Making the Shift From THEN to NOW

Line up five people and have them whisper a complex set of instructions in succession to one another. What the fifth person hears and does will have little resemblance to what the first person intended. Imagine if the fifth person has a question and the communication process is reversed.

This silly children’s “grapevine” game actually takes place all the time in the old system of management, where hierarchy rules. A customer presents a problem, the problem travels up the chain of command, a question comes back down, and the answer slogs its way back up the chain. Finally a distorted decision finally creeps back to the point of customer contact. Welcome to the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of THEN Management.

As a recent Consumer Reports survey indicates, two-thirds of customers suffering through such an aggravating problem-solving approach will have bolted out the door or slammed down the phone. That puts a smile on the face of the more nimble competitor who easily snags the angry customer’s business.

Today, customers (defined as anyone inside or outside the company who expect to receive value from others’ work) want the right solutions to the right problems, and they want

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“Management works in the system. Leadership works on the system.”

– Stephen R. Covey

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them NOW.  Making that happen requires a NOW Management System℠, one that enables every employee to jump on every opportunity every time.

Due to the “Grand Canyon gap” between what leaders envision and what employees must deliver in real time, management must be reengineered. Management’s purpose is to make sure that everything is in place before the NOW Moment℠ arrives — that’s the definition of NOW Management.  In a NOW Management System℠, leaders ensure that the company’s mission, vision, values, goals, and strategies thrive in the minds of everyone who works for the company, especially those on the frontlines who create the most value.

“Yes” is the only viable value proposition and “now” is the only viable timeframe in today’s high speed world. As the Internet has driven access and speed to everything we need and want, the world of business now functions in real time. It’s a “now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t” world of opportunities, which is changing how organizations think about their competitive strategy.

The frontline of this battlefield is the frontline – it’s the people who produce and deliver your products. And every leader should be asking, “What’s the YESability℠ of my employees? Do they understand our strategy? Are the values of the company in their bones? Do they know what we are counting on them to do? Do they have the data they need to make decisions? Do they have permission to take action in the now, in real time.

Today the gap between what the leaders want and what the frontline delivers is deep and wide. Witness the social media dramatized gaffs that expose the problem in its extreme. But every leader knows the reality that inside their organizations things go on every day that make no sense. Deadlines missed for unexplainable reasons. Projects that are shelved at the last minute. Opportunities lost. Dollars wasted.

The biggest economic shift in a century

Among the many factors associated with the so-called Great Recession, one will permanently alter the business landscape. The painful grinding of the macro-economic gears signaled a fundamental shift in our capitalist system from Old Management’s world of Mass Production to Now Management’s era of Mass Customization.

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“This economic crisis doesn’t represent a cycle, it represents a reset. It’s an emotional, raw social, economic reset. People who understand that will prosper. Those who don’t will be left behind.”

– Jeffrey Immelt, CEO, General Electric

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Today’s prevailing management practices still rely on deeply and unconsciously rooted ideas that sprang from the world of Mass Production. That system saw humans as extensions of machines and often referred to them as “wrenches, hammers, and oilers.”  Mass Production created a rigidly hierarchical and highly disengaging management style that inevitably resulted in a disconnected workforce.

According to Gallup Consulting, in the typical organization 18% of employees are actively disengaged, 49% are not engaged, and only 33% are fully engaged. While customers demand customization and personal responses in the new era, frontline workers too often lack the knowledge and authority to fulfill that demand, while their managers, struggling to maintain the old system, fail to give them what their people need to act in the NOW.