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Bram Lagrou: How a division of 200 plus engineers solved in three months what they didn't in two years prior. Welcome to this episode of the Lagrou Partners podcast for the commercial leader. Today is really all about a particular case study that might be of interest to your business as well.
What if your team is drowning in complexity right now and they need some assistance? And what if it's not necessarily a capability issue, it is a complexity issue?
My name is Bram Lagrou. I'm the founder of Lagrou Partners, and we specialize in leading change in a commercial way.
Let me tell you about the situation. The situation is such that a large organization with multiple sites across the country experienced a big bottleneck. It was a [00:01:00] supplier to other departments inside the same company, and over the last two years, all of the key metrics that they were tracking were all basically falling behind.
Morale was low, deadlines weren't met, and there was a sense of reactivity and a "well, we can't fix this anyway, so why would we bother?" Sort of attitude. So you can imagine as a culture, it wasn't very productive, it wasn't very engaging, it wasn't very positive. But then there's also the commercial repercussions of this.
And so as we looked at this, it was very clear that morale was under pressure. And it was such that complexity was masquerading the effort. The more they tracked, the more overwhelmed they became. This is at the time when the general manager of operations, who I already had the pleasure of working with for a number of months, and together we had achieved a lot of great outcomes for the organization.
At that particular point in time, he was [00:02:00] talking to the general manager of engineering. And they both agreed that I should be brought into the organization to potentially assist there too.
As I sat down with the GM of engineering, my diagnosis was such that it wasn't a skills problem, it wasn't a resource problem, it was a clarity problem.
Too many priorities dilutes people's attention. People kind of spend a little bit of time on this, on that, and on the other, but nothing really moves in a significant, substantial way across a whole team, and therefore, while the team was being spread too thinly. Obviously outcomes weren't met.
And so too many metrics means no accountability really. When everything matters, nothing really does.
I designed a two day offsite retreat for the senior leadership team, which was over 20 people, looking after more than [00:03:00] 200 together.
The first day we decided to strip back, went through all of the key metrics, and we really wanted to be clear about, well, one key metric to reach out for in the future, what would that one key metric be?
So we stripped it all back to just one, the core one, the main one, use it as our north star, so to speak.
Day two then is where we also fleshed it back to what we call connecting the dots: if you want to achieve that, what could you and me on a day-to-day basis do? And to what quantity level so that if we all jointly as a senior leadership team, putting all of our efforts together into this, what would happen with this key metric, what would make it really come alive? What would really create the momentum? We connected the dots.
Of key behaviors, we chose three. We put a number on it [00:04:00] per senior leader that they actually were accountable for. They chose it, which means there was buy-in right from the get go. It wasn't decided by the GM of engineering and me. It was their choice. Three metrics, adding a number to it against everybody's name.
And then after the retreat we did two things. We created a scoreboard that would easily map and visualize how we were tracking with three things that we do on a day-to-day basis, and connecting the dots basically with a lag measure in the future. As we are doing this to a certain number across 24 people, how is that actually moving the dial on the scoreboard in terms of our future goal?
We then also created a 20 minute session for all the leaders to zoom in on. We would over the course of 20 minutes only per week, have every single leader in two minutes or [00:05:00] less report back to the group where they were at.
A success formula for execution. And so as we did that, and I helped them to implement the structure and coached them and made them tweak it.
Within three months, they achieved the key metrics, which was basically saying instead of falling behind, they started to get back in the green within three months.
This was a significant milestone that they personally didn't anticipate. Now they were back on track, and that was all due to clarity of thought, clarity of action, and everybody pulling in the same direction.
Now the lesson for your business is such that this isn't an engineering story. This is a leadership story, and there's two questions that are at this point in time, I'd like you to ask yourself, is it possible that your team is drowning in complexity and [00:06:00] are you tracking more than you're actually moving?
The three principles that I want you to walk away with today are as follows:
One, clarity beats comprehensiveness sometimes, especially in a very analytical, technical environment where there's a lot of complexity. Us human beings, we have a tendency to overcomplicate things and overanalyze things.
This doesn't help, it actually gets in the way of progress. So having somebody external like me coming in and asking the questions to strip it back to what truly matters, creates clarity where there was chaos before.
Number two, lead indicators drive lag results, and so it's important that we measure what people do right now and not just what they achieve down the track.
Number three. Simple accountability structures [00:07:00] create also momentum and a scoreboard and a short weekly call. Like I said, 20 minutes only can make a world of difference and create a culture of accountability and progress.
Note also that these principles, they work regardless of the industry.
And this brings me to the close of this video.
If your team closed the gap in the next 90 days that's been open for the past two years, what would that be worth to your business?
Let that question really sink in please, because the chances are that if there's a lot of complexity that your team is grappling with.
This would be a great opportunity for us to have a conversation about where you're at and where you want to get to and what would be the easiest path to get there soon.
My name is Bram Lagrou. Any thoughts or questions, you can happily post them below. Otherwise, I look forward to speaking with you and seeing you again in the future.
Thank you.
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