Overcoming Helicopter Management

What is helicopter management? It's another term for firefighting, where manager react to the problem of the day, fly in and fix it and leave. Typically, the fly-in includes a ton of collateral damage and counter productive activity which includes not really teaching anyone anything, setting up the inevitable future disaster along the same lines. This has many different names and flavors, but the "root cause" is lack of finding the root cause. We treat symptoms all the time because we need immediate results. Sometimes failure and the resultant learning is the BEST way to cure a problem, permanently. I am completely guilty of flying in, hosing down the enemy and leaving. Problem solved for the immediate term, but little lasting impact, and more than likely a beleaguered staff that will simply wait for my intervention when the next fire is spotted. Bottomline --> how do you create a critical thinking work force???

This is TQM 101, isn't it? Focus on the process and not the person? Put a well documented process in place and work with the team to become process minded so that they begin to refine and improve all processes? I think this is a start, but in astartup where capital is constrained and time is even more precious how do you balance the two? Pick critical processes and focus ONLY on them. Get them right first and then expand. In our business there are probably 3 processes that really matter. How supplies are ordered is not one of them (right now). Managing administrative paperwork and insurance approvals is certainly one of the top. Much of the time, we use people and personalities to solve problems (ie "assign John to ____, he is good at solving those kinds of problems); but people and personalities change from day to day and the underlying process is still broken or does not exist at all. The other compounding issue is to throw technology at it....that solves everything! All it really does is take a complicated problem and make it more complex. I have seen many small practices that are marginally profitable pursue technology as the holy grail, only to waste money and never get it fully implemented. Again treating symptoms....

This week I am going to go sit in the practice and document what they do. From many preliminary conversations about process it is evident that most folks think they have a standard way they do things but the reality is greatly different that what they think. One of my favorite tools is visual mapping. Try and visually map the process and then provide markers within the business to "see" it in action. This might include color coded bins (kan bans), whiteboards that track results, etc.

One of my personal challenges will be to avoid helicoptering in to solve the problem, rather trying to provide the environment for the team to see their issues and create solutions. My goal is to ask the executive team a couple of simple questions when an issue arises -- what is the process? Is it repeatable? Can you measure the outcome. Much of what we do at the executive level would fail these tests.....

More as we get into the "mapping".