Do not visit their web site ! – you will want one too and end up being out of pocket $4,000 or more.

Seriously, healthcare software accessories are not all that different. You have core modules and then, well, there are extras.

I love the revenue but I warn clients about ordering our knowledgebase product, our portal plug in, our process mapping tool unless they are committed to actually using these products.  You do have to put data into them or they will have nothing to process.

How do we get to where options become a source of sleepless nights?

My take is it’s a combination of buyers listing features in RFIs/RFPs and vendors reading these and badgering their development  teams to add in features/functions, ready for the next RFI/RFP.  The resulting “bloatware” can take a perfectly good software product and cause it to collapse under its own weight.

In many of the LinkedIn Discussion Groups, people ask whether they should first get technology and later figure out what to do with it. The most recent debate is about ERP software versus BPM.

Is it best to first map out your processes and then figure out how to use best practice templates to guide the processing of instances or should a customer start with the run time resource allocation, leveling and balancing environment and then build best practices?

Or, should the customer look for an integrated software suite that does both?  And, what if the customer already has a legacy run time environment that does not seamlessly link to a BPM or ACM/BPM software suite? Should the customer keep the legacy system or replace it?

None of these decisions are easy but the main point is the more moving parts you end up with the higher the acquisition cost, the longer the training and if you end up not using certain features/functions, why go through all of this?

Bottom line, it’s best to first plan, then operationalize. And, be careful when you go shopping !

     Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
     Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
     Alice: I don’t much care where.
     Cat: Then it does not matter which way you go.

When you are considering a major change to your organization, it is best not to try to be your own management consultant.

Consultants have been going through a rough patch because many organizations are driving these days with one foot on the gas pedal and the other on the brake pedal.

Saving money by not hiring consultants is not good practice.

This happens in small organizations that figure they are too small to be able to afford a consultant. It happens in large organizations that have internal Business Improvement (BI) departments and figure they are self-sufficient.

There are three things you need to know about management consultants.

Firstly, the good ones start to prepare to leave the moment they arrive at a customer’s site.  Most of these people have lives, just like the rest of us, and they feel 8AM to 10PM workdays are not the best way to spend one’s time.  See
http://wp.me/pzzpB-2E

Next, we have rates.  If the rates seem “expensive”, remember that a good consultant does homework before going out on assignment,  then there may be travel days to/from the customer site, followed by time back at the office writing up study reports.  A two-day on-site assignment can actually end up taking  5-6 days of time. Do the math using 14 hour days and the rates do not look bad at all.

Finally, we have experience.  I am sure you have met people with many years of experience only to discover that they actually have one year of experience replicated “n” times.  Consultants take on assignments with multiple clients across multiple industries. They can not only bring fresh ideas to an organization, they can also prevent organizations from making decisions to go in directions others have tried to go and have failed.

All in all, most consultants give you excellent value for money.

This workshop is a pre-symposium event for the 49th Symposium of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, Karachi, Pakistan. It is scheduled for 27 March 2012, 0900 Hrs (+5 UTC)

Participation will be via SKYPE, with a pre-recorded backup video in case the connection breaks during the event.

It’s my understanding the state of the art of medicine in Pakistan is not encumbered with the EMR/EHR problems/issues that exist in many countries so there is a potential leapfrog opportunity here in terms of adoption of user-friendly EMRs that feature decision-support and the ability to accommodate ad hoc Case interventions.

The focus of my workshop will be on increasing staff efficiency, increasing throughput, decreasing medical/admin errors, improving compliance with standards (internal and external).

I am really looking forward to this event.

The problem is you are likely to put your organization on a slippery slope where cutbacks lead to decreased customer satisfaction and decreased staff morale, leading in turn to further cutbacks.

For 2012/2013 many organizations are still operating in downsizing mode whereas a few are seeing light at the end of the tunnel and are looking for ways and means to ramp up their operations.

