Operations File: The Art of Tweaking - 10 Steps to Efficient Working

There is no question in my mind that the smaller an organisation the easier it is to review, assess and analyse faults and identify inefficiencies. The fewer parts there are in any machine or system the fewer points of failure it can have or develop. It becomes a relatively quick process to fix a problem, to reorganise a system, to develop it or add and expand it.

Faults, spanners in the works, inefficiencies can only be in a limited number of places in the smaller enterprise operating in isolation. For larger concerns (including government departments and banks) such challenges become ever more complicated to nail down to just one cause as several factors are always in play at any one point. Put simply, problems multiple proportionately according to complexity of the systems devised. This situation is exacerbated when prior expansion plans were not thought through or could not predict excessive demand and no contingency plan was considered.

Leaving aside health and social care (the subject for a future blog) this blog outlines the basic principles for any other organisation. The reason to separate health and social care is because the effect of changes are far more complex as real lives are at stake and the entire history of such services has to be taken into account. It merits a more detailed understanding.

Signs of overload

Hands up all those who have encountered difficulty getting through to the right person in the right department to resolve a problem; from supplies of raw materials to contractors and delays in applications for funding, loans, getting repairs done and all manner of bureaucratic tick boxes to wade through – all hold us up in our endeavours. This is nothing new, the only thing that has changed is our lack of patience. I am no exception to this at all though I do try to be.

With increased demand comes a higher risk of inefficiency, mistakes and delays exponentially speaking. With increased inefficiency comes an increase in frustrations, complaints and overloading systems and ultimately... collapse. The solution is to calm down. The expedient to deploy is forward planning.

However when a crisis occurs forward planning is not the priority and if no contingency plan has been anticipated for any particular situation it can result in a recipe for disaster. The only way to cure inefficiency is to work methodically through all the following steps.

10 Steps to Cure Inefficiency

Step 1: Identify areas of high risk of overload – they are your priority.

Step 2: Identify specific labour intensive, time consuming tasks – they are areas that need attention.

Step 3: Look at the whole system to see if some faults are occurring everywhere – if so do they have the same root cause?

Step 4: Identify where and how duplicated effort occurs and why – opportunities to simplify should start to become self evident.

Step 5: Identify what still works efficiently and why – you’re going to need to protect it to continue to work.

Step 6: Research ways in which to simplify tasks and reduce duplicated effort that will suit your workforce and its way of working – there’s no point trying to get staff to work in a way that causes stress or worse, disinterest – and discuss options with all staff.

Step 7: Propose a 3 phase plan of action to the workforce and amend according to priority of need for each and every department.

Step 8: Finalise plan of action and set target dates for each phase.

Step 9: Monitor, review and adapt each phase as it is being implemented.

Step 10: Start planning how the new system can be modified and developed for expansion and don’t forget to design a contingency plan to prevent panic should it need to downsize – it substantially reduces risks of stress which enables people to adjust more easily.

All this sounds simple but in practice it requires the full co-operation of everyone, patience and commitment. Just a surgeon wishes to avoid snagging a lung when operating on a heart, success depends largely on NOT disturbing what works as little as possible. The key steps I find that commonly get glossed over or totally ignored are Step 5 – identify what does work and why, and Step 6 – research and discuss with staff. You can delegate or take the first 5 steps in any order it you like, but ensure you do them all thoroughly. 

In one overhaul of systems the instruction came to me to “change everything!” This came from staff and managers alike. What followed was the eradication of duplicated tasks by different departments, increased access of information that anyone needed to do their work. This didn’t mean all information was made available, merely that which was relevant to each department with the addition of overviews from other departments.

During the transitional period staff found that they had to relinquish some responsibilities and take up new ones, but by asking staff beforehand this was achieved amicably so that it all worked out rather well. It did so because things were not such much overhauled as methodically, systematically tweaked into working at every stage of the process across the whole operation at the same time. The result was an overhaul. Everyone was behind it because they totally understood both the risks and the benefits throughout the process.

The practicalities of tweaking is more of a specialism of the staff than managers in practice but only when managers are on top of the whole picture so that they can highlight pitfalls to avoid and reinforce the long-term objectives. They co-ordinate the whole, but it’s the staff that make it happen. Regular updates are vital during any transitional period so that no one department races ahead before others are ready to. If one department is lagging behind to achieve its targets, the others who are waiting for them should help by teaming up with them which increases unity in any workforce.

Efficiency to me automatically means less stress in the workplace and always entails empowering all parties to utilise their skills to their full potential. Collectively we can and do devise solutions that benefit all. In isolation we can only devise systems that will suit a few.

Hard work need never be devoid of fun so enjoy the Art of Tweaking your way to a less stressful and more successful stress free future!

