Catherine McDonald  00:00

Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Lean Solutions Podcast led by your hosts Andy Olrich and myself, Catherine McDonald, Andy, how are you today?

 

Andy Olrich  00:42

I’m going great. Catherine. Well, thank you. How are you?

 

Catherine McDonald  00:46

Good good, the usual daily juggle for me to get out here and get through everything else in the day. So I think we have a great topic today, which might actually help me as well as our listeners. Today, we are going to talk about prioritizing the wrong work. How does that sound?

 

Andy Olrich  01:06

Prioritizing the wrong work? That’s that’s a very good topic. And I will put my hand up and I fall into that trap. Intentionally or unintentionally. So yeah, I’m really really keen to to unpack this one. Yeah,

 

Catherine McDonald  01:17

yeah. I think I think we all do in our personal lives, and also in organizations. And I think there’ll be hopefully a few listeners listening in today going Yeah, gosh, like I resonate with that or resonate with what our guest today Mr. Benz is going to be talking about. And I let you introduce me in a few minutes, Andy, but just on the topic, and just to explain to listeners, what we’re going to talk about, I like this topic, because I’ve always been fascinated by the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. And I think, you know, efficiency, me, you can jump in already. And correct me if I’m wrong. But efficiency is really about, I suppose focusing on on on doing things, right, whereas effectiveness is doing the right thing. And there’s a huge difference between those two things. And a lot of the time on the show, we’ll talk about efficiency, we’ll talk about Lean and Six Sigma and quality improvement. And we’ll focus on the efficiency, how we get things done. But really, we need to get the balance, right between efficiency and effectiveness. So making sure we’re focusing on the right things. So this, I hope will be a really interesting conversation with Emma. And so what we need to understand is an M, you’re going to talk to us that the companies that are most successful need to get this balance, right. So the reason being when we prioritize the wrong work, it actually prevents us from growth and development in our organizations. It holds us back. But we’re going to talk about the ways to, I suppose prevent this. Really, in order to prevent this, it is possible. And it’s possible when we create a culture of continuous improvement. So it’s about regularly reassessing our priorities. It’s about leveraging the our tools and knowledge and methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma in the right way. And it’s making sure that teams are not wasting time on tasks and initiatives that are misaligned, and that they are spending more time on work that is impactful and aligned to our goals and the direction that we want to go in. So really, what we want to do is we want to make sure we get this balance right to ensure organizational success and individual fulfillment. So we’re going to talk about how we do all that with Emma and Andy, would you like to introduce Emma to our listeners there?

 

Andy Olrich  03:31

Thanks, Catherine. Absolutely. Great topic. So let’s talk about Emma Bint is the managing director of ici limited, graduating with a Master’s of law degree and two postgraduate certificates in leadership, and then went on to certify as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and found her passion for continuous improvement. For the last 12 years, she has had extensive experience in working in the service side of Lean such as customer service sales after sales, administration, ops, finance, logistics and shared services. Emma has worked for global organizations leading her own CI OPEX and RPA specialists. It also uses her CI skills to help develop leadership teams, transform processes, and create functional CI strategies for growth and cultural change. Her experiences culminated in setting up a new company, which provides professional continuous improvement solutions, known as high CI limited, fantastic, welcome to the show. Emma, how are you?

 

Emma Bint  04:23

I’m really good. How are you?

 

Andy Olrich  04:26

Going? Well, thanks. There’s some fantastic backstory there. And I was just wondering you would you like to talk a little bit more about yourself, please?

 

Emma Bint  04:34

Yeah, sure. I suppose everyone enters lead from a different background, don’t they? And mine was operations, although I have quite figured out might be a bit sooner than that. So I was looking after a team of operations specialists in a company I used to work for and quickly realized we needed some methodologies to help us with our processes. And so I went on to certify as a black belt. But then I was able to use those skills to really drive continuous improvement from a cultural perspective, a leadership perspective, and was lucky enough to work in lots of different leadership teams, helping teams, not only with their processes, but also with their ways of working. And I think Catherine sort of mentioning what you were talking about the beginning, it’s the ways of working that I think that we overlook, sometimes from a lean perspective, we tend to focus on the processes and, but never how we work as individuals or as teams that could actually cause the biggest wastes for us. So yeah, I’ve got a got into that, and then decided that I wanted to set up my own business, very passionate about CI, and did that very recently, actually. So in December, myself, or my grandson.

