Returning from an 'enforced winter' and building resilience in your organisation

Now that the country is moving back into some sort of normality, we hear the same questions from our clients:

“How do we ensure that our organisation will return in a fit and robust way from the last 15 months or so?”

“I have 101 things to do, and that list just keeps getting longer AND I’m not really sure if everything we are doing is right!”

“My way of doing business before seems to be different to what is required moving forward.”

“How will my team be able to return to ‘normal’…. whatever that is?”

In our work, we are beginning to look at a more detailed process that we call the Resilient Operating System (ROS). The system consists of 6 focus areas:

- Vision

- People

- Data

- Issues

- Process

- Grip

In this, the first of 4 articles, we assume that your Vision is in place, with clarity and understanding. It all starts with Vision and hopefully you have worked on this during the lockdown period. Here we will offer ideas on themes and processes that, if applied with intention, context, discipline and speed, will support you in rebuilding a resilient organisation into the new future.

Part 1 will focus on Data, Part 2 will discuss Issues, Part 3 will follow up with Process and Part 4 will focus on People.

Picture a small plane flying from London to New York. Halfway across the captain announces “I’ve bad news and good news. The bad news is that the gauges and dashboard have stopped working, we have no idea where we are, no idea of what direction we are flying in or how much fuel we have left. The good news is that we are making great time!”

This is how a lot of organisations, especially the entrepreneurial ones, operate on a day to day basis. It’s also what causes that nagging doubt in your head, you are uneasy but not sure why.

We recommend that you need to measure the pulse of your business but to do that you need factual, relevant information that can give you an objective opinion rather than a subjective one.

Instead of managing assumptions, emotions and egos we believe that you have to find ways to manage consistently and accurately on a regular basis.

How could you do this? We suggest two simple tools to get to this:

- Dashboard

- Measurables

DASHBOARD

This concept has been around for years, common sense but not, in our experience, common practice. Activity based dashboards are rare, most organisations rely only on financial data such as profit, income, sales, surplus etc. These are valid and have a place, but as Lag measures (it tells us how we have done after the event).

We propose that you develop what we call Lead measures, the activities that tell us as we go what is happening.

WE SUGGEST A 4 STEP PROCESS TO FOLLOW:

- Take 2-3 hours with your leadership team to decide upon a handful of numbers that give you the pulse of your organisation on a weekly basis.

We would suggest between 5-15 high level measures that could include sales, client meetings, fundraising applications, cash in, leads generated etc.

- Create a simple dashboard with columns to record who is accountable for each one, the measure, the goal, and dates for each week.

We suggest this because it will help immensely with accountability among your employees.

- Agree the timing and circulation of the report prior to each weekly meeting.

- Use it!!

MEASURABLES

Everyone has a number! When one of us worked at a high growth family business we allocated a meaningful number to everyone who worked there.

For example, our receptionist had the number ‘2’. Two was the number of rings we expected when customers called, two was good, three wasn’t . This also tied directly into our customer satisfaction measure on the Dashboard, helping that person to feel they were contributing to the greater Vision!

A great way to start is to look at specific roles. For instance, if you have a Project Manager the 5 major elements of the role could be:

- Complete projects on time

- Achieve the planned margin/budget on each project

- Client satisfaction

- Weekly reporting on time

- Achieve quality standards

Of these 5, you could easily measure on time, margin/budget and client satisfaction. Give them a number!

CONCLUSION

When you start to measure the right things regularly and focus on Lead not Lag measures you are also moving towards the sixth step in our ROS - Grip.

Your organisation is open and transparent, and everyone understands their own role in achieving your vision.

David Hoey is an Associate Consultant with Response Consulting working with SMEs, Charity and Not for Profit organisations enabling them to develop Resilient Operating Systems.

If you would like to know more please contact rob@responseconsulting.co.uk