Regardless of your current operational M.O. it makes good sense in the current economic climate to adopt a “more for less” approach to budget preparation.

If you are downsizing, try to first increase efficiency/effectiveness before you downsize. If you are planning a ramp up, try to first increase efficiency/effectiveness before you ramp up.

At the end of the day, “more for less” budgeting requires taking stock of corporate assets (customers, capital, human resources, processes, other infrastructure) with a resolve to re-structure, re-organize and re-deploy these assets.

Remember that efficiency (e.g. doing things right) is not the same as effectiveness (e.g.  doing the right things) and it follows that you always have the option of “doing the right things the right way” which holds the promise of producing a better outcome than doing one or the other either alone or separately.

You can quickly get up to speed by reading three short blog posts on strategic and operational planning at the following URLs.

The Essence of Business Management Part I at
http://wp.me/pzzpB-gr

Infrastructure for Building corporate Strategies Part II at
http://wp.me/pzzpB-gD

Infrastructure for Operational Effectiveness Part III at
http://wp.me/pzzpB-gG

Filofax was an excellent upgrade from shoe-boxes/recipe cards for tracking customer and prospective customer interaction.

CRMs became popular with the advent of, at first, mainframes/minicompters, then desktops, and now smartphones.

The problem is businesses finally came to realize that customers are important to all functions across an organization, not just marketing/sales and customer support and that building, maintaining and increasing customer satisfaction is key to the ongoing success of a business.

While all of this was going on, organizations had been quietly working on Business Process Management (BPM) and software equivalents of this methodology, commonly called BPMs.

BPM allows organizations to develop and implement best practices that guide the processing of work.  Some BPM enthusiasts hold the view that it’s all about automation and cost reduction, others maintain that the use of best practice workflow templates leads to greater consistency in terms of outcomes.

The train wreck happened when BPM realized customers wanted to “be in the loop” at various stages along the road to the production of customer deliverables.

If could have gone either way, but my take is BPM decided to widen its area of interest to include CRM with the result that, today, if you need enterprise software to manage your business, a BPMs will let you do that nicely as well as let you plan and track customer and prospective customer activity.

Next on the horizon is ACM which has the potential to manage both structured and unstructured work.  It may absorb BPM or the two may co-exist happily, or we may end up with ACM/BPM.

Now, anyone who thinks cell phones are secure, take a look at the highly innovative ASUS Eee Pad Transformer  (a tablet you can insert into a keyboard docking station).  I remember thinking when this came out how cool it would be if you could make a phone call with this and guess what?,  only a few weeks later I saw  an announcement about the Padfone.   I think ASUS is on the right path.

Actually, I am in no rush to get either.  I continue to lug around my 17” ASUS G73J “laptop” which has 8GB of RAM plus twin 500 GB drives which are full,  along with  my three external drives.  This machine is supposed to be for gamers but several of my developer friends like the G73J for performance reasons.

I am pleased to report that my year-long search for a proper video camera terminated this month with the acquisition of a Panasonic AG-AC160.  This device has, count them, one-hundred and twenty parameters that can be set and I have been busy reading the 107 page manual. One of my partners called today and commented that he has not heard from me for a while.

Busy.. Busy.. Busy.. was my response.

The supply chain management software is based on research of a large number of customers. It is easy to use the software. Dynamics increases the productivity of the employees. With its help, you can perform the tasks related to sales and marketing in an easy manner. The employees can customize the software for an individualized experience. When the software s implemented on-premise, it helps in monitoring and maintaining business technology systems. This software is available in Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP, NAV, and SL versions.

The Dynamics software is useful in many types of industries like public sector and services. It is used in distribution and management of supply chains. The software helps in the sales data visibility, inventory, and shipment. It helps you to fulfill the demands of the customers. The software helps in identification of behavior of customers and prediction of future market trends. It helps in making buying decisions, reducing costs, negotiation of terms with suppliers and improving relations with customers. The software is also useful in manufacturing and retail sectors.

