Losing the Cape
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About this ebook
Are you ready to lose the cape?
Many businesses operate in a state of chaos – people running around, working hard, just to achieve a mediocre level of performance. When crisis situations arise we are often lucky enough to have a 'super hero' work for us that can help us to get out of our impending disaster.
We celebrate these people for their ability to pull us out of the sticky stuff… but what if this was a problem that was really disguised?
What if our heroes could put away their capes, re-direct their efforts and help transform the fortunes of the business?
What if we only wore our capes when the business was facing a real issue, and not one that we have created through our own management?
A step by step solution
There is a way out of this situation, and we can kindly retire our superheroes so that a more effective and more efficient way of working can come through. Our days don't have to be full pelt trying to stay still, we can think our way out of this situation and Losing the Cape shares a range of strategies to help you do this in your business.
The ideas contained in this book are based on practical, real world, business transformation projects. They don't apply to just one type of business – the ideas are universal, so whether you work in a government department, a professional services business, or a manufacturer, these ideas can work for your business.
Practical management approach
There is no magic in this book, only practical management ideas that have been proven out in the real world. The author, Giles Johnston, works with businesses of all different sizes, in all different sectors, that are trying to achieve the same basic objectives. They want happier customers, better profits, easier working lives and a feeling of control back in their businesses. The methods outlined in Losing the Cape are designed to do just that.
Part one of the book gets you to look at how your business is fundamentally operating.
Part two takes you through a series of strategies and methods that you can apply to your business as you move away from a reliance on superhero cape wearing and into a more controlled process driven way of working.
You don't need to crush creativity out of your business on the way to higher levels of control, but there are some things that you can do in order to get the best of both worlds.
Downloads to accelerate change
To help you apply the ideas even faster into your business a number of downloads accompany the book. Tailoring and using these worksheets and templates can help you move quickly from where you are today, to where you need to be.
Are you ready to lose the cape?
Giles Johnston
Giles Johnston is a business improvement consultant who specialises in helping businesses improve their on time delivery performance. Giles is a Chartered Engineer and uses the same principles and problem solving ideas from his manufacturing background to help businesses in all sectors. Many of the tools and methods Giles uses to help his clients improve their performance have now made their way into written format and have now been published as ebooks. Giles is thankful to his clients who have pushed him to write down his views and ideas, making these books possible. Giles lives in the North East of England with his family.
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Book preview
Losing the Cape - Giles Johnston
Part One – The Cape
Are you ready to start to hunt for the capes present in your business?
If I do my bit right, and you come along for the hunt, you should be able to see some of the past events of your business differently. Between us we can find opportunities for improvement by changing the meaning we give to certain events.
On your mark, get set, go!
What Is the Cape?
Welcome to this book. I see many people who ‘love the cape’ whilst on my travels as I work with businesses to improve their on time delivery and productivity levels. When there is a problem in their business these individuals, like a superhero, change from their normal personality into someone who can leap into the heart of the action and remedy the situation.
The cape is a habit pattern; when there is a problem they leap into action and achieve a better result. When there is a (perceived) emergency in the business the cape appears.
The cape is everywhere
Let me give you some examples of when the cape might appear.
Imagine you work in a factory and you are regularly behind schedule with your orders. When you get customers phoning you to complain about orders being late the cape might come out. Overtime might be arranged, extra labour might be sourced and other deliveries might be sacrificed. You manage to please the customer who has complained... but at a cost.
Now imagine that you are working on a project and the deadline is looming. You realise that in order to avoid the penalties that the customer will impose you need to ‘pull out all of the stops’. Like the last example, overtime and additional labour may be applied. Hopefully corners won’t be cut, but you are no longer sure as the pressure of the situation increases. The productivity of the project increases during this period... but it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.
So, is there an alternative?
Why do we need the cape in the first place?
Why Do We Need the Cape?
The cape fascinates me. I am writing this in in 2017 and most of the problems I deal with when I work with businesses (in all different sectors) are to do with fundamentals. My father once asked me about what kind of improvement projects I work on and he was disappointed to hear that I wasn’t working on some kind of high tech / state of the art problem. I was working on problems that were the same problems that he would have faced decades earlier. This is not meant to depress you, rather encourage you that you are not facing a new set of challenges, just a different environment to apply some age-old wisdom.
Are you exceptional?
Getting the basics right in most businesses can be enough to distinguish you from the competition. Being exceptional often means doing the basics extraordinarily well.
The cape exists when an unforeseen issue hits the business. It exists because we need some immediate results and we need a superhero level response to get the business unstuck, fast!
When I say unforeseen this is not entirely true. There are some genuine issues that need to be dealt with that not even the best strategist could foresee. But, and this is the point of this book, there are a whole range of other issues that could have been foreseen. They haven’t come out of the blue, they have been lurking amongst the weaknesses of the business. They shouldn’t be a surprise, but they do catch us off-guard.
A lack of systems?
Many of the times the cape needs to appear is because we have failed to create the type of systems and processes in our business that help us to stop these issues from arising in the first place. I am not going to give you a false picture of the world. Sometimes stuff just happens, what I am going to suggest in this book is that we are the creators of a lot of this stuff. The illustration below will hopefully ring a bell with you.
