Operational Excellence

The need for operational hygiene and excel in business parameters has been growing at an exponential pace. The reasons for the increased focus is driven by the uncertain and volatile business environment. While the principals of Six Sigma, Kanban and other quality methodology have stood the test of time, I feel there is a need for a fresh look at the leader mandate to ingrain this culture on the daily functioning of the organization. The challenge is not in creating the operational excellence strategy. The challenge is in the execution and instilling the culture of operational excellence. In my experience, this culture can stand the test of time only when the following three steps are put in practise:

1. Leadership buy-in should be clearly demonstrated to the entire organization. As and when they do their interactions with the wider group whether to review a progress or comment on the dashboard, their commitment to solve real business challenges comes to the fore! People realize whether the leadership is really trying to help solve the problem or doing this meeting as a tick on the box. The higher the leadership commitment, the higher the team’s involvement.

2. Core team members from different teams and ranks does wonders to the collective spirit to achieve operational excellence. I have seen cross functional teams with a senior leader as the sponsor do wonders in this area. The reason is not difficult to understand. Divergent and different points of view are often required to solve sticky business challenges. If the leader is able to channelize the views into a constructive conversation and reach a mutual consensus, the team can achieve faster economic benefits

3. Differentiated rewards for the top performers is always expected. However resources who embrace this operational excellence culture and display the right set of behaviour should be recognized. The intent is replicate this role model across the different teams.