Enterprise fitness: what it takes to be lean, strong, and agile – year after year

Citation

Covington, J. (2001), "Enterprise fitness: what it takes to be lean, strong, and agile – year after year", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 29 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/sl.2001.26129eab.001

Enterprise fitness: what it takes to be lean, strong, and agile – year after year

Enterprise fitness: what it takes to be lean, strong, and agile – year after year

John Covington

John Covington is president of Chesapeake Consulting, based in Severna Park, Maryland (www.chesapeak.com). The firm provides value-chain improvement solutions that enhance growth through increased speed and predictability.

After 20 years of successive waves of improvement methodologies – from TQM, reengineering, and employee empowerment to Lean Thinking, ERP, and Six Sigma – one thing is clear. All of these systems contain a piece of the answer, but none is a panacea. There is no single set of principles and tools out there that will work magic for every enterprise. There is no surefire formula for whipping an organization into shape for the tough competitive environment that is ushering in the twenty-first century.

Why should we expect such a thing? True, these "solutions" are often sold as the ultimate answer, the last big push you'll ever need to finally achieve sustainable organizational health. But everything we know about our own businesses should make us suspicious about allegedly all-encompassing solutions. We know our own organization is not exactly like any other. We know it is not exactly the same outfit it was five years ago or even three years ago.

An organization is a living system, not unlike another complex system we live with even more intimately – the human body. The similarities between our business organizations and our bodies are striking:

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  Each business and each body is different from any other.

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  In both cases, there is a wealth of knowledge about how to treat ailments and achieve optimum health and fitness – and considerable conflict within that body of knowledge.

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  There are ways to measure improvement.

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  Depending on the age and condition of the entity, improvement efforts begin at different points.

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  Heredity may be a factor in how much improvement can occur.

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  Outside influences have an impact on overall health.

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  Both businesses and bodies are alive and dynamic, so one-time fixes are not the answer.

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  The organism can change quickly, making course corrections necessary.

A fix or off base?

Fitness of a human body or an enterprise implies a level of strength, stamina, and agility. The fit entity is lean and flexible enough to go the distance. When it is our human bodies, we get symptoms that tell us when we are not up to par and that create the sense of urgency that impels us to make some improvement. There is persistent pain. Or there is an inability to perform some function that was formerly easy.

The symptom does not always tell us what or where the problem is. Abdominal pain could be a sign of an ulcer, a sick gall bladder, emotional stress, or something else entirely. A backache may be caused by poor posture, a slipped disc, or an injury in some other part of the body.

Since we see only the symptoms and not the cause, our attempts to fix the problem or raise the level of fitness and function may be completely off base. We dose our stomachs with antacids when what we may really need to do is cut out dairy products. We exercise to strengthen our backs when the better remedy may be a new mattress.

In our organizations, improvement initiatives and methodologies are the equivalents of yoga, low-fat diets, and weight training. They are the equivalents of chiropractic treatments, vitamin pills, and meditation. In other words, depending on the circumstances, the improvement initiative may be:

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  right on target, the perfect solution to the problem;

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  harmless, but irrelevant to the actual problem;

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  moderately helpful, but falling short of giving full relief;

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  worse than useless, because it diverts resources and attention away from the real problem.

It is not as simple as saying a particular product or brand of thinking is good or bad. Remember, in terms of our bodies, a vigorous workout on a stair-climbing machine may be the perfect exercise for a fit 25-year-old, but a lethal one for an out-of-shape, overweight, heart patient. A daily dose of vitamins and supplements might be helpful for people who live on fast foods, but might be a waste of money for someone who is eating right. Whether a treatment is good, bad, or indifferent has everything to do with individual circumstances.

No holy grail

Enterprise improvement philosophies and systems also retain the "flavor of the month" quality found in fad diets and exercise programs. Last year's amazing solution is suddenly dead as a doornail, and all hopes are vested in the marvelous new prescription. And sometimes it seems that the more expensive, disruptive, and hard-to-make-a-habit the new system is, the more we need to convince ourselves that this really is the be-all and end-all.

As of now, there is no Holy Grail in sight, either for the human body or for a business enterprise. In fact, to do it right, the whole business of getting fit and keeping fit is less of a heroic adventure or unending quest than a matter of steadily building on strengths and focusing improvement efforts where they will make the most difference.

Before committing millions of dollars and months of time on the latest and greatest computer system or paving the entire enterprise with the management methodology du jour, a sane step would be a baseline assessment of the whole living system – the equivalent of a thorough, annual, physical examination. This evaluation will indicate where there's a need to build muscles, lose flab, or increase flexibility.

An enterprisewide "physical exam" will show where the weaknesses are – insufficient capacity, not selling enough, problems in the vendor base, not hitting due dates, or whatever. And zooming in on the problems this way indicates which tools are appropriate to create improvement.

Are silos and turf mentality, for example, keeping you from meeting your customers' expectations and needs? If so, bearing down with lean principles is probably not going to help. Lean is focused on getting the waste out of the system. This may not be the best tool kit for breaking down barriers between functional areas.

But lean thinking is great for many other fitness challenges. So are theory of constraints, six sigma, business process reengineering, chaos theory, and all the bodies of knowledge of the "soft" side of business – the issues of human motivation and behavior. There is no law that says you can be married to only one improvement methodology. All these maps of the world are sources of wisdom and insight.

Making common sense of a habit

It is okay then to "cherry pick," i.e. use the tools that fit the situation best and to use them selectively, where and when they will have the most impact. What's most important is keeping the view of the whole system in sight – and that may well be the panoramic view from your vendors' vendors to your customers' customers – to be sure that "local" improvement strategies are having a positive effect on the overall fitness of the enterprise.

Above all, an attitude of persistence pays off. Many of us, in our personal lives, start a new exercise regime or diet as a New Year's resolution, but are back to our old bad habits within weeks or days. In our organizational improvement efforts, fits and starts are also the general rule. Many four-year improvement initiatives get abandoned by year three. Many perfectly good plans find themselves scrapped whenever there's a change in management or structure or markets. Many perfectly fine methodologies get dropped in favor of the new silver bullet program that is fielding all the attention.

In their own minor ways, however, most of these improvement philosophies are like the great religions of the world. They have some enduring truth to them, some precepts that will work if you faithfully apply them. And methods for decreasing variability, improving quality, and streamlining workflow have some underlying and eternal wisdom that is equivalent to taking in less food and burning more fuel to lose weight. Given a bedrock common sense inherent in all these improvement methodologies, it's more important to find how each fits at your company, to do so patiently and persistently, and to make it a habit. In other words, it's just like exercise: You'll probably do better walking for 30 minutes a day, every day, year in and year out, than thinking you need inline skates or a rowing machine to do something about your "spare tire."

When it comes to enterprise fitness, a top Olympic athlete is the best role model. The star athlete who wants to shave a second off his time will know his own body thoroughly, will select the tool or regimen that is best suited to the desired improvement, and will apply it consistently and unwaveringly until the goal is achieved. The sedentary slob, on the other hand, harbors a "zeal" for improvement that comes in fits and starts, usually at the instigation of some external threat. That is not the level of energy and commitment that will help him reach his goal.

Improving performance is not as expensive, difficult, or complicated as we make it. We do not have to wait around for new enterprise software or the next CEO, nor should we implement every piece of some proprietary, improvement program in every corner of the organization. Improving performance can begin right now simply with knowing who you are as a company, using what you know, and sticking with the practices that work until they become second nature.