Too often, business leaders get caught up in the firefight of solving day-to-day problems and are unable to adequately focus on their vision for the future.
A healthy company doesn’t put 100 percent of the responsibility for running, improving and growing the business on leadership — it spreads it across the organization. Employees who are empowered and encouraged to be leaders will both improve KPIs and discover new operational efficiencies.
Great leaders are able to hand control over to those at the front lines so that they are free to execute longer-term strategies. This is the philosophy of continuous improvement, and it’s the most valuable lesson that we at Midwest Industrial Supply Inc. have taken from our four-year collaboration with Definity Partners.
We’d spent years working towards short-term goals like higher margins and shorter lead times, but they rarely made it out of the boardroom. Thanks to Definity’s organizationwide approach, our employees now have the tools they need to constantly improve day-to-day operations.
How it works
Continuous improvement differs from other management strategies by beginning with the end in mind. Continuous improvement is about fixing what’s not broken, foreseeing problems before they impact your business and charting the right course through inevitable storms.
At Midwest, achieving that kind of transformation meant improving cross-functionality between our departments. Definity helped to develop better communication between every department so that the business as a whole could achieve the goals leadership had set. Definity defines this process as run, improve, grow:
■ Run
All day-to-day operations of the business fall into the run category. With the help of Definity, project managers got involved with employees at every level of the business, training each member of our team to think beyond their individual responsibilities and make decisions independently of their direct superiors.
■ Improve
As team members began to take responsibility and ownership for their work, they became more focused on streamlining and improving that work. Teams develop long-term solutions to common problems in daily huddle meetings, creating lasting efficiencies.
■ Grow
Once the rest of the organization has taken on the task of both carrying out and improving operations, executives can define growth strategies and implement them.
The results
Today, the problems I worry about are more forward-looking than the ones I was dealing with three years ago. By empowering the front line, Midwest has become more operationally efficient. Now, Midwest’s leadership is better able to lead, and our teams are better able to collaborate, improve and make decisions themselves. A culture of responsibility, ownership and trust has helped us align our operations and chart a course of growth. ●
Steven Vitale is president of Midwest Industrial Supply.
