvement deserves careful planning, support of necessary players, and tracking of outcomes along the way in order to effectively carry out those plans. Otherwise, program and effort results can fall to:

• Failure to achieve buy-in for the change.
• Lack of focus on the task at hand.
• Distraction of participants' local concerns.
• Failure to see progress toward objectives.

Many managers probably recognize at least some of these failures as a source of disappointment in their efforts, and by reasonable extension, in their organizational performance. Avoiding them requires systemic and systematic thinking in the targeting, design, and implementation of improvement. The Theory of Constraints (TOC) suggests that this requires first a holistic understanding of the organizational goal and the primary aspect of the system that prevents achieving more of that goal.

TOC not only provides insight at a conceptual level, but also provides tools for analysis, functional applications for rational local improvements, and processes for necessary buy-in. Probably even more important, the TOC approach to analysis, design and implementation is a scalable process that results in a holistic approach for getting out of the cycle of ineffective improvement programs and into a true strategic process of on-going whole-system improvement.

Think about it . . . and about which of these lie at the root of your disappointments . . . and about how you are dealing with them. (I’d be interested to hear which of these you recognize so I can focus future columns on subjects meaningful to my readers. Drop me a line.)

©2001, Frank Patrick

This is one of a series of columns on improvement, TOC, constraint management, change management, systems thinking, uncommon sense, and whatever else comes into my mind. Suggestions for topics are welcome. - FP, 908-874-8664 or via the contact page of this site.

If you are interested in using these 1/2-page columns for your APICS, ASQ, PMI, or IIE newsletter, let me know through the same channels, and I'll send you the more easily usable MS Word versions.

-- Frank Patrick

Related links:

Unconstrained Thinking Index