Changing Times

Coauthored by Carol Schifman, Laura Butcher and Karen Wunderlin (who collectively have over six decades of Work-Out experience with organizations all over the world!)

If you subscribe to the “what’s new” approach to organizational change, Work-Out might seem like yesterday’s news.  But, recent experiences reinforced Work-Out’s continued relevance. In some ways, arrival of tough times for all organizations has made Work-Out – and concepts like it – more contemporary than ever.

The Wunderlin Company’s approach to cultural change is rooted in our collective experiences with GE’s Work-Out process. Work-Out places the work to be done (or the problem to be solved) in the middle of an organization and surrounds it with the people who know it best. This unlocks new resources for problem solving.

From the beginning, Work-Out was a source of major transformation at GE.  In the mid 80’s GE was still a stodgy, monolithic enterprise, weighed down by bureaucracy and bureaucrats.  The earliest Work-Out wins were in the moments that we observed the combination of problem-solving teams asking, “Why do we do things this way?  What if we could try…” and leadership teams saying, “I’m listening….and I’ll support you to make that change.”  It’s a transformational combination!  And, more than 20 years later, it’s exactly the same in organizations who are just beginning Work-Out.

While the process is directed from the top of the organization, it is implemented with broad participation from employees throughout the organization. Work-Out develops broad coalitions across the organization. Employees start to care deeply about success because they are connected to the organization and can make change happen. The Work-Out process also provides a vehicle for organizations to optimize speed, cost and quality – without compromising any of these measures, and results in new levels of success.

Proof it works

Last year, we helped a financial services organization introduce Work-Out and facilitated a number of their early problem-solving sessions.  A highlight for Laura occurred when true “breakthrough thinking” occurred, resulting in a 90% cycle time reduction.  By making a few simple changes to their standard business contracts, the contract negotiation process was shortened and the legal department was no longer consumed by iterative “red lining” of agreements.  It was proof that Work-Out really works – even in a legal department!

Early on in Karen’s consulting career, The Wunderlin Company was engaged to instill the Work-Out process throughout Louisville city government. From the city garages, to garbage pickup to purchasing processes, we worked with government employees to tackle difficult problems and the results were nothing short of remarkable – in terms of time and money saved, citizen services improved, and overall morale boosted. In fact, the program was so successful that the Louisville government was awarded a Ford Foundation Innovations in Government Award to teach other cities how to implement the process.

Carol worked recently with a utility distribution business that was able to save $1.8 million by buying pre-fabricated parts and expects to save nearly $20 million by rolling out the program system wide – all thanks to the Work-Out process. That same company was also able to make similar improvements to its collections, prepayments and safety programs.

Another example of success was a Safety Work-Out that was instrumental in turning around a difficult ongoing trend for the company, achieving a 25% reduction in preventable motor vehicle accidents and OSHA recordables within one year. The company also revamped the entire Accident Prevention Manual in just five days with 35 union and 15 management employees.

Why it works

Work-Out gets the whole system in the room. How many times have you or an associate been frustrated by a work process that you know can work better… but how to make “those people over there” – whether it’s production or people in the field or finance – cooperate?  An essential tenet of Work-Out is to get the whole system in the room.

Work-Out significantly shortens decision times. A typical task force meets for two hours every week or so for a couple months, presents to leadership, and then waits days, weeks or months to hear the final decisions.  With Work-Out, teams work with a facilitator for 2-4 days, and then leadership joins the group.  The teams make their recommendations for improvement and leadership makes the decision on the spot. In 20 plus years of leading Work-Outs, we have yet to see a Work-Out session that received less than 80 percent “Yes’s” to the recommendations – and that isn’t because senior leaders become easy marks in public forums; it is because if you ask the people who do the work how to do it better, they know and they come up with highly workable solutions.

Work-Out is much better than training. Frequently leaders talk to us about how to get employees to change their behavior.  What we have seen is the “double benefit” of Work-Out experiences – in addition to identifying and implementing recommendations to improve business results, associates learn new ways to do their work.  A participant in a Work-Out about fleet maintenance told us a year after his Work-Out experience “If I came in tomorrow and we went back to the old way of working, I would quit.”  Now that’s sustained organizational change!

People support what they help create. In Work-Out, participants own their approved solutions. Instead of “selling” their good ideas to the rest of the organization, the organization gets involved in selecting the best approaches to improvement, making implementation go more smoothly and faster.

The Work-Out process is elegant in its simplicity – yet deceptively powerful on so many levels

• You can get traction quickly working on important problems or opportunities.
• You can increase associate involvement and ownership in generating solutions. The people closest to the work are called upon to create and own the solutions; thereby creating support and buy in.
• You can breakdown real (or imaginary) organization boundaries – between manufacturing and engineering, sales and marketing, field and headquarters –because you start to look at the process end-to-end and with a customer-focused perspective. Participants gain valuable perspectives on their jobs and learn about other processes within the company. Leaders can demonstrate a way of leading that engages people in a more transparent and interactive way and gives associates, those closest to the work, the power of being involved in decision-making.

Here’s how it works.

1. Leadership identifies a critical organization issue or problem.

2. A small group of people from several functional areas comes together for uninterrupted work time with the pressure of a deadline as a catalyst and the assistance of skilled facilitators to support their work.

3. The group works to develop and present recommendations it can implement.

4. Leadership hears their recommendations and gives a “Yes,” “No,” (and here is why) or “Further Study” and then empowers teams to implement approved recommendations.

5. The teams implement accepted recommendations.

6. The teams come back together at a predetermined time (usually 90-120 days later) to report their progress.

At its core, Work-Out is a means for driving cultural change. In the short term, you can increase efficiency, improve work processes, eliminate nonessential work, involve your people in the process and increase communication. Long term, it empowers your people, sustains productivity improvements, and, perhaps most importantly, creates true partnerships.

What has to happen?

Senior leadership has to support the Work-Out. Participants’ most common fear: “Senior management will never really let us do this.”

Planning is critical. A small group of folks has to spend a couple weeks crafting the question to be answered, recruiting the right people to participate and gathering relevant background information.

Skilled facilitators are needed. Teams need a facilitator who knows Work-Out, and is highly skilled in bringing cross-functional teams to a high-performance state. The facilitator ensures the Work-Out teams’ efforts are focused and efficient, completing specific Action Plans to be accomplished within 90 days. The group must feel free to disagree, discuss, explore and problem solve in a short, intense period.

Try Work-Out

If you want to quickly see results, try Work-Out. If you want to improve dialogue, remove barriers between functions and bust bureaucracy, try Work-Out. If your work group has been wrestling with an issue for some time or is struggling to improve its performance, try WorkOut.

In 2010 being able to move quickly to take advantage of emerging opportunities and to streamline processes differentiates recovery from continued struggles.  When considering your department or organization’s recovery strategy, consider working in Work-Out—it really works!