DailyKaizen

At the risk of being abstract I am going to write this post on the subject of defining purpose.  Purpose is defined by wikipedia as “an anticipated aim that guides action.”  Webster defines it as an “anticipated outcome” or a “function of what something is used for.”  During his visit to our organization a couple weeks back James Womack asked each team we visited the question: “What is the purpose of this process.” This is the same question my Sensei asked me each time I would bring an improvement idea to the team.  So what is all this talk of purpose and why is it important?

The more I have gained experience the more I have learned just how important it is to define purpose for everything you do or would like to do.  Whether you are trying to set the direction of the organization, questioning why a process exists, trying to define why an action should be taken, or just simply stating the reason a group of leaders are being pulled together for a meeting it is essential to first define the purpose.   Given how important defining purpose is you would expect that it would become common business practice to take care to make sure it is defined.  Yet, in my business experience this is not the case.  As I work with leadership teams it is fascinating how little agreement there typically is around purpose, primarily because we often skip the step of defining it and jump to action.  Thus the purpose is assumed and not until later do we realize that assumptions have been made or expectations are not being met.  Just as often you will find long purpose or objectives statements at the top of team or project charters.  These statements are suppose to define a piece of work or function, but they are so diluted they often say nothing with meaning.  How strange. 

Without first defining purpose we run all kinds of risks as well as miss some of the greatest opportunities to promote alignment and make improvement.  Recently, we have had several proposals for improvement that when we questioned the purpose of the process in the first place we realized that rather then improve the process we should just stop doing it in the first place, because it has no purpose to support our customers.   Another good, simple example is our work with leadership teams to put in place standard work for meeting.  Part of this work is that every meeting must have a clearly defined purpose.  Sound simple, but you would be amazed at how many meetings just happen with no purpose and how much time can be saved, by making leaders first define why a meeting needs to take place before they ask for others time.

 Lean organizations take care to define purpose for everything they do.  Purpose needs to be explicit and measurable.  As an organization we have a great opportunity to follow their lead. 

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed