[Continuing our series “ABCs for Managers…”]
Alice: I am lost, I am walking in circles.
The Cheshire Manager: You can never be lost walking in circles.
Alice: But I keep coming back to the same place again and again.
The Cheshire Manager: You can never be lost if you know where you are.
Alice: What I really want is to go straight but this road keeps looping back.
The Cheshire Manager: Then walk in loops so that you can move straight.
All execution happens in the form of projects. All formal projects have elaborate project plans. All project plans are a sequence of steps. These steps can be arranged in wonderful linear dependencies like FS, SS, SF, SF. But we know few plans survive contact with the real world. The antidote is not absence of planning or of plans. It is not even thinking that multiple alternate plans are needed. It is about the need to build in feedback loops within each planned activity.
These loops are referred to differently in specific contexts for e.g. running experiments in Lean Startups, management by walking etc.. But loops are more important than restricting them to any specific context.
A Loop can be defined as a perpetual process which provides immediate and correct feedback to the decision maker to take the next step
- Immediate: This is the time between an event which occurs and for it to reach the person who can take a decision based on the event. This means the person who can take a decision should be placed as close to the event as possible.
- Correct: The source of information is more important than more information to prevent unnecessary inundation in the loop. This implies the decision maker needs to be as close to the source as possible to act as a qualitative and quantitative filter. Sometimes metrics might be needed as a wrapper for ensuring correct information that is unfiltered by qualitative analysis.
- Perpetual: It is important to not think of a loop as a bi-directional flow of information. A Loop has no direction, just a continuous seamless movement which feeds the forward flow of plan.
- Next Step: A loop is a self-sustaining mechanism and hence the flow post decision-making also needs to be well thought of.
A good execution plan inherently has the following in place:
- A high number of small/short loops with trained decision makers (“trained” implying that typical responses to typical situations are formalized)
- A medium number of medium-sized loops comprising of multiple decision makers arranged in combination or hierarchical structure for atypical responses to atypical situations
- Extremely few large size loops comprising of hierarchical decision making flow for rare events. In such a situation, while the size of the loop is large in terms of correctness, but needs to be short in terms of immediacy as these events will be urgent & important at the same time.
In an environment of flux,
All straight lines are Loops,
All plans are a series of intertwined Loops,
Build your loops with the immediacy, correctness, decisiveness and perpetuity that are needed.