 

Catherine McDonald  06:05

Super. So it sounds like you’ve been on a bit of a journey, you’re obviously passionate about continuous improvement, you have seen, I suppose, room for improvement are the opportunities for improvement within organizations and the need for this kind of information and methodology and all of this, which is really, really important. As we know, you know, probably all the listeners probably are, understand the importance of this as well. But I think you’re going to expand and tell us a little bit about what happens when we don’t do this. So I think you by the sounds of it, you have had some experience in the other side of things when things don’t go right. And when you are prioritizing on the you know, the wrong things. So tell us a little bit about what that looks like, or what happens when an organization is prioritizing the wrong things. How do we even know we are?

 

06:52

is a really great question. And I think it’s a big topic, isn’t it? So we could probably talk about this for a long time. But I actually think not prioritizing the right word is a really underrated and overlooked area of waste. I don’t think we recognize it as waste when we’re in organizations, because we’re so busy doing the do and dealing with competing priorities and dealing with our teams and dealing with our other colleagues that we really miss this as a big area of waste. And, and I have worked in organizations where we believe we’re doing the right thing. But we’re kind of like our own enemies, because we’re preventing us being the best that we can be through the ways that we were. And it was only through sort of identifying that and understanding what those things were, could we sort of recognize how we wanted to work on them. So just as a little bit of a for instance, you know, I would spend lots of time to be clarifying things or spend lots of times, you know, going over information or realigning to the message. And sometimes that has a negative impact on teams as well. So those are some of the areas of wastes that we can see when we do prioritize the wrong.

 

Andy Olrich  08:21

Right. And I, you talked about negative impacts, I’d like to expand on that a little bit. And if you’ve got some lived examples that you might just want to touch on, briefly, whatever you whatever you like. So good. What are some of those? And and how does that for me, one of the impacts that that comes through is around the ability for the growth of the organization. And in turn the people there as well for them to develop and learn new things or be able to shine through some of those good skills they have. Yeah, a couple of those examples, please.

 

08:57

Absolutely. I think if we just take a step back in terms of understanding organizations and their competing priorities, when we’re working with people, it’s not necessarily the people we’re working directly with. It’s also the it’s also the people work around and the wider teams. And what that does, is it creating the interdependencies. And in that space, it can actually mean that we have to communicate or probably over communicate more than we think that we’ll do. And if we’re not prioritizing the right word, what can happen is those conversations can turn into non constructive conversations because nobody necessarily knows if they’re doing the right thing or not. And what can also happen from a cultural perspective, is that you may get subcultures where you’ll get a group of people who may be aligned in a certain way and then another group of people who will be aligned in a different way If you get this kind of like mini climate culture going on, which can create is, you know, from a behavioral perspective, more of a negative impact than maybe a positive impact. So I think from a cultural perspective, that’s what I mean. But also from conflicting messaging, we can waste a lot of time, again, on the phone or calling different people just to clarify your message. What did that mean? what did this mean, I don’t understand. Again, not understanding what the right word to work is, is on can also cause lack of clarity and potentially causative decision making where decision making will again, go off into small pockets. And then you’ve got someone saying, Oh, that person said this, and oh, no, then that person said that. So again, a real sort of like cultural difference, then. And potentially also, that means that, you know, when the performance management of teams or the performance of the business is really looked at, we could be missing, we could be missing what our performance targets or indicators are. Because of all that wastage that’s going on around us, I think,

 

Andy Olrich  11:14

to the piece around getting time to do additional development, training years or some more of those discretionary type efforts by being busy doing the wrong things. I think, that’s it’s really resonating resonating with me, and around that, those comments that you made to thank you for that.

 

Catherine McDonald  11:34

It reminds me of when I first started learning about Lean management, and I was showing the picture of the dock on the water, you know, gliding along with the the legs underneath going, you know, 90 to the doesn’t like everybody’s really busy under the surface, working on things, tasks, whatever comes up, whatever is urgent. And to everybody else, it seems like everything’s okay. You know, we’re sailing down the river, we’re working every day who everybody has jobs, everything’s fine. But it’s not. It’s not coordinated. You know, it’s sort of chaotic, and it’s not coordinated. So yeah, that’s what it reminds me of, and do you do you ever find that, that when you, you know, see these organizations that maybe they’re not prioritizing, you know, the right, the right work or the right things? Do they come across as as firefighting or do they come across as stressed?

 

12:23

Absolutely. I think reactive is the word that I would use reactive to problems that are happening right then and there. Not necessarily anticipating that problem and understanding how they could mitigate those things before they happen. And stressed unfought Unfortunately, Catherine is a great word to describe that situation. Because when we think about how we do work every day, we would like to be able to spend time having lunch, we would like to be able to spend time taking a coffee Great to meet with people. But I don’t see that all that often. And and also, you know, it’s almost a little bit frowned upon sometimes. Maybe if we’re taking more than half an hour break in some circumstances, or actually people are booking meetings throughout your lunch breaks throughout that lunch period. That was a real indicator and a symptom of a reactive environment.

 

Andy Olrich  13:27

I think I like the duck reference. Catherine, did you say 92? That doesn’t?Yeah, that’s, that’s great. Like, why why I love it, too, is when you’re talking about it we the right word. Did you call them sub climates? Emma as well? Was it? Yeah, that’s a fantastic term. And all that one, that one hit me right between the eyes. I’ve worked in an organization like that, and the duck thing. I may have mentioned it before, but the ducks on the pond if people kind of busy and they’re maybe not 100% sure of what their what they really should be doing with confidence. They, you see a leader go out onto the floor into an office area and they just kind of slowly or scattered to the far corners and kind of look busy doing something. I think with the prioritization if you know, you should be working on something or having that, that sacred time. Stay where you are. And you’ve got full confidence to turn around, say, Well, I’m here. This is what I know. This is what we’re supposed to be doing. Right. So I love those couple of terms. Learning new things all the time. So that’s it. That’s a fantastic commentary there.

 

Emma Bint  14:31

Me, you’re young, and you got to say something else. Sorry.

 

Andy Olrich  14:34

Now you got you got Catherine. 

 

Catherine McDonald  14:36

I was just thinking. So you just painted a picture really well of what it looks like when an organization is reactive. And let’s say isn’t aligned to a bigger purpose, or you know, everybody’s busy, but maybe we’re busy doing the wrong thing. So it’s a little bit stressed and everybody’s a little bit stressed. So how do we get ourselves out of that? How does an organization see this happening and say, right, we need things To change, we need to start working on the right things, we need to identify what the right things are first. So what how do organizations turn it around? And

 

Emma Bint  15:09

I think the first thing is about how do we know we’re not working on the right things to begin with. And that can look like not finishing projects and maybe starting a project and then be put on hold halfway through or being stopped completely and then having to do something else. And if that’s happening a lot, then that’s another indicator, another signal that we’re probably not working on the right things. And one of the ways that I’ve certainly done in the past on and I would certainly carry on doing is have that alignment with the beginning. So often, I think we, we believe we have to dive straight into sorting out, right, let’s just jump straight to the solution. Let’s figure out where amazing it’s to live. And that’s, that’s great. That’s, that’s, you know, that will and that was shining through. But I always like to advise customers and clients just take that step back. Because what needs to happen is that full alignment between the team and the team members, at whatever, however large or small between meals, and to start with the why because the why is such an important part of prioritizing the right word. And not only to understand the why, but also the What’s In It For Me conversation. Because if we, as individuals in a team are aligned to the event, the why or why we’re doing it, the us personally, we may not be able to go forward in the most effective or efficient way. So having that alignment that that session where we come together as a team, and we understand what what are the things that are blocking us? What are the things that we’re finding challenges with, and getting it all out on the table so that we have an appreciation of a start or jump point really. And then we can, you know, move forward from there. And tools that you know, I’m sure you guys have used often come to the come to the to the space where we’re doing this alignment. If we’re lucky enough to have a lien facilitator in the presence, I would often advise bring that lien facilitator in because not only do they have that subjective opinion, but they have the tools and the techniques to help that team get to the right space, if there isn’t a lead facilitator, maybe an HR person or change person to be to be that facilitator. Because it really helps the team thing, get that clarity get that you know the leaders and how to do two jobs, being the leader and the facilitator, they can have that space to be with the team and think with the team. And using those tools. Whether it’s prioritization matrices, whether it’s starting at the strategic level, from Hashem perspective, to you let the length that it takes to use those tools with the team to start getting it all in order. It could even be as simple as a thing to diagram whilst you’re doing those alignment sessions, just settings and start to feel that clutter decrease from their brand and seeing out on paper and understanding what things they’re actually working with. Or even a fishbone you know, that we don’t often use Fishbone leadership, we use fish bones in processes, don’t we and to solve problems. But actually from a leadership perspective, you can really bucket those things from a people process systems, environment, culture, whatever that bucket is, we can start to really hone in on where we think our biggest challenges are arising.

