Would you know what to do if your cash supply suddenly slowed, yet you still needed to deliver the same output?
That’s just happened at my place of work. At a recent staff meeting, one of our hospital’s directors told us that the government was cutting our budgets back to where they were three years ago, but that we needed to deliver increased performance with the reduced budget.
So we need to be more efficient – but how do you go about it? Not surprisingly, the principles are the same whether you are big or small.
First review, then refocus, and finally reform.
Review the past: Management needs to critically review what metrics they were using to describe success – were we using the wrong metrics, or were we focussing on the wrong goals?
Refocus:We need to be absolutely clear what the business is here to do, and redefine success and how it will be measured
Reform: Create an organisation, with an affordable structure and clear strategy to deliver these new plans. We don’t have the resources to do everything, so we have to be smarter.
For the strategies, I like to use what I call a traffic light exercise:
• Red: What bad things do we need to stop doing?
• Amber: What things are we not using efficiently – what existing processes can be tweaked to produce more, better results?
• Green: What good things are we doing, that we need to do more of?
And finally, you MUST manage this change process really well if it is going to succeed
Management needs to answer the questions, why do we need to change, why now, and what’s the benefit of this? And then they need to conspicuously lead by example.
I’ll let you know how we get on!
