Big Boss Is Asking For Help

I receive a mail from the VP, asking for help to improve the operation performance as the KPI of the business segment I work for is far below the target. After go through his mail and the KPIs attached, I sympathize his situation, other than that, I don’t think I can do much to put the situation on track, because, I m just a small flies in the organization and my power of influencing is so limited. There are so many experience managers on top of me, everybody has their own thought of management practice. Getting them to believe in Six Sigma and Lean could be a big challenge.

I joint the organization 3 years ago, I would say, since the day I report to work, I m facing quite a big culture change until today I m still trying hard to adjust myself to suite the organization culture. In fact, the business segment was not performing well over the past 3 years, why?

Here are the few reasons I observed;

- Overall KPIs was not linked to the sub functional departmental KPIs. As I mentioned earlier, there are many experience managers having their own management thought, each manager set their own set KPI to report their departmental performance, but these KPIs seldom liked to the overall KPIs that measure the overall business segment performance.

- People’s mind set. I face the problem since day one I joint the company, may be due to the influence of deep corporate culture, many of them, especially those have many years experience in this company, are so reluctant to change. In other word, talking to them with the Lean and Six Sigma way is really a great challenge.

- The way the people handle problem. Problem Statement formation is the first step in Six Sigma GB or BB project. A good problem statement help the team focus at the right direction. I don’t see good problem statement being define in most case, but people just jump into the conclusion and point out the root cause.

- Another characteristic of the peoples (especially the managers) like to twist and turn the problem by asking a lot of question that may not directly linked to the problem. They ask a lot of questions, demand for huge number of data and information, hopefully they manage to find something to justify them to pull away from the discussion.

Well, this is the organization culture that I have to live with. My manager told me before; the environment is as such, if I can’t take it, the only way for me is to leave the organization. I wish to, if I have got the chance.

I m not sure how many of the so call experience mangers in this organization will respond to the VP with a constructive idea. The VP is the one that can change the situation. Have to exercise his power to push the people to do something. If he believes something will change by sending out an email like this. Hmm…let see what will happen.