Between saying and doing, there’s the sea (Italian popular proverb)
- Manager - I’m losing €8M/year because of the delays;
- Me - Uh, I know… As we agreed, start working on the first action with the highest operational impact to recover capacity and get back that money you lost;
- Manager - Okay!
(after 1 month)
- Me - Sorry, but why have the delays stayed the same?
- Manager - Uh, because we didn’t do anything…
The first real change during the implementation of a Model of Excellence is to uncouple the executive capacity of the share capital, meaning turning into reality the agreed actions. At first, I thought it was a joke, but all (I repeat, ALL) organizations struggle to carry out what has been decided.
THE 10 CAUSES OF EXECUTION STAGNATION
Doing business today isn’t easy. The execution timelines for starting, carrying out, and closing activities have expanded.
Let’s see why the share capital of every company is living through a period of execution stagnation:
1) Staff are de-responsibilized
Commitment to work has drastically decreased over the last 30 years. If baby boomers used to die for work, now the balance has been completely reversed. Partly that’s right, but in this way it’s excessive.
Between new trends (such as for example, the quiet quitting ) and the loss of trust in institutions and companies, work has become more like a mere means to obtain money, while the common goal that every company has (not only making revenue, for info) has been lost.
Moreover, the culture of meritocracy within companies is very rare, so the brain responds this way: “if I don’t gain anything more, why do it? Anyway, the salary is always the same”.
Quite rightly, I’d say.
2) Work has been drastically fragmented
Ask anyone to bring home just one result within an hour. If after that hour you ask how it’s going, not only will you be told that the goal wasn’t reached, but that another 10 have been started (all of them halfway, though).
This fragmentation extends execution timelines indefinitely, for any activity, regardless of economic-operational importance.
3) People think they’re creating value, but instead they work to feed waste
E-mails, phone calls, meetings, reporting huge numbers of indicators, various spreadsheets, etc. Hours and hours of work. But then someone thinks: still, I sell a product/service or emails?
Well yes: 95% of the activities you’re carrying out are NOT value-added activities. 35% consist of non-value-added but necessary activities, while the remaining 60% are waste. They’re not easily identifiable because they’re intangible.
Maximizing local productivity seems useful for your own KPIs, but it becomes waste for the company’s KPIs. The company pays you, not your department.
4) Activities are blocked by political constraints and the status quo
A large part of the actions are blocked by political constraints, therefore by decision-making bottlenecks. And if there are more partners, decision stagnation is almost certain. The platinum medal for stagnation goes, however, to multi-partner companies with people from different generations: open your eyes!
Finally, maintaining one’s hegemony in terms of one’s hierarchical position (status quo): if an action leads to changes in certain hierarchical levels, statistically they will try to block the execution.
This happens generally because the benefit is for the company, while the individual might suffer a loss. So, a person in a position of hegemony tends to protect themselves at the expense of the company.
5) Well-being causes stagnation
Greeks and Romans understood the problem long ago: well-being causes laziness. Laziness, stagnation.
Although the kind of well-being from the 60s–80s no longer exists, cultural inertia remains unchanged. Also in play is the everything-is-fine syndrome.
6) People waste time on complex and unworkable solutions
As seen in other articles, our country is particularly prone to protecting hegemony (the status quo), a phenomenon that becomes even more pronounced during economic recessions.
When the status quo can’t be guaranteed through economic and class barriers, people tend to create psychological distance from other individuals using grandiose words, letting their impulses run wild in overly ambitious, complex, and often unworkable projects.
7) A culture of handouts pushes people toward an external solution (that never comes)
Specific cultures around the world—and in particular the Italian one—are very focused on handouts: a Messiah who protects everyone regardless of their own effort.
This mechanism is useful for maintaining mass control, in exchange for demotivating and mediocre work.
Waiting for an external savior removes the individual’s executive capability through their own work.
8) People avoid getting their hands dirty
PCs, e-mails, meetings, reports, phone calls, and speeches, but no one who goes in person to change things.
This creates a herd of “spectators,” but no “actors” involved in physically executing the agreed activities.
9) People no longer make decisions
As we saw in a previous article (you can find it here Why today’s managers can NO LONGER make DECISIONS: 5 causes + SOLUTION | Programma Socrate®), making decisions has practically become impossible.
Decision-making inability blocks the execution process: if it hasn’t even been decided what to do, then it’s certainly impossible to carry it out.
The time needed to make decisions adds to the total lead time to carry out the action.
10) The motivation hormone has been drained by technology
The media doesn’t talk about it because they exploit this human weakness, but the motivation hormone, dopamine, has been removed by technology (in particular, smartphones).
Videos, images, digital content in rapid succession trigger the release of dopamine. But like everything else, dopamine runs out and the brain needs time to recreate it.
If, between one “scroll” and the next, there are tasks to do, it’s practically impossible for the human body because it lacks the “fuel” that motivates it to move.
That’s why everything has slowed down (or, worse, stopped) over the last 15 years.
SOLUTION
The first impact with execution methods is often traumatic. Individuals struggle to internalize the approach because it also calls into question their own “at-home” work: if, in a company, an activity is closed in 1 month, why does a similar activity take 6 months at home?
“Digesting” this dichotomy, everyone discovers a new way of working (and often, of living).
The management method for reducing execution lead times is the 4DEx.
4DEx is a structured, but simple, methodology to set the right goals for the company, visual management to share process productivity measurements to layer the data in a visual and simple way, but above all, a standard method to track actions and responsibilities, along with an ongoing monitoring of the results of one’s completed actions.
This way, people are oriented toward shared goals and can immediately identify the effectiveness of their own actions.