Cost reduction, reduction in force, reorganization – these days, these words continue to echo through many corporations.
The reaction to this state of affairs by many people in the organization is, “what is going on? I’ve been giving my all – why do we have to do this (again)?” Unfortunately, for whatever reason – failure of products, services, sales, finance, management manufacturing or just plain economics – the revenue coming into the corporation are no longer sufficient to support the current organization. So the numbers of people get reduced in the corporation.
There are also secondary effects to the systems: processes and procedures must change so the remaining people can handle the workload. It seems to be a truism that for some reason the workload is not reduced proportionally. In fact, certain portions of it seem to grow. And in reality it does. Historically in economic downturns health, insurance, service and other claims rise, even though the organization staff has been reduced.
Enter getting more done with fewer people. When you are the CXO, the task falls to you. You have to get it done to insure the viability of the corporation. You probably also have fewer resources than you had before, not just the “other ” departments. Understand that times have changed and priorities have reordered.
So where do you start?
Step One: Assess the goals that have to be accomplished.
Consider ROI, but it may not be the prime reason for the change. Besides in crises situations things are changing very fast and it may not the primary consideration. Things like booking orders or collecting money faster may prove to be more critical to the company’s survival.
Step Two: Establish a priority of critical functions that must be maintained.
Step Three: Determine at what level of service these function have to operate – 100%, 75%, 50%?
Step Four: What amount of effort, time and resources are required to change the processes and what is the return?
Step Five: Reassign values, priorities based on what you have learned.
Step Six: Set out an implementation plan- implement those items that can be done quickly and take few resources. The reason here is that it will build your credibility, which believe me you will need for the larger tasks. It also gives your remaining team some confidence and experience working in a very high stress environment.
Step Seven: Monitor progress and these changes to insure that they are working as planned.
If you are the driving force behind the changes, do not expect to be viewed as the head but perhaps something lower down. So you will have to do a sales job in the affected departments. Your improvements will be viewed as anything from interference to just unnecessary or even downright dumb. People seldom view change as a good thing; there are exceptions, but that’s why they are called exceptions! You must get the users’ buy-in and have them understand that the outcome and success of the changes affects their future. In other words if they do not adopt and implement the improvements, the company may close and they will have to find another job, which might no be so easy. The challenge here for you is that you may not have time to create and run “feel good” committees and solicit everyone’s opinion. You may have to send in an analyst check out the current operations and then implement the improvements at great speed. You may view it as a time of battle, which it is. It is a battle for a company’s survival.
You will probably have to put together a working user group that will take responsibility for helping design the changes and implement them. This does two big things. It should get you the information you need on current operations. And secondarily, when the changes are introduced, these people will be the leaders in their implementation. If nothing else you can tell them it will look good on their resumes. Perhaps that is one motivator to keep the projects moving forward.
You may also run into dissention, objections and resistance from these people initially, but you must make them understand the options – one of which is the failure of the company. There may be some that will not come over to your views- drop them from the working group and isolate them as much as possible. This triage, not band aid time. Your job also evaporates if the company does. The outcome of every one of these work group meetings is a plan and list of items that must be accomplished by the time of the next meeting. That is why you are having the meeting – to see how it can be done, not if! You must have an agreed upon goal and a time to accomplish it. There must be a clearly stated deliverable and time for the delivery if you want the new process to succeed. NASA found that absence of these conditions caused 90% of their project failures, as there was no point of completion and thus a lack of urgency to implement the solution.
The positive side of this is that the company will become stronger through improved productivity and hopefully all the people who contributed in a positive way will be rewarded.
Mr. Vishney has held several senior level positions as Partner in a Consulting firm, CEO, VP Sales and Marketing, Consultant, and CIO. As the founder, chairman, and CEO of the globally recognized software company, AWARD Software Inc., Mr. Vishney was instrumental in offering the leading edge BIOS software in the PC industry, which runs on over 300 million personal computers today. You can contact him at rvishney@vcgconsult.com, or find out more about him, his company, products and services at http://www.vishney.com.