 

Andy Olrich  19:24

You’ve got a great story, Emma, and I’m always fascinated by the guests that come on what maybe they were doing before or started out doing before they get into the Lean CI space. So doing your law degree plus a couple of other postgraduate things and then jumping into the CI Lean Six Sigma space. That’s a that’s a pretty cool story. I wanted to maybe just unpack that a little bit. But if we’re able to just what what was the catalyst for that really like why did you think I’ve done this and now I think I might go and do some of this lean, lean six sigma stuff.

 

20:01

So yes, I studied law at university. But I wasn’t very good at it. And so I quickly pivoted in the organization that I was in and understood what I was good at there. And it was operations, I was quite well organized, I was able to understand the end to end processes, pieced them together and started from there. But the catalyst for me is when I started in administration operations role. And we kept getting customer complaints. And I was like, Why? Why does this keep happening? And luckily had a friend who had done Lean Six Sigma before, so I knew there was something out there that could help. I started to research it, and quickly stood what it was, it really aligned with my introverted nature. And my process brain. So I was like, Well, I’ve got it. And to be honest, Andy, as soon as I discovered what it was, I knew that was my purpose. I just knew. I don’t know if you guys have ever had that conflict moment in your life. But but when I discovered Lean Six, sigma, I just knew, so I was intrigued. And I spent all of my time reading learning studying,

 

Andy Olrich  21:26

don’t you? Yeah, it’s I had that I had that light bulb moment. Yeah, I didn’t start here in this in this space. But I love it. Now. I had that really connect with that. I bet it that’s the thing. And yeah, here we are a few years later. And I, you mentioned some tools. Okay. But I just really, for those out there listening that are sort of thinking, Well, that sounds great. And I’m right, where you are in some of those examples? Is there any particular tool or tools that you wanted to mention? And we can just talk about some some applications for those that were just getting started, for example, and we don’t have a link facilitator that we can just pull in or someone independent or whatever or from within? What would be your go to tools to get get the team up and away and really starting to see that? That mess, for example of the wrong stuff. And with the good stuff?

 

22:13

Yeah, I think is a very simple affinity. Let’s theme it up. Let’s see where our problems are. I think that’s a real basic tool. If there’s no instant answer in that leads, it doesn’t necessarily have any lien training. And let’s not call it a affinity because that’s more technical, let’s call it a themed leaves, where we decide what buckets your problems or challenges fall into. Other tools that are reduced are maybe a Kaino tool, where we’re understanding our delights or satisfies and our deceptive styles or our must haves. That’s a really great tool, just to understand, are we actually do the basics, but are we getting the basics right in this organization? And if not, why not? If not, how can we? And what are the delights is that we’re offering our customers, is it too soon to offer those delighted to do the basics, or actually do stand out against the competition means they are delighted that we can confidently offer our customers at that point. So that’s a good one and quite a fun one to do. I mentioned the fishbone. Before, that’s almost a segue from the Kaino to kind of delve a little bit deeper into that. And then moving on to a solutions matrix percentage or these benefit diagrams to maybe see how hard these things are going to be or how costly these things are going to being and pick just a few I think that will be more one thing. Don’t feel like you’ve got to take the whole piece of the pie and try and eat it all happen. Again, for you common mistake with prioritization is that, you know, we feel we’ve got to do it all. And we can’t we’ve got to be honest with ourselves, we can’t do it all. Let’s break it down. Let’s check it out. What are those matrices sending us? What are those prioritizations telling us some of the tools that we use and start with them? First, it’s usually the quick wins, gain momentum, gaining some traction, gaining some confidence from the team, gain some benefit, see some hard outputs, and then try and build on the other ones because we might need investment for those types of things. So there’s maybe three or four really simple key tools that you can use to get teams into a position where they can see the first couple of things that they do is going to have a big impact. That’s

 

Catherine McDonald  24:51

great. Yeah, very really helpful. Emma and I like that you start with the current state because I know you do a lot of process mapping routine teams and you know, you take the lean and continuous improvement approach that we have to see a process we have to visualize we are together, we have to understand how something works in order to see where we can improve it. So I love your approach that you’re bringing people together, and you’re not starting with that’s a problem. You know, we need to fix it, you start with, let’s understand what’s happening first. And I think it’s easier and to lead and inspire people to see, well, look, we can see what’s happening. What what of each of us, it’s like the great Nicole system, what what can we do about it? You know, what are the things that we could just go out and do differently and commit to doing now that we see the way that we’re doing them? You know, so what is this kind of future state? And then, you know, I suppose that that part is sometimes the easy part I find in terms of when you see the JUST DO IT actions, and people go, Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll go off and fix this. And I’ll do that. But sometimes it’s harder to work on the things that are more cross functional are the processes that are spread out and interdependent across the whole organization. So how do we get to the point where we can see the you know, issues and opportunities for improvement work on the most important priority processes that are linked to our strategic objectives that’ll drive us forward. But at the same time, adopt this structured problem solving porch to make sure that we’re fixing the things that are not so easy to face? Wow.

 

26:29

Well, there’s no silver bullets, that Catherine at all. And again, I think we would have to start small with with that one. Because, especially with working with independent teams, teams that you need to help you or rely on to do your piece of work. If we think about the whole, you know, a core process around your interviewing process, then we start beginning potentially, with new product introductions, nothing like that. And then the end of the process, which is usually finance, there’s a lot of people involved in that channel to get that right. So how do we confidently know that everyone on the chain needs is thought about, and it’s about education? And that would be the first thing that I would do with a lot of teams is, once you’ve seen, see that process visualized in front of you. So mapping is a great visualization tool. I use it for communication. Do you know or do you know the other people that you impact by the work that you do? And actually, these are the people that you impact? And these are the problems that sometimes I’ll pause for them as a result of the work that you do. And each, there’s a wow moment, at that point with a lot of teams. And they go, it didn’t realize that my work that I did up upstream, impacted all the way downstream. So I’d say, like I was saying before, we can’t do everything at once. But that education piece, and that visualization is one of the first things I would do to get the teams all on board and understand. Right? That would be our starting point for me. Yeah,

 

Catherine McDonald  28:18

I actually agree with you the process mapping bringing people together, even just the conversations that happen there. And the visuals you use, it’s so important, isn’t it in terms of getting to the root of the bigger, bigger priorities? Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Emma. That’s great. That’s great.

 

Andy Olrich  28:33

I love it, the visualization, and the two points is over that. See, you know, see, look at that no wonder and the see and the No wonder it’s, there’s people that could sit there and look at all of that and go, No wonder we’re in the mess we’re in or no wonder I feel the way I do look at this beast, look at all the people that are connected. And I haven’t even thought of talking to those people and getting that clarity and alignment just through a process map or something. That’s where I think the tools come in. And we’re mentioning its culture, its people it’s all that sort of stuff that the tools help support not the other way around. So it’s it sounds like you’ve got some really good lived experience and some richness of some of those interactions. Well if we go in and sorry, I’m you go

 

29:20

to a point where you one of the entertainers for me is where we have teams set up into in places that are there to correct the world. So often my process of the invoice correction teams or something that’s correcting your work and it’s quite it’s quite strange almost funny for me where we’re just the name of the team is indicating that we we’ve got a problem. Why would you why would you employ people to correct work? That’s, that’s, I find that

 

