A touch of reality, please
Ad de Grauw
Published at
It is election time in The Netherlands. All across the country political leaders get out into the streets and connect with the people who put them in power. You can feel that there is something in the air. The international trend is that unlikely things do happen. The UK have had their Brexit, the US their Donald Trump. In The Netherlands, the popularity of populist Geert Wilders is rising; a trend we also see in other European countries. It seems that more and more people don’t trust the establishment any more. Have politicians truly lost touch with reality?
We see our national political leaders heading out to the countryside to engage with ‘the angry citizen’. They offer them the obligatory buttons, flyers and the occasional red rose, hoping to regain their trust and vote. What you really see is that political leaders have lost connection with their electorate.
Distance
A painful example is our ‘Binnenhof’ (the political heart in The Hague), which is a stone’s throw away from the ‘Schilderswijk’ (workers district). However, the social distance could not be any larger. At R&G Global Consultants we see the same phenomenon in some organisations. Honestly, how often does it happen to you that things are not going as planned or not going at all? That despite an excellent strategy results are not as expected.
Gemba
Too often I’ve met with general managers in boardrooms less than a stone’s throw away from the actual shop floor to find out that they had no clue whatsoever about what was going on there. While the Gemba – the place where the actual value is added to the company’s products – was at their feet. It’s an illusion that you can simply ask for results from your management and OPEX teams, without having experienced yourself what’s going on there.
Flawless strategies
As a reality check, you might want to answer the following questions.
- Do you expect your strategy to cascade through the organisation down to execution level by itself and expect its implementation to be exactly as intended just by telling your MT once?
- Do you sometimes have the feeling the messages you receive about the successful implementation of a change do not match with the bottom line results you are (not) seeing?
- 70% of (flawless) strategies fail in (flawed) execution. What makes you certain your company beats this statistic?
- How do you expect people to be motivated to change if you do not show that you care and show up at their workplace?
- What does it cost you if they actually find out you don’t have a clue?
Operating system
In the end, it’s you who’s accountable for what is going on in your company and it’s you who needs to act. What you probably need is an effective operating system. At R&G we know the cost of not having it and we can guide you how to set it up and to put it into effect. To make sure strategies get executed as intended, avoid discussing monthly average figures from afar in a boardroom. Get a better perspective on a per unit basis at the shop floor. And ask the right questions to empower your team and to avoid unpleasant surprises. You only deserve what you tolerate.
Avoid surprises
What we can learn from the political trends in The Netherlands and abroad is not to be surprised by your own business. So stay connected, know what’s going on, listen and ask the right questions to build trust.
I wish you happy elections.
Ad de Grauw is Business Process Consultant at R&G Global Consultants in the Netherlands.
