KAIKAKU: Ups & Downs E-Book

Robert F. Carter

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Serie: KAIKAKU
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 212

Beschreibung

Synopsis: To change, you have to leave your comfort zone. This is a very uncomfortable thought and an even more uncomfortable road to travel. Both the thought and the journey can cause long-lasting pain if procrastination takes the place of immediate action. Kaikaku (Japanese for 'radical change') is like slapping the face of someone who has fainted: they may have lost consciousness, but the sudden forceful impact can bring them back from a horrendous nightmare. In this book, the author describes how kaikaku is best applied to businesses, how crises can be prevented, and what to do if you have just dealt with a crisis and do not want to get into a new one anytime soon. True stories are used to illustrate the main topics of kaikaku and give an insight into proven problem-solving methods. Some of them might not be entirely legal in all countries, but a slap on the wrist and a 'don't do it again' might be all you get if you're caught out. Lean management is all about avoiding waste, so this book is concise and to the point – it avoids verbal diarrhoea so that the reader does not have to sift through the rubbish to get to the good stuff.

Leseprobe

Robert F. Carter

KAIKAKU: Ups & Downs

A Guide for Interim CROs and DIY Management Teams in SMEs.

© 2021 Robert F. Carter

Publishing and print:

tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg

ISBN

Paperback:

978-3-347-35045-8

Hardcover:

978-3-347-35046-5

e-Book:

978-3-347-35047-2

The work including its parts is protected by copyright. Any use is not permitted without the consent of the publisher and the author. This applies in particular to electronic or other duplication, translation, distribution and making available to the public.

About the author and his company

Robert F. Carter has a college degree from Zurich University in economics, business administration and industrial psychology. After almost a quarter of a century as general manager of a variety of industrial production companies in Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Malaysia, Vietnam and Mexico, he set up shop as a freelance business consultant and one-to-one executive coach when he turned 50. Robert met Marianna 30 years ago (parallels to Robin Hood and Lady Marian are coincidental but accurate). Soon thereafter marriage was proposed and accepted. They are both proud of their two sons, Daniel and Benjamin.

Robert’s company, Coaching for ReThink GmbH, registered in Roggwil, Switzerland, aims to live up to its name by inducing, rekindling and encouraging new thought processes in its clients. At Coaching for ReThink we do not believe in the old adage that ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’, but instead believe that ‘if you rest, you rust’. Henry Ford said, ‘Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it’; having validated this through experience, here is what Coaching for ReThink stands for:

Coaching for ReThink’s credo: ‘We believe that nobody can be held responsible for the gender, country or colour of skin they were born into. We believe instead that everyone can be held responsible for the beliefs they nurture.’

Coaching for ReThink’s vision: ‘We want people striving to simplify processes to achieve Flow©.’

Coaching for ReThink’s mission: ‘Our mission is to steadily progress towards our vision – an undertaking akin to the intersecting of parallel lines! But then: the journey is the reward.’’

In lieu of a foreword, an anecdote about belief

‘A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.’ – Henrik Ibsen

Kaikaku (改革, Japanese for ‘radical change’) can also mean a return to one’s core belief. Therefore, radical change should not be confused with radical renewal or something radically new. A true story will explain what I mean.

For nine years, I dabbled in a variety of esoteric lore – astrology, numerology, enneagrams, feng shui, reiki, etc. – and in the bygone days when the following story took place, I had the reputation of an expert in these unholy fields – unholy because the person this story tells you about had been an observing Roman Catholic for almost 50 years. It should not come as a surprise that we did not always see eye-to-eye. We respected each other’s differing views on the world in general and, in particular, on spirituality, but we did not enthusiastically seek the company of the other, and when we met, beliefs were never the subject of our discussions.

