What does it mean, “change in control“? Companies are experiencing many changes these days. Changing market conditions. A changing economic climate. Changing customer expectations. Change has become the constant factor these days. All these changes can put a significant strain on your business. Terms like “agile”, “nimble” and the like are all over the Internet these days. The question is: Can your business survive in this changing world? Better yet: Can your business thrive in this changing world? You need to take control over your business so your business can take control of its market. You need to be in control!
Of course who would like to admit that they aren’t in control of their business? If you’d ask the CEO of a random organisation, (s)he probably wouldn’t say: “We don’t know how to get a grip on this organisation! We are like a boat without a rudder in the stormy seas of today’s business climate!”. I would imagine the employees walking around in life jackets, rubber boats in the hallways, and lifebuoys near the exits… I guess it would probably be only a matter of time before this organisation would disappear in the stormy waters of todays economic climate. Waiting around just to determine if an organisation is in control is not the way to go though…
So even if you do admit that you’re not as much in control as you’d like, you still can be. You don’t have to be on an ocean liner either to get in control. If you are on a row boat, your chances of being in control are better given the fact there is less to control… Anyways, I would say you need the following three things:
- Know what you are doing
- Know how to change what you are doing so you can do it better/quicker/whatever is appropriate in your line of business
- Know how to keep control over the two aforementioned points
Simply put, you need to put a Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle in place and keep it going for your continuous improvements to happen. Going through the cycle once is good. Going through the cycle continuously should be your aim. Does that sound like a stretch? It really doesn’t have to be. Yes, it can be a fair amount of work to accomplish, but with the right guidance and the right tools it can be accomplished. No matter how big or small your business is. Let’s review the above three points one by one.
Every organisation delivers one or more services or products to its clients. That’s what your organisation is doing to stay in business. If you want it or not, there is a process in place to deliver these services or products. If you want to improve your business, you have to know where you are now. Think about it: If you don’t know how things get done now, how can you know how to improve?
The next step is to determine what needs to change in order to improve. There are numerous ways to approach this step, but you probably already have some gut feeling that tells you you should be paying more attention to one or two parts in your process. It also depends on what you want to achieve with the improvements: Do you want to be able to react quicker to changes in the market? Do you want to produce quicker? Do you want to deliver your services more efficiently? These are all different desired improvements that will require different solutions.
The last step is to maintain control over the way of working and over the process of improving your way of working. As vague as it may sound to you, it is the most critical part of the whole process. Without control, your chance of succeeding become rather slim. It is like that project that spun out of control. It was probably due to lack of control over what was going on. I don’t mean to say that project management is the solution for this third step. It is a partial solution, but there is more required. A project is a temporary vehicle to reach a defined goal. This step is about implementing a change of culture of how things get done. And this step is where the right technology can be a tremendous help.
Of course the above was mostly about the why and not about the how. Please be patient and I’ll write more about the how next time. In the meantime, if you need any help, Pallas Athena can help you change your processes in a controlled way and also support you in establishing control over these processes at the same time. That’s what our business is all about; to put you in control so you can handle the changes you need to deal with: change in control!
