When any organization thinks about “Delivery
Excellence”, it is always a top down approach and using a guiding framework
like ISO, CMMI, ITIL, Malcom Baldridge, Deming’s principles, etc. Many a times
a special department or authority is created to run this program. This
authority creates all the necessary processes and supporting templates and
tools. These are implemented through training, coaching, and auditing to ensure
uniform progress and results across the organization. There are several
measurement criteria defined to measure the progress along the way to final destination.
There are external audits/ assessments carried out to understand the progress
made and results achieved through an unbiased view. The whole structure works
like a uniform machine and each person knows the expectation from him/her and
performs to that expectation in anticipation of good results. I have observed
that organizations try to maintain the highest level of certification/
assessment throughout and it is herculean effort on both employees and
organization every 3/5 years to undergo an external audit. There is no roadmap
beyond this certification for further improvement, there are still stray cases
where things fall through the cracks but the life goes on.
In my earlier blog on Delivery Excellence on Auto Pilot*, I
had discussed how to make this top down process more effective and lasting in
terms of results. However I am going to discuss a different approach here which
will remove all the pitfalls of the top down approach and provide a fresh
outlook to achieve the delivery excellence.
Organization is
made up of people. Each person is responsible for several activities and part of
several teams for whom these activities are performed. These teams are also
part of some larger teams and so on. Finally all the teams form one team at
organization level which is responsible to achieve organizational excellence. In
this new bottoms-up approach we keep the definition of excellence in mind i.e. “Excellence
is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what
one has done previously in the entire activities one performs on personal and
professional life. The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving
upwards. There is not end as to final level of excellence” and encourage each
person to the following; we are sure to have a positive result
- Self Question* the way he/she is doing a specific activity and see how it can be done better and how it can help the team he/she is working for to achieve its objective
- Experiment* with new way of operation and see the results. If the results are encouraging, then implement the new way of working and share this improved way of working along with results with others in team. A new and improved way of doing a specific activity has been found and registered in the repository for reference by others in the organization. A small step in achieving delivery excellence has been taken and multiple such steps create a momentum necessary for big result
- Repeat this process from individual level to team levels up the hierarchy
One question comes to mind; - If
everyone in the organization starts thinking and implementing his/her own
improvements then will it not be chaotic and uncontrolled delivery? The answer is NO
The definition of excellence guides
the individuals that their improvement actions are required to achieve better
results than their current level and thus all the new improvements will direct
the results in positive direction. We can build a common high level metrics for
each team (which we already have) and performance be measured based on the
same. As long as we are able to measure the performance through these metrics,
the teams can have freedom to do their improvement journey as per their thought process. Building certain individual metrics like Say-do ratio* and Ownership
Quotient* will help teams to monitor themselves on regular basis. In the
beginning, the process may look un controlled as there is a significant level
of freedom available to the teams on ground, however it enables teams to
contribute better in achieving overall results. Allowing people to perform*
provides a great motivation and ensures results.
*- There are separate blogs for each
of the idea mentioned here and can be referred for detailed information