As I write this I am thinking back to a time when I used to run a business unit within a manufacturing plant. Every day was a challenge to juggle the despatches planned for the day just to minimise the level of complaints that I received. My cape didn’t get me the kind of recognition that would be portrayed in a film, it just reduced the ‘beating’ I would receive from the people who paid our bills. The bottom line was that I was trying to wear the cape continuously, not achieving the results needed and getting progressively more tired. Our customers were unimpressed and my business unit was making a loss.
It was only when I got fed up with this situation that I put the cape away for only genuine crisis situations. I had to think differently; I could no longer think like the people who were around me who were in the same basic position as me. If I wanted different results I had to do something different.
So, that is why the cape exists, to cater for both genuine emergencies and our own inadequacies in terms of running a business.
When I left the cape for only very occasional use my business unit soared. The team work increased, the profits returned (and were improved upon each month for the rest of my time there), new products were introduced faster and our overall productivity was on an upwards trajectory. I actually spent less time in the factory and enjoyed the job more.
I’m not going to guarantee any results from this book, but I hope that you can find a number of strategies that you can use to form more productive habits in your business that can make your life a little easier and help your business to perform at a higher level.
‘Out of the Blue Cape’ Versus ‘Repeat Cape’
Let me make a clarification at this point about the two types of cape I see on regular basis. I really need to stress this point before I carry on.
The genuine cape
When you have a genuine crisis in your business you need to put on the cape and do what is necessary. In these instances, you are caught off guard and have to do something in order to avert disaster. Disaster obviously differs depending on your particular industry and your business’ perception of what bad looks like, but you will know what disaster looks like for you.
These crises are often things that have such a low probability of happening that they aren’t part of your business forecast. They don’t make up part of your plans and therefore leave you unprepared for their occurrence. They appear to be out of the blue.
The fake cape
The other type of cape situation is the type that you can predict, the type that you have seen before and pretty much guarantee that you’ll see again. These repeat incidents require for the cape to be worn because you need to sort out the situation. You might even realise that you have caused the issue that raised the crisis in the first place; there might have been something that you haven’t been doing that has led to this situation.
Both of these situations require the cape to be worn and it is likely that you will never get away from the need to have a cape in your business, to some degree. So, here’s the challenge. Can you do something about the repeat crises that lowers the overall need to do your superhero act on such a regular basis?
I want to add at this point that if your business is facing a resource issue, if your staff are stretched beyond what is realistic then some of the cape situations you are experiencing are likely to be exacerbated by this factor. There is some good news to be found in this book however. Before you look at your resource plan and start to plan out what level of staff you need to operate your business, read this book first. Once you have worked your way through the different ideas and options you should be in a better position to design how you want your business to operate. You may even find that you are able to stop doing some of the things you are doing currently, and this might free up some of the time that has been tied up wearing unnecessary capes. Additionally, if resource management is a missing process in your business then after you have reviewed the ideas in this book you may decide to include it as a formal activity going forward.
If you split up the crises your business faces into two camps; out of the blue and repeat crises you would have a ratio you could monitor. Over time, following the ideas in this book, you should be able to see a significant decrease in the repeat cape incidents and even possibly a reduction in the out of the blue incidents.
You will still have urgent issues to deal with, but the ones caused within your business will decrease if you actively work on the causes that are under your control.
Action Points
- Make a distinction between the genuine capes and the unnecessary capes that appear in your business.
Do Crises Hide a Skills Shortage?
A question that must come to mind is ‘do crises hide skills shortages within my business?’
It is a perfectly valid question and one this book is built on.
In my experience it is hard to see what shortcomings people’s skill sets have when they spend their time in superhero mode.
Whilst preparing to write this book I asked a number of business owners and directors their opinion to this question and got the same answer. Over time it was felt that if they didn’t move away from the fire fighting and chaos mode then it was assumed that the person in question didn’t have the skills / habits to work in a different way.
One person in particular said they might have the skills, but they don’t seem to choose to use them, they seem happy flying around putting out fires.
Interesting...
What if there is no second mode?
Appraisals and regular reviews with your staff are a good place to start to try and work out if there is anything more to an individual’s skill set than what you have seen.
I’m sure that you have been through enough of these conversations to realise that you need to properly dig to find out if there is a second mode to the way a person works. Most of these kinds of conversations (we need to do something different...
) lead to head nodding and the right kinds of words being said.
Pointed examples and proper responses to the questions, rather than glib generalised statements (that possibly have been trotted out several times before) need to be requested. In the heat of the discussion it is very easy for the person being questioned to tell you what you want to hear rather than the truth of the matter.
Strategies to consider
If you are thinking that some of your staff don’t have a second mode don’t worry, the rest of this book is here to help with that.
Of course, if you have some genuine skill deficits then it is probably worthwhile addressing those needs. However, and this is the main point of this book, the habits, processes and working patterns that we utilise in our business is what drives the main chunk of results we get.
Through the course of this book I will share with you a number of strategies that will help you to re-direct your staff in order to work in a way that is more organised and productive.
If you have read Stephen Covey’s brilliant book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ you will possibly recall his views on time management and the challenge we all have - to balance our work between the important items and the urgent items. The cape lives in the world of urgency, whilst routines and process thinking live in the world of the important.
Keep reading and let’s consider a simple principle that can help us to start moving in the right direction.
Action Points
- Look at the