Time and Resources
“Our People Always Tell Us They Don’t Have Enough Time and Resources to Do the Things that Need to Get Done.”
The Challenge
Organizations are in a constant state of reactive/crisis management. There is never enough time or resources to get all the work done. Reducing budgets is the order of the day. Longer-term consequences receive minimal consideration. By patching the crisis of the day without fixing the real problem (the root cause), those crises raise their ugly heads over and over again.
We must help our employees find a way to balance their time more effectively between the immediate crisis and a focus on improving work flow and achieving longer term goals?
The Core Problem
Time spent on failures and re-work take up as much as 35% of work time in many organizations. Typical budget reductions do not take into account the amount of time spent on failures. They do not allow for time or resources to conduct root cause analysis or to implement corrective actions. Failures do not automatically go away with budget reductions. They usually increase shortly afterward! Remaining resources are drained even more and failures increase. A downward spiral of work quality and employee morale takes hold. Frontline workers begin to doubt the veracity and competency of management.
The Solution
A Dynamic Set of Trainings for Managers and Frontline Workers Attack Problems at the Root Cause and Provides Innovative Solutions and Buy-in.
Within our executive and leadership workshops, we establish a clear definition of the various tasks that teams/departments perform and why. Participants then determine how well time and current resources are being utilized for each one. These activities generate a mindset change for managers. If they do not allot any time on actions required to permanently eliminate failures, their probability of surviving in today’s business environment is seriously compromised.
During the workshops, most managers realize that, with more than 25% of their departmental resources spent on failures, they need to invest some resources into prevention. The payoff is greater than two to one, an excellent return on investment. Additionally, freed time and resources lead to even bigger payoffs as well as improved profitability.
With managers now trained to help their workers initiate and implement change, frontline workers learn skills to pinpoint failures, determine root cause, and provide solutions with cost/benefit analysis, metrics and implementation plans. Frontline work teams go out and implement these root cause solutions, with the support of management, and report back to managers and executive sponsors with measurable results. With this dynamic of managers and frontline working together with a flow of frank honest information in both directions, failures are eliminated and failure work-time is cut dramatically, freeing resources to accomplish more – including the work that was previously left undone….Goodbye Backlog!
A dynamic of competency, enthusiasm and mutual respect becomes the order of the day.
