“Excellent Management” means being very good at the profession and practice of managing. It is something that requires a systemic, repeatable, and balanced approach to mastering seven essential attributes. These are more than just words; the attributes represent entire concepts embodied in the actions of:
- Growing Excellent Leaders,
- Building an Excellent Working Culture,
- Focusing on Excellent Customer Service,
- Building Excellent Teams of Empowered People,
- Mastering Skills, Problem Solving, and Core Competencies,
- Mastering Change and Continuously Improving Methods and Processes, and
- Driving Toward Excellence by Measuring Performance.
One of the best ways we found to help others understand and remember these attributes is to stress the balance of the attributes using an artist’s mobile. As a mobile requires perfect balance, so too, does Excellent Management within an organization or project. On a mobile, remove any one piece and the system is out of balance. Likewise, remove any one of these seven attributes within an organization and the management of the organization or project is out of balance. Also, as on a mobile, in an organization or project, no one attribute will work alone.
How Might One Use the Mobile of Excellent Management?
The elements in the mobile are complex and their exact nature will vary from organization to organization. One of the best ways of creating a working mobile for your organization is by working right across the organization to create a collage of examples, metaphors, and stories that you can use to communicate what each element within the mobile means at the moment and what you would like it to mean in the future.
You need everyone in the organization to understand the individual elements and the linkages between each of them in a way that allows them to translate the principles into practical behavior and relate them to their own work practices.
Where did the Westbrook Stevens Mobile of Excellent Management Come From?
When I studied for a Ph.D. at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, one of my mentors was Dr. Jerry Westbrook, Director of the Engineering Management, Industrial, and Systems Engineering Department. The professors at UAH taught me many things about management principles, quality, Business Process Improvement, strategy, and Project Management. One of Dr. Westbrook’s concepts fired my lifelong interest in implementing organizational change. He researched the subject of Total Quality Management (TQM) and developed a systematic and repeatable definition for TQM. Before that time, TQM was very vague and a single definition was elusive. He suggested that everything ever written on TQM had one or more of six and only six attributes.
During my first dissertation “attempt,” I worked to validate Dr. Westbrook’s findings. Using a meta-analysis in a Design of Experiment type study, I reviewed hundreds of articles and books on TQM, management, and quality, and collaborated with several colleagues. (One Navy Officer kept politely suggesting we add leadership to the model (before that we embedded leadership was in culture.)
We asked the question, if “Excellent Management” requires the ability to influence others to achieve “excellent results,” then what would it take to achieve excellent management. During a workshop for the Department of Energy (1992), we started graphically representing these seven attributes using a mobile. By adding the leadership attribute and the metaphor of a mobile to Dr. Westbrook’s work, we could explain “Excellent Management” in a way that would be simple to explain and easier to implement.
Over the years, I have taught these concepts to many different organizations including governmental (DOD, DOE, NASA, DCS,); Universities (Vanderbilt, Belmont, Trevecca, University of Phoenix…) and commercial organizations, a bunch of conferences, and This became the subject of the first Geronimo Stone book that we published as an adventure business book (download a free eBook from www.geronimostone.com).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row top_margin=”0″ bottom_margin=”0″][vc_column][vc_accordion title=”The Seven Attributes”][vc_accordion_tab title=”Step 1 – Building Excellent Leaders”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”4434″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_outline” img_link_large=”yes” title=”Building Excellent Leadership”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
By Craig A. Stevens
“The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Like the hand holding the mobile in the Mobile of Excellent Management above, without excellent leadership, the organization falls and breaks apart. But it’s more complex than that, leadership needs to be distributed throughout the organization, excellent leadership is everyone’s job. As Victor Dingus, a past Quality Manager at Tennessee Eastman put it, “We use to have 14,000 employees, but only 400 were paid to think. Our goal is to have 14,000 employees paid to think.”
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By Craig A. Stevens
Culture is the collective programming of the mind, which distinguishes the members of one group from another. – Geert Hofstede
An organization’s culture is the limiting factor to its success. When we think of culture, we often think of the employees in our organization but culture is more likely a reflection of the leaders. An employer experiences the culture of a company as a reflection of the relationship with his or her direct supervisor; thus culture often flows downhill.
On the Mobile of Excellent Management, culture is represented by the string or cable that holds the mobile together. If the leaders drop the cable the mobile falls. Furthermore, if you cut the cable, the mobile falls apart. No initiative will work effectively without a willing culture. In addition, on the mobile, many strands make up a cable; the same is true of an organization’s culture.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Step 3 – Building Excellent Customer Focus”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”4447″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”” style=”vc_box_outline” title=”Building Excellent Customer Focus”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
By Craig A. Stevens
“There is only one boss: The customer. And, he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” – Sam Walton
In an organization without good customer focus, there is no clear goal on which to hang the organization’s work. If you do not have a customer or do not know who your customers are, then you should not have a job.