Therefore, I was rather taken aback when she appeared at the door to my office, asked if I had a minute to spare and came in, closing the door behind her. Her red eyes revealed that she must have been crying, and she was not her usual, confident self. I offered her the seat in front of my desk and asked how I could be of help. She fought back tears unsuccessfully and dabbed her eyes with a well-used handkerchief while she extended a piece of paper towards me. To my relief, it did not look like her written resignation from the company’s employ. Instead, it contained two dates. It was not hard to guess that the dates were birthdays. She took a deep, quivering breath and told me that she had been an observing Roman Catholic since her very early childhood, that she attended mass daily and that she would have to confess to her priest about consulting someone like me (at which point I could not suppress a diabolical smile, though it was lost on her as she was speaking to the triangular paper calendar on my desk) about the delicate matter she was about to reveal. I was intrigued, of course, and my eagerness to hear her story made me sit forwards on the edge of my seat. I habitually quip and joke about serious matters (for which I usually receive an exasperated sigh and a ‘Will you never grow up?’ from my wife, Marianna), but this time my inner voice ordered me to hold my sharp tongue in its scabbard and to listen carefully. The dates on the piece of paper were indeed birthdays: one was her husband’s, and the other was that of her husband’s newly acquired lover.

Anxiousness – that I would fail, but also that I may succeed in revealing something valuable – showed on her face when she asked me to render an analysis about the people behind the birthdates – people I had never even seen before. I gathered my wits and delivered, according to her, an impressively accurate description of the two people. Eagerness to learn more chased away the anxiousness on her face, and she asked me what I would recommend her to do.

‘Bake a cake, buy a bottle of excellent wine and a bunch of flowers and pay the happy couple a visit in their love nest,’

was my spontaneous answer. It made me take a mental note to brush up on my diplomacy and to train my inner voice to hold tighter reins on my tongue. When what I had said sunk in, fire lit up in her eyes, and if eyes could kill, I would not be around to tell this story. Mainly to defuse the situation and to lessen my fear of being killed by a pair of severe-looking eyes, I asked rhetorically,

‘One of the pillars of your religion is forgiveness, isn’t it?’

Still shocked by the sheer nefariousness of my proposal, she barely managed to nod in agreement. In a half-hour monologue, I described to her what she would lose if she did not do as I had suggested: almost 50 years’ worth of time attending mass and her authenticity as a Roman Catholic. The very essence of her entire belief system was at stake in this matter, and its survival depended on her decision. After I ended my verbal elaboration on the issue, we sat in complete silence for a considerable period of time. With both of us showing a great interest in the folded hands in our respective laps, she finally looked me in the eyes, said,

‘Thank you, Mr Carter’

got to her feet and left my office. With absolute confidence that true believers are very rare on this planet, I soon dismissed the episode as a quaint interlude. Thus, I was rather astonished when about three weeks later, she again appeared in the doorframe of my office, entered, closed the door and occupied the chair in front of my desk with a radiant expression on her face, exclaiming with sparkling eyes,

‘I did it!’

My face must have revealed my puzzlement, because, with a trace of annoyance, she added,

‘What you suggested – I did it. I baked a cake, bought a bottle of wine and a bunch of flowers and visited them in their new home.’

My eyebrows shot up and I chided myself inwardly for shooting off my big mouth again. As a true Piscean should, she noticed my discomfort and said,

‘No, no, don’t worry, Mr Carter. Everything went well – very well, actually. They were, of course, somewhat suspicious and didn’t want to believe in my good intentions and well wishes for their happiness, but after we had eaten the cake, drank the wine and talked for about three hours, everyone was glad that the situation had been defused in such an agreeable manner.’

Speechlessness is not my hallmark, but I could only nod and grin dumbly before awareness kicked in. I extended a hand and congratulated her on her superhuman achievement. She thanked me again for the ‘somewhat out-of-the-ordinary piece of advice’ and left my office as happy as a cricket.

Why did I tell this story and what’s the kaikaku effect?

I am sure there are other people with such strong beliefs. The above story is to remind them of the importance of their being true to their credo even if they have to change radically to revert to it.

The kaikaku-effect in this anecdote is a positive one: I admit that the radical change is not obvious in above story. – When her husband confessed to cheating on her with his new flame, she chucked him out of their home using language that lengthened her next visit at her confessor’s unduly. – Our spontaneous responses reveal our true beliefs. Therefore, her spontaneous reaction was in utter contradiction to her beliefs. – The radical change came about when she visited the flower shop to buy a bunch of forget-me-nots to her rival. With this radical change in her attitude her beliefs and actions became one.

