Could You Duplicate Your Organization?

So, you're chugging along with your successful little organization, whether a five-person beauty salon, a call center with fifty service reps, or a hospital ward with 250 staff. You're managing. They're working. Things are getting done. It's a little chaotic, but then that's how business is, isn't it?

Then, for some reason, you're called upon to duplicate your results - to spread the gospel of what you do and how you do it. How easy would it be for you to open another salon, build a sister call center in another city, or repeat your ward's success in twenty other Health Regions? Could you start tomorrow?

All organizations, and all managers, can benefit from this thought exercise: Could you duplicate your organization tomorrow based on what you have in place today?

How do you know what to do and how to do it? How do your people know what to do and how to do it? Do you know, start-to-finish, how your processes work? Do your people have standard work defined, with clearly defined work methods and sequence? Do they actually follow it? Do they value it? Do your standard work processed continually improve as you collectively discover even better methods to do what you do?

Look at your workplace as if you wanted to create a chain of franchises tomorrow - could you communicate all the important details of how you do what you do? Think about it.