Integrated Tactical Planning

CHAPTER 6Driving Performance Improvement: The Management Agenda: Too Busy to Improve?

One of the common symptoms that we see when working with clients on improving the effectiveness of their planning and execution in the Integrated Tactical Planning zone is the too‐busy‐to‐improve syndrome. As we identified in the Introduction it often feels like everyone is running around putting out the latest fire, only to look up and run into, what appears on the surface, another isolated one‐off incident, another fire to put out. This cycle continues and becomes for those who are working within it like being a hamster stuck on a hamster wheel, just trying to keep up with the issues that keep coming (see Figure 6.1). The result is that too often those involved feel helpless, frustrated, and in the worst cases experience personal burnout as “things never seem to get any better around here.”

The whole premise of Integrated Tactical Planning is that great results come from great execution. No business that we have worked with has stated that their ambition is to have low service levels to their customers, to be writing off millions of dollars of obsolete inventory each year, to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on premium freight and overtime, or incurring the cost of absenteeism or recruitment resulting from stressed and poorly engaged employees. However, that is the reality for many organizations in which short‐term planning and execution are poor.

Depending on the performance ...