Customers are the reason behind every job. But it is not good enough to say our customers are our number one concern. For customers to be number one, they have to come third. First, leaders have to acknowledge the importance of the customers and demonstrate that in their actions and daily conversations. Likewise, the organization’s culture has to actually value the customers in word and deed. Then, and only then, will the organization treat the customers as the organization’s most treasured resource.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Step 4 – Building Excellent People (Human Relations and Teams)”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”4450″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”” style=”vc_box_outline” title=”Building Excellent People (HR and Teams)”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
By Craig A. Stevens
“Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” – Vince Lombardi
Understand people, build them up, and capitalize on teams working together to create the forces required for success. Teams represent people working together (and individually) to make things happen. Value, motivate, and reward people and build teams not only in your projects but also in your operations. Most people do not grow up understanding what is required to be a servant leader.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Step 5 – Building Excellent Skill and Core Competencies “][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”4457″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”” style=”vc_box_outline” title=”Building Excellent Skills and Core Competencies (Problem Solving)”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
By Craig A. Stevens
By Craig A. Stevens, PMP, MBB
“All of the top achievers I know are life-long learners… Looking for new skills, insights, and ideas. If they’re not learning, they’re not growing… not moving toward excellence.” – Denis Waitley
The process of developing skills, core competencies, and problem solving tools (Six-Sigma, Project Management, Business Analysis, etc.) is what makes people and teams effective. Your company may have the best leadership, culture, people, and teams in the world but that is not enough. Without a professionally skilled workforce with the correct core competencies, your company will never be competitive. And, without the correct tools, even the most skilled professionals are ineffective. An unskilled team gets little done.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Step 6 – Excellent Change Management (Continuous Process and Systems Improvement) “][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”4459″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”” style=”vc_box_outline” title=”Excellent Change Management (Continuous Process and Systems Improvement)”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
By Craig A. Stevens
“The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything or nothing.” – Lady Nancy Astor
The increasing pace of innovation and change means that soon others will make what you do obsolete. Master the three phases (the before, during, and after) of change and continuous improvement to stay competitive. To thrive, it is everyone’s job at your company to be the first at making your own processes, products, services, jobs, and systems obsolete. Even when you know what and how to change, it is important to know how to manage and implement the change during the three phases of change (before, during, and after). You will find more details on change in this site.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_accordion_tab][vc_accordion_tab title=”Step 7 – Building Excellent Performance Measures (Metrics)”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”4461″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_outline” title=”Building Excellent Performance Measures”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
By Craig A. Stevens
Building Excellent Performance Measures
By Craig A. Stevens, PMP, MBB
“You have to measure things that are basic. If it’s not simple, not easily understood, nor easily tracked, then don’t bother measuring it because nobody will ever use it.” – Gould, L.; “Measuring Business Reengineering is Part of Its Success,” Managing Automation, May 1993, pp. 45-47.
In the 90’s everyone knew, “You cannot manage what you cannot measure.” However, few government organizations applied any performance measures to what they did. During this time, I developed for the U.S. Department of Energy, seven steps to measuring performance based on about 60 research papers and books on the subject. Below are the “Seven Steps to Measuring Performance.”
- Understand the science behind performance measures. There are many rules related to good metrics. Understand the rules before you start the process of developing a set for an organization. For example, processes require a chain of activities. As with any chain, making only one link stronger has little effect on the overall strength of the chain. Likewise, to make your organization stronger, use a whole systems approach to measuring performance.
- Understand the goals of the organization. One should never develop performance measures that do not track back to specific organizational goals (e.g., lower cost, better quality, faster service) that reflect the goals you are trying to achieve.
- Create a set of criteria(e.g., lower cost, better quality, faster service) that reflect the goals you are trying to achieve.
- Create the performance indicators(hours worked, number of complaints about a specific subject) related to the criteria that will give a picture of company performance.
- Collect the datarelated to the indicators.
- Analyze the datato determine the performance.
- Use the datato make a difference.
Miss any one performance measuring step and there is no reason to measure. If you do not know the rules, chances are you will break them and make things worse. If you measure something not related to a goal, then you are wasting time and money. If you are never going to use the information, you again are wasting time, money and undermining the business.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_accordion_tab][/vc_accordion][vc_column_text]
Understanding this mobile will help any organization to implement excellent management. Each of the seven attributes represents major concepts in management theory and process improvement. Chronological order is important. You therefore need to address the seven attributes in order (1-7, as listed above). Remember, balance is important and without any one of these attributes, excellence will be impossible.
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