Building great relationships is more like a marathon than a sprint. In order to do well in a marathon, we need to Urgently Practice, Urgently get started, and Urgently plan for all that is at stake. Once this is done, then it’s time to stay the course and stick with it.

Definition of Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Definition of Hyper Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting the SAME results.

Rationale: During a period of accelerated economic change, it is foolhardy to think that the things you did in the past, even as recently as a few years ago, will produce the same results today as they did then. It’s time to embrace new methods, new thinking and new behaviors.

What we expect is often predicated on past activities and past results. The problem occurs when we are not paying close attention to all of the factors that can significantly influence the end game. This is why predicting the weather is so difficult in spite of all the modern instrumentation and history of practicing.

What are the factors changing in your industry? How are the attitudes and behaviors of your customers changing?

If you have been involved in operations for any length of time, you undoubtedly have heard the old story that trying to fill a 5-pound bag of potatoes with 10 pounds of potatoes always results in mashed potatoes!

Yet, even today, I keep encountering clients that behave as if they never heard of this truism before or go into complete denial when a super opportunity is at hand.

Many years ago, I would have attributed this behavior as lack of operational knowledge, easily corrected by an educational workshop or the reading of a particular textbook. I now realize that I was the naïve one. As I study this phenomenon in more detail, it is evident that in the day-to-day world of selling and producing items, the communication process gets convoluted. The right hand of the company (sales) and the left hand of the company (operations) are not as well coordinated as needed. What starts out as a good intention too often ends up as a huge mess, with both sales and operations pointing fingers.

The bad news is that this viscous cycle is still too commonplace-causing unintended damage to the organization and just more important, to their customer base, as some customers end up having their orders either being delivered late or incomplete.

The good news is that there are ways to eliminate, once and for all, this viscous cycle. There is a bit of a catch, however. The complete solution involves much more than a simple workshop, or a having a facilitated kumbaya session with sales and operations. This may open up diplomatic relations between sales and operations, but is not sufficient to move to the sustainable solution.

Over the last 25 years traditional Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) has been a common prescription to this malady. While this is a good first step, typically the S&OP process has some limitations when dealing with environments where traditional quantitative forecasting techniques are not applicable. Companies that provide custom solutions or offer many options will need to be tied much closer to the sales process.

It is a fact of life that the vast majority of companies are sales constrained i.e. they can make more product than what they actually sell. This can result in pressure to close the sales gap, driving the sales team to do whatever it takes to get a sale, including heavy discounting, promoting a product that is not financially desirable or committing to ship on dates that are not realistic back in the factory.

What is required is to create a comprehensive framework where operations will always be in a position of supporting the needs of sales within some agreed parameters. To accomplish this requires some adjustment on both traditional operational practices but just as import is a re-thinking to product accounting practices to isolate true ‘out of pocket’ costs from fully absorbed costs. More specifically, in those companies that are involved in complex products (vs. sales of standard items) the sale and operations process requires much more than a traditional sales forecast. The process must start much further into the sales funnel, with a great emphasis on knowledge of the customer’s sale process.

As with any approach, the devil is in the details, but before we delve into the minutia, the overall framework must be understood. First, traditional Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) may be sufficient for companies that sell standard products, (e.g. items that can be described in a sales catalog or as SKU’s at a distributer).

Complex organizations require significantly more synchronization of the requisite complex sales strategy. Anything less will inadvertently lead to putting 10 pounds into a 5-pound bag. It’s your choice!

Process is overrated and CONDITION is underrated. Many business managers love to masque ineffectiveness and lack of performance with misguided thoughts about poor process. Sound business practices and processes are certainly important, but good processes alone are not sufficient. When great processes are applied in lousy conditions, the results will be lousy most of the time. When lousy processes are applied in great conditions, the results may not be optimal but there is a huge opportunity to not only improve the process, but also to enjoy the environment in which to do so.

Many managers struggle to create healthy conditions chiefly because they have never considered that the condition in which critical business processes live is subject to a number of complex and not well understood variables. In order to create healthy conditions, it would be wise to define its essence. Think about fish for a moment. If you were to ask fish to tell you about the water in which they swim,  their likely response would be, “what water?” This is because their environment is second nature and not recognized as something to be noted. The fish would swim about paying no attention to the condition (water) unless there was a disruption to the condition, such as a contaminant that caused suffocation or some other undesirable effect.

