It is very difficult to play a game intensely if you are not clear on the rules or if the rules keep changing. The natural tendency in such a situation is to play cautiously so we don't get caught off guard, look foolish or get hurt.

Imagine the difference between two games: the first of high-stakes poker, where everyone has a great deal on the line and will sit in an uncomfortable chair from 10 pm until 2 in the morning to play the game and enjoy it! The second game: two children playing cards. When one of the children begins to win the other one might suddenly announce, "Oh, I forgot to tell you, aces don't count." And then, a few minutes later as the sly child begins to lose again, she announces: "Oh, I forgot to tell you, jacks count triple." Shortly, cards fly into the air and a dispute emerges. Children will not play such a game for long because of the frustration of being caught off guard, and not knowing the rules. The same is true in a business setting, but usually we need to keep playing the game because we can't throw our job to the winds. As a result, we play it quite cautiously with a fair amount of frustration and complain about communication problems.

Improving communication will not solve this problem.

Many businesses fail to get organized. Oh yes they have a few systems, generally forced on them by outside agencies under threat accounting, personnel law or safety penalty. Rarely is there a concerted effort to organize each function in the organization with clarity and simplicity in order to make the business more effective and more efficient. This weakness shows up on the bottom line.

Most businesses have regular concerns about how well communication occurs, particularly between various teams, departments or functions. Stunning examples of miscommunication or failure to coordinate abound. Many of these occur because of the lack of organization-like two children playing cards without agreement on the rules. In other words, the separate functions of customer billing and ordering each focus on doing the best job it can. Each adapts to changes and individual situations by modifying decisions to suit the occasion. Micro changes occur continuously. They become the basis of miscommunication. One department thought another did things in a certain way only to discover they don't.

Organization disciplines the capture of knowledge your company develops. Frequently, the written policies and procedures isn't what actually gets done. Experience teaches your key people to manage the work in a better way, perhaps not captured in the way the work is organized. Instead, the best working methods come from and stay in the brains of key people in your company. If they retire, die, leave or move their knowledge is lost. This impacts your bottom line, your customer service and the value of the company. Getting organized and staying organized can capture experience, turn it into knowledge and increase the knowledge equity in your business.

Stay disorganized! You will maintain maximum flexibility, and you will not "waste" time getting organized. You'll use more resources than necessary, and miscommunication and frustration will be designed into the work. The price to pay may be necessary and worth it for a small and new organization. A large and growing organization, pays the price in premature aging leading to bureaucracy.

The following workbook takes you through an eight step process to get organized. Examples are italicized.

Step 1—Purpose

Select a specific business function to get organized. Start with ones that are most important and/or cut across departments. For example, customer billing, filling customer orders, selecting employees to hire. Departments usually encompass a number of functions. Most businesses might include somewhere between 10 to 30 distinct functions grouped into several departments. Some functions operate continuously while other are intermittent.

1. Name the function. Selecting new employees.

2. What is the desired result this function is to produce? Selecting top players who match the requirements of the position.

3. Describe any results or side effects that might occur which you wish to avoid.

4. Why incur the costs of this function? What value does it deliver to the business. Having the right people in the right seats is the foundation on which our business is built. Hiring wrong incurs huge corrective costs.

5. How does this function directly support our company plan? The response may overlap with 4. Supports our company goals to drive costs down and to deliver faultless customer service.

Step 2—Policies

What policies apply to this function? A policy is a strategic guideline which shapes, limits or directs how the function is done. It is not as specific or rigid as a rule. It defines a general approach or a specific limit. Without policies it is much harder to delegate the function to others.
Somewhere between 2-3 and 5-7 policies seems to be the right number. When you have more than a dozen, it is likely they are becoming too narrow and specific. Remember these are not 'rules,' they are guiding principles.

1. Never rush in making a hiring decision.

2. Keep a record on each hire and your evaluations so they can be debriefed and learned from later.

3. Use a comprehensive approach with in depth interviews and data based tools.P

Review the Purpose and Policies with those who must support them.

Step 3—Customers & Stakeholders

Identify the key customers and stakeholders for this function. A customer is someone who receives the output or result of the function. A stakeholder is someone who may not receive the result, but who has an interest in how the function is done and its output.

Now identify the top three requirements (their needs, what they value, or are concerned about) for each customer type and stakeholder type. These are the requirements which if met would delight customers and stakeholders.

Finally, describe how each requirement can be assessed or measured to determine if it is delivering the requirement which delights.

• Customer type and their Requirements—Department heads: Always hire an 'A,' No delays in hiring.

• How to Assess or Measure Each Requirement—Jobs filled with in 4 weeks of posting. 30 & 90 day reviews of new hires.

• Stakeholder type and their Requirements—State and federal labor laws. Full compliance with hiring rules.

• How to Assess or Measure Each Requirement—Annual legal review. Cost of employee legal problems.

Step 4—Procedures

There are two levels at which this step can be performed. Both levels should be accomplished. Some departments may decide to combine the two steps. The second step requires more work, deeper thinking and more change.

LEVEL ONE
Outline the steps required to do the function right. 'Right' means delighting the customers/stakeholders (Step 3) while following our policies (Step 2) and delivering the desired result (Step 1). We must enlist the help of the people who are most experienced and most expert in doing this function so that the procedures can be derived from their knowledge. Involving them also builds their support of the procedures.

LEVEL TWO
In this level we want to redesign the procedures so they are better. This means:

• Simplify, fewer steps. Most procedures grow over time with little additions here and there. Some outdated steps continue to be used in most procedures.

