Uncertainty and hardship can arise at any minute, so you need to prioritize diagnosing and fixing underperformance—because while underperformance hurts in good economic times, it’s absolutely devastating during a downturn.
Survival—and the potential for your business to thrive when the challenging times are over—depends on decision-making, planning, and management.
D-MAPP helps identify and diagnose problems so you can fix inefficient processes and move forward as a more productive and unified organization. It helps you plan to survive and thrive by showing the bigger picture of your organization’s performance, by helping employees and managers come to solutions together, and by helping users refine their processes. Armed with actionable insights, you can position yourself to be competitive when the economy picks back up.
Here’s How D-MAPP Works:
- D-MAPP gives you a current-state analysis of your organization. D-MAPP allows your employees to set up their major processes and activities using a next-generation mapping technique.Under each major key process, teams list their key activities along with any metrics they’re collecting and frustrations that arise during these activities. With their map set up all on one screen in a simple matrix, teams have a visual control to work from.
With this visual control, teams can identify improvement opportunities. Using clear color-coding, D-MAPP illustrates frustrations and roadblocks, and which processes have more frustrations than others, at a glance.
Using simple descriptive analytics, you can easily see what might be missing, identify what can be improved, and evaluate where you can get the most value for your time and money. With this knowledge, you can define your strategy going forward.
This bird’s-eye view is critical in times of economic uncertainty.
Doug Stilwell, Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership at Drake University, tells of a systems simulation that demonstrates this point as it relates to choices during COVID-19. Stilwell divides his students into fishing companies and tells them their goal is to “maximize your assets.” The students usually don’t take a step back to see the bigger picture, focusing instead on the here-and-now. This tunnel-vision results in overfishing, “and the system, along with every company, collapses,” Stilwell says.
Seeing the bigger picture allows you to make wiser decisions. It allows you to take into account future possibilities and how the functions of different teams contribute to the whole.
- The D-MAPP Program Aligns Managers and Employees
A recent study by Philippe Aghion, Nicholas Bloom, Brian Lucking, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen found that when companies distribute decision making among the company, not confining decisions to upper management, they are better able to navigate uncertain times.
“The [2008] recession introduced a lot of uncertainty and turbulence,” said Sadun, a professor at Harvard Business School. “One [piece of] advice would be [to] really think carefully about your organizational structure because that’s one way you cope with uncertainty.”
D-MAPP helps align organizational decision making so you’re all on the same page. You can see where your employees are having a hard time, so you know what to prioritize and where to send additional resources. Your employees can also see how their processes fit into the bigger picture of the organization and either remove frustrations or pivot so the frustrations don’t get in the way.
- D-MAPP Defines and Refines Your Processes, which is crucial for all companies, but particularly for manufacturing companies that are pivoting to meet the needs of a challenging environment.For example, Royal Mint, which usually manufactures coins and precious metal investment products, started making plastic visors for healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic. With companies making sudden and drastic changes, it’s understandable they may face obstacles along the way as Royal Mint did with their supply chain.
D-MAPP can help any company refine any process. From onboarding to writing an article to manufacturing physical products, D-MAPP outlines the best steps to follow for that process. With the steps outlined, it’s easy to see where the processes can be refined.
As an example, let’s say your process map makes it clear that there are communication barriers between your account executives and your clients. You can add a project for account executives to overcome that frustration by setting up clear expectations at the beginning of the relationship with the client. As your account executives improve their client communication, you can update the status of the project. Everyone with access to D-MAPP will be able to visualize the team’s improvement in that area.
Today’s companies aren’t focused on whether they beat or miss profit projections. In challenging times, the concern becomes, do we have enough money in the bank and credit to pay our employees, keep our locations open, rollover debt, and withstand the shock of this? The focus is often on merely surviving.
D-MAPP allows you to zoom out and see the bigger picture of your organization’s performance. It makes it possible for your employees and managers to synthesize perspectives to navigate difficult times. And it helps businesses likes yours refine their processes. Reach out today to see how the D-MAPP program can do all of this for you.
The Dorsey Group can help unleash your team’s potential and power peak performance. For more information, contact us at www.TheDorseyGroup.org or (954) 629-5774.