Leadership Fundamentals
Create a path for others to succeed
The obstacles that block a company from reaching strategic and operational goals are numerous and varied. The most common types are initiative overload, the chaos of poorly defined decisions, and persistent and pervasive problems which overburden an organization with the weight of unresolved issues.
Great leaders create a pathway to progress devoid of obstacles which serves as a playbook to shift the company towards a bright future. Building fundamental leadership capabilities around effective issue resolution is essential to ensure the success of an enterprise. Where and how to focus, are key ingredients for future success.
A growth mindset requires a bias for action
The power of prioritization
Doing what matters most and not succumbing to the tyranny of the urgent is the surest path to success. A comprehensive examination of the landscape combined with a clear-eyed focus on what matters most, is crucial for maximizing organizational performance.
Making the subjective as objective as possible when driving decisions
Strengthen the quality of decision making in the enterprise by creating a value-driven model for reviewing and assessing alternatives. Being explicit about what we want, then sharing and reconciling key objectives with other stakeholders ensures the ability to lock in the best-balanced choice.
Proactive Problem Management to drive organization resilience
Increase resilience of the enterprise through problem control activities that build on root cause analysis exercises and documenting known errors and workarounds. Problems must be prioritized based on the risk they pose in terms of probability and impact to operations. Focus should be directed to problems with the highest risk to stakeholder and customer experience.
Tipping the balance from problems to opportunities
The highest performing organizations are forward-leaning. They are geared towards maximizing the value of the opportunities they create through better prioritization and sharper decisions. An organization focused on problems is spending most of the time recovering from the past.
Case Studies Section
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$11M
saved in the first year
60%
improvement in on-time performance
50%
reduction in admin workload
Challenges
Kennecott Utah Copper operates the Bingham canyon mine concentrator plant, a smelter and a refinery. Ore from this mine is concentrated into slurry, piped to where the smelting process occurs, and then sent to the refinery. Efficient operation at the concentrator stage is critical to maintaining uptime of the smelter. Each year the concentrator plant is shut down a total of 36 times. This is necessary to maintain critical equipment while essential repairs and upgrades are completed. The issue at Bingham was that the length of downtime was causing a bottleneck in the overall process.
Read Case StudyResults
The shutdown process saved over $11 million in the first year of implementation. On-time performance improved by 60% and is tracking towards world-class results. key performance Indicators (KPls) for shutdown performance improved over all prior years. Team performance (on-scope, on-cost) improved by 60%. Shutdown administrative work load fell by over 50% allowing team members to focus on other areas such as reducing cost or generating more revenue. All Injury Frequency Rate (AIFR) improved, advancing a strong safety culture which is a core value of KUCC.
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47%
improvement in operational efficiency
30%
improvement in production rate
50%
reduction in change over time
Challenges
After a major capital investment at its biscuit factory at Papakura, Griffin’s needed to address several variables impacting overall conversion cost. The site was struggling with high waste, high downtime, and planning deficiencies; and overall workflow was not conducive to producing at the lowest possible conversion cost.
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For overall results, Operational Efficiency (OE), the measure of line performance relative to a theoretical maximum achievable throughput rate, was used to measure success. To achieve an OE of 100%, the line must run at its maximum theoretical throughput rate with zero plant downtime and product waste. At the conclusion of the Kepner-Tregoe engagement the plant achieved:
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€4.5M
decrease in spin-off costs
70%
non-conformity reduction in 3 years in specific departments
Challenges
Fokker wanted to increase their issue resolution maturity. This meant improving the quality and completeness of information about problems, accelerating root cause analysis and involving the right people at the right time.
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Success has been measured in a drastic reduction in non-conformities which is saving millions of euros yearly. A proactive culture has replaced the “fire-fighting” of reactive problem solving.