Internal Efforts vs. External Support

 

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It has become more and more common in most businesses to assemble multidisciplinary teams of internal people to tackle on specific improvement projects, operational issues, managerial concerns or other situations that need to be addressed; and it just makes sense to deal with these initiatives internally since these teams should know the players as well as what is going on in the business.
 

Whether it is a matter of consolidating SKU’s, improving customer experience, revisiting standards or procedures, improving up time for a critical asset, achieving a major cost reduction requirement, enhancing product mix and revenue, reducing cycle times, consolidating functions, simplifying a set of processes and a long list of other potential issues.

While this is the right approach in many situations, here are a few pointers to pay serious attention to when making a decision as how to execute on these initiatives:

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1. Timing:   Internal team members already have a full time job that they need to continue doing, probably already working long weeks and maybe even weekends, mostly no one will say I won’t do it or I don’t want to be in that team, but the mechanics once initiatives are rolling are that first the everyday job takes priority and then if there is some time left then they might be willing and able to support the efforts; it is an undeniable fact that attention and focus from internal team members assigned to work in improvement initiatives very quickly deteriorates as there are too many ‘good’ reasons why a strict schedule can never be followed. In some situations I have seen delays of up to three years from the original plan while executive reports shows everything as per schedule.

2. Opportunity Depth:   When these teams are given a mandate to identify and possibly capture operational, qualitative or financial opportunities through internal efforts it becomes an uphill battle and findings tend to be small and fractured, too often the direction is towards the acquisition of equipment or technology and not the identification of ways to maximize the sometimes heavy structure already in place. Internal teams will only focus on what they know of the business and their findings will not be enhanced with best practices from other industries. A cold analytical view and perspective that a third party can provide will give you the most aggressive approach, in one case where an internal team had agreed that there was a 5% improvement in process time optimization the external aggressive approach demonstrated the potential at 33% and, what was captured after a joint effort was actually 28% in the first year.

3. Consistency:   When companies of any size use the internal team approach there is usually lack of a standard methodology to be applied and a track record of what works and what doesn’t work, this affects the timing and final outcome, a better option is to outsource at least in part this types of initiatives to ensure consistency in the development and application of solutions and that outcomes are not bias to an area or an individual but to the business.

4. Method:   The use of a standardized methodology should give you peace of mind that once the plan is laid out it is something achievable, realistic and the outcome will be as planned or better. The human factor is the recurring missing piece in the methodology, what we see is major emphasis in the operational, commercial and financial sides but the management of change is unfortunately left as an item to be dealt with once solutions are defined and are ready to be deployed, unfortunately if you did not engage people at all levels in the process that are willing to support the change when you are not there they can provide enough blockage and resistance to the efforts and in some cases make the entire initiative fail.

5. Pragmatism:   Internal multidisciplinary teams gather huge talent and industry experience, some of the brightest individuals I have ever met I have met in these teams, the problem is that each one of them are experts in their own discipline or area and they believe is not them that need to change but they can swiftly give each one of the other team members a long list of items where improvements are to provide major benefits for the organization, the best way to deal with this is by having an external perspective that can balance and control these situations as many of the real opportunities are found in the interaction between areas and processes.

6. Speed:   In the dynamics of teams working together they go through four major stages, FORM -> STORM -> COMFORM -> PERFORM, most internal teams spend way too much time in the storming phase, personalities, hierarchy, internal politics, beliefs, background, personal expectations and commitment tend to get in the way, this is also the stage where the calendar tends to suffer changes and the overall plan gets typically extended and scope reduced and where parts of the original vision get distorted.

7. Sustainability:   This is the most critical risk that you run, once internal initiatives and projects have come to an end team members have to get back to their everyday jobs or why not? Another initiative, this being the natural rhythm of most organizations, sometimes but not the norm is that someone is charged with ensuring continuity to the initiatives implemented, until the individual is required elsewhere, gets promoted or moves on, that is when sustainability suffers and results get deteriorated and the horseshoe effect comes into play meaning that whatever gains were achieved are lost as everything starts coming back to what was normal, you have to make sure that any initiative that involves change gets devoted a minimum of 6 six weeks of support and coaching, and that scorecards are generated to track progress but most importantly that any deterioration gets addressed in a timely manner, outsourcing this activities is always a sound idea.

8. Involvement:   If you are a C-suite executive leading an initiative but not devote the time to spend on it then you should not burn the opportunity for your organization, all initiatives that are transformational of your business and that have specific measurable expectations should always be not sponsored but led by a top executive in the organization, the leader should provide direction, motivate the team, resolve conflicts, provide resources, ensure that the plan is followed, promote the management of change, is visible in the environment where changes are happening and above all is accountable for the outcome.

 

If you already have in place an area that addresses these situations still you want to make sure that you can always have a fresh set of eyes into what is happening and not happening in your business and how you can get access to effective business practices from other industries that you might believe have absolutely nothing to do with your business.

 

By: Cristopher Del Angel, CEO at To The Top Management Consulting