We last
addressed your leadership action plan at the end of the review of lectures
11-16. If you are a diligent student you have been very busy working on the
actions you defined for yourself up to that point. That is why you have not
been asked to update your plan as you studied lectures 17 – 29. Now it is time
to go back to your plan.
First, conduct an assessment of
how well you are doing implementing your action plan. Are you making reasonable
progress on every item? If so, you deserve a pat on the back. Are there planed
actions that you have found difficult to implement? If there are, go back to
the lecture that gave rise to the difficult actions and review the lecture to
see if you are missing anything in your implementation efforts. Are there any
actions you have dropped? Reevaluate your reasons for dropping these actions.
It may be that you just deferred some actions to put more effort on others. It
may be time to pick such actions up again. It may be that you decided you
didn’t really need to work on some actions. Think again about these actions and
see if you made wise decisions. After asking and answering these questions
assess whether you are ready to implement more actions or if you need to
continue on your current plan for a while. If you conclude you need to work on
your current plan longer before adding more actions then schedule a time when
you believe you will be ready to add more actions and put it on your calendar.
Now you are ready to continue
to build your plan. Finish your plan now even if you aren’t going to work on
new actions for some time. Finishing your plan now helps ingrain what you have
recently studied. It is also easier to do when the material in the final
lectures is fresh in your mind. A list of 21 questions relating to the material
in lectures 17-29 follows to guide you in finishing your plan:
1.
Does your organization compete on a national or global
basis?
2.
If so, have you committed to developing an organization
with the skills and experience to prevail in competition at this level?
3.
Are your recruiting and training processes robust
enough to build the quality of organization you need?
4.
Do you know if your worker’s strengths are well matched
to their jobs and if you do, are they?
5.
Are you developing your successor?
6.
Are you managing your time effectively with time
allocated for the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of your life?
7.
Are you scheduling your time by the week and following
your schedules?
8.
Are you dictating instead of typing where it makes
sense?
9.
Are you being effective with people and efficient with
other work processes?
10. Have
you learned to listen empathically to your workers, your boss, your family?
11. Have
you structured your organization’s meetings so that you have effective
communications with your workers without wasting their time?
12. Have
you organized the work in your organization so that you do not have highly paid
workers doing work that could be done just as well by lower skilled and lower
paid workers?
13. Are
you managing risks effectively using sound risk management methods in all your
organization’s work?
14. Have
you read Goldratt’s books on Theory of Constraints and reviewed your
organization’s major processes to ensure the theory isn’t being violated?
15. Have
you committed to self-study of statistical process control or to attending a
training course?
16. Have
you committed to training all of your workers in process improvement
techniques? (If you are already doing Six Sigma only selected employees need to
be fully trained.)
17. Have
you committed to yourself to empower your workers to control and improve their
own processes once they have been properly trained? (Be careful with this if
your process improvement strategy is Six Sigma and you are training only part
of your workers.)
18. Have
you begun continuous process improvement in your organization?
19. Are
you practicing how to think statistically?
20. Have
you stopped asking for explanations of common cause variation in processes in
your organization?
21. Have
you stopped inventing explanations for common cause variation in required
reporting to your superiors?
By the time
you have finished reviewing these questions and adding to your leadership
action plan as indicated by your answers you should have a comprehensive plan.
It is likely to take several years to fully implement your plan, depending on
the state of your management maturity and your organization’s maturity. This is
a lot of work but it is well worth it. If you are working in a stable
environment and in a culture that allows you to implement your plan you will
achieve an organization that is 20 to 30% more effective than when you started.
You will be better able to prevail in today’s highly competitive and stressful
work environment. You and your workers will be spending less time on crisis
management and more time doing high quality work. You will have the time to
effectively lead your organization in achieving strategic objectives rather
than having to divert time to resolve daily crises. Nearly all will be enjoying
their jobs more.
Get busy on your plan and make
it work.
If you have completed the study of each
posted lecture you may wish to have a hard or electronic copy of this material close
at hand. You can buy the book “The
Manager’s Guide for Effective Leadership” in hard copy or for Kindle at:
or hard copy or for nook at:
or hard copy or E-book at:
