Pocket power

For many companies that wish to make their operations leaner and more efficient, the biggest difficulties arise not in achieving the initial improvements, but in ensuring that the new way of working is sustainable over the long term. The paper discusses the three critical aspects to successful, sustainable change: the operating system, the management infrastructure and the mindsets, capabilities and behaviours of the organisation's employees. An operational change programme is more like a journey - with risks and obstacles to face along the way - than a neat or definable process. Overlapping, interacting elements from across the organisation must all be considered and tackled simultaneously if the objective is to be achieved. No organisation gets the balance right first time every time, but successful organisations are those that persist in the face of setbacks, shifting their attention all the time to ensure that systems, management and mindsets are all moving in the right direction and taking the organisation with them, little by little, towards the goal.