Section 4.3. 3. Participate

4.3. 3. Participate

You'll see a theme repeated throughout this book. It's valuable to those just starting down the path of process improvement. That is the theme of executive commitment: dedicated and focused executive commitment is essential to the success of any process initiativein fact, to any business initiative.

When you create a process program, you are not creating an end product. You are setting down the first stone in what will eventually (hopefully) stretch into a well-worn path. But, of course, the stone is not the path, and all the good work of your process team has not laid the brush aside. It has delivered a direction and a map. Now the real test comes.

There's always a strong leadership presence in successful process programs: the champions , the visionaries, the true believers . Maybe those labels are too strong to apply to many process initiatives. But you probably understand the directive behind them: make executive commitment a visible thing. To do that, it is essential to participate in the life of the program. Management must lead the way.

4.3.1. Appear in the Valley

It's no doubt easy sometimes to look down on company operations from high up. The view from there can often appear placid, orderly. And there's an argument to be made that heavy executive management across all layers of an organization might not be a good thing. After all, if you hire competent people, you should probably get out of their way and let them do their jobs. That's my philosophy, too. But it's a general philosophy, good for routines that have stabilized

But for new or emerging process programs, the stability is usually not there, at least not in most companies. In these situations, visible executive commitment and support become especially important.

By the term "appear in the valley," I mean to suggest that management appear as a guide. They are not there to audit, or to check up on people, or to peer over shoulders; they show up to show your people that they are interested, that they want to see results, that the company will be patient, as long as progress is being made. And also that the company will be tolerant when missteps are made, that those kinds of trials will no doubt arise, but that they are OK as long as they are indicators that people are moving into the program.

4.3.2. Be Content with Commitment Equal to Yours

The last thought here on the subject of participation is the level of commitment you should expect from your people as your program becomes a part of the way you do business. The level of commitment you showopenly and visibly in the organizationis the level of commitment you can predict will permeate through your process program.

You probably know this already. Think of your management partners : will they share this commitment with you? This form of on-floor encouragement does not require an inordinate amount of attention. If you've designed the process program so that it fits the organization well, then it shouldn't be a struggle to fit it into daily and routine business activities. But especially at the outset, the program will be new to people, maybe a little strange or a little daunting. If senior management can be seen as imminently interested in how people are adjusting to it and strongly committed to seeing it succeed for the organization, then that attitude will go a long way to ensuring adoption, attenuation, and integration into work group cultures.

4.4. 4. Training

If I were asked to pinpoint two of the most critical factors in achieving a successful process program, I'd cite executive commitment and training Not one after another, but both together. I see them as being equally crucial.

Chapter 3 looked at the importance of training when it comes to establishing your process program. There it is essential, because it preps your people to begin using the program effectively. But training should become an ongoing and permanent part of your program, just as improvement is.

Naturally your program is going to evolve over time. So the best way to have a better program is to have better people. Such an ongoing commitment to training works best when it takes on a two-dimensional shape.

The first is focused on growth. This includes the growth of your program, the growth of your people, and the growth of your business. Training addresses all of these. As a manager, in addition to all your other duties , you are the caretaker of your people. Like a football coach, you should want to turn them into the best players they can be. And so it's good practice to seek and support their personal career goals in ways that line up with the mission of the business.

This area can include professional training and often includes training that is not directly relevant to the process program. For example, you may have some network people in your group who would like to obtain Cisco CCNA certification. You might have programmers on staff who want to obtain MCSD certification. These paths are designed to help produce better network analysts and better programmers.

If parts of your business objectives are to improve network efficiency or to program .NET more effectively, then this form of growth training will bring advanced knowledge, skills, and practices into the organization. And this will provide a foundation of fresh knowledge and new perspectives that can be directly applied to improving the process program.

The second facet of this two-dimensional shape is process training. Your organization should establish some form of training program to support the use and evolution of the process program across the organization. There are some sound reasons for this.

First, you'll no doubt be bringing new people into the organization on something of a regular basis. And you should have some sort of mechanism in place for training these people in their jobs. Part of their job will be to follow the processes established to carry out the work. You can facilitate this with formal classroom-style training, with coaching and mentoring, maybe even with computer-based instruction.

At the same time, you'll want to remember that your process program will be evolving over time: changing to become better and changing to keep up with shifting business environments. This will require process refresh training at certain intervals. Depending on the size and reach of your program, you may set up some type of fixed training regimen or curriculum that requires attendance by certain job roles for mini sessions once a quarter, twice a year, or even annually.

The issue of training, once your program is moving under its own steam , can easily lose its focus. But it's wise to keep a steady handle on it. If you appreciate the fact that your program will changethat you actually want it to changeand that your people's ability to use the program effectively is key to its success, then you will have little trouble justifying the importance of training and the contribution it can make to sustained process improvement.