Beyond Goals … Beyond Lean: A Prescription for Managing a Perpetually Improving Company Using Gaamess©

By Fred J. Conforti

All too many business books focus on grand concepts that are appealing but not practical. Beyond Goals…Beyond Lean, on the other hand, provides clear, hard-hitting real-world business advice that executives can use. Fred Conforti knows how to build a business and he shares his years of experience in the trenches in this remarkable book.” Tim Calkins Clinical Professor of Marketing Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management

The object of managing a business is to serve customers in the best ways possible in order to maximize results for employees and owners. This guidebook is for executives who want to go beyond the traditional approach of relying on lean manufacturing principles or MBOs to achieve their goals.

Using the prescribed GAMES© method, one company went from insolvency to profitability in six months and then beyond to become the largest supplier of residential smoke detectors. Another company went from the brink of closing to the top brand in the fire controls business in twelve years. Time after time, companies have used the GAMES© method to execute dramatic improvements and turnarounds.

Executives at these companies empowered coworkers and created self-motivated cultures and thriving enterprises—you can do the same. Learn how to assess the condition of your company; gather feedback from customers, conduct a SWOT analysis, develop a Plan and move beyond traditional business practices.

Charts, images, and key summaries make it easy to follow the strategies, so you can eliminate problems, energize employees, and move Beyond Goals … Beyond Lean.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480802780

Fred J. Conforti

Fred J. Conforti was president and cofounder of First Alert, the leading home detector brand. He founded System Sensor, which is now owned by Honeywell, and Wyreless Access, which is now part of Ingersoll Rand. He was also CEO of PSTG. He received his MBA from Northwestern University and his bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He currently consults for a variety of companies. www.conforticonsulting.com

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Copyright © 2014 Fred J. Conforti.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0277-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0279-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0278-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013918231

Archway Publishing rev. date: 11/16/2018

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Taking your company Beyond…making it the best it can be!

Chapter 2 Your role

Chapter 3 Where to begin

Chapter 4 Typical problematic symptoms of a less-than-robust business

Chapter 5 Usual shortcomings

Chapter 6 Do you recognize any of these symptoms or shortcomings?

Chapter 7 Progress starts with a vision

Chapter 8 Current situation? Where is your company now?

Chapter 9 Getting started: yourself, your customers and employees, your company

Chapter 10 Now what?

Chapter 11 How embracing change leads to success

Chapter 12 How developing and executing a Plan improved companies

Chapter 13 Changing the culture to reach your vision

Chapter 14 Goals and objectives

Chapter 15 The Plan

Chapter 16 Building a success-oriented Plan

Chapter 17 GAMES: the secret to managing a sustainable, continuously improving company

Chapter 18 Separating the wheat from the chaff

Chapter 19 Some caveats

Chapter 20 Predicting success

Chapter 21 Commitment

Chapter 22 Tally

Chapter 23 Selling change

Chapter 24 Communicating

Chapter 25 Change Is not for the faint of heart

Chapter 26 Establishing a new culture

Chapter 27 Recognition and Selebrating

Chapter 28 Rewarding success at the end of a Cycle

Chapter 29 Gives results

Chapter 30 Needs repeating

Chapter 31 Calendar

Chapter 32 Doing what you’re best at, what you enjoy!

Chapter 33 Time to go Beyond

Appendix A: Definitions

Appendix B: GAMES Forms

Appendix C: Five Whys

Appendix D: Meetings

Reference List

To

all those who answered my questions

which taught me so much.

Introduction

You want your company to be the best it can be. Right? I agree and intend to help!

As a prelude to helping, let me share with you my philosophy which is that every company, no matter how good it may be, can be better. Probably a lot better! That’s why I wrote this book.

Beyond… is a guide written for every executive who earnestly wants to improve his/her company’s performance – making it the best it can be. It starts with exploring the generic symptoms and shortcomings found in several of the dozens of companies I have advised. Once knowing those we explore and compare them to your company’s current situation. Using that information we begin to find opportunities and then show ways to take advantage of the opportunities uncovered. This then leads to a Plan for increased success. Following the roadmap laid out in Beyond will help make your company the best it can be.

Optimizing your company is your creed.

Beyond empowers leaders and those being led to create a thriving, productive, self-motivated and organized enterprise. It delivers a practical Prescription that goes Beyond Goals…Beyond LEAN to a Process for enterprise-wide culture change. Following its Prescriptive Process should lead to unprecedented growth and profitability - given your company’s perspective is long term.

Long-term success is your ambition.

If, sadly, your perspective is short term this book will not help. So, if that is the case, be generous and consider giving this book to a friend in a company with an enduring viewpoint.

Before you start reading, it is important that your team is getting you timely financial statements. If you are not getting sound monthly financial statements or budget reports that is where you need to begin. So, put this book aside for now. Get help to produce reasonably sound monthly statements and once you are getting good financial statements it is time to continue reading.

If you want to improve it, you need to measure it.

More than likely following Beyond’s Prescription will require some sort of culture modification or change. Expecting that a modification or change of the company’s operating culture is in order can mean a long, difficult transition. The Prescriptive Process is not a one dose panacea. It will take multiple doses to change the company’s culture to one that is more engaged, self-motivated, proactive and accomplished. Though it may take time, if you never start you’ll never get there.

A bias for action is your style.

Beyond is about more than aspiring visions, mission statements, or strategies. It’s about turning all of them into a Plan that will transform those aspirations into reality. Your vision will be incorporated into strategies, which will get converted into initiatives, which will show up in your business Plan. Carrying the Plan out will enable your company to reach your vision and fulfill your ambitions.

Bring your company’s aspirations to this book. It will outline a Prescription to carry them beyond the goal line … year after year.

Expecting that you are reading this book to improve yourself and your company, division, operation, or department, I believe you do not want a glorified, overly optimistic, emotional presentation. You want reality … not sugar-coated fluff or academic study conclusions. So, all of the vignettes in Beyond are from first-hand involvement.

The approach of Beyond is from the perspective that every company, no matter how good it is, can be better. We will look at the company’s strengths. But, for us to uncover what can become better, we will start by looking at the things that could be amiss. A bit negative, which I do not like to be … but effective.

Problems are opportunities to be reached!

Once we have uncovered what can become better, your company can move beyond to a brighter future.

This book is primarily addressed to CEOs, but it can apply to all officers and managers in an organization, regardless of its size or type. The Prescription Process offered can be applied to any operation, department, or team. The protocol for developing a great Plan still applies.

Before going further, please review the definitions in Appendix A so that the advice given is more easily understood.

1

Taking your company Beyond…making it the best it can be!

Beyond takes you further than earlier goals programs or Lean initiatives. It gives you a comprehensive Prescription to follow. The Prescription Process will continually organize and improve your business through your team. Initially, it will be like going to your doctor with some symptoms that are bothering you—some that may not be apparent to you, some that you may have been disregarding for years, and some that you may want to ignore completely.

Your doctor will assure you that she will uncover your problems’ true causes and then make you better. She will already have books of symptoms and their causes for reference. If she doesn’t have the right references, she will get the ones she needs. She will ask you to describe your symptoms in detail. She will then examine you, looking for more clues, and send you for testing. Tests might include an X-ray, a CT scan, or an internal exam like a laryngoscopy to get as much information as possible to aid in her diagnosis.

Using your description, the results of the tests, and conferences with colleagues, your doctor will make an analysis, and a diagnosis will follow. She will set up a treatment regimen. You will be involved and consulted.

Only then will she prescribe specific medications. She will tell you that this medicine has helped many with similar symptoms. The results of taking these medications will be tracked through follow-up appointments and evaluations. Your doctor will not release you until the true causes of your problems are found and treated, and your symptoms are gone. You are cured. The symptoms should never return again.

Beyond will be similar. It will start by reaffirming the purpose of a business and espousing the premise that every company, even your company, can be better—probably a lot better! Given that premise, it will share with you the common, undesirable symptoms found in other companies that could be doing better. Next, it will catalog and prioritize the shortcomings found in actual companies that had issues and have been helped. It will be interesting to note the high percentage of companies that exhibited these shortcomings. In most cases, management would have disagreed or were not even aware that these shortcomings existed.

Beyond will ask if you recognize some of these symptoms and shortcomings that your company might have. You may have been choosing to ignore them. If so, it is now time to expose them and deal with them, once and for all. It’s time to move beyond.

Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is. ¹

If you do not recognize any of the symptoms or shortcomings, and you feel your company is running well, you may see no need to change. However, you may be missing some prospects.

To help find those missing prospects, the Prescription outlines four proven diagnostic techniques to uncover the unvarnished, current condition of your company. This is the examination phase. You may be surprised what you will learn.

One of those techniques will recommend that you look in the mirror, to give you confidence that others are seeing you as you see yourself … or not! A second technique will ask you to get a reading from your customers as to how well your company is doing for them and what they seek going forward. The third technique is a survey for addressing the six critical operating functions that drive bottom-line performance. Last, the Prescription will reacquaint you with SWOT, an exercise to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing your company. This exercise will be used to rank tasks designed to perk up the company.

These four techniques will complete the diagnosis and give a clear picture of the current condition of your company.

The SWOT part of the Process allows participative introspection, a burst of suggestions, an evaluation and prioritizing of ideas for the improvement of the company. Strengths will be highlighted with the prospect of building on them. Weaknesses will be revealed and then recorded, without finger-pointing or animosity. The Process is eye-opening yet nonantagonistic.

