Sometimes what looks simple is hard to do. Hard, not because it’s difficult, but because it requires consistent commitment. A great example is 5s (learn more here). The concept is easy to grasp, but the difficulty lies in consistently committing to execution.
The same is true of the Three Killer Questions.
The three killer questions are three simple questions that should be asked in sequence at every level of the organisation consistently. These questions should serve as a guiding principle for daily huddles or stand-ups. They should be guiding weekly team meetings. They should be guiding monthly business reviews.
So what are the three questions?
- What was the plan?
- How did we do against the plan?
- What can we do to improve?
The three killer questions are three simple questions that should be asked in sequence at every level of the organisation consistently.
1 – What was the plan?
Such a simple question, but to answer it, you first need to have a plan. A plan could include activities that need to be completed or volumes that need to be processed. Perhaps storyboard points delivered by your development team, or possibly daily sales volumes, revenue, productivity, and other key metrics, to name a few.
Do you have a daily, weekly, and monthly plan?
2 – How did we do against the plan?
The second question can only be answered if you have the first one in place. But assuming you did have a plan, how did you do against it? Did the team meet the necessary volumes, produce the required storyboard initiatives to stay on track, or achieve the necessary revenue, sales, or productivity targets? Did we make the right progress on a project we are working on.
If you can answer this, you can then answer the final question.
3 – What can we do to improve?
This is where the continuous improvement mindset and culture come from. The ability to review team performance daily drives daily opportunities for incremental improvement. The ability to review monthly performance enables teams, departments, or sectors to allocate resources and energy in the most effective places to improve performance.
It asks open questions to the team about what stopped them from delivering the plan. Perhaps it was due to delays in the supplier’s parts arriving. Or delays in PO approvals? Maybe we failed to develop the feature because we encountered a technical bug that needed to be prioritised?
If we can ask, “What can we do to improve?” then managers stop attending monthly performance meetings, trying to avoid questions and looking good. Senior leaders want to see problems so they can support and drive improvements. At an organisational level, we are now learning to drive change.
Takeaway: These three simple questions underpin a culture where every day we strive to do things a little better than yesterday. A culture where everyone is involved in looking at how we can improve and work smarter and more efficiently. This is where real organisational change grows from.
Learn more https://leanscape.io/morning-huddle-3-killer-questions/
