How short-term, results-driven projects can improve results and build capability…

Rapid Results is a structured process that mobilizes teams to quickly achieve tangible results and learn along the way.  A succession of 100-day projects engages the organization at all levels while unlocking the door to major change:

• Improve Performance. Accomplish a rapid-cycle improvement in one key area of performance - that can translate into other important areas.
• Convert Strategy into Action.  Test assumptions – and demonstrate on a smaller scale how to enter a new market, sell a new product, or deliver better service.
• Accelerate Growth.  Drive dramatic gains in revenues via successful execution of multiple results-focused growth initiatives.
• Increase Productivity. Map, redesign and test a portion of a larger process to demonstrate how a larger-scale, ambitious redesign can capture greater efficiencies.
• Initiate a Pilot Test.  Demonstrate and test a method in one location that will be installed in all locations.

Why Rapid Results Works

1. By unlocking creative solutions, every organization can capture a “hidden reserve” of potential.
2. The best way to capture this underutilized potential is to creatively challenge a team to make actual improvements.

7 Steps to Rapid Results Success

These seven steps are the means to creating widespread, lasting progress, beginning by achieving rapid results at the micro level, ultimately building a solid foundation for larger, future success.

1. Define an important goal. Designate a micro-level project as a high priority business imperative that can move the organization forward on a larger, critical strategic objective.
2. Set measurable stretch results. Establish milestones and goals that are real, measurable and, most important, beyond what be considered possible.
3. Take a “results-now” perspective. Schaffer considers “short-term” anything from a few weeks to 3-4 months, demanding intensity and focus that a 12-18 month (or longer) project can’t command.
4. Identify clear accountability. Assign one individual for ultimate accountability for the project, someone on the proverbial “hot seat” who ideally refuses to let organizational barriers and constraints stop the team from achieving results.
5. Experiment! The 100-day process is designed to identify new, creative and more effective ways to achieve needed business objectives.
6. Instill planning and discipline. While the team is encouraged to test new techniques, it also puts solid plans in place and holds regular progress reviews against the goals.
7. Learn while doing. To create momentum on larger scale change, projects provide learning as well as excitement and tangible success.

Books

• Rapid Results! How 100-Day Projects Build the Capacity for Large-Scale Change , Robert H. Schaffer, Ronald N. Ashkenas, and Associates; Jossey-Bass; 2005.

This publication shows how to make large-scale changes succeed by using 100-day results-producing projects to develop vital implementation capability. Written by leaders in the field of change management, Rapid Results! describes an approach that has been field-tested by real organizations of every size and industry to improve performance and accelerate the pace of change.

• Execution Plain and Simple: Twelve Steps to Achieving Any Goal on Time and On Budget , Robert A. Neiman, McGraw-Hill, 2004.

This book provides a practical guide for any manager who needs to get an organization to execute better. It describes a 12-step plan to get results, overcome delays, and achieve tough goals faster. Reading this book will help you generate momentum to tackle critical goals and achieve performance breakthroughs – no matter what the challenge.

• The Breakthrough Strategy , Robert H. Schaffer, Harper-Collins, 1988, ISBN 0-88730-404-4.

This book describes why American companies have invested billions of dollars in improvement programs, many of which have yielded only minimal results. The key premise is that most programs reinforce existing barriers to performance improvement and emphasize activity over results. The Breakthrough Strategy shows how modest “breakthrough” successes can be used to drive major organizational changes, yield dramatic performance improvement, and build internal change capabilities.

Also published in Korean and Chinese.

Selected Blogs

• The Girl with the 100,00 HOMES Tattoo
• Organic Growth at Avery Dennison Through Rapid Results

Avery Dennison

Avery Dennison, the leading adhesives films and office products manufacturer, was growing, but CEO Phil Neal and his leadership team were not satisfied with the pace.     learn more...

DuPont Canada

Breakthrough Strategy: A stepping stone to greater success

Since the early 1990s, several DuPont business units have relied on a performance improvement methodology called the "Breakthrough Strategy." Developed by Schaffer Consulting over the last 40 years, the technique is also used at Nortel, Motorola, E. I. du Pont, and other leading companies.      learn more...

Motorola

Team effort ensures success of breakthrough strategy in V.3225

In early November 1993, Jim Wagner announced several critical improvement challenges facing Motorola UDS. Of particular importance was the need to improve the delinquency and cycle time performance of key high-selling products.     learn more...

HIV/AIDS

The battle against HIV/AIDS is frustrating many governments around the world, despite the vast amounts of resources poured into this global fight. We have helped the Ministry of Health of Eritrea demonstrate how the battle might be won.    

Learn more about how Schaffer's Rapid Results approach can help your business.

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