Sherpa Alliance

Reinforcing a Mindset of Operations Management.

In continuous process businesses, errors unfold rapidly and propagate quickly, often with disastrous consequences. High reliability operations management prevents crises management and all businesses are continuous process businesses to some degree.

The new Rules-of-the-Road:

• All businesses are operationally intensive, whether they are product, service or knowledge intensive businesses with a visible assembly line or an invisible one, in which we need to establish a clear mindset of Operations Management;
• We must routinely expect the unexpected and be ready, willing and able to manage these events as part of our operations management routine (Expecting & Managing the Unexpected);
• If we aren’t reinforcing this mindset of Operations Management, we will be continually surprised and consumed by unexpected events, which will hold back the rest of our BREAKTHROUGH! efforts. 

What creates Wheel-spin?

• When we use the words "Operations Management" in many businesses, in particular in those in which the assembly line is less visible, our experience is that people tend to hear the words "Crises Management" - its has become situation normal for them to be lurching from one crisis to another, barely recovering from the last one before the next one is taking shape.  "Crises Management" has become a cross-functional systemic problem to which we need the cross-functional systemic solution of "Operations Management".  A cross-functional systemic solution to a cross-functional systemic problem is at the heart of the definition of a breakthrough, which doesn’t happen by accident.
• As a result, we stay in a constant mode of crisis management and white-water (Constant White-Water), consumed by attending to the "urgent" while spinning our wheels on the less urgent but more important breakthrough initiatives.  The very same breakthrough initiatives which would help us breakout of the constant white-water/crisis-mode we are in.  That’s Catch 22 Gridlock!
• Because we don’t breakout of a Catch 22 Gridlock by accident, instead requiring a full-force, collective, cross-functional effort of breakthrough leadership, teams tend to tolerate each other’s excuses of "being too busy", unwittingly colluding together down the path of "we encourage what we allow; we become what we tolerate".  Constant white-water/crisis-mode is a choice we have colluded in making, but it doesn’t have to be that way. 

What creates Traction?

• The discipline of determined efforts to act more mindfully in expecting and managing the unexpected, organizing oursleves in such a way to be better able to notice the unexpected in the making and halt its development and, if we have difficulty in halting its development, then shifting focus to containing it.
• The discipline of resilience, in the case that the unexpected breaks through the containment, and the swift restortation of system functioning.
• The discipline of cross-functional team-work to create systemic solutions to systemic problems and institutionalizing organizational learning, so we close the loop back to our "mindfulness" as an organization - so we are more mindful in expecting and managing the unexpected next time around, so that history has less chance of repeating itself, even if it is well disguised - any time history remotely repeats itself is, by definiton, Wheel-spin.

The Breeakthrough Leadership Challenge

• Convincing people that constant white-water/crisis-mode is a choice and it doesn’t have to be that way.  While breaking out of the Catch 22 Gridlock isn’t easy (otherwise you would have done it a long time ago) it is achievable with a full-force collective effort.  If, thank goodness, they can achieve it with nuclear aircraft carriers, air traffic control systems, aircraft operations systems, hostage negotiation teams, emergency medical treatment teams, nuclear power generation plants, continuous processing firms and wild-land firefighting crews (Expecting & Managing the Unexpected) then my guess is that you can achieve it with your operation.
• Unlocking the gridlock necessarily starts with finding the first small piece of the puzzle which you can find the wiggle room to change, which begins to loosen up other areas of wiggle room in the rest of the puzzle (Compound Interest & The 1% Solution) which allows you to create more change and more wiggle room, and so it goes, building momentum and brewing up a breakthrough.  Now we run into the classic change-leadership/change-management challenge of how to break the ice around this issue, start a conversation and keep things rolling.  The Ice-Breaker & Conversation Starter tool is used for that purpose, integrating a classic model of 9 stages of change-leadership/change-management, commencing with establishing a sense-of-urgency.  This is crucial to beginning the process of brewing up a breakthrough.  All change involves loss and, therefore, pain and until the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of change, nothing will change.  The first piece of the puzzle to unlock the gridlock will necessarily be small, possibly very small.  Often times it can be something so elegantly simple it is almost embarassingly so, which is why most people don’t do it.  Get over it - that’s part of breakthrough leadership - being will to do embarassingly simple things which others aren’t willing to do.  When you exhibit the humility of that kind of breakthrough leadership, you send a powerful message to all of, "wow, he/she must be serious".
• Asserting the need for rigorous organizational learning from every unexpected event, some how institutionalizing this learning into our mindfulness as a team and organization, so that history has less chance of repeating itself.  Typically, when we are wiping the sweat off our brow from the latest crisis,  people aren’t inclined to want to do a full debrief.  Partly because it involves having to relieve this situation we are just decompressing from, maybe having to confront what and who was at fault (Nameless Rankless Debriefs).  Partly because thinking broadly/deeply about organizational lessons learned and institutionalizing them more mindfully is abstract, big-picture-system, largely right-brained work.  Often times, our people who are most prone to constant white-water/crisis-mode are most comfortable with task-oriented, tactical, largely left-brained work.  Another Catch 22!