First What, Then Who

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First who, then what?

“First who, then what. Get the right people on the bus.” That is the paradigm that was developed in the book Good to Great.^[1] Those who want to build great organizations are told to make sure they have the right people on the bus and the right people in the key seats before they figure out where to drive the bus. Paradigm: always think first about who and then about what. The Author of Good to Great believes that “When facing chaos and uncertainty, because you cannot possibly predict what's coming around the corner, your best ‘strategy’ is to have a busload of people who can adapt to and perform brilliantly no matter what comes next.”

That almost seems to be good advice until you realize that there is a significantly high operational cost of having a top-heavy direct/indirect labor pool, a DL/IL ratio of 2.5 or less.

First what, then who!

First, a company, any company, only succeeds when it defines and develops the capability (or capabilities) that is necessary to be successful. This occurs through defining the work that must be done to create and deliver their product(s) and/or service(s) that are intended to be offered to the market. It is self-evident that a company can only succeed when its business processes are fully capable of effectively creating the results that matter to the success of the business.

The pathway to succeed is actually defined when the leaders/founders identify the individual business capabilities (‘What’) they require and then develop those capabilities through the business processes that must be implemented to enable them. Those business processes must be well designed, defined, proven to work, and implemented, such that they can be consistently executed by skilled, trained, and competent people to create the product(s) and/or service(s) that are delivered to the market. This is ‘effectiveness’ in creating results, however, that alone will not be sufficient for a successful business.

Second, the skilled, trained, and competent people (‘Who’) within the business operations must execute that work in a manner that is efficient in providing the product(s) and/or service(s) on behalf of the business. A business must be ‘efficiently effective’ in order to make the business successful. 

“Am I truly effective (doing the right thing) or am I merely efficient (doing things right)?  Success requires being efficiently effective.”  – Peter Drucker 

In the world of business, performance is the name of the game… Performance for results that matter to the business: Effective Process + Efficient Execution = Performance.

“Effectiveness is doing the right thing. Efficiency is doing the right thing right.” – Peter Drucker

Operational Efficiency can be predictably achieved with the Predictive Quality Management (PQM) solution. that enables management control over operational ‘quality’, ensuring operational efficacy and efficiency, yielding a net positive affect upon operational profit.

[1] Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't. Random House Business Books.