Dick Ling gave a talk on Sales & Operations Planning at Tuesday evening’s meeting of the Atlanta chapter of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS). Ling has been a manufacturing consultant since 1979 and was once associated with the Oliver Wight Companies. His book on Sales and Operations Planning launched the methodology into corporate America in the mid 80’s. I first met Ling in the early 90’s when S&OP was all about balancing supply and demand. But the world has changed and so too has S&OP. More and more businesses are becoming global and the need for product and service innovation is ever greater. So beyond just tracking widgets and managing demand and supply we are now aware of the need for integrating and rolling out New products and services.
Ling presented 3 Laws. CHANGE – change happens; so manage it PERSPECTIVE – it all depends on where you are coming from; so integrate and align the organization ENTROPY – over time systems (and organizations) become random, break down, morph; so put energy into counter this His 13 Principles for integrated decision making:
- The future will be different
- Effective planning is all about managing change
- Information needs to be prepared and presented for management decision making
- Better to be roughly right than precisely wrong
- Start with the end in mind
- S&OP connects & aligns strategy and tactics
- S&OP integrates and reconciles different views
- Business planning needs to be multi lingual (units and/or $, process families and/or market segments)
- Interdependency is the essence of integrated decision making
- Balance the Paradoxes
- Have a Framework and balance consistency and bureaucracy
- Learn-by-doing and regularly self assess
- New tools are important, but making change stick is about PEOPLE
A colleague of mine, Charlie Hagan, had a unique scale for assessing professional experience and competence. He would describe someone as either having: driven the bus, ridden on the bus, seen the bus drive by, say "what bus?", or be thrown off or under the bus. I was recently reminded of this scale while talking with a self proclaimed organizational development expert who must have been on different buses from the ones I’ve been riding and driving on my lean sigma journey. Organizational transformation, like oil on water, can live comfortably on the surface of an organization resistant to penetrating the fiber and makeup of the culture. Transformation is a major undertaking that comes at a high price. A positive organizational culture reinforces the core beliefs and behaviors that a leader desires while weakening the values and actions the leader rejects. A negative culture becomes toxic, poisoning the life of the organization and hindering any future potential for growth. When dysfunction is detected and cultural change is needed, a major overhaul is called for. Cultures do not readily adjust. A serious mistake made by many leaders is to try to forcefully change the mindsets of those within an organization. Managers often try to force, rather than lead the change. Organizational transformation imposed on followers first is almost always resisted and resented by the followers. Successful leaders first impose change on themselves and then cultivate it in others. As Charlie would say, "Sometimes you got to drive the bus."
