January 30th, 2012
In a recent post on Forbes.com consultant Randy Ottinger of Kotter International (KI) says that KI’s research supports the widespread belief that 70% of new, large-scale initial fall short of their goal. In fact, says Ottinger, only about 5% of organizations “produce dramatic results” from strategic initiatives, thanks in large part to their ability to create a sense of urgency throughout the management chain and establish formal mechanisms for seeing that implementation takes place.
Ottinger’s commentary doesn’t really present any breakthrough ideas, but it does reinforce the growing recognition that strategy execution requires rigor and discipline. The work of your strategy development team doesn’t stop once the strategy is developed. You have to make sure you have systems and processes in place that make business strategy execution feasible.
One “secret weapon” cited by Ottinger is having a cross-functional management team that uses a structured process for guiding and monitoring implementation. I agree that having a person or team that is held accountable for results is just as critical for strategy execution as it is for anything important your organization does. But there is an additional dimension you need to consider if you want to be world-class: how to make it as easy as possible for this person or group to do their work effectively. If you’re serious enough about achieving strategic goals to establish groups to oversee the implementation, don’t limit their effectiveness by using information systems better suited to the previous century.
To best coordinate and manage implementation, you need real-time, accurate information on the status of every effort linked to the strategic goals. And they only want to get that kind of information is by using today’s technology. You’ve probably heard some of the labels for this technology – goal management software, Hoshin planning software, six sigma project tracking software, and so on. What they have in common is the ability for any manager at any level to see what projects are in their domain, the status of those projects, and the linkages between the projects and higher-level goals.
Yes, coordinating the strategy execution takes work. And if that work is too difficult and too time consuming, it will get done slowly at best and perhaps won’t get done at all. You will have wasted the energy you invested in creating the strategy in the first place and greatly lowered the odds of achieving your goals. Make sure that the people responsible for implementation in your organization have the tools they need to work fast and effectively.
Tags: Business Execution, goal management software, six sigma project tracking software
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January 19th, 2012
Perhaps one of the least-fair demands put on executives today is the expectation that they should be talented fortune tellers. They should be able to anticipate customer wants and needs. They should be able to predict business conditions a year or more out into the future, even with the unstable economies found on every continent.
I probably don’t have to tell you how important predictability can be for a manager. There is so much uncertainty in our world that having the ability to know with any level of confidence that something is… or isn’t… going to happen on-time and in-budget, is a gift. And the more lead time a manager has in making this determination, the more options they will have in terms of reacting appropriately.
Whilst no one has yet invented the perfect fortune teller’s globe for business leaders, there is one area where predicting the future is becoming a reality: business execution. One of the most exciting aspects of new performance improvement software tools like i-nexus’s business execution system is the ability for managers to be able to see farther out into the future with a greater degree of certainty than they’ve ever had before. With real-time updates on project progress, the software can reliably predict whether that project will be on track not just a week or month from now, but 3, 6, 9, or even 12 months out.
This greater predictability gives managers much more time to make adjustments in resources, timing, and budgets so they can still get the business results required of them to meet annual or strategic goals.
Tags: Business Execution, business execution software, Lean Six Sigma
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January 19th, 2012
If you’ve been following this blog, you know that we conducted a survey last fall about the most common causes of failure of Lean Six Sigma programs. The results were presented at a webinar in December delivered by Grant Crow, our COO, and Jon Fitzgerald, Solutions Consultant.
Almost 700 people responded via LinkedIn, and 63% of them voted for “Lack of Management Buy-In” as the biggest source of failure. (For comparison, the next-highest response was 13% of the votes cast for “lack of effective coaching.”)
I’m not really surprised that lack of management buy-in came in so far ahead because it’s a common complaint I hear from Lean and Six Sigma practitioners across the globe. But we have to be careful not to interpret that response as blaming management for a lack of commitment to something they see as valuable. What is more likely the case is that the Lean Six Sigma leaders are choosing the wrong projects (and therefore the efforts don’t deserve management buy-in) or they haven’t been able to show that the efforts are, in fact, contributing to business priorities. If you can clearly demonstrate to a manager or executive that Lean Six Sigma success directly contributes to their business success, then lack of buy-in won’t be an issue.
With budgets tighter than ever and a host of newer challenges competing for management attention, it’s up to the Lean Six Sigma practitioners and supporters to make sure that they are selecting high priority projects, and then marshal the evidence that their efforts deserve management attention and support.
Neither of these tasks is easy, but they are more readily accomplished now than they were even a few years ago. New software tools (such as Hoshin planning software and business execution systems) can help you map out projects in ways that clearly establish linkages from the business priorities to project goals, at every level of the organization. Having that linkage is the first step in securing management buy in. The best software tools in this class also help you better communicate with management throughout the organization: you can roll up results and summarize them for senior executives, or dissect them into minute detail for supervisors and frontline managers.
Tags: Business Execution, hoshin planning software, Lean Six Sigma
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January 12th, 2012
In today’s competitive economic climate, organizations stand or fall by how well they deliver against the promises they make to stakeholders. There are two likely causes of the failure to deliver on promises made: either the strategy itself was fundamentally flawed, or the process through which strategy gets disseminated and executed was ineffective. In the majority of cases, it is this execution process that lies at the heart of the problem with the root causes of this being one of the following:
- Lack of alignment between top level corporate strategy and the initiatives which take place at a tactical level
- Management reviews are predominantly focused around lagging measures which measure outcomes, and not leading measures which predict what the outcomes will be
- Organizations are unable to accurately predict the impact that the successful completion of actions will have on the Key Performance Indicators, and ultimately, strategy.
The process of Hoshin Planning or goal deployment, using the powerful X-Matrix, is being implemented by a number of organizations to help address these root causes, however close to 90% of companies are using spreadsheets to manage this and subsequently fail to achieve their goals.
Join me in this one hour webinar and I will discuss the steps organizations can take to address the barriers to effective Hoshin Planning. Click here to register.
Take part in our LinkedIn poll today and the results will be discussed during the webinar.
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