SCQA is an acronym for Situation, Complication, Question and Answer.

What is SCQA and How Does It Work?

The reason for using this technique is to try and really understand the question that we should be focusing on, rather than the most obvious question or the initial question.

Often we think we know what the real question is, i.e. the most important question, but it’s not always the case, and if we have the wrong question, then we definitely won’t find the right solution.

So when you find yourself in a difficult position, just take a little time to step back and write down what the current situation is, this might be the question that you think you have to answer.

Once you have done that, then write down any Complications that you are encountering, which may be causing you difficulties in solving what you thought was the original problem.

Then ask yourself, so given all that, what’s the real question, or questions, that I now need to answer in order to make real progress?

Many times that I have done this, it has been a real eye-opener. It has often presented me with a question that I wasn’t focused on at all, one that really needed to be answered first, or was a different approach.

This then allowed me to better prioritise resources, focus on what was important and then look to make the progress needed to be successful.

This is another way of looking at the situation, to try and get a different perspective, to see whether there is another problem that we could solve first which might remove a major roadblock for us.

Applying SCQA to Real-Life Challenges

I was involved in a project where we had a program which had a Database Query which took 5 minutes to run, this wouldn’t have been a problem except that we called that Query 1000 times, which meant that this program would take 5000 minutes to run.

So we got all the Database experts in a room and we looked to find a way to reduce the duration of the Query. After a couple of hours the experts had done a great job, they had reduced the Query by 80%, but unfortunately, this meant that it still took 1000 minutes which was way too long.

So I stepped back and went through the SCQA process.

Situation – Define the Current State

We have a batch program that needs to complete in 1 hr.

Complication – Identify the Obstacles

One of the Database Queries takes 1 minute to run, which we call 1000 times, giving the program an overall duration of 1000 minutes which is way too long.

By writing this down, it’s now clear that we have two potential complications, one the job takes a minute to run, and two we have to call it 1000 times.

By looking at it this way we now get a different question.

Question – Determine the Real Issue

Why do we need to call the query 1000 times?

If we can answer that, and find a way to solve that problem, then the fact that the Query took 5  minutes is not a problem at all.

Answer – Find the Solution

As it turned out the Query always came back with the same answer, so we actually only needed to call it once.

In this case, we really couldn’t see the forest for the trees, there were two problems that we could have looked at but we had only focused on one, the Query duration.

I have used this SCQA technique many times when I have been stuck, or even when I have been creating presentations, to help me better understand and communicate what the real problem is that we need to solve, rather than just focusing on what might appear to be the most obvious problem.

If you want to learn more about creating highly engaged teams or being a better leader click the link to view our course.

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“Faster, Better, Cheaper, Pick Any Two!” implies that all three cannot be achieved at the same time.

This pessimistic mindset would most likely deter people from even attempting to try, knowing that others have failed before them.

This statement may be accurate for individual tasks or products.

However, when we extend our scope, not only do I strongly believe that achieving all three is possible, I actually know it’s possible having achieved it, not only once, but on several occasions.

At one company I was tasked with optimizing the Data Centre.

There was strong growth in demand, so much so that we were looking to extend the data centre, which would have a big impact on costs.

At the start of the task, I was told that the Data Center was running at an optimum level and that the only way we could improve was to invest.

Prior to agreeing to the extension of the data centre, I asked for a report showing the utilization of our servers, of which we had over 4000.

I was provided with a report, which at a summary level, showed that the overall performance was in line with industry best practices.

Whilst I didn’t doubt the accuracy of the report, I felt that it didn’t give the full story, so I asked for a more detailed report that showed the % utilization of each server.

What I saw when I received that report was, that we had around 500 servers whose utilization was close to zero percent.

When I questioned this, I was told these were backup/failover servers and it was normal that they would have very low utilization, i.e. <1%.

I wasn’t completely convinced, so I asked for even more details, asking which applications these servers were supporting.

Once this report was prepared, it showed that over 450 servers, just over 10% of our total inventory, had zero utilization and were not being used to support any applications at all.

These were orphan servers, which were a result of several mergers and acquisitions, which had just been forgotten about. Given that they were never-failing they were just left idle.

We set up a program to decommission these servers, which netted us a saving of over $5m. Additionally, with this reduction of required capacity, we were also able to cancel the extension of the data centre that avoided additional costs of over $2m.

At this point, we had now achieved one of our three goals of Faster, Better and Cheaper.

What we did next was to invest some of the savings to fund projects to:

• Virtualize servers
• Migrate some of the systems from Unix to Linux
• Reviewed the backups/failover systems that some were not correctly set up
• Implemented Oracle Clustering onto additional systems
• Reallocated some of the zero utilized servers to other applications to increase their performance.

As we moved through these optimization projects many staff came forward with additional recommendations where we could eliminate waste/unused resources.

Overall we were able to cut the Operations budget by $20m per annum and improved operational performance and reliability.

Faster, Better and Cheaper is achievable!

If you want to learn more about creating highly engaged teams or being a better leader click the link to make an appointment to talk about how I can help.

