One Inch at a Time

Reading Jack Vinson's article 'Perfection is the goal, not the first step' brings to mind one of the concepts we discussed here in '4 Quick Ways to Get Your Business Documentation Rolling'.

The concept is to spend at least a few minutes every day working towards your goal. This idea is especially relevant when discussing the documentation of business operations because:

1. It's not something that you're likely to see immediate results from.
2. It's not a particularly fun process.
3. It's easy to put off because there won't be any immediate impact.
4. A lot of people literally don't know where to begin.

There are many approaches to business improvements that discuss the benefits of committing a certain amount of time every day to document and analyze your operations. I've found this approach to be much more beneficial then setting aside a certain block of time each week (or month!).

By using the tools offered with KMX to organize tasks I have our entire business innovation approach divided into several small objectives. My KMX dashboard allows me to view these objectives sorted by date according to the last time there was anything done with the objective to move it forward. I make it a priority to start off my day by reviewing these activities and 'doing something'. Some days this activity is just a few minutes to review some notes someone has left and some days it's a couple of hours fleshing out a system innovation.

I'm finding a lot of success in other areas of my life as well following this concept. By focusing on doing something every day - even if it just takes a couple of minutes - to move my 'someday maybe' projects forward I see a lot more things getting done.

Measuring Performance

The Center for Management & Organization Effectiveness describes the effectiveness of scorecards to establish individual accountability.

Scorecards serve as a good summary for monitoring expectations, but without the critical component of clear documentation of expectations, scorecards do not fulfill their potential.

I once heard an analogy about typical management practices. The illustration depicted a bowling scenario in which the employee was rolling the ball at the pins. Management would stand in front of the pins with a blanket. The ball would roll under the blanket and knock down the pins. Management would keep the blanket up and look at the pins and try to tell the employee how many were still standing, etc. The employee has to keep rolling the ball and try to knock down all of the pins without eer seeing them.

I see this type of scenario playing out often in the 'real world'. You have a conversation with someone describing some outcome and defining the tasks required. Without clear, written instructions it is almost inevitable that two people in a conversation like this will walk away with two different ideas of what the end product will look like. Then you end up with the employee doing what they think is needed and the manager being unhappy because the end product isn't exactly what they envisioned.

Clear documentation for business processes and responsibilities is a sure-fire way to bypass this disparity and drop that blanket so employees know what their targets are and what management expects from them.