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[email protected] Best Practices for Operational Excellence | Luca-dellanna.com Best Practices for Operational Excellence Luca Dellanna @DellAnnaLuca Luca-dellanna.com First edition December 2019 Luca Dell’Anna © 2019 – All Rights Reserved 1 Best Practices for Operational Excellence | Luca-dellanna.com Introduction It is very satisfying to observe an organization having achieved Operational Excellence. The managers are focused, working on the tasks where they have the most leverage; long are gone the days where they were running all over the place fixing emergencies. The workers are proud of their work, each owning his role and trusting his manager. The workplace is a good environment to work in: little dangers, everything is at its place, everyone knows what the company is doing and cares about it. Unfortunately, Operational Excellence is being practiced in few companies only, for two reasons. First, few managers know how to achieve it. And second, most managers do not have it as their priority. While they are interested in the benefits of Operational Excellence, they are not convinced that such benefits are worth the efforts required to achieve them. There are many selfish reasons to implement Operational Excellence. Managers of a team with a culture of Operational Excellence are less stressed (they do not spend their days running after emergencies), work less hours (when you are effective, you don’t have to work overtime), are more fulfilled (they become respected by both their subordinates and their boss), are more valuable (they and their team become able to consistently hit milestones), are more employable (being able to manage a team effectively is a rare and valuable skill), and are richer (as their team hits their bottom line results, more money becomes available to be distributed in the form of bonuses). Achieving Operational Excellence is not complex. It does take a limited amount of focused effort, but the benefits begin to show very fast, if you know what to focus on. The first part of this book provides solutions to the problem: what to focus on. It will tell you which actions matter and which do not, so that you won’t waste 2 Best Practices for Operational Excellence | Luca-dellanna.com your time and energy on things which will not bring you any good. It will show you which are the few actions that, if taken, will have a disproportionate impact on your working life. The second part of this book provides you with Eight Best Practices: quick tools you can begin using today to change the way your team operates and to get evidence that things can change: unmotivated employees can become motivated, unproductive ones can become productive, and previously unreachable objectives can be attained. In the third and last part of this book, you will find a roadmap to extend the change to scopes larger than your direct subordinates. For example, your plant, your office or your organization. I’ve been working in the field of Operational Excellence for more than seven years and, while it might not seem much, I’ve seen hundreds of companies and consulted dozens. I’ve witnessed problems and solutions. I know what works and what doesn’t. This book is the result: a practical guide to help you becoming a more effective manager and to solve most of your problems at work. ACHIEVING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE Operational Excellence is not an abstract concept which lives in the theories of academics. Operational Excellence is what happens on the work floor, on the production lines and in the warehouses. How employees work when they are actively supervised and when they aren’t. On the good days and, especially, on the bad ones, whe