Check Up or Check Out?
Over the last two weeks, I’ve been going through a round of “safety checks” to evaluate my personal operating systems. Although the medical professionals may have more sophisticated terms, they are nonetheless evaluating my operating capabilities to see how much may have changed. These capability evaluations have paid off with rates of return that run off the charts. I am just like many business operating systems in that I’m subject to the risks of decay and disruption. Decay and disruption mean that some things gradually eat away at my capabilities while others can have a very big impact in a short period of time. I also run the risks of relying on the wrong data for decision making, just like a business might. I could, for example, believe that if something is wrong, my body would always let me know with pain, discomfort, fever, or other tangible nasty stuff. The big risk of using that kind of data is that I may find out way too late in the process and may not be able to recover. If I were a business behaving that way, I might wait for complaints, or rely on catching failures at the end of the process. If I were a business behaving that way, the consequences might be terrible since waiting on complaint data may tell me I’m already dead with certain customers before the complaints get my attention. Reality is a harsh teacher that ignorance is not bliss and complacency kills. Feeling good is not a reliable indicator of being good.
I combine this yearly set of assessments with quarterly check-ups so that my doctor can detect changes in my condition. Frequency of measurement is really important, particularly when systems are subject to wear and tear, or suppliers are changing, or requirements are changing, or the environment is presenting new constraints. It means that I need a frequency of measurement that can catch stuff in time to do something about it. Of course, having great measurement without the will or means to do something about what the data says is a waste of time and money. I have someone to hold accountable for the quality and interpretation of the data, but only I can be accountable for doing something with the data. Data is expensive, analysis is not so expensive, but both are worthless without decisions and actions when appropriate. In fact, data can have value if it improves the decision making process. Data is for what I am about to do … for decisions that need to be made, even if it is about what we had done before.
One unhealthy condition people can share with a business that will eventually kill any business is obesity; process and cultural obesity. It’s all the waste we carry around in our processes and decision making. We’ve all seen it; many of us have done it or caused it. It not only makes us slow, it also makes us expensive. In really good times, we can get by, but when times get tough, keeping up while carrying the useless load becomes challenging. I’ve always believed that fitness precedes performance. The things that I want to do may require a big investment into the things I need to do. Aspirations may require lots of perspiration.
This is the time when many of us are finalizing our goals, aspirations and planned expenditures for next year … it is all about what we want to do. Are our capabilities up to the task? When was our last check-up?
