Beyond the Buzzwords for High Performance

1
Beyond the Buzzwords for High Performance
Rick Bohan NEO Center for Labor Management
Cooperation at WINOC
20th Ohio Employee Ownership Conference Employee
Ownership Creating Companies Worth
Keeping Friday, April 21 Akron/Fairlawn Hilton
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What are the buzzwords?

• ...And how come we have to go beyond them?
• Too many companies still dont do the basics very
  well!

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Somaybe we need to go back to the buzzwords!

• Visionary Leadership
• Focus on the Customer
• Organization and Personal Learning
• Employee Participation, Involvement and
  Empowerment
• Agile Processes
• Management by Fact
• Managing for Innovation

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Visionary Leadership

• When was the last conversation you had with your
  employees about vision and goals?
• David Coyle of Ohio Department of Transportation
  District 12 schedules an appointment with each of
  450 employees every yearto discuss organization
  vision and goals.

5
Focus on the Customer

• Does each employee know
• Who you top customers are?
• What theyre needs and expectations are?
• What they buy from you?
• What the latest quality and service performance
  to those customers are?

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Organizational and Personal Learning

• Whats your process for sharing best practices
  around the organization?

7
Employee Participation, Involvement and
Empowerment

• Bohans Law of Implementing New Stuff
• New capital, machinery, equipment, technology,
  and systems of all sorts MUST be designed,
  purchased, installed, tested and brought on-line
  by those who will operate, maintain, and directly
  supervise it

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Agile Processes

• Have you mapped each of your core processes
  (those that provide value to customers)?
• Have you mapped each of your most vital support
  processes?
• What, specifically, have you done to take
  variability out of those processes?

9
Management by Fact

• What are the Key Indicators of Performance in
  your organization? Are they posted for all to
  see?
• Do supervisors and managers talk about those
  Indicators with employees in staff and shift
  meetings?
• Do you have employee teams that focus on
  improvement of specific Indicators?
• What data analysis methods do managers and
  employees use?

10
Managing for Innovation

• If youre not competing on Innovation, youre
  probably going to go out of business sooner
  rather than later.
• Five years from now, how much of your revenues
  will come from services or products that you
  dont offer right now?
• Do you have an organization culture that
  supports, encourages, prompts, and motivates
  innovation in processes and products? How do you
  know?

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Beyond the Buzzwords?

• In Little League or the American League, baseball
  is just throwing, catching, and hitting.
• Companies like Toyota, Costco, Southwest Air,
  Caterpillar didnt move beyond the
  buzzwords.they just keep getting better at
  throwing, catching, and hitting.