• Design the steps so that quality is built in to the procedures. This means reducing the need for checking and testing, reducing all errors and waste. To begin, you might target a 50% reduction in errors and waste the next twelve months.

• Challenging all the assumptions on which the current procedures rest.

• There are several tools for accomplishing LEVEL TWO redesign. For more help than provided below, contact Qm².

Describe your procedures. Use a flow chart where possible. This should be clear and specific enough that a new hire could use what you have written and do a credible job with no guidance from others. When this is possible the knowledge has been captured in the procedure.

The new husband asked the new wife why she cut off the end of the roast before putting it into the roasting pan when there was lots of room in the pan. She replied," I don't know. My mother always did it." When the mother was asked "Why?" She said her mother always did it.

Finally, the new husband asked the grandmother, "Why?" She replied, "When I was first married I had a small roasting pan and the roast would not fit unless I cut the end off."

Step 5—People

Now that you know the desired result (Step 1), the policies (2), the customers/stakeholders needs (3), and the procedures (4), it is time to spell out what sort of people you need to do this function. In some cases many people can do it, but the function can be done better and more efficiently if you match the people to the work.

There are several formal ways of doing this using the Predictive Index or the Prep Profile. Both of these use a quick survey to create a style profile of an individual and of a job. Comparing profiles helps make a good match.

You can do this on your own. Here's how. Think of the function and the people doing it now. Who does it best? Most effortlessly? With the least errors? With the least supervision? In other words who are your class 'A' workers in this function.

List these people.

What is their style of working, their attitudes, their character, their philosophy? What else do they bring to the job which makes it easier for them to do it very well?

For the Accounts Receivable function:

Detailed, systematic, follows up well.
Strong interpersonal skills.
Not a pushover, but flexible.
Initiates phone calls easily.

It is now time to honestly evaluate everyone doing this function now. List there names, decide whether their fit with the function as described in Steps 1-6 is an A, B or C fit. If it is not an 'A', decide what to do to correct this.

Step 6—Milestones & Monitoring

Using the data from Steps 1-4, design a system of milestones and results to track how well this function is performing. Decide how often to set a milestone and how frequently to measure results.

Milestones

1. Defining 'A' players in each department.
2. Design new, rigorous interviewing process.
3. Create data based hiring tools.
4. Job openings proactively anticipated at 95% level.

Results

1. 80% of all managers are 'A' players.
2. 90% of all new hires are 'A'
3. Four week average fill time.

Decide who sees the Milestones and Monitors the Results, how they get them and how often. Assign names, frequency and media (e mail, memo, etc.) for each item above.

Describe the process that insures corrective action is taken when milestones and results are not as desired or when desired. Milestones and Results reported the day before each monthly mgt. Meeting. Reviewed for corrective action in the meeting as needed.

Step 7—Staying Current

Many companies have policy and procedure manuals, suffering from several flaws which you can avoid.

1. They attempt to legislate every situation. Every problem gets turned into a new rule. Eventually, the number of rules becomes so large they become ineffective.

2. Lack of general policies requires an overabundance of specific procedures. No room is made for individuals to develop their own judgement. No coaching is provided to develop this judgement.

3. Procedures are continuously added to correct problems; yet old policies and procedures are not systematically removed.

4. Since policies and procedures are not current, everyone learns its OK not to follow some of them which undermines all of them.

We believe you should set a regular time to zero out, or sunset the above steps for a particular function and redesign them. This insures they are current, elegant, cohesive and on target. Here is an easy way to do this and do it on just the right schedule.

• From the moment that all the key players agree on Steps 1-6 the contents of those steps are placed in a GREEN binder labeled: Purpose, Policies, Customers, Procedures & People for the XYZ Function in Our Company, dated. A duplicate book is prepared but it is placed in a YELLOW book.

• Everyone now plays by the GREEN Book. And uses the YELLOW Book to make notes for changes, deletions, improvements, etc This implies that all procedures and policies are always followed. No exceptions. If a policy or procedure is found wanting, a YELLOW BOOK meeting is called.

• On some regular, infrequent basis, let's say annually, the key players for that function (XYZ) convene with the GREEN and YELLOW Books to readjust and update the GREEN book into a new and agreed version. Thus new pieces are not added when ever someone sees the opportunity to add something. The important and critical dynamic is that the community of individuals connected to a particular function are all involved in making changes. This insures changes are made with input from the whole system. This is also the time to eliminate or streamline current elements. This keeps the organization of the function effective, efficient, adapted and connected with the users and customers.

• If any one finds the GREEN Book requires an up date or change sooner than once a year, any one can call for an update meeting to consider changes.

Step8—Implementation of All Steps

This step applies to all the other steps.

You can not easily implement any of these steps unless everyone affected by them supports them enthusiastically. This includes customers and stakeholders. It especially includes those outside the function who must respond to, provide input to, or utilize the function and its outputs in any way.

Everybody must be allowed time, ideally in a team setting, to be educated on the proposed GREEN Book, to raise questions about it and possibly to make modifications in it.

You are encouraged to involve others in each step to insure they have considered the implications of what you have written, and have provided any input for modifications or improvements.

As the leader(s) of the function you are responsible for:

1. Keeping the GREEN book current.

2. Holding YELLOW book update meetings as needed or as called for by others.

3. Insuring others know and support the GREEN book for your function. This should not be compliance due to threat or authority, but rather compliance due to understanding.

4. Insuring the GREEN book drives the function it covers towards effectiveness (serving the customers/stakeholders) and efficiency (serving the bottom line in cost control) and adaptiveness (being current).

5. Involving the least amount of people in the process of formulating and updating the GREEN book, so that 1, 2 and 3 above are also true.