Catherine McDonald  29:56

like, it’s like the returns department you know, yeah. But yeah, it’s true. It’s true. Yeah, so So, Emma, you talk a lot about aligning the work. So how do we, I suppose, Link, what we’re talking about here in terms of people’s daily work and the work of teams and individuals? Where does the strategic alignment come in as in the strategic goals and the filtering of those into teams and to inform the, you know, priorities? Because you would think I suppose, if they were in place, and if they were communicated properly, all the way down, and teams were involved in their development, that we wouldn’t have this bigger problem where people were just going off in different directions. So how do we how do we do that better if the strategic setting the goals from as far as it has to be top down in a way? How do we do that better to inform all of this? Yeah,

 

30:58

excuse me. This is now back to ways of working as an analogy using it. So we’ve talked a little bit about efficiencies, that linear end to end process, what you’re talking about there, for me, it’s all about ways of working and effectiveness and system thinking that is a real big part of strategic deployment, and you know, the waterfall of those goals. So a great tool is Hoshin. I don’t know how many organizations use that some use it in different ways. Some use it in sort of like KPI format. And others will use a generational plan where you work back with the end in mind, start with the end in mind and work back to where you are, build that plan. It just depends. You know, what organization you are. But I think having the approach of understanding what your goals are, what are what are the key goals that we’re going to achieve them? Not necessarily next year, but in the next five years? Let’s really start thinking ahead. What what does this year look like? What What improvements are you going to make this year? And what are the measures of success? And how are we going to plan all those measures of success. And this is where that culture of CI and name really sort of comes into its own because this is starting from a top down perspective, like you say, Catherine, where we’re understanding the organizational goals from a patient perspective. And then you can cascade that you can almost cascade that ocean into into the next leadership team. And they create the same document, but they’re aligned goals, and what they’re doing for that particular part of the business to the overall strategic goal. And then it’s a rinse and repeat at that leadership level, everyone having their own strategic document that’s interlinked in alarm, and it cascades to the next leadership team and then so on and so forth, all the way through to the individual, you can then sort of set those KPIs with individuals and also maybe OKRs. And we’ve got that holistic approach to not only strategic deployment and and goal setting, but alignment and a culture of continuous improvement. Now I say that but that is probably one of the hardest things to do and you may have come across this Andy and Catherine in your environments in your roles. It’s very difficult to do and what can happen is the momentum is lost quite quickly, and it stops and then it’s not revisited again. And then we wonder why we’re having to constantly revisited again so I would say the methodology is there. And there is that that’s proven and worked, but the ability to practice in carrying it out and keep practicing and keep reflecting and keep coming back to it and also the right thing, that habit or that systematic approach isn’t there and or I don’t see working Unison too often. So it’s a very difficult thing to do I would say so it sounds easy, but it’s not

 

Andy Olrich  34:30

you touched on measures there Emma have some classic examples out there if we do a really great job at just clearing out the clutter like prioritizing or getting them on like a year our customers want us to do that as well great, they’re up on the wall. Let’s go and then the measures aren’t done or even world find the kind of tell keep that well. Are these the right things that we’re doing really or and how are we improving? And I think that’s that resonated with me about The measures piece to help us look at it more consistently and truly understand if we are even doing that thing. Well, by the numbers or something that we can, we can definitely lean back on. So when you touch on measures, I think it’s so critical where we get we get the things that what’s up there and in the house, but what’s that looking like so have you got a, say not such a great story of how that may have gone a bit sideways for you in the past or a team that you had to pull back on track.

 

35:36

It’s happened and every time there isn’t one team in particular or one organization, because because it’s so difficult. And whilst you’re working with that structure, and you may be lucky enough to have a Lean Expert working within that environment, but the world changes around you at the same time, the economy changes, the market changes, something else happens, I don’t know, get a new CEO, get a new leadership team, all those things are running parallel to trying to sort out your you know, your approach and your strategic deployment. And as soon as anything changes outside, something’s got to change inside. And that’s why the habit of constantly reviewing your strategic deployment and how it how they do it has to become a habit. Because you’ve got to constantly change with what’s going on around you. And you wouldn’t want to change too much, you might want to fractionally change, because you should be going in the right direction. you’re reviewing your strategic approach, often. But that those marginal gains or that slightly normal to whatever is happening, the outside world has to run hand in hand. And I would say that that’s the same in law. You know, somebody asked me the other day, you know, how do you like link to law? It’s that it’s the world is changing very, very quickly. The laws don’t say the same. How are you going to quickly? You know, we precedent, something to fit what’s happening today as well.

