You can see into the future. Strategy for guranteeing success.

Hello Everyone,
This week's topic is on ensuring success through iterative feedback and monitoring. Most often than none ventures, projects, implementations, and other initiatives fail because the leadership fails to implement proactive monitoring and feedback into the process.

The following is a practical tip/strategy that anyone can implement to ensure success in their tasks. The easiest, quickest, and the least complicated method to implement iterative feedback and monitoring within tasks is to:

1. Identify the feedback indicators
2. Choose the iteration frequency

Identifying the feedback indicator means to select the unit of measure by which one will determine if the progress is going as planned or not. The unit of measure is dependant on the task that is being performed. In many cases it is as simple as asking "Are you satisfied thus far?" or "Is there resistance". In other cases it could be the measure of the rate of implementation against a deliverable timeline.

Once the unit of measure has been identified, then the next step is to determine the frequency of the iteration. This means determining how often will the unit of measure be checked. This can be by day, week, or level of production, etc. For example, one may want to check the feedback indicator every week, every time 10 units are rolled out, or every time a milestone is reached, and so on.

Yes, I compare implementing iterative monitoring and feedback to the ability of seeing into the future because if one implements iterative monitoring and feedback processes, one can gauge how the tasks are progressing and can predict the outcome with a high degree of certainty; provided that the two factors mentioned above have been accurately identified and implemented.

To illustrate this with an example, if one is implementing a new process within Operations and using the iterative monitoring and feedback techniques one find out that there is much resistance then one can conclude that if the present course is not altered in a way to reduce resistance then the change will most likely fail. The same holds true for the opposite; that is if the monitoring and feedback indicators show that the change is being received and implemented with little resistance then success is ensured.

Therefore, do not discount implementing iterative monitoring and feedback within initiatives. It could be the difference between success and failure.

Question of the week:
Do you implement iterative monitoring and feedback within your initiatives? If yes, then what have you noticed? If not, what have your results been?

Till next time...

Sal
www.skkservices.com