Innovation

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Transformation drives excellence


In my previous post I succinctly discussed what is business transformation? In that post I defined the primary and supporting activities of an organization and how business transformation is used to improve overall business performance.

To execute business transformation one must consider what are the approaches to leverage to drive toward business excellence.

In this next post, I want to discuss a basic lean framework and select examples of  one may consider to establish a quality driven organization. There are four sections of the framework that I will discuss that include:
  • Define the vision, mission & value
  • Establish the management systems
  • Manage the performance management
  • Lead the people via change management
Below is a chart that provides a sample of approaches within each section to leverage to achieve the purpose of each of the section. I call this a “Quality within Quality” framework.

The first section’s purpose is paramount to define an organization’s vision, mission and values. It is vital because it sets the strategic planning processes and answers questions of – what do we do; for whom do we do it; and how do we develop exceptional capabilities?

Simply the vision of an organization defines what the organization aspires to become. The mission of an organization established the purpose of why the organization exists. The values are the beliefs that develop the culture of the organization that define how decisions are made.

The three approaches in this first section of the framework include Voice of Customer, SWOT and PEST. Each of these can be used to articulate and form the organization strategy.
One, Voice of customer (VOC) is a marketing managers tool to articulate the customers wants and needs in a prioritized means that is used as an input for new product development. A VOC can be developed through examples of qualitative interviews, focus groups and quantitative benchmarking.
Two, SWOT is a technique used to determine whether a business goal will be achieved by assessing it against an organization’s internal attributes of strengths and weaknesses in contrast to the external attributes of the business environment or industry of opportunities and threats.
Three, PEST is a tool that scans an organization’s macro-environment influences based on considerations of:
  • Political relates to a country’s government and political stability
  • Economic refers to areas on how businesses operate in the host country
  • Social evaluate the country trends in relationship to the demand of the organizations product or service
  • Technology factors infer the level of capability of quality, cost and delivery of an organization’s products and services
These strategic analytical tools can be used to evaluate a project, organization, industry and a host country in context of achieving it’s vision and mission.

The second section on management systems is an interdisciplinary study of each part of an organization as comprised between primary and supporting functions and to consider it as part of a whole. These criteria whether based on systems or process approaches are based on quality managed practices with a focus to drive continuous improvement. A couple of systems examples noted below include:

First, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987 recognizes U.S. organizations in the business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors for performance excellence. The Baldrige criteria provide a system’s perspective for managing your organization and its key processes to achieve results – and to strive for performance excellence. The Baldrige framework has seven criteria that work as an integrated system as noted below:

Second, ISO 9001:2008 sets out the criteria for a quality management system and is implemented by over one million companies and organizations in over 170 countries. The standard is based on a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement.

The ISO 9001 Quality Management System standard has eight principles notes as:
  • Principle 1 – Customer focus
  • Principle 2 – Leadership
  • Principle 3 – Involvement of people
  • Principle 4 – Process approach
  • Principle 5 – System approach to management
  • Principle 6 – Continual improvement
  • Principle 7 – Factual approach to decision making
  • Principle 8 – Mutually beneficial supplier relationships

Another type of quality management system example is based on a process framework that is noted below. In 1992, a group of business leaders and process management experts created APQC’s Process Classification FrameworkSM (PCF). The PCF outlines all of the processes practiced by most organizations, categorizes them, and aligns them according to a hierarchical numbering system. PCF categorizes four levels of codification noted below:
  • Level 1 – Category
  • Level 2 – Process group
  • Level 3 – Process
  • Level 4 – Activity
These codifications go down and across each of the twelve process groups in the framework illustrated in the diagram.

A key-note I should mention is that many management systems are considered “umbrella frameworks”. That is each function may have it’s own industry standard or best practice that achieves excellence and it links up to the management system.

Some examples of other best practices that underpin the function or process group include:
  • Finance may use COSO
  • Information Technology will use CoBiT
  • R&D and Operations may leverage Six Sigma or Project Management PMI standards

Quality management systems develop a framework by which organizations can take full advantage of their core competencies and have a means to align functional unites to drive and evaluate performance.