 

Andy Olrich  37:14

So there’s that ad hoc, we have to change some things that push in and drive that change. But is there also a cadence like a minimum cadence you would put on prioritization i How often at a minimum, we should look to reprioritize?

 

37:29

Great question, Andy. And I think reprioritize can be a dangerous word. It might not be that we need to reprioritize everything. When I think of reporting, I think of just shuffling everything up in the air and let it land and see what happens. I think it’s about just slightly changing if we need to, because if we’ve got the right strategy, and the overarching strategy hasn’t changed too much, and everything’s been stable, you should only read that need to maybe tweak that every so often. And I would like to, as a new practitioner and being in that world, do it every three months, or wherever, at least every quarter with the team so that we’re just checking in every now again, it’s everything’s still the same as anything changed. No. Okay, let’s go again. And, you know, we all Darklands

 

Catherine McDonald  38:25

shows the importance of leadership, doesn’t it? As always comes into our conversations, it doesn’t just happen. You have to look at what’s happening. You have to the leader has to bring people together to review, you know, to adapts to understand what’s happening. So leadership is just so important here isn’t

 

38:46

100%? Yeah. It’s everything to do with it, isn’t it? Because the leader was able to drive all those things happening? They’re the ones who are going to say how we do things. Yeah, brilliant.

 

Catherine McDonald  39:01

Okay, so just to sum up, and you can tell me if I’ve missed anything, so, too, I suppose you know, why I’m trying to think about why this happens in the first place. So why do we prioritize the wrong the wrong work to begin with? So what I hear from you ama is, it happens for a few reasons. The one being a big one being misaligned, goal setting, so we’re just we’re and that stems from maybe goal setting isn’t happening in the first place. Well, maybe there’s poor communication there. So we’re not communicating out to people and working with people and involving people in what the goals are to help them align their work to what most important things are, and obviously a lot of that falls on leadership to do that. And leaders. Also you talked about, you know, the lack of systems, you know, review systems, the lack of effective data measures, lack of justice, people’s willingness to adapt and to change. Simple bad habits we can fall into. And again, that’s maybe where the need for individual supports and coaching comes in to help people change and adapt. And then just basically not enough focus on people’s lives in general, because a lot of this, as you said, comes down to shaping the culture and people and support to get this right and guiding gentle guidance, but inspiring people to see what’s needed and giving them the autonomy to work in the right direction on the right things. So did I miss anything there? Or what? So is that is that in a nutshell, why it happens? Or what have I missed there? Ah,

 

40:38

I don’t think we’ve missed anything fascinating. I honestly don’t know why it happens. Because it could be for so many different reasons. And every company and organization is different. So it’d be hard to say why 100%. But I think it’s that will, isn’t it that we’ll have people process systems leadership, it’s the operational excellence will. And maybe just like with with other things that need balance, if one falls out, then everything falls out. So I think going back to your original word, I think it’s balanced. It has to be a fine balance of everything. And I don’t know why one tips out. But it could be due to anything that happens in that we’ll have you’ll have greatness.

 

Catherine McDonald  41:28

And the most important thing, as you say, is identifying that it’s happening in the first place. And then understanding why and then being able to apply the tools and the thinking and the leadership to change things around. Yeah, great. And you’ve given us some great tools and some great food for thought as well, which is really great. And, you know, like to Andy’s question. Like, what do you do if you don’t have a lean consultant to hand? That’s really important, because we not every organization does. And, you know, we need to be able to make this practical and feasible within organizations that don’t have any room for additional resources, but need to be able to do something about this issue. So Andy, yeah, great questions on that as well. So Emma, if people would like to know more about your business and your services, where can they go to find you?

 

42:14

Yeah, sure. So my website is www dot FBI cia.com. And also my LinkedIn profile, so you can find me directly or ici isn’t so as a business page on there as well. Brilliant, good.

 

Andy Olrich  42:31

Excellent. You did say and I truly support and believe that this this is can be a difficult process and you need you need a hand work no matter where you are in the journey or as an organization. So yeah, if people are looking to get it, get started or get better here, reach out to him. So it’s been a great chat. Mo. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.