Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com February 23, 2015 • Hartford Business Journal 21 Biz Books Dismantling roadblocks to continuous improvement "H ow to Succeed with Continu- ous Improvement — A Primer for Becoming the Best in the World" by Joakim Ahlström (McGraw Hill Education, $23). Toyota defines a problem as "the gap between where you were and where you wanted to be." It defines an improvement as "a problem solved." Sounds simple. It isn't. Why? Small problems often fly under the radar. Action is taken when the problem becomes too big to ignore. At that point, the firm faces urgent improvement, which delays other projects because the fix diverts people, time and money away from them. If dealing with the small issues was thought of as an ongoing part of closing the aforementioned gap, continu- ous improvement would result. It would also minimize prob- lems down the road. Ahlström believes that three things get in the way of continuous improvement: 1. The lack of micro feedback. Com- pany results are posted on a macro basis. Employees don't see how they affect the results. As a result, they disengage. The fix: weekly departmental meetings (15-20 minutes max) that allow employees to talk about progress and obstacles. By discussing obstacles, groupthink can find solutions. 2. Unnecessary hassle. How many hoops do people have to jump through to get something done? Procedures are often roadblocks to progress. Procedures need to be relevant to how you plan on working, not to how you worked in the past. Layers of decision- making add to employee disen- gagement, too. 3. Internal customers. Colleagues are creators and end-users of work product. Think of them as suppliers and users of information. Just like your ultimate customer, they must have their needs met. Appreciating their varying perspectives will improve collaboration and create solutions. Key takeaway: To bridge the gap and solve your problem, managers and their teams have to constantly ask and answer three questions: 1. Where are we? 2. Where are we going? 3. How are we going to get there? Hint on the answer to 3 — do some- thing different or do some things differently. • • • "Nothing But the Truth: Secrets from Top Intelligence Experts to Con- trol Conversations and Get the Infor- mation You Need" by Maryann Karinch (Career Press, $15.99). Many people are afraid to tell the whole truth because they fear reprisal, or are too embarrassed to admit they did something wrong. Rather than accepting responsibility, they make excuses and blame others. Manag- ers can ill afford anything but the truth. Bad information leads to bad decisions. Karinch discusses three steps to dis- cerning the truth. 1. Never use fear as a motivation for your conversation. If you do, the respons- es will always be guarded, and subject to errors of omission. 2. Establish rapport. Once established, trust and respect follow — and so does the truth. You can break anyone's ice with open body lan- guage (e.g. smiling when speak- ing, maintaining eye contact, not folding your arms, etc.). Asking open-ended questions and listening intently shows your interest in the person and their information. Knowing things about someone opens their doors, too. Observation and their colleagues are prime sourc- es. In today's connected world, a Web search yields tons of useful information, too. 3. Motivating conversation. Play- ing off of your open-ended questions and listening, move the conversation along by providing incentives to speak truth. Pique their curiosity by asking questions that suggest you know something that the other party would like to know more about. This prompts their interest in the topic and deep- ens the conversational bond. Flattery can be useful, too. By boost- ing someone's self-esteem, you're build- ing respect. When people believe their information and opinions are val- ued, they provide more candid answers. Silence motivates, too. Occasionally, create conver- sational tension by remain- ing silent while maintaining eye contact. The other party will begin speaking to re- establish the connection. The bottom line: The deep- er the conversation, the more likely you'll find the truth. n Jim Pawlak is a nationally syndicated book reviewer. Jim Pawlak talkinG Points Spot crises today, or they'll run you over tomorrow By Andrea Obston C rises happen. And the ones that are the toughest to recover from are those that smolder for a while before they catch fire. Consider the 11 years that GM's ignition switch situation simmered while manage- ment chose to ignore it; or the NFL's silence on player concussions. There was also the 13-year gap between initial investigations of Jerry Sandusky's conduct with young boys and his ulti- mate arrest in 2011. Where were those in authority while these situations smol- dered, gained oxygen and ultimately turned into reputation infer- nos? Who knew and when? And why didn't they take action? Because they believed their organizations could do no wrong. Hubris, my friends, often wins out over common sense when it comes to spotting crises. The truth is that most crises — two-thirds of those over the last 10 years — are slow growing incidents that are so low probability that managers refuse to acknowledge they could happen. But these low probability inci- dents carry high impact. They do significant damage to reputations and are much tougher to recover from. Consider the concussion issue: For over 20 years the NFL has sponsored studies about the long-term damage of repeated concussions among their players. These studies were often contradictory. However, by 2010, the NFL finally acknowledged that many of its ex-players were suffering from progressive degenerative dis- eases brought on by multiple concussions and other forms of head injuries. Meanwhile, participation in organized football is shrinking among players ages six through 14. It went down almost 5 percent between 2008 and 2012. In addition, nearly half of parents in a recent AP poll said they were not comfortable letting their children play football because of concussion concerns. And if you don't play a sport, you're less likely to watch it. Football is already seeing the impact of this festering crisis on its fan base. Millenni- als aren't attending college games or watching the NFL the way they used to. Here's the deal: If you don't spot and extinguish a crisis that starts as a "fire in the wastebasket", it's going to be much tougher to fight it when it's a forest fire. That's where crisis spotting comes in. When- ever we do a crisis plan for a client we make them go through an exercise that requires them to envision the worst. Why? Because if you open the door to the possibility that bad things might happen, someone is more likely to identify a cri- sis in-the-making early on. Here's how the exercise goes: We gather a sampling of people from the organization from management to front-line customer contacts. We ask them to imagine possible activities that could affect their business badly. We offer them various categories of cri- sis: those involving management, volunteers, employees, the regulatory environment, even the community in which their business oper- ates. We ask them to stretch and use their imaginations. Could the president embezzle funds and bankrupt the company? Could their main plant be hit by a hurricane? Could regulators impose stricter standards on the company's most profitable product? Then, we assign a vulnerability index to each scenario to help us prioritize them. The vulner- ability index is the product of the likelihood of the incident (on a one-to-10 scale) multiplied by the impact it could have (also one-to-10). In the embezzlement example, here's how it would work: There's a small, but still possible likelihood that the company's new president could embezzle funds. We'll give that a two on the likelihood scale. But, it if did happen, that would have enormous impact on the company's reputation, so let's give that an eight. That makes the vulner- ability index a 16 (2 X 8). If the plant is in Florida, the likelihood of a hurricane is more like a 10, but the impact will only be a three since it's a known risk in the Sunshine State. This crisis gets a 30 on the vul- nerability scale and should get more attention early on than the embezzlement possibility. Envisioning failure seems like something that would offend the Oprahs and Deepaks of the world, but it's a necessary step in build- ing a crisis plan that protects a company's reputation. Do it before you need to. n Andrea Obston is president of Andrea Obston Marketing Communications in Bloomfield. Andrea Obston ▶ ▶ Procedures are often roadblocks to progress. Procedures need to be relevant to how you plan on working, not to how you worked in the past. Layers of decision-making add to employee disengagement, too. ▶ ▶ The truth is that most crises — two-thirds of those over the last 10 years — are slow growing incidents that are so low probability that managers refuse to acknowledge they could happen.

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