OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE FRAMEWORK
Understanding Your Business
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
- Peter Drucker
“Execution requires a comprehensive understanding of a business, its people, and its environment.” - Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan
​
Strategic business inputs inform your organization’s definition of operational excellence, which is why we take the time to understand your business:
-
Customers (internal & external) and what they value most
-
Mission & values statement
-
Business plan and budget constraints
-
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) or SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations, results) analysis of your organization
​
Success Measures
With this foundation, we can define your Success Measure, or Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), for your project. The business inputs inform your quality & financial targets, your customer experience and employee experience goals, your technology & risk considerations.
Once your success measures are in place, we can create the roadmap of tasks and initiatives, and a timeline to improving your organization and achieving your KPI's.
Tools
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”
- Clayton Christensen
​
We bring to each engagement only the tools needed to achieve your specific goals. During the initial phase we assess both what tools you already have, and what tools will be needed. One of our value propositions is our robust toolkit. We have a host of proprietary tools we can apply quickly and efficiently to your organization's needs on the transformation journey, including a proven system for tracking and improving employee productivity anywhere in the world.
Competencies
“Leaders create culture. Culture drives behavior. Behavior produces results” – Urban Meyer
​
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast, operational excellence for lunch and everything else for dinner.”
– Peter Drucker
​
Your transformation journey is more likely to be successful, and your hard-earned improvements are more likely to be sustained, if the necessary organizational competencies are in place. We look for specific characteristics that correlate with successful and sustained transformations, across multiple parameters:
-
Organizational culture and sub-cultures
-
Leadership traits & behaviors at various levels in the organization
-
Stakeholder maps, sacred cows and any strong pockets of resistence
-
Core skills around implementing change initiatives
​
With our proprietary competencies model, we work with you to close gaps, mitigate risks, and ensure project objectives are achievable.
Governance
"For many organizations, defining appropriate ownership and accountability is the single most important factor in driving successful execution of strategy." - David Axson
​
A rigorous governance structure is necessary to assure clarity around:
-
Accountability for different components of the project and its ongoing success
-
The process for decision-making around schedule, budget and goals, any escalations, and any change of scope
-
Reporting and meeting & communication details: Who, When, What
-
Crisis management protocols
​
Summary
"Learn the past, watch the present, and create the future" - Jess Conrad
​
Our tools and methodologies are centered around a practical view of how to get the job done. You want a transformation partner who can work within your organization, who takes into account your business needs and leverages your organizational values, strengths and competencies. We know how to overcome resistance and engineer lasting change in a way that honors and respects both where your organization has been and where it is striving to go next.