As the fish experience their new and undesirable condition, the furthest thing from their mind would be to improve any processes that need attention. Rather, their only course of action would be to find a condition (suitable water) whereby they felt safe from the immediate threat.

Let’s consider how this applies to an organization in which all people experience a healthy condition. If you were to ask them about the air that they breath, they would say, “what do you mean? The air is fine.” Similarly, if you were to ask them about the problems that management ignores, they would say, “what problems? We know we have problems, but which ones do you think we are ignoring?”

Contrast this scenario to that of an unhealthy condition…If you were to ask them about the problems that management ignores, they would have a long list. Ironically, whether or not they share the list depends upon them feeling safe enough to do so.

Here are some steps you can take TODAY to enhance the condition in your organization:

1) Invite criticism.  If you get none, BEWARE! This probably means you have a toxic condition and your people don’t feel safe enough to share their ideas. You have your work cut out for you.

2) Listen to and record the criticism. Your job for now is not to criticize the criticism. Just listen, and write.

3) Acknowledge the criticism. Acknowledging is not the same as “agreeing with.” You need to send the message that you have heard the criticism, but have not decided how to act upon the criticism, if at all. If people feel like that they had an opportunity to make their case, even if it doesn’t get implemented, they will be grateful that they were heard.

4) Sort the ideas and take action. Share with your people the decision that you have made and why. Don’t expect them to agree, but do expect them to understand how you reached your conclusions. Almost everyone will respect your decisions, even if they don’t agree, as long as you explain your thinking.

Some managers believe that they don’t need to explain their thinking. This is a big mistake. The people that you lead are not stupid. If fact, you would do well to appreciate the reasons you hired them in the first place was because of the intelligence and strengths you identified way back when.  Explaining your thinking creates the condition that you respect their opinions and value their input.

As a result of a healthy condition, watch how your business processes improve to levels you never thought possible.

The reason public speaking skills are so valuable is simple. As a speaker you will gain confidence telling your story. You will be more persuasive. Being able to persuade people is the lifeblood of effectiveness for just about everything that you do.

If you want to feel good about yourself when presenting to a group, consider sharpening your speaking skills. Check out the world wide network of Toastmasters as your next step (if you have the guts).

Here is an excerpt from brilliant minds at Bold Thinking

Consumers versus customers:  In the world of the creative for the purposes of crafting compelling concepts that attract or initiate action, a consumer is anyone who uses your product or service independent of the buying relationship.  A customer on the other hand, is the person that you have an economic relationship with, the person who is engaged in the transaction. Therefore, a consumer and a customer can be the same individual. Often however, they are not (think mother customer, child consumer).  One can generalize that all customers are consumers, but not all consumers are customers.

You can read the entire entry on their website: www.boldthinking.com/ourphilosophy.html

The point of leadership is to show up as an example and have people re-commited to what THEY want to achieve.

The Key: What THEY want to achieve.

This has less to do with you and more to do with your followers.

Companies that intend to remain competitive understand that the most important factor is their ability to service customers. A lot of emphasis in recent years has been on cost cutting and doing more with less. Keep your efforts focused on this while at the same time building effectiveness.

I often see service levels diminish as a result of cuts. What happens when cuts are made is that remaining people are often asked to do more tasks; some of which they are not well trained for or skilled at. This causes a lot of unintended work to show up later. For example, if an order entry person makes errors, this may force production to go back and ask for clarity about the order. This can be very time consuming and the number of errors can snowball. If the order entry person had been trained for the additional tasks, it may have eliminated the original errors.

“There never seems to be enough time to do it right at first, but there always seems to be time to redo the work later.”

It is common for a manager to get a mandate from above to reduce payroll, or some other cost cutting directive, without first analyzing the overall training or skills gaps. There can be an urgency to reduce the cost without the urgency to bring others up to speed. This causes an “on the job training” cycle that is problematic. The remaining people are happy to have survived the cut, but in a short time they will feel overburdened and underappreciated. This can cause overall production to falter.

Companies that lag in service will see negative consequences. As their customers migrate to suppliers that are in tune with what is truly of value, many will be left wondering where the greatest breakdowns occurred.

Conclusion: Be careful to not get caught up in a “cut our way to prosperity” mentality without first carefully considering the training necessary to get others up to speed.

How often have you heard of someone upgrading or replacing their software system in order to become more efficient; when in fact the situation really came down to straightening chairs on the Titanic?