In our previous blogs, I discussed the first four steps in the PLAN phase of the PDCA process. We are starting another blog series covering the fifth step—developing countermeasures. This takes us to the next stage of the PDCA process—the “DO” phase.
What’s interesting about this stage is that this is the part that everyone wants to jump into from the very beginning. It’s common for people to say, “Oh, we have these problems, and I know the answer.” Or they would say, “We need a body.” “We need a system.” But they aren’t really clear on what problems they are trying to solve in the first place.
Most of the time, in working with teams, up until this point of developing countermeasures, I very much have to hold the reins back. I am reminding them not to speed ahead. But at step five, I can finally let those reins go. They have a clearly scoped go-live from step four, which is identifying countermeasures.
The Difference Between Identifying and Developing Countermeasures
In step four, which is identifying countermeasures, you are only focusing on scoping and getting full agreement on the plan. As the term implies, you are only naming countermeasures to problems you’ve prioritized, particularly identifying what your key operational change is and its supporting tools, and who is going to be the person in charge of the change.
On the other hand, step five, which is developing countermeasures, is where the full development of the countermeasures identified in step four happens. It’s divide and conquer. Write that call script. Develop that standard onboarding deck. Put together the automation. Whatever the countermeasure to the problem is, you are going to make it in step five.
The 30-Day Lead Time
There are some parameters that we put around developing countermeasures to make them really effective. The first one is a 30-day lead time. The idea behind this is simply that if you give a team more than 30 days to create something, they’re going to wait 15 days to start.
A parameter we use in prioritizing the problems is whether they can be solved in 30 days; if they cannot, then we do not add them to the scope of the go-live. You have 30 days to make the script, the deck, the tech checklists, the automation, or whatever that countermeasure is. And this helps people take action.
The irony is that at the very beginning of the PDCA process, people want to move really fast.
Then they realize the complexity of the effort and want to slow down. And this is where they want more than 30 days, even though the whole time they’ve been wanting to go fast. We put that 30-day lead time there to really just cap people’s time and focus on action. Anything longer, they will wait to get started; anything shorter is unrealistic.
Since you have already named the persons in charge in step four, by this time you already know the allocation of countermeasures within your team. For example, if you have a team of 10 people with 50 countermeasures, on average, we expect five countermeasures per person to be accomplished within that 30-day lead time. As you can see, the structure is what makes this approach successful.
What you’re aiming for in 30 days is an 80 percent completion rate. Why not aim for a 100 percent completion rate? Tune in again next week to find out how and why it works.
In your service,
Hilary Corna
