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If it isn't Broken, Break it!

Guest post by: John Grubbs

Article Overview: Peter Drucker stated that obsolescence must be planned into products and processes in order to stay ahead of the competition. A company or product that is stagnant only creates fertile opportunity for competition. In other words, your competition will always replicate the success you have achieved in the past. This simplified premise makes innovation the competitive advantage that most successful companies lack over sustained periods of prosperity.

If it isn't Broken, Break it!

Peter Drucker stated that obsolescence must be planned into products and processes in order to stay ahead of the competition. A company or product that is stagnant only creates fertile opportunity for competition. In other words, your competition will always replicate the success you have achieved in the past. This simplified premise makes innovation the competitive advantage that most successful companies lack over sustained periods of prosperity.

Success can be the most significant cause of complacency that leads to mediocrity that leads to losing ground against the competitive forces that accompany positive results. Progressive thinking leaders are now developing a culture that mandates innovation in every process and product. This thinking alone directs hiring decisions as well promotion requirements. Individuals that do not promote and require innovation are not selected for leadership positions. Even the most basic of processes are required to become adaptive and responsive the necessity of change.

Resistance to change becomes a disqualifier for key advantages within the organization. Changing a proven process for something new and better may seem a bit counter intuitive to most people. Yet, even the most effective and historically successful work must be forced to change in order to maintain the lead on the competition. The American auto market is an example of complacency that has led to being overtaken by the competition. General Motors success during the period after world war two and the arrogance of looking inward promoted an environment that paved the path to automotive number one for Toyota. The sad reality of today is a General Motors that follows Toyota's lead in a market they used to dominate.

First to market or being the best at a current point in time is certainly no indication of success for the future. Jim Collins listed Circuit City as one of the "Great" companies from the eighties and nineties. Today, Circuit City is a memory in the wake of the phenomenal success of Best Buy. Larger and more open stores with better products and employees with more product knowledge (Geek Squad) slanted the landscape toward success for Best Buy. Think of it this way, it is much easier to take a proven process and product and improve it rather than reinvent something that beats the competition. It is easier to improve than invent. Innovation is not synonymous with invention.

Another significant challenge for many organizations is talent complacency. We become complacent with our current talent and settle for performance mediocrity. We settle for so many reasons. We disguise this lack of leadership as loyalty to those that have been here for a long time. We hide from the leadership role we are supposed to occupy. We abdicate the function of managing the team to attrition over time. We deny the performance truth in order to make life easier on ourselves. We hid behind the threat of corporate litigation. We become apathetic over the challenge of finding new and better qualified talent. No matter what reason we choose the result is the same. We end up with an organization that is threatened by the competition. We put the business and all employees at risk simply because we do not have the intestinal fortitude to do the job that is necessary for performance excellence. Instead of creating a challenge for our competitors, we make it easier for them to beat us at our own game. Even worse is our fate when the competition picks up the better talent that we could have made a part of our team. Leaders must always make room for anyone that will improve the intellectual capital and ultimately the success of the team.

Sometimes we must "dehire" good people in order to make room for better talent on the team. The organizational toughness required by this concept is foreign to most managers today. Imagine the idea of a good person that has improved the organization to a certain point. Now consider replacing that manager with someone that can continue to improve the organization. This concept is uncommon to most organizations. Yet it does exist in an environment that validates the premise.

A professional sport is the purest example of accountability and talent management. Winning the game is ultimate goal and everything else falls under this outcome. Loyalty, friendship, and tenure all have significantly less influence on the decisions made by managers. This purity of purpose helps clarify decisions at all levels of the organization. Even the most seasoned and accomplished player will admit (albeit with difficulty) when he can no longer perform at the level that benefits the team. Professional quarterbacks that once led the National Football League will accept roles as teachers or mentors to the new talent that can take the team to the next level. This reallocation of talent is very common and the new roles are readily accepted most of the time by all of the individuals on the team. Business leaders can learn so much from the performance requirements and expectations of the professional sports franchise. Making decisions for the benefit of the collective even at the expense of the individual is the norm, while in business the benefit of individual often far surpasses the collective benefit of the organization.

Imagine a business that truly places talent at the pinnacle of the strategic and tactical operation. Better customer service, improved quality products, safer activities, reduced cost and more profits all wait for the organization that filters every single decision through the performance and talent of the organization as a whole. Imagine a business that makes every single product, process, policy, and program obsolete within a predetermined amount of time. Consider the amount of change required by this type of management. Innovation and improvement will become the expectation rather than the occasional surprise. Improvement will be the norm while complacency will be scrutinized and forced out of the organization at every opportunity. Leaders will see the future as something far different than the present. Employees will come to work with the expectation for change rather than resisting it at every opportunity. The beauty of the strain required for growth will become the expectation of the team.

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Article Tags: change, drucker, improvement, leadership, talent
Referred by: http://www.thetrainingbank.com/



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