Ten Improvement Models for Leaders Who Don't Know How To Improve

If you want better results from your company, but you really don't know how to systematically make things better, here are ten models you can use to flail away at improvement:

1. Get people to work harder. Generally done through some combination of begging, bullying, and bribing.
2. Work longer hours. Crank up the number of hours that you and your people work.
3. Hire more people. Throw more bodies at the problem.
4. Downsize some people. Growth and profits through emaciation.
5. Add some technology (the mythical silver bullet). This gizmo ought to fix things.
6. Set targets and hold people accountable. I don't know how to improve things; maybe they'll figure something out.
7. Set big bold stretch goals. And then hope some magic happens.
8. Work smarter, not harder. Which isn't insulting at all to those who've been experts at their jobs for fifteen years.
9. Fire anyone who makes a mistake. Only for perfect managers or hypocrites, of whom I've met several.
10. Hire only the best. We need a hero, because we don't know how to succeed without heroes.
11. Reorganize. Changing who people report to will somehow fix what we do.
12. Counting. Make decisions based only on the numbers you can measure.

I realize that was twelve, not ten, but there are so many of these desperate-feeling improvement models that it's hard to stop. These models all seem powerless, relying on hope and wishful thinking, relying on "something" happening; something magical, or lucky, or wished for. Yet these models are all used. Commonly. Ineffectively.

When the temperature outside goes above zero again (it's -40 today with wind chill), we'll look at ten improvment models used by leaders who DO know how to improve.