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Is it the Leader, the Employee, or both of them.

Everytime I do this more than 50% of the people respond that both the leader and employee are jointly accountable for employee engagement.

I strongly disagree with this for a number of reasons.

Firstly, as the leader is accountable for the results, and given that employee engagement is critical to getting results that seems a pretty clear reasons for why I see leaders as accountable being accountable for ensuring that employees are not only engaged, but highly engaged.

But, if you look beyond that, and study the reasons why employees become disengaged it I believe it becomes even more obvious.

Causes of Employee Disengagement

In the chart below, I have listed the 8 most common reasons that I see for why employees become disengaged.

.

Now yes, two of these, they can’t be bothered or they don’t agree with the direction are down to the employee. But I find that this is only true in less that 5% of the cases where I see disengaged teams.

Often if they don’t agree, this can be remedied by explaining why we are taking this direction. Explaining what are the benefits for the company, and also the the employee, of the direction that has been chosen. Knowing this can often help to get them on board.

But in the majority of cases for employee disengagement I find that it is because of one of these item

• they don’t have the skills
• they don’t have the resources
• they don’t have the time
• they don’t understand whats expected of them
• they don’t see how they can be successful
• or their leader is not engaged

Why Leaders are Accountable

For the first six of these it’s the leaders job to ensure that their teams have everything they need. If you don’t then you have set them up for failure. And who would want to engage with something that they know will fail? I know I wouldn’t. People are not afraid of hard work they are afraid of failure. And if you set people up for success the vat majority of people will grasp it with both hands.

I am always staggered that companies pay fortunes to run employee engagement surveys, when asking these simple questions will let you know immediately if there is anything blocking them from being engaged.

One reason why these questions might not get asked, is if the leader themselves are not engaged. Leadership engagement runs at levels below employee engagement according to Gartner surveys, with management disengagement at around 70%, compared to employee disengagement which is at around 65-68%.

If the leaders are not engaged, then it’s highly unlikely that employees are engaged.

Given that employee engagement is critical to success it has to be a leaders #1 focus.

4 Steps to Creating Engaged Teams

Step 1 – Be engaged, its hard to light a fire with a damp match

Step 2 – Ask your teams if they have everything they need to be successful.
This is a an excellent question. Not only does is check to see if they have everything they need, but if they say yes, then they have accepted accountability.

Step 3 – If they don’t have everything that they need, then get it for them. This is your job!

Step 4 to keep them engaged give them positive feedback and encouragement. Everyone loved praise and encouragement.

If you follow these 4 simple steps not only will you have engaged teams, but you will be well on your way to having highly engaged teams that deliver great results.

If you want to learn more about creating highly engaged teams or being a better leader click the link to make an appointment to talk about how I can help.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ckYnukJIiA

It looks like your team has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. That they were unlucky and they just failed to get the project over the finish line in time.

At one company I worked at they had a metric for the percentage of projects that were green, which was always in the high 80s.  Yet our overall delivery was in the low 30s.  That means that 50 percent on projects that were doing well suddenly started to fail. They slipped and slipped until there was nothing that could be done to save them.

The reality was somewhat different, when I took over the ownership of that area I did a detailed analysis, and what we found that 40 percent of the projects had actually failed before they had even started.

They didn’t slip one day at a time until it was too much, these projects couldn’t have been delivered on time if all the work had been completed 100 percent on the first day.

In my experience, the majority of projects are doomed to fail right from the start. According to Gartner projects end up costing three times the original estimate, which equates to a 300 percent increase in scope or complexity. According to research on projects that fail 70 percent of the time, the teams involved knew they were going to fail.

To fix your on-time delivery you need to look at the start of the process, not the end, make sure that you have set yourself up for success, and have a chance of meeting the date. Ask your teams how confident they feel, and if they say not very then look to fix whatever the problem is.

If you don’t take care at the start, then you are setting yourself, and your company up for failure.

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There is a saying “Faster, Better, Cheaper pick any two!”

The implication being that it’s not possible to deliver all three together.

This defeatist attitude probably often stops people from even attempting to try, knowing that others that have gone before have failed, or think it’s impossible.

On individual tasks or products, this saying might possibly be true.

However, when we extend our scope, not only do I strongly believe that achieving all three is possible, I actually know it’s possible having achieved it, not only once, but on several occasions.

At one company I was tasked with optimizing the Data Center.

There was strong growth in demand, so much so that we were looking to extend the data center, which would have a big impact on costs, multi-million dollar extension.

At the start of the task I was told that the Data Center was running at an optimum level and that the only way we could improve was to invest.

Prior to agreeing to the extension of the data center I asked for a report showing the utilization of our servers, of which we had over 4000. The boss even had a “Faster, Better, Cheaper – Pick Any Two” Plaque on his wall.

I was provided with a report, which at a summary level, showed that the overall performance was in line with industry best practice. Whilst I didn’t doubt the accuracy of the report, I felt that it didn’t give the full story, so I asked for a more detailed report that showed the % utilization of each individual server.

There was quite a bit of resistance around this request as several of the management team was adamant that they were operating at maximum efficiency and spending time creating such a report would be itself a waste of effort.