It is hard enough to be in the middle of a crisis, but if it gets even harder – for example, with a wisecracking smart aleck, like an interim manager with an at-times-unbearable manner, turning up – it is a tremendous relief to be able to fall back on something familiar that once worked well. Thus, if you act according to your true and honest beliefs, you are authentic and in harmony with all your senses, your body and your essence – in short, with your entire being. To reach this state of holistic bliss is the ultimate objective of the kaikaku process.

This book is meant as a guide for small and mid-sized enterprise (SME) executives and interim managers. Its motto is the same I assigned to the CQO (Chief Quality Officer):

‘I am not a teacher, but an awakener’ – Robert Frost.

For easier readability, the male gender is used throughout the book.

Chapter 1

A crisis rarely comes out of the blue but is the result of negligence, lack of focus, and lack of discipline. – Almost all crisis can be prevented by daily practice of hansei (反省, Japanese for ‘self-reflection’) and kaizen (改善, Japanese for literally ‘drive out the bad’ but more usually translated into ‘continuous improvement’)

In a crisis kaizen is useless because its success lies in incremental, sometimes even imperceptible, changes in and to the system to forgo disruptions and stress caused by radical changes.

In a crisis kaikaku has to be applied to get back on track as soon as possible. – Kaikaku will also help you to introduce lean management. Which will prevent crisis any other than the ones due to vis major (like earthquakes, floods or pandemic diseases, etc.)

As I said, do not let the crisis go to waste but implement lean management quickly and efficiently. Why is a crisis a gate-opener for lean management? Because lean management thrives on simplicity, and established enterprises have usually developed some very complex systems that are hard to dismantle in a non-crisis situation but that can be discarded with the flick of an imaginary wand when existences are at stake. – Under chapter 11 (‘reorganisation bankruptcy procedures’ in the USA), and other similar regulations in other countries, a lot of kaikaku is done and hardly any kaizen.

Complex systems operate with a lot of manpower. Simple systems, on the other hand, run with far fewer people, or even autonomously. Therefore, resistance to change is much more contested in a non-crisis environment. Leaving the comfort zone out of one’s own free will requires superhuman willpower – anyone who has tried to diet for any reason other than a medical one knows this. External forces furnish an excellent excuse to get long-overdue things done.

Having said that, it does not matter how severe a crisis is; the following, prevalent obstacles need to be overcome:

1) inner resistance -> only radical measures can break resistance;

2) slow learning -> triggering the instinct of survival speeds up learning; and

3) fast forgetting -> it is hard to forget a shocking experience.

Radical changes cause a lot of stress, therefore remind yourself of what Churchill had to say on changes might help to prevent crisis or at least to facilitate the implementation of change: ‘We must take change by the hand or change will take us by the throat.’

Implementing radical changes all by yourself is akin as pulling yourself out by your own bootstraps: extremely difficult and therefore hardly feasible. External help, like a ‘friendly’ kick in the butt should get you started. – Interim managers are professional ‘butt kickers’ and ‘arm twisters’, martinets really, who make you do what you have planned to do for a long time and never got around it. – If you have a martinet in your management team all you have to do is to vow to do whatever he says.

A word of caution to stakeholders and management:

do not use interim managers as stooges to implement your avowed solutions for mastering a crisis; you had ample time to do so before you hired external help! In the process of selecting an interim manager, look for the most impartial one. In the mid and long run, you do neither yourself, nor the company nor the selected interim manager any favours if you select someone to buttress your respective position. Usually, sticking to positions is what causes crises in the first place, because a battle of opinions (read: egos) can result in trench warfare where winning an argument becomes more important than saving the company.

That is why you should always have a BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement, see ‘Getting to Yes’ by Roger Fisher and William Ury) ready so you do not sacrifice the company on the altar of oversized egos.

