Share this article :
Other articles you may be interested in:
-
Getting your mood right to succeed
-
From "7 Habits of Successful People"
-
Working in pairs to summarise projects and for other purposes too
-
The 14th in our series of pen portraits
-
We answer a frequently asked question on how to make insight more engaging for senior stakeholders
-
-
A review of the article 'The Boardroom Verdict' in Marketing Week
-
Winning paper at 2004 MRS Conference
Applying Discipline
One of the key roles of any Insight team is to support the operational side of the business by monitoring performance. To do this, you need to understand the disciplines applied by your operational colleagues so that you can then maximise the value delivered by your monitoring processes.
Insight teams might not use these processes themselves (although you might want to look at your own processes in the light of the models below). However, you still need to familiarise yourself with them so that you can talk the same language as your internal clients and understand what they are trying to achieve. This in turn could help your team to seek an earlier involvement in a process, and to deliver more targeted results which will help to feed the whole process.
Although you may have come across these models before, it’s worth reiterating the fact that operational personnel typically use two key approaches, driven by quality control:
1) PDCA
The basic version is a problem-solving process called ‘Plan, do, check, act’ or PDCA.
PLAN – Define the problem and its root causes and establish the processes that will have an effect upon it.
DO – Choose the best process, develop it and then put it into practice.
CHECK – Monitor and analyse the results to see if the process is having the desired effect. If not, start again!
ACT – Act upon your evaluation: review and refine the process as required.
To find out more, try visiting these websites:
For examples of PDCA in practice, look at:
2) DMAIC
This is a slightly more advanced approach derived from the Six Sigma process for quality control developed by Motorola.
DEFINE – Define your issues and your process improvement goals.
MEASURE – Collect data related to the performance of the process.
ANALYSE – Analyse the data to find the causes of the problem.
IMPROVE – Improve and streamline your chosen process.
CONTROL – Make sure that your process stays on track by implementing suitable controls.
To find out more, try visiting these websites:
For examples of DMAIC in practice, look at:
