Principle #3: Do What Works!
Have you ever worked in an environment where they just don’t seem to learn from their mistakes? An environment that seems to get stuck over and over again, and when they finally have found their way out, there is always someone closing the door again?
Why is that? Before we started ARQS, we were both working as consultants for two of the larger consultancy firms in the country. Although we eventually got sickened by the way the industry works, we must admit that we learned the hell of a lot during that time…
We learned how NOT to do things.
Client after client, environment after environment, we saw projects fail. It didn’t really matter how many of us (consultants) you would hire, most of the projects where completely beyond saving and besides, we where only there to open our handbook and implement some processes “by the letter of the law”.
To be honest…, the hole in the client’s pocket just got bigger and they weren’t necessarily more successful. All we did was replacing a dysfunctional process by a cultural mismatching new one, how could you expect that to work?
The saddest part of this story is that most of the companies work this way. They have a complex problem, they ignore their own people with common sense, hire a bunch of consultants, throw in some politics and there you have it…, insanity.
Did you know that the definition of insanity is the decision to keep doing something that is not working? It’s about doing something in the same way, and to expect different results.
At ARQS, we felt like we needed to balance that out…, we truly want to help our clients and make them self-sustainable as soon as possible. So what’s the opposite of insanity? Sanity!
It’s to notice what is not working, change the way you are doing it and get better results. It’s about doing what works and instantly dropping what doesn’t.
That’s why we’re a big fan Kaizen Iterations (KI’s). We steer our clients into tightly scoped improvement trajectories of about 4 to 6 weeks depending on the organisation. Such a trajectory is a KI.
Before a KI starts, we conduct a few highly efficient workshops and interview sessions where we:
- Get to know the environment, the current situation and the vision for the future.
- Ask the people on the floor what they would improve first if they got X-weeks to do so.
Once everything is crystal clear, we scope the KI and have a go at it, coaching and assisting the change makers into using common sense, enlarging their perspectives, failing fast, learning from their mistakes and doing what works.
Believe it or not, the success-rate of this approach is near to 100%. By doing what works, you almost always come up with a simple solution that works for everybody, matching the culture and reshapes an environment forever.
P.S.: We use the same approach within our own company, practicing what we preach, improving and refining it every step of the way so that everybody can benefit from it.
The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
This article is number three in a series of ten, find out more by checking out our previous publications!
Love to do what works? Want to find out more about Kaizen Iterations and our way of working? Subscribe to our newsletter or one of our various social channels! (Twitter, LinkedIn and/or Medium)
