Solutions

Fundamentals of Management Momentum

Anticipate

And what does this mean? Let’s go back to the definition of anticipate, namely “to realise beforehand; to foretaste or foresee and recognise situations and relations”. It’s the ‘alert’ aspect of flexibility: not only reacting when something happens, but also the timely detection of situations, or even defining the future to some extent. Just think about the pioneering concept of Ikea, or the hype around Apple products. Being alert is not only the detection of trends or the flagging of exceptions, it’s also recognising connections and relations. And do those connections allow us to adjust our plans? Do we know the impact of our decisions? Not just in one department, but throughout the entire organisation?

Monitor & Learn

In fact, don’t we all dream of that playstation, where the game briskly reacts when we are turning the knobs? Where we can test things until we are successful in winning the game? However, it should be easy to realise as we have increasingly more data at our disposal, we develop KPI dashboards based of the available data, and we have powerful reporting tools ... . But who looks at the dashboard or the reports? Do we learn from the past or do we recognise situations? Do we make decisions based on the information? Have we made someone responsible for adapting the processes?

Experiment

A flexible management is characterised by quick decision-making based on accurate information. This information allows for a quick switch to a first test or pilot: in fact, short cycles and small teams are crucial to getting a first result fast, and to correct what’s wrong. And first successes are highly inspiring to convince the group. Because that’s the starting point: better a quick mistake and brisk adjustment, than a late, and maybe even outdated, decision. Making mistakes is OK and we encourage it, providing we learn something from it.

Own

In flexible organisations, the communication lines are short, often informal. When the busine ss case is obvious, management makes the decision and delegates the responsibility to multifunctional teams.

Just think about the design teams at Zara : 2-3 people decide what the next designs will be, 2 weeks later, small batches are being sold. What doesn’t sell well is ruthlessly discontinued. Issues are escalated only when they can’t be solved at the level at which they occurred (‘escalate as high as needed, but not higher’). Focus is on the end-to-end process, not on the executing business unit.

Best Practice: Shell’s worst case scenario