To continue reading about Microsoft dynamics supply chain please Visit supply chain management

King: Begin at the beginning. . and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

This advice given by Lewis Carroll in 1865 clearly was not meant for corporate planners. Planning has no start, middle or end and you cannot stop at any point – planning must be continuous.

From a practical perspective, Business Process Management should begin with a knowledgebase of pretty much everything you are likely to need to discover processes, map these processes, improve your processes and then, proceed to use your mapped, improved processes as best practices to guide the processing of instances. Start with a 30,000 foot view and then dive down to the details.

Examples of what you are likely find in an inventory of objects for process mapping include industry knowledge, evolving legislation, information on competitors, corporate strategy/policy and procedure, a portfolio of current products and products that may be on the drawing board, and, of course, an inventory of existing processes.

However tedious it may seem, there are important benefits to be gained from carving up objects into short, highly focused mini-objects.

A search for occurrences of a keyword in an industry standard in a free-form Kbase will highlight clauses in an organization’s policy and procedure, responding to questions such as “… where in our policy and procedure do we address a clause in a particular standard?”. And, with no added effort, the reverse search “. . . where in a standard does is say we have to follow a particular clause in our policy and procedure?”

Given a Kbase of processes and information needed to improve these and to develop new processes, it becomes relatively easy to prioritize initiatives at the Kbase. From here, projects can be planned, launched and managed, always with a return to the KBase to update status and re-prioritize initiatives.

Of course, there are Kbases, and then there are Kbases – if your objects are in a graphic environment you can use a “Russian Doll” approach to organizing these and you can go a long way toward accommodating thousands, even tens of thousands of objects on one screen. As anyone who has moved from a traditional computer monitor to a large monitor has discovered, the bad news is you will eventually run out of real estate but you can always go to a rotating/zoomable sphere and continue on.

I suppose the next step is to transition to a command center where you sit inside of a holograph and get at your data. They seem to be able to do this kind of thing on TV, so the wait may not be too long.

I suspect the travel business has stopped worrying about tele-transporter technology which dates back to the mid-1960’s, so who knows?

Development of processes is best done by functional units with the help of a facilitator if need be. This is easier said than done unless you have access to a mapping environment where processes can be mapped as quickly as stakeholders say “ . . . and then we do this”. The facts are some very large corporations lock themselves in time by using whiteboards and post-its and seem none the worse off.All this does is tell us that there is a separation between efficiency and effectiveness.

Beyond process mapping, the herd starts to thin out.

Few organizations where staff is mostly made up of knowledge workers reach a stage of maturity where best practices are encouraged, yet where ad hoc “processes of one step each” can be engaged at any time to the point where a series of ad hoc interventions can substitute for best practices.

In any case, the key point regarding process discovery, mapping, improvement and run-time use is that when you think you are at the end it’s really just a new beginning.

Initiatives undertaken with determination that funding will terminate at the 50% stage, have no chance of success so they should excluded from the statistics.

Many organizations I become involved with just don’t seem to have the desire/ motivation/budgets to take things beyond paper process maps. (the half-way point).

Not sure how much of this is due to a technology disconnect between process mapping on paper and putting process maps in-line to guide the processing of instances versus failure to develop a plan and ROI that properly funds an initiative.

It has always been clear to me that in the case of complex processes, staff cannot be expected to make consistent use of mapped processes when these remain paper-based.

For this class of process, you have to put your processes in-line and this involves carving up processes into steps and posting steps to staff intrays on the basis of skill/availability. That, after all, is what task management is all about. You need an automated seamless way of compiling paper process maps to get to this stage.

So, my question is how many BPMS actually allow organizations to carry out ‘Business Process Management’?

