You know all the answers, but do you know the questions?
K Buechler
Copyright Caravan Publishing 2011
Published by Caravan Publishing at Smashwords
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Chapter 1 Background
I, your writer, have been in management consultancy almost as long as the profession has been recognized as a profession.
I realise that I need to win your trust, but you also want to get into the meat of the book as quickly as possible. To meet both these needs, I set out my experience in the Appendix. Please look at it if the matter interests you. At this stage, suffice it to say that I know what I am talking about.
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During many years of seeing that many businesses are striving to do the best they can, and often failing in that task, I could not help asking “why?” This question was one that that I had asked throughout my working life, and I could not understand why others did not ask it.
The answer is simple.
Everyone in a business, usually, and not least, the top executives, know all the answers. The only problem is that they do not know the right questions.
The way to success in most cases lies in asking the right questions. The right question has the answer built into it. Arriving at the answer before you have asked the question almost invariably denies you the opportunity to understand the real situation. Even worse, ‘knowing the answer’ before you have formulated the question defeats the whole object of asking.
This book sets out to correct the situation as far as possible, by providing a method to allow a manager of a business, or any part of it, to conduct a mini-management consultancy and to improve the operations of that unit almost beyond belief.
If you follow the rules and the methodology set out, you will be able to find most of the problems that make life in business so difficult, (and that will be probably the most important thing you will do this year), generate appropriate solutions for the problems you find, and implement these solutions in a way that will stick.
Chapter 2 Plan of this Book
A glance at the index will show how this book is organised. We started at the point of building credibility – you won’t follow any advice, no matter how good it may be, until you are personally convinced that the advice is credible and from a source that, in your opinion, has shown that it is capable of offering good advice – but gave you the choice of reading that now or later. I hope that we are now past that point.
Having achieved this, or, possibly, convinced you that it may be worth your precious time to read further, we proceed to why you should follow the advice offered.
We then have a close look, becoming progressively closer, at how to determine firstly if something needs fixing, then how to find what is wrong with it, then how to go about figuring what is wrong. Knowing that a situation could be better does not tell us how it could be better. Having determined precisely what is wrong, we generate an appropriate solution. End of story? Not really. The hard part is still to come. We must then implement the solution, taking care not to allow the company to implode while we do this.
We need to go through a rigorous analysis of the problem area before we jump to any conclusions. The title of this book says it all. “You know all the answers, but do you know the right questions?”
What we are trying to achieve, in a nutshell, is to get you to understand that all the answers you and your staff have, and fervently believe in, are not necessarily correct or complete. An answer may be correct today, but totally wrong tomorrow. It could be that most of the answers you can give now are not completely right or complete.
In the modern world, we can recognise this process all around us. The very basis of science has undergone numerous enormous upheavals and reversals in thinking and understanding over the past three centuries, and, in many cases, our understanding of how things work has changed dramatically since we learned them at school. If this is true of the world, why should it be less true of our business environment? At the micro level of our business, everything is in flux. It is our responsibility to put in place a structure for our company, division or office that enables us to recognise the real facts facing us, not only our view of what those ‘facts’ might be, and to cope with the situations that will flow from them. This depends, of course, on knowing at the starting point, what the real facts are.
As in the world of nature, only those best fitted to face the problems and to make use of the opportunities thrown at us, or, more likely, sneaking up on us from unexpected directions, will survive the stressful environment of the future. And the future is now.
Back to the plan of this book.
Having looked at why you should consider whether your business has a problem, we give some illustrations of the sorts of problems our clients have encountered. These will provide you with an understanding of what to look for, where to look, and, in some cases, how to look. The most obvious problems are often hidden behind a situation of pride, self-defence, ‘old experience’, reasons, ‘we’ve always done it this way’, unfounded explanations, untested assumptions and so on.