According to Seneca,

‘If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.’

Therefore, it is an excellent idea to define a key performance indicators (KPI) baseline at the very beginning of a project, regardless of the state of the company: progress has to be tracked and displayed for everyone to see. Brief progress reports, preferably using charts to show trendlines and going easy on verbose written explanations, are vital. Information about the current state is what everyone in a crisis wants. Nothing breeds malicious rumours more than a lack of information.

Choose a room – in lean management terminology also called an obeya (大 部屋, Japanese for ‘big room’) – where all teams involved in solving the crisis can congregate regularly to discuss the best way forward. Display the latest KPIs and catch up on what everyone has achieved so far.

A word of caution on Key Performance Indicators:

Always, and I do mean ALWAYS, make sure you know where your figures come from, how they are compiled and how they are crunched before they get shown to the public. – Making sure is NOT just asking the controller whether he is happy with his data sources. – Making sure is to look for yourself by questioning even the tiniest detail about the data sources.

The power of figures is such that no matter whether they are true or false people tend to take them at face value and use them in their arguments.

I always try to make this room accessible to all employees because, as I have mentioned before, people crave information in a crisis. Letting them follow the progress helps to get them on your side – or at least prevents them from opposing you behind your back – by encouraging them to discuss matters openly. Keep everything as simple and as transparent as possible. Although it might sound outlandish but it is much easier to get to a complicated system than to a simple one. Why? Because the complicated system was not set up – it evolved usually by a series of well-intentioned quick-fixes. – But as we all know ‘There is nothing so permanent than a temporary solution.’ – Milton Friedman

A simple system, on the other hand, is the result of simplification, which is an active process of making something easier. – During the entire journey out of the critical situation you have found yourself in, keep in mind Einstein’s apt observation:

‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’

The best way to explain something – anything really – is by visualisation. Visualisation is the most versatile and maybe also the most powerful tool in the lean management toolbox; use it extensively. Here, too much is better than not enough. Why? Because much like the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy-tale ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ who pointed out that the emperor did not wear any clothes at all but was, in fact, totally starkers, it reveals everything and has no regard for status, politics, ideology or any other face-saving measures.

A word of caution on saving face:

No one likes to be blamed and shamed, especially publicly. However, in a crisis, all must be revealed so that problems can be solved as closely to their roots as possible. Psychology has extensively scrutinised people’s associations and dissociations. Mentally sane people, a minority of the human beings, know exactly when they should associate with or dissociate themselves from events. Those prone to depression, like to associate themselves with negative events like:

‘I am so unlucky. Of course, this has to happen to me after I’ve already lost my job, my car broke down and my partner walked out on me at the drop of a hat’

and dissociate themselves from positive ones

‘A stroke of luck my foot! This only happened to lure me into a false sense of security that my ordeals are finally over.’’

Those prone to megalomania do the opposite: they associate themselves with the tiniest success, whether they have been involved in creating it or not

‘I and my team made it happen again! Where would they be without me?’

and dissociate themselves from failures

‘How many times did I ask for XYZ to be removed from my team? They should have sacked them ages ago! No, they shouldn’t have given XYZ a contract in the first place!’ or ‘My plan was perfect. Unforeseeable circumstances and the incompetence of some team members who I didn’t select for this task have led to this failure, which could have been prevented if the powers that be had just listened to me.’

That is why one of the three principles of kaizen is to not blame or shame anyone but to focus instead on the problem and ask ‘why?’ at least five times to find out the real reason. A conclusion about shame by Alexander Pope closes this short excursion:

‘No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.’

Decisions make or break success in times of crisis. The ‘break’ part is a certainty if no decisions at all are taken. There is no worse situation in a crisis than being in limbo because no decision has been made by the people in charge. Thus, all heads of departments have to decide on critically important issues on the spot. Standstills should be prevented at all costs because people become restless and listless quickly and easily. This can lead either to lethargy or to sedition – both are hard to handle. Therefore, it is better to let people march in the wrong direction and turn them around than leave them wondering what happens next. Having to keep order when nerves are frail because livelihoods are at stake or to rekindle spirits once despair has settled in is definitely not something you want as a manager when in a crisis; as Joan Baez had it,

‘Action is the antidote to despair.’

