Self-directed teams
Thursday, July 10th, 2008In January 2006, I was marketing director at a company that sold TV’s. I got frustrated because I would do work and, assembly-line style, it would get passed along, one person to the other until it came out the other end, none of us proud of the result.
So I went around, found out what my coworkers wanted, and got us into teams. In two weeks, we redid a sales display from start to finish. This project hadn’t gotten done in the past 9 months, yet now we were finally working together, it took us two weeks.
Our success inspired our coworkers to start their own projects, which I helped guide in my new role as project manager. Every two weeks, a new breakthrough would be finished.
Customers got called back in new ways to ensure their satisfaction. Inventory got listed through a new quality-assurance program. Sales associates invented new ways to upsell and cross-sell products, including a great new interactive product display that helped customers find which accessories to buy with their TV. The checkout process was improved to make it easier for customers to buy, and sales increased. The sales manager saw the need for, and organized and led, a new HR workshop. A complex issue with product delivery was resolved. Suppliers partnered with us and worked side-by-side.
I helped coworkers prepare, act, and evaluate each project.
The cost of all these innovations was less than zero — we saved money and time. Let me write that again. The cost of this work was so low, sometimes free, and the benefits from increased sales were so great, that even over the few weeks we worked, we recouped costs. The time we spent prepapring, getting things done, and evaluating, saved us more time than the time we’d wasted being frustrated.
Similar Posts:
July 10th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
[...] Go to the author’s original blog: Incremental project management [...]