Operations Research pioneer Dr. Russell Ackoff says re-engineering activities by department or process takes managers.  Analyzing parts of a business sheds little light on how to improve results for the whole firm.  Coordinating and fitting departments and processes into a better performing firm takes leaders. 

Georgia Pacific is convinced its future edge will come from employee empowerment.  The firm uses 3 principles:  1) Be pro-active -- take action before action is forced on you. 2) Develop a personal mission statement, and 3) Put top priority on recreation and relationship building with the important people in your life.  This philosophy, taught by the Covey Leadership Center, virtually eliminated customer claims for quality problems and brought measurable cost savings through product quality improvement.  An unmeasured result was a more trusting relationship among co-workers.

Delta Dental Insurance did both, then created a 7-point service guarantee to promise no-hassle customer relations.  It also increased market share, improved morale, and reduced costs.

Dean Ornish, a medical doctor, encourages drastic change.  He says people who make one-step-at-a-time lifestyle changes soon go back to old habits.  But drastically re-engineering a weak firm makes sense only if the fundamentals are in place.  Pratt & Whitney used 6 strategies to bring itself up to world class.  First, it visualized the firm as a big room with units in each corner to eliminate the need for hand-offs and delays.  P&G employees were trained, empowered, and held accountable to create and use standard processes and measurements to ensure timeliness and save customers money with basics.  Nothing succeeds like success.  For example, a home run in the first inning of a baseball game creates a we-can-do-it commitment among team members.

Play makes working toward the goal fun.  Operations Research pioneer Dr. Russell Ackoff says successful leaders of revolutionary change use a concept called The Mobilizing Idea - powerful enough to excite and motivate employees to make sacrifices that see the revolution through to success.  Ackoff says it's not enough for leaders to give an ideal to shoot for - the pursuit itself must be fun.  Ackoff says the most important issue to emerge in executive planning for a leading U.S. firm was how to stimulate more involvement and creativity from the workforce - a means to get firms to learn to celebrate mistakes.

One-shot speeches from the boss are not enough - they breed cynicism. CEOs from American Express, Dayton Hudson, Levi Strauss, and Hallmark say product and service, and contributing to the economy is not enough.  Contributing to the broader community is vital.  In a Business Ethics Foundation survey, CEOs say ethical workplaces are more productive.  Ethics promotes openness and trust that leads to higher productivity, decreases blaming, and increases sharing of credit.  CEOs say money spent in training and promoting ethical conduct is money well spent.

The Principal Financial Group uses peer and direct report assessments to help employees develop skills critical to individual and company success.  The Principal adopted a questionnaire called the PROFILOR.  It also identified 27 competencies that officers must develop to succeed with its strategic view of the future.

Master the art of recognizing those who earn it, and you will find more and more employees earning recognition.  Proctor & Gamble surveyed 10,000 employees about rewards and recognition.  Responses revealed the 4 factors employees most value: 1) Getting a sincere thank you from the boss. 2) Being asked for an opinion or help. 3) Having the opportunity to do what you like, and 4) Being part of a winning team.  P&G found participation in a successful improvement team combines most of the best recognition methods identified in the survey.

Consultant Arnold Judson cites 5 factors: 1) Understand the dimensions of what to do, who will do it, why, and what happens if it's not done. 2) Encourage team member buy-in and ownership of the firm's key values and plans. 3) A system to measure progress against strategy. 4) Resources (time, tools, funding), and 5) A climate of accountability created by performance appraisals and rewards that focus on strategy implementation.

Keep striving.  Win people over gradually.  According to the CEO of Baldrige Award-winning Wainwright Industries, being the sole leader for change is tough, but it can pay off.  Challenge leadership's mindset.  Ask what their management model is.  The hardest thing to get leadership to admit is that it might be looking at the wrong things.  A dedicated few within a company can move the many.  Remember, there is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit.