Processes that are bypassed are good candidates for continuous improvement. Given the intelligence and efforts of your teams to work around the rules you impose, you have some great opportunities for improvement.
To progress, you must constantly find opportunities to improve. Your creativity may be dry… I have already talked about managing the 3% of problematic individuals. However, your organization may not be dealing with malicious people, but rather with people who are recalcitrant to your practices. if the result is the same, the motivation is different.
Unsuspected opportunities for improvement
Just as you have a good recruitment and management team, you also have good operational teams. You can consider these 3% recalcitrants as drivers. In fact, these people get up every morning with the goal of doing their job well and moving their organization forward.
When a manager meets with these people, she should do so with an open mind. Using 5-Why tools, she can seek to understand where the gap between the behavior and the organization’s expectations lies.
- Is the value system different?
- Has your employee found a different way to achieve a result?
- Does the “how” matter to your organization?
- How far do you want to standardize your practices?
- To what extent do you recognize innovation?
Discern what needs to be challenged
Not all rules should be questioned. Indeed, you could lose a lot of time. However, you must have the openness and discernment to ask yourself the right questions. This is especially true when situations are repeated.
Also consider the power of the fresh eyes of your new recruits. Everyone who joins an organization should be required to submit a “fresh-eye” report. You will learn a lot from this report about practices that deserve to be challenged.
Here are some examples of practices that offer avenues for improvement:
- An imposed text to answer a client’s question
In general, imposed texts (unless they are legally required) sound bad. In fact, the call center agent who misunderstands this text recites it more than he answers the customer. - An authorization to perform an action
When authorization is given systematically or in identified cases, your employee will proceed. Then she will ask for permission. The application is a mere formality for her, which wastes time for both parties. - The signature of a document by several people
Signatures that are passed from office to office, for signature, without ever being checked, do not encourage anyone to take responsibility for their actions.