The Fearless Front Line Part Two

The second part of the Run-Improve-Grow model in Ray Attiyah's book "The Fearless Front Line" is Improve - Liberating Leaders to do their Best Work.

The first step is to continue making improvements - to go from individual quick wins into a process of continuous improvement throughout the organization. For this to happen, the leader must change how he or she leads and commit to modeling quick action.

The author compares the RIG model to juggling - improvements throughout the entire business are implemented simultaneously so there is no focus on a single system, all systems are improved at once.

In order to sustain improvements, management systems have to be upgraded to reflect the front line's new role in leading the Run. An interesting point regards the questions that we ask - we should stop asking short sighted questions that can be answered with yes or no. Instead, we should ask more open ended questions that open the door to thoughtful discussion.

Finally, there is an excellent discussion of Reactive Improvements and Proactive Improvements. Most improvements are reactive in that we are solving problems brought on by the lack of reliability in our systems. Once our systems have improved and we have achieved some momentum in continuous improvement, we can pursue proactive improvements. These are necessary for the final part of the model - Grow. Proactive improvements help to develop the internal infrastructure that gives us the flexibility to add new capabilities and capacities.