Category Archives: Systems strategy

The essentials of good management

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600 words | 3 minutes to read

From busyness…

A few years ago, I held a productivity session for a large group of managers who all had the same role but worked in different locations. The session theme was Essentialism, which is (essentially) saying no to the things that don’t matter so you have the time and resources to achieve the things that do.

I asked the group to list on large Post-it® notes their most important tasks. They came up with 43 – the walls were covered.

The tasks could not all be equally important, and some were likely to be counter-productive – distracted managers doing things slowly that they should be setting-up others to do swiftly. The tasks certainly could not all be priorities (the whole idea of a priority is to have only one – pri- means ‘first’, not ‘firsts’.)

Image of a Post-it with one! written on it

As the great Anna Pavlova said: To follow, without halt, one aim: There is the secret to success. The performance of both individuals and teams suffer from having mixed priorities.

To business…

So we shook things down, discussed the relative costs and implications of each task, and within an hour we had illuminated the underlying truth of good management, which is to do just three things.

  1. Recruit awesome people and support them.
  2. Problem solve to clear paths for your staff to get on with being awesome.
  3. And, without compromising your performance of the first two activities, do anything else (compliance, peripheral administration, contributing to strategic decisions, etc) to keep the team humming.

But there is a fourth task – or, rather, a new first one – if the system in which everyone is working is fundamentally flawed (which wasn’t the case for those managers).

  1. Audit and redesign the system.

I keep returning to this Edwards Deming quote, but its relevancy has not dulled.

[A manager] needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in

In other words, a flawed system prevents optimal performance by affected participants, so its manager needs to find a way to redesign the system.

Examples of flawed systems at the big end of the scale are the health and education systems. Our health system is still a reactive sickness system, not a proactive well-being system. Our education system is still a qualifications factory, not a careers facilitator. Neither can be optimal until their purposes are transformed.

But the systems I am most familiar with are those in which documents are produced. These sub-systems are much smaller and easier to redesign, and although I have seen many improvements during the past few years, I still see more flaws than flow. This is why I teach my Improving Document Production course, which provides managers with a simple process and supporting tools to set-up their writers to efficiently produce effective documents.

How are you improving the systems you manage?

Given the title of this article, I will assume you are a manager. If you understand Deming’s message about performance, have you invested in your own ability to design and manage an optimal system for your field of work?

A system design improvement is exponentially more valuable than a one-off performance improvement by a worker within a system – just ask the folk managing the world’s 37,000-odd McDonald’s restaurants, or any restaurant manager who wants every meal served to be satisfying, timely, and profitable.

Do you invest enough in your ability to improve the systems you manage? In the world of business writing, investment in designing an optimal production system is typically zero, which is why government departments and other large organisations still regularly deliver documents that are unsatisfying, untimely, and unprofitable.

I have no doubt a breakthrough shift will eventually occur – the light will go off and the knowledge industry will transform, like US car manufacturing transformed in the 1980s. In the meantime, I will continue to do my best to light the fuse…

Don’t put off improving how you write, or how you manage writers. Attend Simon’s public courses in Auckland or at Victoria Professional and Executive Development in Wellington.

Improving Document Production
Writing Essentials

To book an Essentialism talk or workshop, contact Simon.

Why solving writing issues starts at the top

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450 words | 3 minutes to read

What’s the problem?

Large organisations all produce large amounts of information, but how much of it is useful and how well is it being produced?

The documents are typically generated by a committee of sorts, not a lone writer. The quality of outputs is usually variable, but the cost is almost always high. This is because the core writing process is bloated with accumulated layers of well-intentioned contributions (from multiple briefers, reviewers, and authorisers).

Stack of papers

Because our ability to consume information is limited, costly information goes unread.

In government agencies, it is common for more than a dozen senior staff — in addition to the writer(s) — to contribute to the production of even a relatively simple ministerial briefing. This explodes costs without a commensurate boost to the quality of outputs.

Producing too much information increases cost and makes the extra information unusable. Most organisations ignore the fact that humans cannot usefully consume unlimited amounts of information.

In corporate environments, it is also common for large teams to produce exhaustive documents (such as business cases, sales documents, or board papers) in which the audience’s need for critical and concise decision-making information remains unmet, or is buried in swathes of non-essential ‘padding’.

Instead of all this effort leading to excellent outputs, the busyness usually obscures responsibilities and leaves writers confused about what they should write, for whom, and to whose satisfaction.

What’s the solution?

Office workers, like all of us, work within systems whose influence cannot be overestimated.

…the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in — W. Edwards Deming

When managers determine that documents are costing too much in relation to their usefulness, they often respond by sending their colleagues to a business writing course (such as my Writing Essentials course). But the performance of those colleagues is bound by the quality of the document production system they work in. Until the system is improved (or, more likely, transformed), the outputs of the system cannot consistently improve.

For example, a system that allows loose briefs is one that forces writers to guess and ensures costly rework (drafts, edits, reviews).

So, before you send your writers to a writing course, I encourage you to attend Nakedize’s new, leader-focussed Improving Document Production course. In one day you will learn how to design and operate an optimal document production system. Clever knowledge workers transformed the manufacturing sector (think Toyota and Total Quality Management) decades ago with this kind of approach, and it’s long overdue for the knowledge sector to take its own advice.
 

Don’t put off improving how you write, or how you manage writers. Attend Simon’s public courses in Auckland or at Victoria Professional and Executive Development in Wellington.

Victoria University iconImproving Document Production
Writing Essentials