In a career in management consultancy spanning over many years, I have never found an employee who comes to work with the intention of destroying or hurting his or her employer. They all believe that what they are doing, and how they are doing it, is the best way to go about it in the circumstances. In many cases, they have views on how things could be improved, but do not believe that ‘management’ will accept a proposal for change. In any case, the work required to generate a well-founded proposal for change, and to convince management that it is both right and necessary, is far too daunting for most people. Anything less than this would not succeed, and would redound to the detriment of the proposer. Harvey Rodber, one of my very early business mentors, had a saying that explained the otherwise puzzling inaction we often experience: “If you don’t do nuffin’, you don’t do nuffin’ wrong.” The saying is, unfortunately, how most companies view change. In some cases, employees merely accept that what they are doing is right without ever having consciously evaluated this belief. Inertia is a powerful motivator at lower levels in the organisation, and particularly so where the top man is viewed, rightly or wrongly, as not wanting to hear the opinions of the rank and file. We take this process a little further by pinpointing what is probably the primary cause of any major problems in your business – the lack of an adequate business plan. This is one of the keys, because the existence of an adequate business plan will prevent you identifying problems when they are approaching or, having arrived, when they have not yet grown to the point where radical surgery is the only possible solution.
There is one major exception to the inherent goodness in most people. A few people see that the system provides an opportunity for them to enrich themselves. In most cases, the other side of the coin is not examined – the side that shows that such enrichment comes at a cost to someone. Far too many people view their employers as not representing the same class of being as themselves. In their view, the employer has unlimited funding, excessive profits and an obligation to share it with the enrichee! This is a different question, one that is examined in a separate book entitled ‘Employee Corruption – the New Entitlement?’
At this point, you will, no doubt, be chafing at the bit, wanting to get into the meat of dealing with the problems you have in your business. But wait! Do not attempt to solve the problems until you are sure that they are the real problems. Many ‘solutions’ to business problems are no more than sticking plaster on a wound. We need to know what causes the wound before we attempt to cure it. Sticking plaster has a nasty habit of falling off when we can least afford it, and gumming up the works. Sometimes we may need to apply sticking plaster, to stop the bleeding long enough for us to undertake real curative treatment. That is acceptable, as long as we recognize that the sticking plaster is only a temporary holding step, and not a long-term solution. And we must also remember to remove the sticking plaster when we are done, and be sure that no further treatment is required to speed the healing process.
We give some tips on how to come to the sure knowledge that what we identify as the real problem is, in fact, exactly that. No business is an exact science. We always need to make judgements in the absence of full facts, and in the face of apparently important irrelevancies and red herrings. However, it is vitally important that we know what we know, and also what we don’t know. If we are able to define what we don’t know, we can take steps to gain the required knowledge, or to ring-fence it so that whatever demons it contains are not allowed to wander unchecked through our business.
Asking the right questions is a good way to reach that state of knowing. Then, when we have the answers, we must ask the questions again, and re-evaluate the ‘knowledge’ we have gained from the previous round. Very often, the ‘right’ answer will have changed, and its importance will have grown or declined. In addition, the importance or lack thereof of the subject of the question may have changed dramatically. Don’t waste your time dealing with matters that have become unimportant or irrelevant. You can note the issue and come back to the matter when you have more time. However, the importance may have become enough to warrant immediate attention, whereas, previously, it was low on the agenda.
When this has been done to your satisfaction, write a report to yourself, and, if possible, present it to others with knowledge and an understanding of the business, and note their comments and responses. Be critical, and encourage others to be critical. When you are comfortable with the report, and believe that it is approaching an accurate statement of the situation, discuss the report with those employees involved in each section, listen to their advice and comments, and encourage them to participate in the process. When the time comes for them to accept the results of your analysis, and to participate in the implementation of your proposed improvements, they must feel that their views of the problem have been recognised, and that they have participated in reaching the conclusions, that you have understood their views and proposals and given due weight to their participation. This does not mean that you must accept everything that they say and propose – this would result in a Matzos pudding, a globular and undefined mess with no clear thread of reason. However, you must not view this part of the process as a formality. It is an opportunity to access the organisational knowledge bank, and to get the people on your side in what you propose to do.
When you think you know it all, return to the real world, and simulate what will happen in real life if you do what you propose. This phase is often as much of a learning experience as the questioning phase. It will force you to confront the interrelationships inherent in anything you do to your company. The simulation typically takes the form of a spreadsheet, setting out the financial or volumetric aspects of the business and its units. It sets out a series of calculations, using the basic inputs to produce outputs in any particular set of assumptions.
A business is like a piece of paper. If you change the position or aspect of a small corner, you will inevitably change the shape and orientation of the whole sheet of paper.
Do not attempt to make a significant change to any part of the organisation unless you have considered what effects the change will have on the whole organisation.
