CI DILEMMA MARCH 2019
CI Dilemma
Bean counting
After a company fell on hard times, new management has re-started the journey towards
growth. However, a cost-saving culture is still holding back the business from progressing
Our business is a strong household
has been in decline. The business has
brand, with many UK national sites
operating as individual cost centres.
Over the last few years, however, the brand
focussed primarily on cost reduction to
keep it afl oat and has been managed for
cash while sales have been declining.
Sadly, last year we were unable to reduce
our cost suffi ciently and for the fi rst time
made a loss. As a result, there has been a
change of leadership who have implemented
a re-brand and we are now seeing sales
increase again. We are now trying to
implement an operational excellence
customer and ensure we retain effi ciency
as we grow.
The problem is we are fi nding it
diffi cult to get the operational excellence
system to work as the culture across the
business is still one of cost-saving, not
growth. How do I, as a member of senior
management, get our people to think
about profi table long-term growth and in
the short-term to eff ectively use the
system to deliver customer value, simply,
easily and at the least cost? In essence –
how do we stop bean counting and start
driving profi table sustainable growth?
CI Solution By Richard Lyle, director, Turner & Townsend Suiko
Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach
to cultural change, this organisation,
due to its model and scale, needs to
see change as a journey of constituent
parts. Clearly there is a pressing need
to breathe life into each of the business’
cost centres, in order to allow each
one to unlock their individual
opportunities under the corporate
growth umbrella.
Operational excellence transformation
requires culture change to be successful.
To accelerate and sustain change,
significant focus must be placed upon
the strategic framework, a group-wide
toolbox, enabling behaviours and strong
programme management.
Typically with organisations facing
these challenges, we aim to:
● Improve – deliver fast, effective
results that provide a significant ROI
with savings that can be used to fund
the next steps
● Sustain – roll out a proven approach
across the business, building capability
in clients’ teams to provide long term
cost, cash and profit improvement
● Grow – reliable and efficient end to
end processes that increase
competitiveness and free up time to
focus on customer satisfaction and
business growth.
Using the Suiko WHY (results),
WHAT (tools and behaviours), HOW
(ability to change) assessments we start
by assessing the level maturity of each
business unit. This allows middle
management to understand the gaps
and develop an improvement
plan with the site teams.
In this way this important
layer of management is
swiftly bought into the
process. As linchpins
within cultural hierarchy
of the organisation, they
have access to shop-floor
staff and the senior
management above them. This
is often a difficult tier to influence,
engage and empower successfully, but
once on board, results and practices
can be embedded efficiently.
As part of this process, the adoption
of a management review process,
encompassing daily and weekly reviews,
will help to move the organisation
from a remote management mindset to
one of local site management using
creative flexible drivers.
We advocate kick-starting the process
by successfully empowering front-line
managers through coaching and training
to measure their key opportunities and
system to help deliver value to the
to learn to review them in an effective
and timely manner.
The local sites would become
empowered to solve their own problems
and advise the central operations teams
on how things could be done better.
Combining the new skills of
the site managers along with
the knowledge of the frontof
house and back-of-house
team members could
provide a winning formula:
one focussed on continuous
improvement with the onus
on creating a permanent fix.
With the sites in control of
their own short-term decisions,
they will naturally be encouraged to
take responsible for developing their
own longer-term strategies.
The end result is a business that has
fully adopted a core operations
framework and behaviourally and
culturally, the way of working and
interacting is transformed.
Frontline people are upskilled and
empowered to make their own decisions
for the short, medium and long-term,
working in tandem with a central
operations team that supports and
encourages their creativity, passion
and profitability.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Do you agree with our expert? How would you change mindsets away from cost-cutting and towards realistic growth?
Send us your views and you could appear here next month. Email: chris.beck@markallengroup.com
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