Routine Standardization (Part 1 of 4)
Here we go again. Will this be another series? Well, yes. There is no way I can unpack everything that “Routine Standardization” embodies in one setting. Inevitably, this post will provide one small bite, just an appetizer.
But, if ever you’ve found this column helpful, remain open-minded. Each course of the buffet will be served in upcoming issues and a smorgasbord of delicacies await. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll even change your diet. You will no doubt be the judge, the taste tester. I’ll do my best to be the chef.
Take time to digest “Routine Standardization.” You’ve never heard it before. Then again, maybe some of you have, I don’t really know. As for me, I’m just another street-smart observer. I haven’t read this anywhere. Google it; no one seems to have coined this phrase. I’ll call it mine and perhaps you’ll find it meaningful enough to make it yours.
There is something embodied in the one simple word “routine” when added to one not so simple word “standardization.” Admittedly they are slightly redundant, but together they are undoubtedly synergistic. Each emphasizes a different aspect of a concept that, when combined, results in a more user friendly idiom that accentuates the notion they are intended to convey.
Let’s begin with some definitions.
Routine: a sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program. The word comes from the word route. That is to say, the path to a particular destination.
For our purposes this means how we do what we do, who does it, how long it takes and how that gets communicated both inside and outside of our organizations, companywide and customer wide.
When you have a routine, you have carefully thought through all of the questions, answered them and addressed all of the variables. That sounds like a mouthful, doesn’t it? Nonetheless, good eating and loaded with nutrition. It’s enough to make and keep your business healthy.
Now, let’s take a look at a similar but more technical word: standardization. It’s nothing to choke on. I like the definition provided by “Investopedia.” This should be easy enough to swallow, if you are full throated enough: “Standardization is a framework of agreements to which all relevant parties in an industry or organization must adhere to ensure that all processes associated with the creation of a good or performance of a service are performed within set guidelines.”
If that doesn’t sound good to you, you must be gorging yourself on junk food, and you and the entity you govern is flabby, just about out of breath and on life support.
Chew on this: Nobody like surprises unless they are celebratory. Disappointment is detrimental. We want predictability; we don’t want to be blindsided. Our customers are no exception. They want a reliable contractor who is well organized, one who consistently and safely delivers a quality product cost effectively and on time. When we provide that, we garner a larger market share that garners more volume, covers annual overhead quickly, boosts profit and makes us more competitive.
Experience teaches us what your employees and customers need and want to know, if we pay attention. Paying attention, living and learning as well as adapting is essential to developing routine standardization. RS is a system based on anticipatory service that answers questions and meets every need before it’s necessary. This applies across the board both internally and externally.
RS simplifies. It answers the all-important question, “Who will do what by when?,” and it specifies how it will be done and the overall time frame as well as any related issues to everyone who needs to know.
While I will give you a few hints, I won’t provide the proprietary info that fully describes our organizational advantage. For example: Our customers are provided a spreadsheet that allows them to self-schedule—a schedule we live and die by. They can select a start date and know with certainty how to schedule around us. How is it that we can provide a year-round schedule for customers? By determining our processes through RS. We know organizationally who will do what, how it should be done, how long they have to accomplish their tasks and when we will deliver the finished product to the customer.
Many think that such a commitment is unthinkable. We are over-promising. However, you don’t overpromise unless you under deliver. If we deliver—and we do 99.9 percent of the time, customers love it. They can rely on us to do what we say.
Delivering consistently on such commitments builds customer confidence. Confident customers leave you alone. They feel no need to micromanage you. That’s a huge relief to both your company and your customers. You have everything under control, and they know that. Your organizational and operational approach is proof.
We are a long way from serving dessert, but that should serve as tease enough for the appetizer I’ve promised.
Routine Standardization, hereafter referred to as “RS,” means that you’ve made it a habit to make decisions about the decisions that need to be made. Such decisions are made well in advance, before the decision is imminent and in pressing need of being made. No, I’m not trying to be clever nor needlessly redundant. I’m just telling it like it is or at least, as it should be.
Once you come to terms with RS and begin to implement it organizationally, you will continue to discover areas, departments, tasks and or details within those tasks where RS is missing and probably desperately needed.
I was visiting projects about six weeks ago and it occurred to me that we have a specific type of small project we do regularly at the beginning and end of each of our residential projects. A sales office is constructed in garages of one of the models early on in a project and then converted back into a garage once the project is sold out.
While we have made it a routine to standardize 99 percent of that task, we had left out one important component: how long we will take from our start date to our completion date. One could argue that they are all different, a little larger or smaller, complex or simple, and perhaps that’s why we had never nailed down a total time frame. Even so, I completely disagree with such thinking. I believe in RS, and RS requires that we settle on method and time frame. I would much rather make a consistent commitment and manage to that commitment as opposed to having to repeatedly determine what that commitment will be.
I decided then and there and after some discussion with stakeholders that going forward it would be an eight-day turnaround on all future sales offices and or conversions. Why make that decision? First and foremost, it is a decision that we have to make organizationally regularly, and there is always a little time lost in our process and scheduling when we allow it to go willy-nilly as we do this one in nine days and this one in six days and everyone is trying to figure out what we are going to do this time. Consequently, we strive to nail down every detail of every activity for the benefit or ourselves and our customers. Generally that practice is what we have come to call RS.
Although we have gotten some pushback internally and externally over the years, we have settled on RS as the way we approach everything. We have documented standard operating procedures in place, and we regularly review one such process in our biweekly management meetings. Some feel nailing down a specific approach that is consistently “date certain” is restrictive and dangerous because it clearly identifies failure and is somewhat impossible to actually deliver on consistently. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I don’t want you commercial contractors to surmise that this doesn’t or quite simply can’t apply to you and your organization. Don’t succumb to such nonsense. We are working to develop similarly in our commercial division, and I have no doubt that it is completely doable as well as extremely beneficial. In my opinion, you can and should do the same thing. Make decisions about the decisions that inevitably need to be made! Make it a part of your routine to standardize. The sooner, the better.
Don’t allow your organization to struggle in indecisiveness. If you know you’re going to have to decide sooner or later, and especially if it’s something you do repetitively, make the decision now. Implement RS by proactively making the decision before you need to make it again. Yes, you will have to revisit the issue from time to time and make adjustments, but get it done. If your SOP needs translated, get it translated.
Recently, we were named the best rough trade in San Diego by the Building Industry Association in 2015 and interviewed on local TV. We were not merely being compared to other drywall companies. To win this award we had to outperform all rough trades in the BIA. That includes every single trade that precedes drywall, and that says a lot about the way we operate and RS.
I’d like to continue, but I’ve got one page to get this column done and way too much to say. I’ll get back to you in Part 2.
