Technical Career News Computerworld has determined that General Mills are  one of the best companies in the US to work for. Congratulations General Mills. There is rather a lot from my experience that an organisation such as General Mills need to do to achieve such lofty heights.
I worked for an organization back a whiles that suddenly came up with the idea that they were suddenly going to get themselves into the stratospheric heights of at least a top 50 entry. I sort of thought at the time we would be lucky to scrape in the the top 100. Now as I seem to remember it there was a bit of fanfare for a while and then zip, died faster than a Saturn V leaving the atmosphere. Gone and it was never seen again. Now I am sure it seemed like a really good idea at the time and another business which was a neighbouring business had after all been the Number 1 pick a couple of years earlier. They had in fact reached the top 10 a few times, so it shouldn’t be that hard. Funny thing is they clearly had no idea that there methods of managing the company held people in such raptures at times that they had little chance, it was a work force that had been beaten down too many times and they just didn’t have the will to go again for another dead end ride.
One of the things was they had to get 50% I think of the staff to do a survey as part of entry. I think the results from the initial survey wasn’t want was that which they expected. Form my experience they would have taken at least two years of decision and follow through with the execution each and every time to show a solid progressive front. I started there amidst some more turbulent times that lead to a plan being hatched to reinvigorate the company and as a new employee against the judgement of the older employees I was working with gave management the benefit of the doubt. Like all before me I was to ultimately be dissapointed. I saw things that didn’t seem right at the time, but hey I was a relative junior in much of that sort of stuff. But I still stuck with them for at least 18 months to try and help make the changes happen. I even enrolled myself as a change evangelist. So what did the company get, well not a lot in the end. A lot was spent and little really changed. Maybe there was a flow on effect and there was probably a few small changes however I think in the end all the major initiatives dropped by the wayside.
I look back and think that really the best for that organisation was Kaizen as shown by Toyota Motor Corporation and written about in the Toyota Way an excellent read. Go to work and make small improvements each and every day, try and do a new thing that improves a process or improves a product. This is something that will work if it is institutionalised from the top. jeffrey Liker wrote a great executive breif in this matter from the Toyota perspective

Since Toyota’s founding we have adhered to the core principle of con-
tributing to society through the practice of manufacturing high-quality
products and services. Our business practices and activities based on this
core principle created values, beliefs and business methods that over the
years have become a source of competitive advantage.These are the
managerial values and business methods that are known collectively as
the Toyota Way.
                                           —Fujio Cho, President Toyota
                                (from the Toyota Way document, 2001)

Big bang means you are leaving your run to change too long, you need to change bit by bit each day, until there is a notivcable chage to process which needs to improve quaility or time to manufacture, however in the interest of continuous improvement,each employee needs to adress the process of improvement in their area every day. Toyota has seen huge pay back in this process.

So go out and make a little improvement in you, your processes or your product each day, little by little.

See ya round

Peter

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