Part 3 - Monitoring Processes
To review: Successful bosses & business owners have systems of
high accountability in their businesses called “structured
autonomy” to bring about “outcome control.” And those with
unstructured autonomy, well they breed chaos and lots of useless
stress.
So what happens if you’re one of the rare birds that doesn’t have
full functioning “structured autonomy?” Gosh! It’s really simple!
You simply put one in place.
Now please understand that these here are fightin’ words to the
100% hot-blooded entrepreneur. No person in their right mind
would ask an entrepreneur to give up even a small portion of their
autonomy. Fortunately we have two things working for us here.
First, most entrepreneurs are really not 100% unadulterated
entrepreneur or 100% hot-blooded and second, what we’re talking
about is not giving up ANY autonomy at all. What we are talking
about is creating a system that structures autonomy to minimize
chaos and maximize follow through for optimum performance of
all involved.
Let’s go back to the previous article’s diatribe on that third bit of
factual grizzle: If both your system and its instruction set are perfectly
designed to avoid responsibility, answerability, amenability, liability,
and accountability for certain key factors in its operation, your system
is out of control.
To have outcome control, the business owner must first make the
commitment to cause that ideal system that got them into the
business in the first place. This means they most first do what
Stephen Covey says to do in his “Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People” book. And that is to do what habit two ask us
to do - start with the end in mind. This mean you must answer
the questions, “What specifically do I want to have occur?” and
“What is the outcome I want?”
Responding to these questions clearly gives you a very good
starting point. It's called a "target." You now have something you can
measure progress against. Again, if you don’t know what the ideal looks
like, how do you know you have it when you have it? I can’t tell you the
number of times I’ve worked with people who do business “on the fly.” They
merely “hope” that someday what will happen is a fully functioning system
- by no fault of their own.
And these are serious business professionals!
So, once you’ve answered these questions, you have another
chore on your list to do. That is determining what actions must be
taken to assure what you want to occur does indeed occur. This
means your instruction set is to be created and put into place.
This also means that whoever is to follow that instruction set must
adhere to these guidelines without exception. To do otherwise
would be to sabotage the system’s effectiveness. (See
http://www.coach.net/golf.htm for more details on the word
“sabotage.”)
To support the desired results coming about, the system must also
have a monitoring system that reflects very accurately what's
going on and what's not going on. The term for this is “having a
system which has MEASURABLE results.”
You see, if you can measure results, you can compare them to the
ideal you had in mind. If you can compare the results of the
system’s output to that which is the ideal and have no deviation,
your system is working as it should.
This also means that your system must have a priority system to
handle any and all events enough to support totally the
effectiveness of that system. This is often reflected as a priority
matrix in combination with a decision tree with all priorities and
decisions spelled out ahead of time.
Again, start with the end in mind (habit 2) AND follow the plan to
bring the end about (habit 3).
When we put it together, we get the essence of “outcome
control.” You now can monitor quite accurately the system’s
performance and make the necessary adjustments based on that
feedback system to assure that you get the results you desire.
So what happens if this is not enough? What happens if the
person monitoring the results chooses not to make the necessary
adjustments to get the desired results? The simple response is to
“can” this person and replace them with someone who "will do"
the job. If that person is you, there must be an alternative unless you
can replace yourself without affecting your income stream. This
alternative requires you to make a commitment that gets you out of the
dreadful comfort zone and into the performance zone.
Let’s talk more about putting your support system into place next
time so you can get into that performance zone.
Have a BODACIOUS week!
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Coach John S. Nagy is CEO and Lead Business Coach for Coaching for Success. Inc., a Business Coaching Service specifically designed for top level decision makers dedicated to peak performance in all facets of their activities. He's hired to focus them continuously in activities that bring higher returns on their resource use. His programs are for the seriously committed. This means having his clients work "ON" their businesses, not just "IN" it. He's a published author and a multi-degree professional with a nationwide client base. Coach Nagy can be reached through his E-mail address at his website at http://www.coach.net and by calling 813-949-0718.
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Copyright © 1999 John S. Nagy
