Leadership - Authority to act
To achieve results in under 3 months it is imperative that the project sponsor has the authority to keep the project on track. Your job is to be a driver for the change process, support the implementation team and help clear obstacles that may get in the way of rapid implementation.
Empowerment - Everyone can contribute
We like the team to be empowered to develop the solution, make suggestions, feel they are listened to and able to make a contribution. This includes anyone who will be using the system. They have to "own it" in order for it to work for you.
We encourage initiative, ideas and anything that might cause the project to go faster and help the solution work better. We also encourage questioning and even scepticism. We actively use the TOC Thinking Tools to address problems logically. We get everyone on the same side working together to solve the problem/issue. All done with above board respect for each other.
Willingness to try
We will be applying solutions which are logical and common sense but not common practice. Sometimes they are best observed in action rather than taught in a classroom. So if things don't make sense first hand, by doing them they rapidly do. It's many times faster than debating a point theoretically.
The systems provide almost insant feedback. Experiencing the cause and effect logic of actions on the systems perfomance is rapid. People quickly learn how to predict outcomes based on their actions. The power of this cannot be understated. This is why we have to give it a try to observe the effect in order to quickly learn to manage the system to maximum benefit.
Make it safe for others to make mistakes and for them to learn
We must understand that we are changing the rules of the game and some pre existing behaviours and practices will need to change to make the new rules work. We encourage positive reinforcement for trying even if the action produced an undesired effect1. We obviously don't allow the mistakes to cause damage or harm in any way.
Depending on the environment we encourage the rule: "It's ok to make a mistake once, learn from it. It's not ok to make same mistake twice"!
1 Using the TOC logical thinking tools enables one to powerfully predict outcomes from actions. You will find us asking lots of questions very often in the pursuit of learning for your people.
Marketing and Referrals
In all our assignments we request the client permission to allow us to use the results for marketing purposes. We will seek approval before publishing any results. We can also offer full confidentiality.
Many of our clients are referred to us by other happy clients. We like to keep the tradition going. We are in fact only as good as our clients say we are. So if we do a good job a good word here or there is much appreciated.
