Seven Actions to Execution Excellence in 2008
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Freedom from
Surprises Newsletter
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January 2008 |
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Engineering Professional,
I hope everyone enjoyed their time with family and friends over the
holidays. Are you refreshed and ready to tackle 2008?
What
are your plans for 2008 that will make this a better year for project
execution? Are you writing them down, making plans and taking actions
to move them from your wish list to a realistic and achievable goal
list? Without a clear set of written improvement objectives and
concrete plans to make them a reality, I would not expect 2008 to be
much different than 2007. Tune up and hone your leadership skills for
2008 and generate improvements that are sure to be noticed. I have
created a list of seven sure-fire actions that WILL improve your
project execution in 2008 via an emphasis on leadership; read on to
review them.
Jeff Jorvig, New Product Development Consultant
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JCI News
- We are now servicing the IT and Electronics industries in
addition to the semiconductor industry.
- Press Release: Virtual Design Manager
- Check out our quick
start product instant downloads.
- Thinking about Wiki for project collaboration
and knowledge management? Check out WikiMatirx.
- Ready for a quick view of your development
roadblocks? See Discovery Survey
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Leading your Team To Execution
Excellence in 2008
Producing
a notable positive shift in project execution for 2008 will take work;
hard work and at times it is going to be painful. If this is an
objective for this year it will take an honest, thorough assessment of
what has not been working well; I suggest you suit up in your best
armor and send your ego on a vacation for a while. Going through a
thorough assessment of how things are really working and implementing
easily noticed improvements will require you to hone your leadership
characteristics and put them into action. Review the diagram below to
refresh your thoughts on the characteristics of managing vs. leading
teams. Displaying a higher degree of the leadership attributes will
provide the essential guidance to developing execution excellence for
your team.
 Are
you planning for simple incremental changes in 2008 or are you ready to
make changes that will be easily noticed, due to improvements being on
a scale that can't be missed? Ready to break some rules and operate in
a mode that is uncharacteristic of the old? Ready to ask the tough
questions? Ready to learn from your team? Ready for taking some risk?
What is holding you back? Understand the answers to these questions and
begin the journey from managing team execution to leading your team to
new levels of execution excellence.
For 2008 will you be
managing the team or leading the team down a path to new levels of
productivity? One path logs an acceptable rating while the other is a
path that logs a striking score, one that will be noticed.
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Seven
Actions that will bring Execution Excellence in 2008
Below
are seven activities that will bring your team visible differences in
their product development execution productivity. Do these well; really
do these well and your team can't help but show a visible, higher level
of execution efficiency brought about under your leadership.
1) Listen -
Spend some time with each member of the new product development team
(design as well as non-design) and listen to what they believe is
impacting their ability to perform better. Act on what you learn.
2) Break some Rules
- Question,
challenge, and stir things up. Being comfortable has no place in an
organization that is going to display project execution leadership. Why
are you doing things the way your are? The status quo has no place in
an organization that is living and breathing excellence in project
execution.
3) Map your Process -
Involve the team, learn how your doing things and map them out.
Identify changes to the process; break some rules in doing this. Think
outside the box; brainstorm with the team to bring fresh, radical ideas
to the table. Involve everyone on the NPD team, not just design. The
final deliverable out of this activity must be a process that everyone
believes will bring a new level of project success to the organization.
4) Don't over commit
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Commit only after doing your homework. Be creative, be aggressive, keep
your vision broad and commit only when you have a means to get there.
Due diligence on plans and schedules will reinforce predictability for
your project. A misplaced commitment will never benefit the team or the
business; it will only erode confidence in the teams ability to execute.
5) Manage Scope -
You must have a process in place to manage the inevitable changes to
project scope. Scope change is a reality that will exist for every
project. Setting your team apart from the norm will be a process that
manages the scope decisions well. That process must include changes
from within the team as well as changes from the customer. Keep the Feature Creep Wildfire under
control.
6) Learn what you
don't know -
"Those that know, know they know. Those that don't know, don't know
they don't know." You must always assume there is something to be
learned about roadblocks to project execution. You need to constantly
be listening to your team to uncover them and mitigate their impact.
Keep a keen eye out for the unknown. It is always there, waiting to
disrupt your plan. More about Finding what you don't know.
7) And Finally Seek
Outside Input -
This is essential to prevent a stale, incestuous view of your
organizations best practices. A pure internal view is too close to the
situation to see possible errors the mechanics of project execution. An
outsider can be someone from a different organization within your
company, another company or a consultant. Most importantly it must be
someone that your team believes has no loyalty to anyone in management
and/or the business operation itself. The team must view this
individual as unbiased and non-threatening to be able to accurately
assess the situation and provide you with accurate feedback.
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How we can Help
Our
mission is excellence in the New Product Development process. If your
teams objective for 2008 is noteworthy improvements, we can provide
guidance to make that a reality.
- Discovery and solution of the unknowns in your process.
- Facilitation of an NPD process improvement.
- Team and leadership coaching.
- Process mapping for NPD process renewal.
- Our complete services listing can be found here.
Email here with any questions or
for more information. We can also be reached at 480-895-0478 or
877-895-0478.
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