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If the journey to industry leading performance was clear, everyone would use it but less than 1% of organisations that embark on that journey stay the course.
Without the right mindset, winning improvement ideas slip through the fingers like grains of sand. As Edison remarked, Hard work, data analysis and logic on their own are not enough to succeed. Invention is 1% idea and 99% perspiration. To look this another way, with new ideas, the content of 99% of effort is shaped by the mindset which created the original idea.
For example a recent survey compared the actions of organisations that succeeded and failed in delivering the potential gains of industry 4.0.
The organisations involved in the study had all taken a significant first step towards that potential by beginning a pilot project. The successful ones progressed past the project stage to transfer the gains across their organisation.
The survey found that the most successful were driven by a mindset of strategic change and systematic improvement.
The least successful were driven by a cost down mindset or in response to competitive actions. Their fate was to endure pilot purgatory. One organisation is quoted as having more pilots that Ryan Air!
The reason for the difference in outcome is the fact that determination to succeed is important but on its own, is not enough. You need to stack the emotional cards in your favour to make it worthwhile for the organisation to put in the extra effort to embrace change and develop/adopt new ideas.
The table below sets out a series of 5 commonly encountered improvement mindsets. The least successful organisations are those driven by mindsets 1 and 2 where actions are driven by the pain of high costs or competitive action. The most successful organisations have mindsets 3 to 5 which drives actions to progress towards a desired outcome.
What successful organisations do well is to create a game plan to bridge the gap between the current reality and the desired outcome. That includes:
- A compelling purpose that the organisation can get behind;
- A milestone plan setting out the steps to deliver that purpose;
- A clear path to the next step (so you actually know what to do)
- A hard and fast time-line for reflecting on progress, capturing lessons learned and moving on.
With these four things, there is enough clarity — and thus enough motivation — to move forward.
To find out more about how to break out of pilot purgatory and stack the improvement odds in your favour why not get in touch?