Following it will help everyone understand their peers, their managers, the company, and the company’s customers better.

The knowledge gained will then be applied to drafting GAMES and building a Plan. As a result, your team will be identifying opportunities that will help endear your company to your customers as well as employees, reduce costs, and increase profitability as long as the Process is maintained. The teams will determine priorities, volunteer to take them on, be committed to complete them, and monitor their own performances. Just let them do it! This is the treatment to go beyond.

Many executives say they delegate, but they don’t. ²

You might be wondering, Shouldn’t we be looking at the financials, the monthly P&L and balance sheet, to help determine the condition of the company? The answer is yes, because they may show you general areas of concern, such as revenues that are too low or are going down monthly, profits that are dropping, expenses that are growing, and so on. But these are symptoms.

The financials are a report card on what the company has been doing. It may be good. It may be bad. But no matter what it is, it will not get better simply by looking at it. Nor will the situation get better if you only manage from those numbers. In other words, companies have to change what they have been doing and how they have been doing it, and then the financial results will change.

Beyond works on the foregone conclusion that no matter how well or poorly your company is doing, only changing what you do and how you do it before the financials are published will affect future outcomes. Following the Prescription Process should affect those outcomes positively.

Financials are the report card for the good and bad decisions that were made long before the financials are published.

The four diagnostic techniques mentioned above will help you explore and then determine what changes are in the company’s best interest.

Some of these explorations may shout change. If not, they may just point to modify. Whichever it is, the Prescription will lead you through a Process to set up a Plan that should transform or tweak how the company operates. It will introduce you to GAMES that will allow many potential enhancements to be taken on and completed. It’s a game changer!

No Plan, No Progress!

Tackling these potential enhancements in an orderly fashion, a fashion that will be replicated over time, will most likely require alterations from your existing ways of doing business. The Prescription Process will guide you through these changes.

To get headed in the right direction, you will be challenged to reaffirm, define, or redefine what you want your company to be in the future. Your vision, supported by the board and/or owner(s), will be instrumental in redirecting the company.

In making changes, every company needs to recognize and embrace which stakeholders come first, second, and third. It also needs to know where it is weak, where it is strong, where favorable conditions exist for gaining new customers, and where there may be potholes to avoid. Exploring and expressing these, using some or all of the four diagnostic techniques, creates an open atmosphere and develops guidelines for initiatives to serve all stakeholders well. Addressing the stakeholders’ needs, as well as the weaknesses and opportunities in a well-developed Plan, will be a major step toward building a new, stronger, more progressive, and participative culture.

Take great care of

customers first,

employees next,

and the owners will realize all they can hope to get.

As with any proposed change, the team needs to accept and support it. In other words, to be successful, the team has to buy in to the idea of change. A great attribute of the GAMES portion of the Prescription Process is the involvement of the team from the outset. The fact that they come up with almost all of the initiatives that will be taken on as Goals is a buy-in from the start!

But that does not absolve you, the leader, from championing the need for change, cheering on the progress, and continually selling the present and future benefits. Change also requires leadership to cultivate a safe environment that supports transformation. A safe environment is one in which there is not constant judgment, where open contributions and discourse are embraced, and calculated risk-taking is acceptable.

Leaders can only lead where followers are willing to go.

Besides a total commitment to and selling of the new approach, your contribution will be to add your expertise to the Process. In developing a Plan, you will take your knowledge and experience and use them to separate the wheat from the chaff … if your subordinates haven’t done it before you. Before the Plan is solidified, you will have a chance to review, modify, and adjudicate what has been proposed.

You are not giving up your authority or control. You are just giving your team the chance to become better focused, take on more of the burden, and be recognized and rewarded for doing so. In your role as reviewer, coordinator, and adjudicator, you will still govern the directions and outcomes—quietly. Your leadership, guidance, and support will determine the rate at which your team will adopt these new approaches and the speed at which the company will garner results.

The tempo of the leader determines the pace of the pack. ³

Following the GAMES format, the selected, reviewed, and approved Goals will be documented and become the company’s Plan. Recording and editing are made easy by an app that you will be able to download from the Internet. (See Appendix B.) Before these initiatives are begun, you will have tools to predict their success.

No matter how earnestly you desire to have a workable Plan, it will only be as good as the Process used to develop it and the commitment of the leadership to its implementation. Most plans fail due to lack of employee involvement, and not enough ongoing management dedication and follow up. Expectedly, following the Process outlined in the Prescription, and using the GAMES format for your business Plan’s development and execution will help to substantially improve outcomes.

The exercise used for uncovering and ranking possible opportunities, which will become Goals, is relatively painless. As a matter of fact, it is energizing in that everyone, even the folks who were seldom heard from before, now gets every chance to contribute. Everyone should feel good about that!

There will be many steps to take, from identifying opportunities to actually publishing