“Now we have to Deliver”—A Call for Business Discipline

Okay, quick recap: In October of 2000 we were still in the throes of the “Internet Revolution” and the “New Economy.” As we coasted through Q4 of the year 2000, things started to come unglued. Stocks plummeted and investment capital dried up. Not only was venture capital suddenly non-existent, but companies started trying to figure out how they were going to deliver what they had already promised to their customers. You know times are hard when money for both R&D and day-to-day business gets tight.

What we learned from the e-business shakeout

As a lesson to us all, we can observe a pronounced pattern in the e-business shakeout. The brick and mortar businesses that added Internet sites to their marketing strategy did far better as a whole than companies that started with the Internet and made it their only focus. Why? Because the brick and mortar businesses already had structure. They understood customer service, how the delivery channel worked, and how to develop and maintain good processes to support service and delivery.

We had easy times for a while, but easy times can obscure the need for discipline. You can waste a lot of energy doing frivolous and inefficient things when times are good—you'll still make a lot of money. When the economy tightens up, you don't have that option anymore. While companies now cut costs and people, and let their R&D go into the fetal position, they would do better to look at how to operate more effectively. Process and structure are at the core. It doesn't mean that you have to have such oppressive rules that your team can't think or innovate. But you have to have enough on paper that when your best people leave, your best practices don't leave with them. Furthermore, you have to have it organized well enough that you can find the information when you need it, and the means to keep it accurate. Finally, you have to anticipate how the structure of your organization will change in the face of more business, or less.

It all starts with process

As a business, once you've established a management team, defined your mission, and figured out who will do what, you will find plenty of systems—both literally and figuratively—to support a disciplined approach. You may select ISO9000, Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, Capability Maturity Model (CMM), SAP, Peoplesoft, or a host of others. But you can't take another step until you understand your processes. In fact, process (and the ability to measure process effectiveness) may be the most important component of all these disciplines as they relate to bottom line profits. Proven, repeatable processes reduce mistakes, rework, and overlap. They boost productivity, which means more work delivered for lower payroll expenditures. An added savings is the fact that new people will become productive faster, bringing even more money to the bottom line that would otherwise have been wasted.

Another supporting argument in favor of process is that the productivity game hasn't really changed. When business was booming, we couldn't find enough people to do the work, so a disciplined approach made sense. Now that business is slow, we still have the same problem. We've fired half of our staff, and we still don't have enough people for the work at hand. As a team, if we think through the correct ways to do things, write them all down, and continually reinforce them, we just might have a fighting chance to keep the customer satisfied.

It ends with process, too

The one constant in business is change, the old saying goes, and established processes can make that a bit easier too. Businesses seem to reorganize more often than not, and processes make it easier to rearrange things as if they were components. How much easier it is to pass a function from one team to the other, as needed, when the flows and work instructions are written down. And when, God forbid, you have to sell off a unit, you will be able to ask for more dollars if all of the business critical functions have been mapped and written down. People like to buy systems, instead of heaps of haphazard functions.

Time to make it happen

In case you haven't noticed, the next freight train is on the tracks and ready to run you over. The only question is “when?” Right now you're probably understaffed or about where you need to be. What happens when the next surge or cut comes. You will have to assimilate new people quickly, or you'll have to do more with even less. Get your processes down now while you have the chance—it won't get any better.
A whole genre of e-business TV ads flooded the airwaves during the second half of 2000. One of my favorites illustrates precisely what to avoid. It shows a team of people, presumably every employee of a new start-up. All have obviously been working themselves to death, and this is make-or-break-time. They are huddled around a man sitting at a PC who announces, as he hits a computer key, “Okay, our new site is open for business…[click]…now!”

Everyone looks at the counter on the screen that shows the number of incoming orders, and within a few seconds it shows an order or two filter in. A few seconds more elapse, and a few more orders come in. Everyone starts cheering and breathing a sigh of relief. Without a word, you know what everyone is thinking, “All right—our company is going to be a roaring success!”

Within a few seconds after that, orders start pouring in at an unbelievable rate. As the team looks at the order counter reaching the thousands, everyone turns white with fear. Once again, you can read their minds, "Oh no—our company is going to be a roaring success."

“Now we have to deliver.”

© 2001 Michael A. “Ryan” Yuhas