Modeling is not the same as encouraging people to make consistent use of best practice protocols so that outcomes will improve. Motivation results in people giving the impression of being on board but they quickly revert to their old ways- the facts are there simply is no way to improve outcomes without a methodology and a set of operational tools that allow you to keep things on the rails at the individual instance level.

We know exactly how to encourage consistent use of best practices – for starters BPM is not the solution where knowledgeworkers are heavily involved at process steps. These people know what they have to do and they just go about doing it, they may follow protocol or they may not, besides, there are many situations where ad hoc interventions become necessary. ACM/BPM is the preferred methodology in this case.

Straight away, this tells us it’s not tasks we need to manage but rather handoffs across staff and more importantly, handoffs across functional units. These are key because most processes include steps that require different skills and most processes span multiple functional units.

In the absence of a breakdown of the 70%, there is not much any of us can do except promote methodologies and tools we feel give results.

Customer satisfaction is the result of transforming inputs to outputs (nobody wants to pay for goods or services where there is no value added) and processes are the means of transforming inputs to outputs.

Look after your processes and they will look after you.

There are three types of processes, processes that 1) contribute directly to customer satisfaction 2) processes that contribute indirectly to customer satisfaction 3) processes that do not contribute to customer satisfaction.

Clearly the members of category 3 are candidates for review.

As for categories 1 and 2, the 80/20 rule applies – a change in the right area will have a larger impact than in another area. Next, some changes require a lot of heavy lifting and cost a lot of money, other changes require less effort and less money.

Given limited resources, it is important to prioritize work. One way do this this is to prepare an inventory of all processes, with an indication of what state of maturity each is at (so as to avoid putting a focus on areas of diminishing returns), with an indication of the impact on the process and the organization of any proposed changes, with an assessment of the effort/cost that will be required, who will do the changes, and when.

And while all of this operations level activity is going on, the organization’s strategy may be changing or about to change, so it’s important that all operations level activity be continuously aligned with strategy (so as to avoid evolving elegant solutions to the wrong problems).

Lots of parameters.  Clearly there is a need for an orderly way of managing change.

My experience has been that it’s best to consolidate and organize all of the information objects needed for process improvement decision making/monitoring/control in a knowledge base. This is a place where you can work with diverse objects, carry out GAP analyses, prioritize change, assign responsibilities, and track progress toward reducing GAPs.

CPM is good for focused planning/scheduling/monitoring/control but no CPM-of-CPMs can juggle all of the parameters.

A knowledge base, on the other hand, can accommodate policy, procedure, practices, guidelines, regulatory standards plus any number of interlinked documents, spreadsheets, pointers to URLs, voice recordings, videos and pointers to relational database records.

The ability to go to a KBase greatly simplifies planning, resource allocation, monitoring and control.

It follows that “time management” is an oxymoron. We should be talking about task management.

Let’s take a look at the nature of work.

When you come into your place of work on any given day, you will have fixed time tasks to perform (appointments, meetings) and you will have floating time tasks (to-do list) to perform. Unless you are particularly good at multi-tasking, you will plan your day around your fixed time tasks and then trim your to-do list by scheduling floating time tasks before and after your fixed time tasks.

Most people like to have control over their to-do list. My personal preference most days is to advance one or two long duration tasks and complete a few short duration tasks.  If you only focus on short/easy-to-do tasks chances are you never get around to showing progress on long duration tasks.  If you take up an entire day on a long duration task, it’s easy to get bogged down, so the idea of a mix of long/short duration tasks makes sense.

In the performance of any task, it’s important to keep a focus on an objective. Completion of a task should be the objective for short duration tasks, advancement to some milestone should be the objective for long duration tasks.

Bottom line, if you want productivity, focus on task management not on time management.

Who are these people and what do they do?

The first thing you need to know about facilitators is that the word facilitator comes from the French word ‘facile’ which means easy.  This does not mean that facilitation is easy, anything but.

