What
do electric car manufacturers Tesla, fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)
and the Home Office have in common? They
have all attempted or are attempting to deliver a big change of a type, size
and scale that is much greater than anything they have attempted before.
Tesla
are trying to achieve ambitious production levels for its first mass production
vehicle, the Model 3 sedan. Last week
for the second time this year they had to shut down production completely to
sort out problems and they are still way off hitting the targets.
In
February KFC switched its UK delivery contract from Bidvest to DHL, even though
DHL had no experience of handling food service delivery. This was expected to deliver big
savings. However within a few weeks KFC
had to close half its outlets due to shortage of supply and switch the supply
contract back to Bidvest. Even now it is
still unable to offer its full menu in more than 20% of its outlets.
The
Home Office has a long track record of failure and incompetence on immigration,
the latest of which is the Windrush scandal that was revealed last week. In spite of this the Home Office is being
charged with developing “from scratch” the UK’s post Brexit system for managing
immigration from the EU.
Now
I am all for setting ambitious targets and going for challenging goals. This is how breakthroughs and real progress
are achieved and we need those people who push us to do more than we thought
possible. However before we charge off
waving flags and blowing trumpets perhaps we should pause for a “deep thort”
and ask ourselves this question.
“Have we ever actually done anything like this before,
on this scale, in this time frame and do we and our partners have experience
and expertise we really need to succeed”?
Only by making an honest assessment of where we are starting from can we
work out what we will need to succeed.
Even then we won’t have all the answers and we will make mistakes so we
need to be ready to manage these and learn from them. In big change if something can go wrong, it
almost certainly will. Balance
enthusiasm and ambition with hard headed pragmatism and robust process.
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