Article: Skills of the future

In the early 1980s I was involved in typesetting. Back then full colour screens and certainly pictures were not commonly available to most businesses; your business was considered advanced and state of the art if it had green and black screens instead of white and black, but at least floppy discs for storing information had arrived instead of cassette tapes. Mobile phones too were just being introduced and were heavy cumbersome things that few could afford and instead of Internet we had fax and answer phone machines.

It meant that everything that needed to happen had to be done at a much slower pace and in a much more manual fashion. Go back a little further in history and typesetting itself was a process of laboriously physically collecting each individual letter to make up words and sentences to produce a page of text - it was called hot metal as that's what the letters were usually made from. The skills required to run any operation in any industry were extremely diverse.

As technological advancement changes so skill requirements to enable businesses to function and survive do. Take as another example weaving and textiles; in the 19th century it was done by people working at home before the industrial revolution brought about mechanised processes. Whole ways of making, producing and functioning periodically change with the result that many manual skills get lost and forgotten. A wholly handmade pair of shoes made by a master cobbler is today regarded as an artisan product and the prices of them reflect the time and craftsmanship as well as the rarity of them in our use for five minutes and throw away modern world. They stand out as being different from what is commonly available precisely because they are not mass produced.

The question that crosses my mind is that by focusing on being able to produce things en mass and do things with ease are we in danger of losing out on many of the pleasurable things in life that enhance the quality of our existence? To just press a button to make things happen is hardly stimulating work and it can lead to all manner of problems if that button doesn't work as the mechanised process grinds to a halt and that then impacts on profits etc. In addition we might well be in danger of failing to develop a myriad of skills by becoming fixated with technology alone.

Today few people have knowledge of what is actually happen when a switch, lever or button is operated; they take it for granted that it will just work and that if it doesn't someone else will fix it. With many modern systems though there are no cogs to align, no wheels to grease, it is mostly down to knowledge of computers, electronics and electrics to kick start things again. 

The inherent problem with such sophisticated systems is that the more complex they are, the more points of failure they will have. It is hardly surprising that those who are particularly adept in computers, programmes and electronics are among the most highly regarded professionals of all due to their sheer usefulness in ensuring things work in our modern world. Certainly if you are involved in technology of any form you are unlikely to find yourself long-term unemployed compared to other aptitudes of skills. What though, does the future hold for those who are not computer orientated and what will the future hold for their skills?

There are of course many other areas which will never become industries of the past; from health care to education, from farming to construction and from plumbers to law enforcement. However the way in which they all work is becoming much more technologically reliant and that could prove to be a problem because if we do not equally value the non-technically orientated we could (and I would argue already are) missing out on the development of many other areas of skill which are not so heavily reliant on technology. 

A person can be taught things without the aid of computers, a better yield from crops can be achieve without them and as yet there is no substitute for the a person knowing by  through experience whether a person is ill or if they are trying to cover up a crime. There is great value from learning how to achieve things via different means, but in our push-button world we will soon not know how to?

Could we function if we had no technology now? Without any clear and viable alternatives to current energy sources which are finite, if the plug were pulled out so we had no electricity supply how would we be able to function at all? Such is the major pitfall of becoming so push-button reliant. That reliance even extends to our spare time and is already throwing up new problems with people simply not knowing how to socialise because they are continually plugged into a computer.

Technology at is best should always aid us, but it should never govern who we are, how we choose to function or what we do next. We should be commanding it and not be dictated by how it operates.

I recently read that children as young as 9 have 'better' (i.e. more advanced) phones than their parents and knew how to use every facility on them. I found that rather sad to reflect on because if the pace at which we work continues to increase, what time will they have to enjoy the planet that sustains their existence and what experiences could they be missing out on? New prejudices are already set to develop against those who are not interested in technology. Are we as a species about to embark on a split between one half of us becoming technophiles while the other half are manual workers. Many would argue we already are and it's certainly been a recurring theme of many a sci-fi story. Historically such differences in aptitudes have fed into the conflicts and been the basis for class systems. So in the future will it matter less how you are educated but matter more what you are educated in for you to make your way in the world?

The fact remains we need both brains and brawn in order to survive and progress, but my concern is that while I see plenty of hype and praise of all things technological, I see little by way of support for other skill bases which are the bare essentials to all of us being able to function at all. There are a lot of non-technical skills which are responsible for maintaining the real infrastructure by which we can have our wonderfully diverse structure. For this reason, while I am a fan of technology myself, I think we would be wise to invest more in ensuring we have future generations to still, farm, build, install electrics, look after our water supply, heal the ill and educate us all. To be blunt in my opinion, we cannot afford not to.