Now that “you’ve survived”, it’s time to Get Organized. While you were going through survival/containment you, undoubtedly, encountered some issues or tasks that were not urgent but were still very important. Like discussed, above, the “get organized” phase is the time to work on these types of items.
While going through the survival/containment phase, the important-but-not-urgent items should have been captured as items to be dealt with later. In addition to that, the important items should have been separated by category or into gatherings of similar characteristics. Before the turnaround started, you might’ve worked on whatever item was the last one that someone emailed or called to complain about instead of properly prioritizing. Now that the urgent matters are dealt with, you have the time to observe, classify, measure, sequence, infer, predict and communicate.
Two things happen when issues are gathered in this manner. First, with items logically gathered they seem less chaotic. Second, the lists are finite. At the beginning of the turnaround the situation seemed hopeless. Urgent and important items were mixed and there was no sense of priority or scale. Now, you should be dealing with finite lists of tasks that are logically organized and the overall task in front of you will seem less intimidating.
This is a less dramatic period of the turnaround. It’s just a matter of standing-‘em-up-and-knocking-‘em-down. You should be using your processes and systems and completing tasks and closing issues. While you’re doing this work, you should have the space to assess your methodologies for waste and inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement. However, it’s most important to get the work done.
While using systems and processes, and looking for lean opportunities, it is a great opportunity to look beyond the limits of your job description and beyond the limits of the role of your functional group. If you understand which functional team is responsible for creating the inputs for your processes, you can begin to appreciate all of the moving pieces of the enterprise. Furthermore, you will be able to anticipate the timeliness and quality of your inputs based on how those functional teams are performing.
You become a more valuable member of your organization the more you reach beyond your role and the KPI’s of your functional group. In fact, the enterprise is not likely to approach the limits of it’s capability until every functional group subordinates the metrics of their team to those of the organization.
So, the essence of the “get organized” phase is that you have space to perform your job without a constant fear of urgent matters disrupting your progress. It gives you the opportunity to get comfortable in your processes and hit your stride. Finally, it allows you to look beyond yourself and consider the entire enterprise. All of this sets the stage for the “world class” phase of a turnaround.
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