Have you ever been in a conversation where someone says the word “squirrel” – because there was some distraction that interrupted the conversation? In the 2009 Disney movie UP, the term “squirrel” became synonymous with distraction, after the dogs in the movie would lose track of whatever they were doing any time a squirrel went by. As both you and I know, there is no shortage of distractions in business.
As a leader, it’s your job to make sure that your team stays focused on tasks and hits the targets while avoiding distraction. Sometimes, staying focused on the goal is easier said than done!
Distraction in production comes in different shapes and sizes. But it only takes a small distraction to cause big confusion in a shop, on a ship or on the production line. That confusion may, and usually does, cause inefficiency, decrease production, create misinformation and potentially generate rework to name a few impacts. If you think about it, distraction is an enemy of all tasks we want to accomplish, whether we are at home or at work. The “squirrels” of life take your focus away from what you’re trying to do and divert it to something else. I can’t even get through writing this blog without a few squirrels popping up!
While distractions of any kind are problematic when we are driving to meet a target, I want to focus on one type of distraction that occurs when a leader is not managing in the details of their process. It’s called diversion or deflection.
Diversion and deflection generally occur when you don’t know the details of your process and when your boss asks you a question about status or problems within your area. From a production point of view, some questions might be like: Are you on track to hit your Plan of the Week? or Will product X finish this week? or How did problem Y happen? or How are you going to fix problem Y? I think you understand the line of questioning that I’m talking about here – statusing projects, one of the core responsibilities of a manager. A manager who is not aware of the details usually finds these questions hard to answer. It takes detailed knowledge of what is happening with your team to answer those types of questions. It usually doesn’t take long to figure out whether a manager is truly aware of the status of the work his or her team has been assigned.
So when asked one of these project or plan status questions, a distraction might become a diversion or a deflection when the manager replies, for example, “Oh, we can’t get to that this week because we discovered Y.” Over the past few blogs, I have talked about knowing the details, removing roadblocks and communicating with your team. All these actions help you minimize distractions created by the squirrels. When you are driving for a target, you don’t want to be distracted by a diversion or deflection that you might have been able to avoid had you worked more closely with your team to identify actual roadblocks.
One of the reasons that I don’t like diversions and deflections are because they cause you and me to waste time! Why? Just by the definition of those two words, they cause you to move your focus from one thing (managing the tasks necessary to hit your targets) to another (running down the actions necessary to fix or complete the diversion).
Let me give you an example of how this might work in practice (and although this may seem like a real example, it’s not), using a question from above.
Let’s consider a situation where I have asked a leader, “Will product X finish this week per schedule?” If the leader responds, “We would if we had part number Z, or engineering drawing number 3,” my initial reaction is to help get those moving so the team will have it. So, as part of following up, I put those wheels into motion.
Unfortunately, after getting the team part number Z or drawing number 3, I learn (more often than I would like) that there’s more to the story; something else is stopping progress – not the part or the drawing.
In this example, because that leader wasn’t managing in the details, he or she didn’t have a full understanding of what was really happening in his or her area. By not knowing the full story, the leader latched on to a probable cause (creating the diversion or deflection), which then caused us to move resources to solve a problem that wasn’t the actual roadblock. This is not to say the part or drawing wasn’t a problem; it just wasn’t the root problem holding up the team from getting product X completed.
This example illustrates how we can end up chasing the wrong thing (the squirrel) when we don’t know what is really going on. Chasing the squirrel just wastes time and resources. Furthermore, it is very frustrating for everyone involved to make things happen trying to solve a problem that ends up not solving the real roadblock.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to manage in the details of your business. The more you know as a manager empowers your team, they become stronger and you waste less time ‒ which is one of our most precious resources.
One thing that I have learned throughout my career (and have written about in several blogs) is that there’s always a way to come through any situation – you just need to find it! Staying focused and not getting distracted helps you and your team find a way to drive to your target. Avoiding distractions is an important way to stay on task. Just because someone yells “Squirrel!” doesn’t mean you have to look!
I hope you are seeing how the last several blogs all tie together. Being a successful driver requires knowing the details, removing roadblocks and listening to your teams. All of these actions intertwine to make us more successful.
See you on the deckplates!
Safely Execute High-Quality Work