Building Full Commitment

Perhaps the toughest thing to get right in management is the level of detail you apply to setting goals. Too little detail leads to confusion and conflicts in interpretation. Too much detail leads to prescription, and conflicts in delegation. Neither result is good for focusing the creative determination of your people where you need it: on the goal, rather than on each other or on you.
And the problem is compounded enormously when you have a brand new team creating a new, business critical, organisation from scratch, as was the situation for Emerson's World Wide Supply Chain (WWSC).
WWSC's response was to use QFD: to understand clearly what the success criteria of the new organisation would be; to develop a structure of processes to deliver that success; and to drive the efficient design and management of those processes.
The picture (above) shows part of the QFD cascade workshop. In the workshop, the whole WWSC organisation worked together to design the critical elements of the organisation. The picture shows one of the process teams creatively exploring the opportunities for their process to contribute to the goals of WWSC. Subsequent to this, the workshop provided the opportunity for them to work with members of other process teams to reconcile their combined ideas into a coherent and effective whole.
As a result of the workshop, every individual in WWSC knew and were committed to what WWSC was going to achieve; they knew their part in that, and how that linked with the wider team; they knew the flexibility they had to make it happen, and they were committed and confident that they could do so. What better place to start!
To read the case study of this work, click here
To understand more about QFD, click here