However, I insisted and got the information requested.

What I saw when I received that report was, that we had over 500 servers who’s utilization was close to zero percent.

When I questioned this, I was told these were all backup/failover servers and it was normal that they would have very low utilization, i.e. <1%.

I wasn’t completely convinced, so I asked for even more details, asking which applications these servers were supporting.

Once this report was prepared, it showed that over 450 servers, just over 10% of our total inventory, had zero utilization and were not being used to support any applications at all.

These were orphan servers, which were a result of several mergers and acquisitions, which had just been forgotten about. Given that they were never-failing they were just left idle, but still costing money through leasing charges, power consumption and taking up of valuable floor space.

We set up a program to decommission these servers, which netted us a saving of over $5m.

Additionally, with this reduction of required capacity, we were also able to cancel the extension of the data center that avoided additional costs of over $3m.

At this point, we had now achieved one of our three goals of Faster, Better and Cheaper.

What we did next was to invest some of the savings to fund projects to:

• Virtualize servers
• Migrate some of the systems from Unix to Linux
• Reviewed the backups/failover systems as some were not correctly set up
• Implemented Oracle Clustering onto additional systems
• Reallocated some of the zero utilized servers to other applications to increase their performance.

As we moved through these optimization projects many staff came forward with additional recommendations where we could eliminate waste/unused resources, or optimize even further.

Overall we were able to cut the Operations budget by $20m per annum and improved operational performance and reliability.

This meant that for a department that was supposedly running at optimal levels we were able to do things Faster, Better and Cheaper.

As leaders it is our job to be open to possibility, to at least look to try and get things to be faster, better cheaper.

If your have a sign on you’re wall that says it can’t be done, it won’t be long before you are replaced by someone who believes it can.

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Too many people over complicate business growth because in reality there are only 2 ways to grow your business.

1. Increasing Revenue from existing customers.
2. Adding Revenue from new customers

Now I am sure that many of you will think, but what about adding new products or increasing prices, but these ideas, whilst valid, still fall under the two options above. If we increase prices or add new products we’re still going to be selling to new or existing customers.

Now whilst we need to attract new customers we also need to see the value of customer retention, as existing customers are one of only 2 sources of revenue for us. Which makes you wonder why so many companies treat their existing customers so badly, especially when you consider the cost of acquiring new customers.  According to research carried out by Flowtown and documented in this spoken report, the cost of acquiring a new customer is 6-7 times that of retaining existing customers, so it makes financial sense to treat our existing customers well.

How we treat our existing customers is also going to have a knock-on effect to our new customer acquisition success too.

Existing customers can refer us, and people are 30% more likely to buy when they are referred to us, but also existing customers to whom we provide poor service can also destroy our reputation in the market.

I remember at one restaurant where I received particularly bad services the manager dismissed my claims, and actually said ‘I don’t care, there are plenty more customers where you came from”.

Which was true, but I was now going back to where I came from to tell those exact same customers how awful the service had been, and in today’s internet age it’s not just us telling one or two friends, we can post on social media and let thousands of people know in seconds.

This infographic from Flowtown does a great job explaining the value of existing customers.

Now I am not suggesting that we focus solely on customer retention, but I am suggesting that we need to have a specific strategy set up to manage it.

If we don’t then we run the risk of making those customers one-time only customers. In which case, we need an outstanding customer acquisition strategy and a never-ending supply of customers.

If we can build brand loyalty it will help build our reputation and increase profitability because the cost of sale significantly reduces with existing customers and their referrals.

We also need to have a solid strategy for customer acquisition too as we cannot neglect this other source of revenue growth.

In today’s world where people have limited attention spans and thousands of things vying for that time, to attract new customers we need to add value right from the get-go in order to catch their attention.

I am constantly approached by companies looking to offer my services, but more often than not it requires me to do something, to make an investment in order to see the value that the company can bring.

However, just recently I was approached by a company USB Memory Direct and they had an interesting offer.  They made it very easy for me to get access to their products, to be able to see some sample which really helped me see the value that they could bring to my business.

Their product was excellent and they really focused on making the whole experience simple for me.

When we make things simple for our potential customers, and we add value, it makes it so much more attractive a proposition for them to do business with us.

I want to contrast that with another experience, again I was approached by a company, this time their product was definitely something that I wanted, yet when I wanted to pay they didn’t take credit cards.

They told me that they only accept bank transfers and then proceeded to give me their account details.  Now as didn’t have my laptop with me, it wasn’t convenient to do that, and by the time I’d gotten home, I decided that I couldn’t be bothered.

I just googled the product, found someone else that offered it, who accepted credit cards and I proceeded to by it from them.

Can you imagine the real costs of customer acquisition for that company if the majority of people choose to go with their competitors just because of a complex payment method, especially in an age when it’s so simple to get things like the Apple Square in order to be able to take credit card payments?

So in the FAST Approach to Business Development, we need to focus on retaining existing customers, on adding value as quickly as possible and on making it exceptionally easy for new customers to do business with us.

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