There are three kinds of problems in operations:
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Show-stoppers are felt immediately. Because they pose an immediate threat to business goals, people naturally coordinate to solve them quickly.
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Time bombs can exist invisibly for months, years, decades. No one sees the threat…until they do. Product safety corner-cutting and lax cybersecurity are good examples. (When was the last time you tested your backups?)
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General shabbiness is the kind of problem everyone feels all the time, but because it can be worked around and is tricky to solve, it can persist indefinitely. Error-prone, manual processes; important knowledge that isn’t documented or shared uniformly; cumbersome tools and platforms. (Regular use of Excel in any regular operational process is a reliable shabbiness “smell”.)
Problems of shabbiness are just as much of a threat to your goals as the other two types. They are the migraines of your business, sapping your energy and creating a culture of cynicism and small thinking.
Why fix shabbiness?
If your business has an office, you probably hire someone to come in and clean it regularly. Let me ask: why do you do this? People can still type on their keyboards and hold meetings in a dusty office, right? Do your customers care about the sweptedness of your office floor? Are they going to pay more for your services because the breakroom sink gets wiped down a couple of times a week?
We empty those wastebaskets and sweep those floors because a clean, professional environment is a requirement for professional work.
Giving people reliable, powerful tools and processes is much, much more important to the quality of their work than a clean workspace, but it is very often the last thing leaders focus on. “Put up with these flaky tools and processes, suck it up and carry on” is much more often the implicit message leaders send to their teams.
Shabbiness is a solved problem.
No one — not team members, not leaders — puts up with shabbiness because they like it. If your team is dealing with the same three papercuts every day, I know that frustration has been felt by you.
“But my team is busy, we have much more immediate problems that need solving!” I get it; devoting scarce time and attention to eliminating minor papercuts is hard to justify when you have other issues that are very pressing.
Thankfully, shabbiness doesn’t need the same kind of resourcing and attention you give to those type-1 showstoppers! It just needs creativity and a nonzero level of persistent attention.
What do “clean” operations look like?
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Leaders and team members show up knowing that they have everything they need to do their best work: ready access to key information, and tools that multiply their effort and guard against mistakes. Processes should serve every level of the organization, not just the C-suite!
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At the same time: each team’s processes naturally capture all the data needed for timely analysis by leadership.
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New team members are brought fully up to speed using a well-understood process within a predictable timeframe.
The platforms and programs people use are stable and reliable over time.
→ Shabbiness usually shows up as either environmental friction or data poverty, or both; resist the temptation to solve for one at the expense of the other.
→ Shabbiness audits can be team- or org-wide catalysts for much-needed digital transformation efforts, but don’t overlook a good targeted fix if it can be made resilient and stable over time. You know your business best, and you may be the one person in the world best suited to take on this work; but if not, get in touch with me.