All you really need to know is that facilitators make difficult things easy and how they go about this is the result of years of experience in the art of facilitation.  You can watch them in action for days and have no clue what they are about to do next.  As Senor Wences used to say, “Difficult for you, easy for me”.

It’s probably best to highlight what a facilitator does not do. First of all, they don’t borrow your watch to tell you what time it is.  And, they are not domain experts so no point asking them what is the best way to do this or that.   For sure, their choice of jokes is, well, terrible.

Facilitators don’t do a lot of talking. Mostly they just listen.  About all you are likely to get out of them is “… and then what do you do next?”.  So, clearly, in terms of content, most of the heavy lifting is up to you.

Their magic becomes apparent when you respond to a ‘… and then what do you do next?” question.

A good facilitator will map your process as fast as you can describe that process.  Whereas they may not have an inventory of good jokes they usually arrive with an inventory of images of your forms that they have organized into a “bucket”.   As you describe your process, they not only map out the steps, they ask you to identify what forms are needed at each step to document the step.   And, they then drag and drop and attach the appropriate forms to your process steps. Is this magical? Absolutely.

Facilitators are high tech. They arrive with their own laptops. The laptop, a telescoping pointer and your projector is all they need to keep a small group of stakeholders on the edge of their chairs. No white boards, no post-its, no brown paper – these are not the tools of facilitators.

Facilitators, when they say anything at all, speak your language. They don’t use Uniform Modeling Languages. And the symbols they use are mostly restricted to circles, arrows and square boxes.

If you want to remain on their good side, its important to understand that facilitators do not take kindly to stakeholders who text, talk on the phone, try to leave the room or doze off.  The telescoping pointer is not just for pointing – it extends the reach of the facilitator by about three feet and facilitators are very adept at reaching out and tapping someone who needs tapping.

One gesture too many and you are likely to inherit the mouse and be stuck with extending the process map yourself.

Lastly, facilitators understand that stakeholders like “instant gratification”.  Any process fragment that gets mapped on any given day will be compiled and running by the end of the day such that the process can be piano-played that same day.  It’s not like a soap opera where you have to wait until tomorrow to see what happens next.

And, as and when stakeholders complain that there are missing steps in a process, that the order of the steps is not right,  that the forms at a step are not the right forms, as fast as alternatives are proposed, the process map will have been revisioned, recompiled and available for another round.

Next time you are working with a mapped, improved best practice protocol, try to remember the weekend where you built this best practice protocol with old what’s his/her name.

Civerex

How does this possibly relate to BPM?

Well, the point here is that most consultants/clients feel BPM ends with a study report and a paper process map.  The evidence for this is in various Linked In discussions where Visio is cited as a tool for process documentation and, to a certain extent, for process improvement. The facts, of course, are that if you want to put your documented/improved processes “in-line” where a process can guide day to day transaction level operations, you will have to re-do your Visio processes in some other environment.

A common thread in my posts has been that for complex processes, staff needs to have access to decision support and the environment for this is not a traditional BPMs but rather an automated resource allocation, leveling and balancing environment that is capable of providing advice and assistance in respect of what, who, where, when, why, how and is capable as well of providing ready access to any forms that need to be filled in to document performance of process steps.

The objective in any organization where there is a mix of structured versus unstructured work is to guide rather than lead, so what you really need is an environment that has its foundation in ACM/BPM as opposed to one that has BPM as a core focus.

One of my posts asked the question ‘Where’s the beef?” (remember the ad where the old lady was inspecting a hamburger ?) That post and others went on and on asking about the missing “M” for “Management” in BPM.

As a consultant, if you want to give good value for money to your clients, use software that will allow your clients to “… catch a mouse”.

If you are a client, ask the consultant you are using to show you what lies beyond process documentation and improvement in terms of operations-level staff efficiency increases, increased throughput, decreased errors and improved compliance with internal and external rules and regulations.

