Do You Have The Bullets But Not The Gun ?

I saw this movie called 'The Burning Bride' a while back, an absolute must watch for thrilling movie lovers.  A lady is trying to save herself from a ferocious and hungry tiger lurking in the house as a part of a conspiracy by her stepfather to kill her. 

Wait on! This post is not about movie lovers but an example for working executives.

A scene in the movie triggered a thought in me.  The girl in danger of being eaten alive by the tiger finds some bullets in one of the rooms amidst all the drama and voila the audience feels she will have her way through, but guess what !

She has the bullets but cannot find the Gun.

 

Does this example relate to your working lives as well?

 

Take an example of a busy work morning.  A Business Operations Executive walks up to his desk, looking worried.  He hasn' t slept through the night, upset with something. He continuously vacillates with a cuppa coffee in his hands and you know what's troubling him?

 

He has the bullets, but doesn't have the gun!  Well, before your mind starts wandering elsewhere, the bullets in this example represent the process data available to him, a whole load of it, but he doesn't know what to do with this data.

 

A few questions rattling his mind since night:

• How does he utilise the data to identify why his process is not performing well?
• Which factors in the process are impacting his Service Levels the most? 
• Which team members are consistently performing and must be recognised?
• Which factors should he work upon to improve his service levels even if he identifies them?

Well, it is always better to investigate rather than discover; to infer rather than conclude; to prevent rather than control !

The Big Gun in this case is an adept knowledge of basic statistics and tools to calculate results for you.

And for all the executives who hate to do maths, the good news is a basic understanding of Six Sigma concepts and knowledge of tools which automatically work out the desired statistics for you will help you in taking precise data driven decisions rather than go by hunch !

So are you prepared to get your GUN in place and fire the Bullets you have ? 

Always here,
Tina