Part 2 of this series features a former colleague, James Onslow.  James is the Founder of Impel Consultants, an innovative service delivering hands-on workshops to provide clever, data-driven solutions to mountains of work!  James addresses complex, cross-departmental issues by applying his vast experience in process engineering, manufacturing and leadership. While at BP, James and Christy partnered together to successfully implement multiple corporate programs and operational business systems.

When asked to share a bit about my workshops and how it relates to the first step in an organization’s shift toward sustainable transformation, I was eager to share a success story.  We all know it’s easier to steer a moving ship so getting started is indeed a key step, but sometimes it’s just not clear where to start or what to start on.  This, for good reason.  I have 1 round-about story about 500 people and 800 things that will lead us back to this point, so stick with me for 2 minutes.

I recently engaged with an organization with a dark history.  For 9 years, a series of 500 people passing through a very successful business could not get started solving an 800-thing problem.  This lack of a solution was costing the organization ~$200m a year.  The 800 things failed and were replaced, one every few days.  What they really wanted was a better plan but because everyone owned a small piece of a complex decision:action process, no one person could see or fix the real issue in order to stop the bleeding once-and-for-all.  Everyone was working very hard making decisions and taking actions but effectively doing the wrong thing.

By Just Starting every day on the next most important thing in front of them, some more complex and valuable things that sat in joint ownership suffered.  

So, what was to be done?  The first step to solving this particular problem was to dream – “I wonder if this 9 year old office-worker problem can be solved in 1 day.”

To solve it in 1 day, each step could only therefore take minutes, as if the people doing the office work were machines in a factory building 800 solutions to 800 problems.  This would mean only a tiny fraction of the work normally performed to solve 800 problems was going to be possible.  I must determine which parts of the work are the critical parts that others need to interact with and which parts can come later.  This would be the only way to have such a factory function in the time available.

With this new perspective, the workshop factory took shape and what couldn’t be solved in 9 years was actually solved in 8 hours after thoughtful planning and partnership with the organization!  So how is this related to Christy’s call to action, Just Start?  Sometimes when what is in front of you is a mountain impossible to climb, to eat the elephant can be the wrong approach.  Just Start hovering over the problem, asking it questions. Just Start seeking advice from experts and outside sources.  Just Start making some new mental models.  Just Start exploring the inevitable conclusions they drive you towards, believing if you don’t make this happen, no one will.  Then, Just Start.

By the way, there’s a 5-minute video of this 1 day event here…