Companies large and small want to create new products or processes and get them into large scale production quickly. Don’t we all.
How do we do this?
Over the years, since man has been making things for mass production, I guess since the last turn of the last century, this has been of interest.
Over the last 30 years, I’ve been involved and this is what I’ve seen.
The turn of this century is a transition from the patriarchy to a new way which doesn’t have a word for it yet. The way that we formalize and organize projects, people and organizations is in a hierarchical manner based on the alpha male concept. There has to be one person at the top who has the power. He has some degree of absolute power but everyone agrees he or she is in charge. The organization of a patriarchy doesn’t mean that it has to be a male at the top. It only means that it is a pyramid structure and that things flow more or less linearly.
The new way and the way that non-developed countries are more experienced with is a concurrent, non linear and flat structure.
In the last 20 years, you’ve heard the terms fighting with each other. On the one side there is concurrent engineering – new way, Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and many others like it – patriarchy.
In the 80′s I thought that concurrent engineering would take hold and that would be it. No more use for someone like me building bridges between departments, companies, employees, etc.
WRONG! Companies now are more confused than ever about how to transfer products and processes. They don’t want to and don’t know how to give up on the patriarchal methods of top down. More senior level executives are burning out or getting fired because they cost too much and don’t provide any value. They want to manage like a feifdom, a kingdom with their followers doing the work and them overlooking and overseeing.
More and more we hear of flattened organizations, outsourcing and contract manufacturing. All of these methods work on a circular not linear flow. But we don’t like circles. They are confusing. They end where they start and there is nobody in charge. “Where is your leader?” How do we know what is doing on? But as we know on Survivor, the strong get executed and if you show too much leadership you have a target on your back. And in real life, someone has to take the blame and it usually is one of the leaders at the top.
So what do we do? How do we make this transition without killing off all the strong and qualified ones? And what method can we use to move things from one place to another, especially from creation to life; from chaos to order? Or is it true as my old nemesis says things move from order to chaos and you just destroy everyone in your path until you are the last one standing? This probably doesn’t give you a place in heaven or if you have a conscious, peaceful sleep at night.
This is what I propose and what I see that works. It is a work in process.
There must be a leadership team – 2 people work best. One of them is technical and the other is interpersonal. Team leadership, not management by committee or groupthink. More and more I hear leaders saying, I listen to my employees – I don’t want to rule by an iron fist. They know that there is too much going on for one person to know about. And a figurehead is only good for royalty.
Whats next? The team of 2 work out a map and use the tools that have been created by the Lean organizations. There are excellent tools for mapping paths to go from point A to point B. This map plan goes through iterative process. The software teams of the world seem to get it the best since what they create is invisible to the layperson. There is a map plan, it is shared with the shareholders (people who have a stake in the outcome), there are changes and then it goes back for an update until there is a freeze. This can apply to a product, a process, an organization structure or anything else that is being created.
At that point, there is a freeze. The freeze must be honored. After that there are no changes, until it gets to the next milestone where planned changes are reviewed and incorporated. Red lines, notes and controlled documentation is collected for the next review cycle. Nothing is ignored but nothing is implemented either.
The complexity of the project/product/process will determine how many cycles are completed before full release. A pilot or first article is always required to prove out the final product.
Realize that nothing is ever perfect and there will always be changes, but they have to be controlled.