Managing Gaps

MANAGING GAPSBy Bill Cottringer

Much of the management role involves the important process of identifying critical gaps, understanding the details of what is in between where things are and where you want them to be, and then managing to close these gaps quickly and cost-effectively. Here are ten critical gaps that need to be identified, understood and closed for any organization to be effective and successful.

• The gap between the organization’s ideal mission and how this mission is actually being carried out by managers, mid-level supervisors and employees.

• The gap between this noble mission and what stakeholders actually see and receive.

• The gap between the current bottom line and the desired one.

• The gap between the organization’s goals and employees’ knowledge, motivation and abilities to achieve those goals.

• The gap between what needs to be communicated and what is communicated in practice.

• The gap between the organization’s core values and how they are actually communicated, interpreted, enforced and reinforced in daily routine.

• The gap between the focus on results and outcomes and the focus on what needs to be done to get those results and outcomes.

• The gap between what everyone knows and can do presently and what all needs to be known and be done to achieve sustainable success.

• The gaps between the competency and commitment of management and that of employees.

• The gap between the company and its customers.

Here are some wise gap-closing considerations:

1. We have a natural tendency to either over- or under-inflate the size of gaps we perceive, leading to an additional miscalculation of the time and effort needed to close those gaps and we often fail to notice this major mistake. Sometimes the gap-closing is like trying to move a mile-high blob of Jell-O with your hands from one place to another and sometimes the gaps themselves even turn out to be completely imaginary. Reasons for perceptual discrepancies in gap sizes can range from incomplete and incorrect information to too much information, or these discrepancies can be related to our insatiable need to reduce infinite complexity down into artificial simplicity, which is easier and more convenient to manage, regardless of its disconnection with reality. This can result in seemingly imaginary gaps that are none-the-less very real for all practical purposes. (I fear there is a gap between what I just said and what was heard).

2. We also have a tendency to assume we know what is making up these gaps, instead of taking the time to get in the trenches, get our feet a little muddy and find out what is actually going on inside the gap. This takes more time and effort to engage in open and honest communication, than we think we have time for, because of the gap between our priorities and what they should or could be.

3. Cap-closing is often much easier or more difficult than we first think. The results of gap-closing are directly related to getting an accurate read on everything related to the gap—its size, content, difficulties, causes and cures. And of course, our increasing lure towards instant need gratification can often blur the satisfaction of seeing gap-closing progress when it is small but sure. That can make a gap wider and harder to close, needlessly.

4. Gap-closing inevitably involves change and that is a dirty word that is often resisted both overtly and covertly. Hence, part of the gap-closing process has to involve selling the obvious benefits of wanting to close the gaps and doing what is necessary to close them, while minimizing any potential adverse, downside of the necessary changes needed to do those things. Often, lots of incorrect beliefs and worries have to be demystified.

5. It takes awhile to see this truth, but you really can’t orchestrate any wide scale gap-closing in others until you have managed to close all of your own. It is the lack of gaps in you that attracts the credibility of others to do the same, once they understand the benefit to be gained without be preoccupied with any great risk, real or not.

6. Sometimes thinking paralyzes one into inaction when action it is needed most. When three or more thoughtful people recognize the same gap, it is time to decide how much study is required and when the time to act to close the gap should be. You can’t waste valuable time getting ready to get ready to close a gap. It will have a funny way of getting wider in the meantime.

7. A smart gap-closing strategy is to close insignificant gaps hastily and deliberate on the more significant ones. Also, always look for the little interventions in gap-closing that will have the biggest impacts for success. In other words, maximum gap-closing results with minimum gap-closing efforts.

8. Gap-closing is a continuous work in progress. The organization that knows its gaps and is leaning towards doing what will close them is way ahead of the curve. But, the perpetual job is never done.