Managers Need to Play Catch

A large financial services company had built itself on mergers and acquisitions and was planning a big integration project to get everybody on the same page - using the same systems, common procedures across all geographic regions, and scalable reporting. In a sensible move, they brought in representatives from all of the global regions to give input and work through all the issues over a period of months.

This project team came up with a plan that seemed to satisfy most of their requirements and they moved into the implementation phase. Despite having representatives from almost every region on the team, the rollout of the new systems and procedures met with huge resistance in almost every geographic region. Local managers actively fought the new systems, and the top-down initiative struggled and stalled for almost three years.

Even though each region was represented in the planning team, the planning team had never closed the loop with all the other people in the region who would be affected by the changes. The managers of the regions weren't given any real opportunity to review the plan, modify the plan, or run the plan by their own people - the people who actually know what's going on and how the work gets done. And, even if the plan was actually a pretty good fit for most regions, the unilateral directive that "this is the way we're going" put everyone into defensive mode, stalling the project.

Every business is made up of individual people. Every division is made up of individual people. Every manager is an individual person. And no individual person likes to have change imposed on them.

People need to be involved in the changes that affect them. Ideally, they need to create the changes that affect them. The traditional corporate planning approach - gather information, plan and implement - doesn't do that, regardless of how good the initial "gather information" stage is. Just as in any communication, a one-way transfer of information doesn't cut it - we need to close the loop with discussion, feedback and conversation.

Much better are the methods of Hoshin Kanri (also called Hoshin Planning and Catch Ball). Check out this short video about Catch Ball from the 2009 IndustryWeek Best Plants Conference (forgive the slow 15 second intro.)

By the way, the financial services company has now retreated from unilateral implementation, and is working to get respectful involvement of every region; engaging their concerns and suggestions and letting the regions adapt the plan to suit their operations. Interestingly enough, when given the chance to adapt the plan to their own needs, most seem to be choosing the plan as is.