A word of caution on management:

I encourage all managers to remind themselves that covering one’s backside is a very short-term strategy. This is especially true in a crisis. Each and every manager who does not stand firm in the face of danger will be (best-case scenario) ridiculed or (worst-case scenario) loathed for such incompetent behaviour. Just remind yourself that even after more than a hundred years, the description of the British army in World War 1, ‘lions led by donkeys’, is still around. Managers’ high salaries should reflect their ability and willingness to take on responsibility, not the size of their inflated egos. One of kaizen’s 10 core beliefs is humility or even ‘servant leadership’. Why servant? Because managers have the power to remove obstacles so that their direct reports can use their own expertise to their full extent, thereby achieving overall success for the company. Your direct reports know that you are the boss, so you neither have to show nor tell them. Instead remember Albert Schweitzer’s thought on leadership:

‘Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.’

Chapter 2

Typical manufacturing companies waste space (factories, warehouses, offices, meeting rooms, etc.), lead time (handling times, non-process-induced buffer times, waiting times, storage times, etc.) and resources (manpower, material, energy, etc.) on a large scale. Space and lead time can usually be reduced without having to face strong headwinds. Headcount reduction is the trickiest part; therefore, the very first step is to make sure that the main objective of kaikaku – the people – is not out of sight. If you thought that the main objective of kaikaku would be money, please think again.

‘Enterprise of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the Earth’ is what the late US President Abraham Lincoln would have said if he had been a business consultant working on restructuring and turnaround projects. Or to put it even more up to the point by quoting John Maynard Keynes, who said ‘It is enterprise which builds and improves the world’s possessions. If enterprise is afoot, wealth accumulates; if enterprise is asleep, wealth decays.’

A lot is on stake if you fail to rescue the enterprise from collapsing. Therefore, take every precaution to prevent the stake- and shareholders from losing faith in you and your approach by:

1) Making sure the company’s culture allows for kaikaku. An arch-conservative culture will never, ever change radically; it will go under rather than go yonder. You cannot win them all, so let this particular chalice pass you by.

2) Nemawashi (根回し, Japanese for ‘preparing the ground for planting’), that is, coming to an agreement with the stake- and shareholders and making them see what really needs to be radically changed (which only coincidentally happens to be what they think needs to be changed). Some Caskie Stinnett-style diplomacy is needed in these situations: ‘A diplomat is a personwho can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.’ A mutual consensus (or at least a mutual compromise) has to be written down in a master schedule, and the tasks should be broken down and allocated to the appropriate departments which will, in turn, cascade these further to each and every employee so that everyone can feel part of the taskforce team setting out to save the company. Such an agreement can also be required by law, for example in German companies, where workers’ councils have many rights of co-determination; one of these rights deals with whether management can hire a lean management consultant and implement lean management.

3) Making sure that Human resources (HR) selects the right employees to be trained, sent into retirement and made redundant, even if it takes a great deal of discussion. Let your impartiality help HR to sort the chaff from the wheat. - You do not want to be caught in a rescue mission where you have to rescue the rescuers, do you?

4) Allowing for enough time to pass for the frequent explanations to settle in. Only people who have a good grasp of what is going to happen next will help you. Once the ‘converted’ are in the majority, things will run (almost) by themselves.

5) Not fooling yourself! Change takes time. Make it clear to impatient stake- and shareholders by having them write with their non-writing hand the following sentence: ‘I’d like to withdraw £500 from my account, please.’ Have them sign it (also with their non-writing hand), then ask them whether they think they would get the cash from a bank clerk who does not know them from Adam. If they are ambidextrous, make them write with their foot.

6) Making sure that with hoshin kanri (方針管理 ,i.e. policy deployment) the show gets on the road. As soon as everyone knows what needs to be done, follow one of the leadership principles of the Swiss army: ‘Command, Check, Correct’.

How serious is the situation?