Fundamentals Matter
Written by Dan Roberts
Imagine that you are a professional football player in the United States. Years of playing football in the park with your friends led to starting on the varsity team in high school, and then college. You were drafted and played for 10 years in the league. You are a battle-hardened veteran and know every part of the game. There is no speech a head coach can give or words that can be used that you have not heard. You know your job and have out-performed all others on your team for your position. You are the starter and you will grind it out every game in the upcoming season.
Your head coach is in his third year, and you are on one knee on the practice field with 37 other players. Your team hasn't won a championship in 16 seasons. What new schemes will the coach bring this year? Everyone knows him from the past two seasons where the team had decent performances coming off of a 1-win season prior to his arrival. However great it was to have an improved performance over that horrible season, the team had a bitter ending after losing the previous year's championship game. Imagine thinking about the dazzling changes he will make to get to the next level and win this year's championship? Afterall, you almost made it last year, so we should pick up where we left off and grow from there - right?
After losing the championship game in 1960, in the start of the 1961 training camp for Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi addressed his team of 38 players. Sixteen were rookies, but all had played football for many years. One statement defined what would become the first of 5 NFL championship seasons between 1961 and 1967. What were these amazing words he started that season with?
"Gentlemen, this is a football"
Lombardi's intent was to emphasize the importance of focusing on the fundamentals of the game: blocking, tackling, throwing, catching, etc. It launched the team into five championships in 7 years – including winning the first two Super Bowls. He is known for repeating this statement in every season to stress the fundamentals of the game. The Green Bay Packers had all the elements of a complex NFL program of that era, but it was the focus on fundamentals first that ensured success.
Much like a professional football team winning the Super Bowl, achieving and sustaining top performance levels can be complex and yet require discipline to fundamentals. Four simple concepts are consistently leveraged by top organizations to realize excellence in operations and drive top quartile/decile performance. From heavy equipment-based mining and extraction of precious metals to sustainable packing operations in organic food production, these same four concepts are applicable to drive performance excellence. Without them, organizations are doomed to mediocracy at best, or to ultimate failure at worst.
Top organizations manage performance with discipline so they know at all times the current performance against carefully defined targets. They measure metrics across the operation, but pay attention to the key performance indicators that matter most.
They also develop talent in the organization at all levels by defining operational processes and practices and executing them with discipline.
These organizations focus on closing the gaps in performance through structured operational and improvement processes.
Finally, they fully leverage ubiquitous technology and tools to monitor, track, analyze, and control the operation.
Companies in all industries and of all sizes aspiring to achieve and sustain top performance must recognize the importance and value of deploying fundamental elements of a performance system first and then integrate these into a complex operational excellence system that defines the organization.