The third area is focused on performance management. While many management systems include a performance management system there are two distinct philosophies that exist:

Management by objectives, was defined by Peter Drucker, in his 1954 book ‘The Practice of Management’. In this context management and employees agree on the objectives and what is required to achieve them.
The balanced scorecard was published by Drs. Kaplan and Norton focuses on strategic financial and non financial measures to align the business to the strategy and be able to communicate effectively on the attainment of the goals.
Today there are many more drivers that add to the success of an organization and the contrast from achieving objectives that one must consider the implications with how we achieve capability and competitive differentiators that add value to overall performance.

The fourth and final section highlights the need to lead change management to effectively create a sense of urgency, sustain teams through change and deliver new capability to achieve the organizations strategy.

One view offered of change management is by Dr. John Kotter and his eight steps to change
  • Step 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency
  • Step 2: Creating the Guiding Coalition
  • Step 3: Developing a Change Vision
  • Step 4: Communicating the Vision for Buy-in
  • Step 5: Empowering Broad-based Action
  • Step 6: Generating Short-term Wins
  • Step 7: Never Letting Up
  • Step 8: Incorporating Changes into the Culture
Another viewpoint of Effective Change Management requires control of the five key building blocks that form the basis of the Prosci® ADKAR® Model. Successful change is noted when one has the ability to change that further enables successful transitions in the achievement of an organization benefits. 
The ADKAR Model has the following criteria:
  • Awareness of the need for change
  • Desire to participate and support the change
  • Knowledge on how to change
  • Ability to implement required skills and behaviors
  • Reinforcement to sustain the change
A relative note that one should consider to address change implication that affect the organization as a whole versus the staff as individuals to apply the appropriate tools to lead, sustain and deliver the change initiative to meet the organizations strategic intent.

A final point on the overall Quality within Quality high level framework is that it integrates quality driven approaches within each of the four categories to enable business transformation. In addition, by recognizing the simple Plan, Do, Check and Act approach one can Plan the strategic objective, Do via the management systems, Check by evaluating performance systems and Act on the objective through change management.

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Cloud computing what have you done for me lately?


Cloud computing is a technology only parallel to the Internet itself. Building on the foundation of the Internet it has changed industries, market competition and the way we work and play every day.

What we need to consider is that cloud computing transforms the way we will use data information to conduct personal and business in the future. Therefore, to gain a good understanding we should clarify:

  • What is Cloud Computing
  • Key Trends and Highlights
  • Benefits and adoption considerations

Cloud computing is defined as a standardized IT capability (services, software, or infrastructure) delivered via Internet technologies in a pay-per-use, self-service way. Cloud computing will impact the $2.5 trillion dollar Internet, Communication and Telecommunications industrymarkets spend that will:

  • Change the way businesses and IT solutions are deployed
  • Transform traditional separate hardware and software providers into service platforms

Some familiar cloud computing provided services include: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google, Amazon and Salesforce.com, to name a few. While there are many cloud computing trends that are pointed out in the media, I am highlighting four key trends in this post. Research shows that cloud computing will:

  1. Impact the valuation models investors use to appraise organizations and its effect on disrupting vertical industries. Cloud computing enables organizations to reinvent themselves and simultaneously creating new entrants.  (i.e. Apple and how it transformed the music industry onto iPOD and iTunes)
  2. The business impact of social computing has overlapped the professional and personal boundaries. These services allow one access to individuals across and between organizations that will result in an increase in personal productivity and add to economic growth (i.e. Services like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin that allow for collaboration)
  3. Context aware technologies (wireless technologies and intelligent devices such as tablets, notebooks etc.) deliver location-based services that track patterns of behavior that will change the way business is conducted (i.e. Integration of GPS and maps that has created a variety of location-based services).
  4. Pattern based technologies that utilize sophisticated algorithms that seek out patterns from information sources to model their impact and adapt to a scenario based on the need or impact of the emergent pattern.

Organizations cite several benefits by adopting cloud computing the highest noted is speeding up application delivery.  Additional benefits include organization cost savings and a focus on core competencies for IT organizations. However, there are many items to consider before adopting cloud-based technologies. Below I highlight three that may not be as clearly understood and create a bit of industry debate:

  1. Lack of visibility into cloud providers infrastructure creates a need for security, privacy and availability to ensure desired practices are in place to protect the buyer and it’s consumers
  2. Demonstrate regulatory compliance requires access to detail information that may be restricted by providers and not shared or mined for business intelligence
  3. Legal and contractual clarity for liability and ownership of damages due to information and Intellectual property breeches

Good luck on harnessing the exploits of cloud computing and it’s impact on how we work in play in the future. The potential for cloud computing impact on society is as high as the sky.

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Telecom Expense Management


Ain’t Life Fun!

On the one hand, the massive mergers of voice and data carriers (traditional telecom providers) and wireless providers over the past five years have been a boon to overstressed IT managers trying to make sense of ever-increasing service offerings from suppliers.

On the other, the demand for more and better, faster and cheaper never lets up so telecom expense managers (usually some poor guy down in IT with too few staff and too many performance expectations) means telecom is becoming ever more pervasive throughout businesses of all sizes.

This is a summary of an article that I contributed to that was printed in CIO Update. Follow the title link to the full article

Regards,

Peter

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Essential Business Technology – Software At Your Service


Essential Business Technology

SaaS could save your business time & hassles. If you’re a business owner, it’s likely you’ve run across the term SaaS (software as a service). As a way to save your business time and money, it’s a name you might want to get acquainted with.

This is a summary of an article that I contributed to that was printed in PC Today. Follow the title link to the full article

Regards,

Peter

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If you are considering Cloud Computing or SaaS read this!


Keep Eyes Wide Open When Considering SaaS

Organizations today rely heavily on their IT software to drive the business objectives to meet the needs of the market. There are a number of sophisticated software applications that have grown in demand and complexity to support an organization’s value chain such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and, conversely, the back office, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). In the traditional model, to meet the needs of the organization the IT department designs software, hosts applications, codified software and manages the operational functions to distribute the internal software packages to customers.

This is a summary of an article that I authored to that was printed in Cloud Computing Journal and reprinted in others. Follow the title link to the full article

Regards,

Peter

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Service Management (ITIL) and Project Management – a contrast in execution


This topic is a series of articles that I authored as part of the Program Delivery Effectiveness Group – The source of innovative program delivery techniques by PA Consulting.  That blog has six major areas of focus:

  • Simply Better PMO – John Hall provides invaluable insight on how your PMO can get the basics right, do the important things well, and minimize overhead.
  • Program Management – Alexander Lowry offers insights on strategic program management. His posts address many of the challenges that occur along the program delivery path.
  • Portfolio Delivery – Tim Pare shares research findings on portfolio management based on survey data we have collected and, continue to collect, from program managers around the world in a variety of business sectors.
  • Design Authority – Andre Vargas discusses techniques for ensuring that solutions are designed & built as imagined through the use of discrete Design Authority function.
  • Change Management – Teneka Polite & Precillia Redmond share valuable insights on driving and releasing change to ensure sustainable benefits from change efforts
  • ITIL & Program Management – Peter Tarhanidis provides a unique perspective on program management as it applies to service management (ITIL)

My series is based on the contrast between Project management and ITIL service management and how they can co-exist since one is based on the temporary undertaking delivering a unique goal and the latter is based on a lifecycle approach. Below are the key articles that are linked back to that site for

Service Management (ITIL) and Project Management – a contrast in execution

Today many IT organizations are redefining their approach to delivery and support of IT of their customers. Some of those IT organizations are adopting a customer oriented approach to meet the requirements of flawless execution of the services customers receive. As a result, IT organizations adopt both Service Management (ITIL) and the use of Project […]

ITIL Service Strategy and Project Management – a contrast in execution

The purpose of these updates is to continue to show how these two best practices, ITIL and project management provide synergy to improve effectiveness and drive overall maturity for organizations to meet the needs of the business. In this article I will focus at a high level what service strategy and project management can leverage […]

ITIL Service Design and Project Management – a contrast in execution

The purpose of this series of articles is to continue to show how these two best practices, ITIL and project management provide synergy to improve effectiveness and drive overall maturity for organizations to meet the needs of the business. In this third article I will focus at a high level on how service design and […]

Thank you for any comments or feedback that provides clarity to distinguish good practices in developing both these disciplines.

Regards

Peter

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