People are not statistics. They are living organisms, with thoughts, hopes, aspirations, desires and fears. Each of them has a set of experiences and prejudices through which they view events. Sometimes they act as magnifiers, grossly enlarging a small event until it becomes the major issue. No matter what the facts may be, if the people perceive that your actions will affect them negatively, they will react negatively. There is nothing worse in a situation of change – something feared by every one of them – than a vocal group questioning the ‘facts’ (often distorted, fabricated or neglected) and advocating a policy of silent resistance by their peers. If you cannot neutralise this, it may be better simply to put the whole exercise on hold until you can be assured of wholehearted support. Do not believe that rationality will carry the day. Mob rule works on an emotional level, and emotions can be much stronger than reason.
Now you are ready to proceed with the fun part. Implementation is by far the most challenging aspect of management consultancy. This may be why so many consultants are happy to produce a 700 page report, and leave the implementation up to the client. They should know that most clients will be no more willing or able than they to implement the numerous weighty and intellectually strong solutions provided in the report, and that the whole exercise will, in most cases, prove to have been a huge waste of time, money and human relations. The only beneficiary to this process will be the consultant’s bank account.
One of my clients was an international footwear manufacturer which had a report done by a major management consultancy, resulting in just such a 700 page report. The work was excellent – exactly what you would expect from a firm of that repute – but, when I asked the client what part of it had been implemented, the reply was “Nothing. We could not get to first base. We lost twenty of our best managers in that exercise.”
Implementation is also the part of the project where you can show your capability as a manager, where you can lay the foundation for the future of your business and, more importantly, be seen by all – shareholders, managers, employees, bankers, auditors - to be doing so.
Our book then goes on to the ‘critical success factors’ of the project: the setting of strategy and the ingestion of that strategy by the organisation, the setting in place of controls and the management tools to manage the organisation under the new rules and objectives, to ensure that you keep to the track you have planned, and get the information you need to change that track should it become necessary.
The final set of advice is the setting up of a Performance Appraisal System that will enable you to apply reason and judgement to the complex task of managing the performance of your employees. I have seen several cases of such a system being implemented before the strategy and associated management controls were in place. This is akin to using an autopilot to steer your boat without bothering to find out where you are or where you are going. The Performance that is Appraised must relate to an objective. Excellent performance in a vacuum has no value – it could be steering the organisation against the course that it needs to go, and every wrong move is encouraged because it is, in itself, apparently a good move.
Chapter 3 Why This Book?
I assume that your purchase of this book was a rational decision. The cost is small, but the cost in your time, if you intend to read it without applying the information it contains, is probably more than you can, or should, afford. I would hate to think that you bought this book as light entertainment.
It is not.
The purpose of this book is to give you a working understanding of a method designed to enable you to improve the performance of your business unit, both in the short term and for the foreseeable future. It is not a ‘plug and play’ unit, but a chart through the difficulties and complexities of restructuring your business. It needs your input. It tells you what to do in most situations you are likely to encounter. It enables you to understand the processes needed to analyse the ‘as is’ situation in your business, to generate solutions and to implement those solutions. It also encourages you to repeat the process, or parts of it, frequently, to ensure that your business is operating at an optimal level, and it gives ideas on how to build in a feedback system that warns you when the organisation is drifting from its chosen course, or when the outside world is drifting away from the reality that existed at the time you set the course, thereby enabling you to recognise developing problem situations before they arrive at your door or, at worst, before they become critical to the existence of the business.
I also attempt to warn you of the possible points of distress or potential problems, so that you can be aware of the actions that may lead to unfortunate consequences. A novice or even an inexperienced operator in the field of correcting the actions of others can easily do things that will lead to massive human problems, unless informed intelligence is applied to the situation. After each phase advocated here, you should carefully consider your progress and your new situation. Asking questions does not only provide information to you. It also tells those you are asking a whole range of possible ‘facts’ about your intentions. If the company is already in difficulties, those you are questioning are likely to know this, or even to think that they know much more that they can classify as ‘fact’. Remember the magnifier analogy? It is real. In many cases, these people may be willing to put two and two together and arrive at fifteen. It could easily happen that their conclusions do not favour your objectives in the exercise, and the telling of their suspicions to others could easily produce a new set of ‘facts’ that will hasten the dissolution you are attempting to circumvent.