Why Improvisation Works Better When Good Equipment Is Deployed

"Improvisation - How to deal with Chaos

It is not enough to be determined. Equipment is the key to success. The right lever will move the world but the clever bit is to think of it first or quickly which is really what improvisation is all about. No matter what the task, it will be better tackled with the correct hardware. The right equipment helps you achieve more with less, and more productively. The same art of survival works brilliantly well when applied to operational managers who know what they need, where to get it and who they can depend upon. The age of random, cheap purchases is over - if it ever really got going. This article is for the serious, operational managers who are looking for ideas and the equipment which will really produce results in operations by improved handling, denser storage, faster retrieval and all with a place to go to get the critical support they need to avoid frustrating progress and getting bogged down with failure.

The earliest recollection I have of improvisation was being sent out to the sandwich van, except he never had any sandwiches in those days, to buy a packet of 10 cigarettes for the shop steward. He had said if they didn't have his brand anything would do. When I returned with 2 pasties I was in a lot of trouble!

Improvisation is what you do every day of the week. Here are a few ideas that will help you face the work with the right support and equipment to put the odds back in your favour.

Chumbawamba management. We frequently think we don't have choice when it comes to a whole range of business situations; who we work with, what we can afford or justify, wants over needs, improvised situations etc. I would go further than this and say life in general, and business in particular is not a spectator activity. Improvisation is exactly what good managers are about, once you know the rules of the game everything else is improvisation.

The law of improvisation states: 'Be prepared to expect the unexpected and deal with it by immersion ' which is a statement of unimaginable oxymoron proportions and it would be funny if it wasn't always so damn tragic. It is acceptable to have a laugh at tragedy providing it is happening to someone else! When you are watching your job, life or your career disappear before your eyes remind yourself that Sir Winston Churchill improvised an entire nation through an impossible and unwinnable situation. Improvisation is not an act, it is a condition and mindset. Some would say it is the art of not knowing when to quit - I call it 'Chumbawamba management', very aptly once you realise that 'Chumbawamba' means nothing. The definition for improvisation is the art of managing with nothing. Mother Teresa summed it up with ""we the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful, we have been doing so much for so long with so little we are now qualified to do anything with nothing..."" in other words Chumbawamba Management.. For those who don't know the song it has a chorus of ""I get knocked down but I get get up again, you ain't ever going to keep me down"" (or very similar, if I have misquoted, sorry guys - great song though)

Awareness of the unexpected. When writing the article I was looking for words to express the feeling of improvisation. I came across an article which has over 126 references to illustrate improvisation theory. I don't think they get it! Can you really prepare for that second when the emergency chute doesn't deploy. If the authors really knew anything first hand about improvising they wouldn't need or even have the luxury of taking references. We don't have hundreds of hours, we have seconds and spend the first few of those trying to buy time and head off the inevitable. It is the art of a combination of limiting damage, salvaging or turning the situation round that improvising is all about, ""cometh the hour, cometh the man""., not cometh the hour cometh the PHD in hindsight, it doesn't work like that.



The first rule of crisis is you usually have more time than you think if you are paying attention. The realisation or warning you will get emotionally is the same feeling you would get when you are being rude about someone, totally unaware that he is standing right behind you, not that any of us would ever do such a thing. What follows this event is improvisation and it had better be good!!

Test your Chumbawamba management skills: See how you would get on with these real life situations. There are no right answers but there are some interesting outcomes at the end of this article which you simply could not script. There is no time to think in these first examples...

1. You need a bit of luck and cool head: You are on the surface, you are a novice diver in 40m of water, you remove the snorkel from your mouth on a signal to dive. Your mates are 20m below you. Your demand valve is on the end of a single pipe, you should have tucked it under your cylinder straps, you didn't. You can't reach it, it is floating behind you, you have 10 seconds of air left in your lungs, you go to jettison your gear but your weight belt buckle wasn't working so you tied a knot in it which you now don't have time to undo and your gear is pulling you down. You wave at your wife of 3 days who is sitting in the boat to try to attract her attention, she waves back, great! You are under the water now drowning with your gear in perfect working order, you just can't get at it, what do you do?

2. Have the courage of your convictions even when the odds are against you: You attend a party with an improvised access through a very large sash window. Your mates decide to throw one of the girls into the pool, she comes back into the party through the window wringing wet. You follow on after you think the incident has blown over, you leap the step and realise the plate glass window has been shut by an irritated hostess. Do you continue through the window to the amazement of the stunned guests or abort?

3. Rely on good procedures at all times: You are travelling on a straight country road, you see a 20 tonne aggregate lorry pull out quarter of a mile in front of you. You see a turning on your right ahead of the lorry which is not indicating right, you can't see anything at the junction, you decide to overtake rather than reduce speed, you then see the front wheel of the lorry steer out to turn right as you draw level - what do you do next?

4. Stay within your abilities: You are a novice skier on your 6th day out on the mountain, you still snow plough, it is the only way you know how to stop, but you would like to parallel ski. Your mates, who are good skiers, are all waiting for you so you decide to show off, you set off in parallel and soon reach more than 30 miles an hour before realising you are going to overshoot your pals and worse still there is a big drop and a lot of rocks where you are going which is why they have stopped....what do you do to stop yourself?

Well, these are a bit extreme but they all happened to me. Thank goodness I never took up sky diving. Here are some business situations which you do have time to think about:

1. Research and negotiation is vital: You are forced into relocating your business. You have 3 months to do this as negotiation to keep your current lease has failed and the site has been sold to a supermarket. How do you see the situation and what are you going to do to maintain productivity and cash flow whilst financing the move? For what are you going to make provision, how and why?

2. Time is always of the essence: You need a new forklift truck. There are at least 12 types of forklift truck and a whole range of accessories and weight ranges, plus various power pack options and certainly more than 400 specialist choices and then all the different manufacturers. One of the trucks and one of the hybrid specifications can not only slash your operating costs it will reduce your fixed overheads and make you a lot of money. What are the most reliable ways to be sure you make the best choice?

3. Cost is an issue: With new build work there are three principal management options, one of them can save you 30% or more. Do you know which one and how?

4. Resources are key: There are three principal reasons for outsourcing project work and definite financial milestones. Do you know what these are?

5. Play right up to the final whistle: Everyone has heard of Sod's Law, but few people have heard of 'Sod's Law of improvisation'. Can you guess what it might be?

So exactly what is my business point? Well, around your work place there are a lot of aspects which are in your control if only you reach out for them as you would a life line.

Materials handling and good storage and retrieval systems are one of those life lines where improvisation and opportunity may combine on a number of different levels, in other words tip top gear. This is not about cost, cost control comes from perfecting technique, never buying on price. You need to find specialists with the right equipment that you trust. Here is a quick list and it is by no means exhaustive. However they all have one thing in common, they all get subjected to extremes from time to time and it is how you deal with what is in your face at that moment where you gain your Chumbawamba qualifications:

Safety
Productivity
Health
Welfare
Accountability
Quality
Value
Consolidation
Down sizing
Up sizing
Replacement tactics
Feeding systems
Emptying and clearing space
Holding
Lifting
Loading
Temperature control
Space management
Time
Multi-Tasking
Storing


....And so on. But there is no need to get knocked about and have a hard time with it. These are all operational words which one would wish to either improve or to add value. If improvisation is a form of creativity then materials handling equipment is definitely a means to this end. Once equipment is selected a period of improvised integration will always occur until procedures can be acquired, learned and written to perfect performance. For every action there is usually more than one way of achieving it, the skill is knowing the best way. This is where improvisation stops and procedure takes control again and we all like to be in control, don't we?

Mount Chumbawamba. One thing for sure is that procedures are only the mantle of gearing up. To date nearly 3,000 people have climbed Mount Chumbawamba - sorry Chomolungna since it was first successfully conquered nearly 60 years ago. In management terms it must be getting easier to climb so they will probably increase the altitude next year, which in fact is happening. Over 200 people are still up there for good. Around £20,000 will get you up the mountain as a fit novice and you can expect some very tough, extreme conditions. You will call upon your own god given resources to improvise to keep you alive. Easy or not? Without the correct gear and procedures it is a suicide mission. A few have summited on more than one occasion since it has been climbed over 4000 times. I suppose the lesson here is if you like it up there so much making a living by being paid or sponsored to go up or taking others up is humbling. I draw this comparison between an impossible mountain and a word that means nothing because all great improvisation starts with nothing but a few facts, a need or intention, shortages, failures, raw determination not to be beaten or a strong desire, which is often all that is left when things don't go to plan. Mountaineers of all people demonstrate the importance of combining skills and equipment with knowledge or a pioneering spirit to achieve goals.

Taking Risks. You have to take risks, they are unavoidable - insure for them, self immunise and gear up. Someone once said that if you are not living life on the edge you are taking up too much space! Your insurance is your research, your immunisation is surrounding yourself with strong, flexible procedures based on the implementation of quality knowledge and when you go up Mount Chumbawamba I doubt you will buy only what you can afford or the cheapest. Although I have to say, it is often how you use what you have that sets you apart. This is the real Law of Chumbawamba management. I remember an admiralty Q.A engineer I worked with years ago was doing sea trials on a submarine. He dispatched his assistant to check all the air valves. 20 minutes later the lad returned, ""they are all OK boss"" he announces. ""Really"" says Tom - ""You are going on sea trials aren't you?"" Yes, he replies, a silence then follows and the lad goes away and returns a few minutes later "". ""I think I will just go and take another look at those valves boss if that is OK"" he says- he was away for 6 hours!. If they don't work the submarine stays down! If you are in it, it focuses the mind!



Never be afraid to ask for help or to pay for expert support and equipment, you will never regret it.

Novice diver: Do nothing, your gear will pull you back in the water because you didn't have a buoyancy vest on either! Your demand valve has positive buoyancy and floats up as you float down - relax - you lived. Note to self: Don't dive with rubbish gear that doesn't work. That is naive stupidity not improvisation, pay for the good equipment, but well done for not panicking!

Sash window: Keep going, the forward motion pushes the glass away. If you pull back it is more likely to dig in, a few stitches beats emergency surgery. Tourniquets don't work well round your neck!

20 tonne truck: Nothing you hit it, but you had your seat belt on tight and got away with it this time - you need a new car though! Well done that procedure saved your life, but you need to read the Highway Code again (I did)

Novice skier: Don't ever snow plough at 30+mph you will always wipe out, unless you would rather drop 1800ft instead - learn to ski first. Note to self: stay within your abilities at all times.

You are forced into relocating your business: It is going to be very tough, stock up, don't miss the opportunities to introduce improvements. Don't accept deadlines without cash incentives, you need a chartered surveyor and solicitor and a materials handling engineer on your team. Everything is negotiable.

You need a new forklift truck: You have 3 aisle choices: 4m, 3m, 2m. 1.8m or 1.2m, in order, are crudely yard work, internal reach work, low volume low pressure on space, high fast turn round to 7m and high bay high pick - for more details you need to talk to a trusted warehousing specialist.

New build work, three principal management options: Appoint a project manager. This makes the biggest savings. Skill sets should include industrial engineering or mechanical/materials handling, finance, grants, planning and building control, health and safely, and contract law. Over £5m you need more support, you need specialists as opposed to just one with good core skills. If you know what you want and are the specialist, it can be architect lead. If it is a bigger project it needs to have specific design, tender and principal contract appointment phases. Frequently specialist industrial works are better left to engineers. Combinations work well for high profile projects where looks are as important or more important than function. There are three principal reasons for outsourcing project work: Time, Resource, Expertise

'Sod's Law of improvisation': Emergency landing procedures have a poor track record in extreme conditions but at least you have something to take your mind off it."