A shout out to all our companies that assist with hosting some of our events. Allowing us to come on site is a benefit for so many organisations but your assistance with this is very much appreciated, so thank you!

Make sure you keep your eyes open as we have some fantastic events coming up. If you haven't already done so, make sure you grab your tickets to our SIRF event of the year - 2019 National Forum held in Melbourne, August 27th & 28th. An exceptional list of specialist presenters & keynote speakers not to be missed.

Book early to confirm your spot today! 

The art of driving the actions that deliver the results

By Brian Niven

How do leaders ensure that their teams are actively engaged to rapidly respond to problems as they arise?

How do leaders also ensure their teams are focused to also complete the important but not necessarily urgent projects or longer term actions that deliver true business benefit?

How do leaders manage their resources to achieve a necessary balance between the reactive response and their proactive long term priorities?

How can organisations be set up to be great at managing to both ?

In the SIRF role, we are lucky enough to visit a number of organisations that do this really well. 

A sense for this can be readily seen when looking at the how they conduct their Daily Meetings, how they communicate the key business targets and performance to targets but also importantly how they manage the follow up actions that arise from these meetings. In some it is clear that there is a separation between the quick follow ups – Issue/Action – Who, When reviews and the longer term actions.

What is also relevant is the cadence and repeated patterns of meetings  that exist to review progress to meet key longer term goals.

Some organisations effectively build a routine into the standard morning meetings such that key long term activities or projects will be briefly reviewed at a weekly or fortnightly interval.

Some have separate weekly or monthly meetings to cover these projects and actions.

In my last article in February, I touched on Coaching & Improvement Kata approach that is directed at middle managers focusing teams on their next action to overcome a challenge in their area to meet their longer term objective. I really like how the cadence for these meetings is not locked time based but rather driven by the expected timing of the next experiment or action to be conducted along the path to improvement.

At its worst case, some organisations have annual reviews and set goals once per year and truly only revisit these once per year at the next annual review – luckily these are becoming fewer as leader recognise that constant communication and focus is required to keep strategic goals on track.

We have visited a number of organisations that really manage this challenge well. They clearly communicate the organisations goals and people understand their part in it and there is visibility for all on progress to target and the next steps on the journey. If you get the chance please join our planned forthcoming site tours to GSK & Nissan Castings to see this in action.

Some companies have successfully adopted the use of new technologies (tablets, screens) for effective visual management of the actions responding both to reactive needs and proactive long term goals.

We will be visiting APM (Australian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers) next month that really do this well delivering safety, quality and production results and engaging their teams in the process.

Don’t miss the chance to see this firsthand, you will be impressed by what you see:

For more details, please click here.

Did you miss any of these great events?

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18th/19th March

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28th March

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