# The perfect electronic health record and care management system

One that retains the best features of ‘paper charts’ (everything relating to the Pt in one place) but gets rid of the bad features (solves the “where’s the chart” problem, adds filtering and sorting, provides decision support without imposing it, supports interoperability)

# The ideal workflow patterns

The ones the agency has spent years building and refining to give the agency a competitive advantage (avoid “solutions” where “ . . . you now need to do it this way because the system needs it to be this way”).

# Data sources, responsibilities and priorities

Data from the outside world (filtered and validated), from internal policy/procedure, from data mining done across different patient populations, from information picked up at steps along best practice protocols, from decision support algorithms;

Responsibilities are a non-issue, in that if best practice protocols have skill attributes defined at steps, auto-resource allocation software will route tasks to those who are supposed to perform, them;

Same solution for priorities – process logic largely determines sequencing, users micro-schedule based on workload and can invoke problem escalation, supervisors are able to level and balance across staff)

# The necessary linkages

Make it easy, use an EMR that takes data from the UI and pushes it both to the patient EMR and to an official Data Exchanger where interested prospective subscribers can go to the owner of the data and subscribe to specific sub-sets (need to know basis).
Make it such that they can pick up their data using subscriber data element naming conventions.

By all means define minimum data sets, but let’s not go to some rigid structure where everyone has to fill in the widest possible number of ‘standard’ data elements to satisfy all possible data recipients). Goes against the MY workflows, MY forms, MY data approach I keep saying is the key to efficiency.

# The greatest deficiencies (ie: money, human resources, training etc.)

Not money (because internal “money” comes out a different bucket from outside consulting not that agencies can or should do everything on their own);

Not human resources because the methodology of documenting/ improving/deploying processes no longer needs to be done on ‘stone tablets’;

Not training because users see THEIR workflows posting THEIR forms to a simple UI consisting of ONE screen, so, what training, really, is needed other than to introduce them to the computer and point out the on button, screen, keyboard and mouse ?

In order to avoid buying a product that you may not be able to use or a product that will yield no tangible benefits, you need to decide in advance what your strategic and operational objectives are and, in respect of operational objectives, quantify these.

Only then, should you go on a shopping spree.

Given a set of objectives, ask the vendor to explain exactly how the product can contribute to attainment of your stated objectives.

Discount meaningless ‘. . . .saves time/saves money’ market-speak.

And, do not hesitate to ask the vendor to build for you, at the vendor’s cost, a process map that is representative of one of your programs and then give you a live demo of your process map posting forms you routinely use to manage this process.

Many BPMs accommodate process mapping, process modeling/simulation, and process improvement. The train ride usually ends with a paper process map.

Anyone who thinks a complex process that includes multiple steps, connected in complex ways, with different skilled resources needed to perform different steps can be “managed” by staring at a paper process map, needs a reality check.

And, beware of statements along the lines of ‘… easy to integrate’ – most systems are anything but easy to integrate and if you consider your processes as strategic assets, you need enterprise-wide automated resource allocation, leveling and balancing software that often is not part of BPMs.

Remember the quote . . .

“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.” Albert Einstein

This tells us if you want to manage business processes and do a better job on process improvement you need enhanced BPM software or BPMx software.

Let’s start with the basics – the purpose of business processes is to allow organizations to increase customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction, however difficult this may be to measure, is what allows a business to stay in business.

In case you haven’t noticed, it has become more difficult to build, improve and maintain customer satisfaction. Brand loyalty is no longer something organizations can count on and with the Internet, customers can do research, reach their own conclusions re products/services and, in many cases, procure goods and services globally.

The other bad news is the nature of knowledge work is not such that it can be guided by ‘best practice’ protocols, so any BPMx software you acquire needs to be able to handle unstructured work as well as structured work. This brings you to the realm of ACM (Adaptive Case Management).

If you think about it, there really is no difference between a process that comprises a linked set of “best practice” process steps, a process that is developed on-the-fly and what might appear to a casual observer as no process at all (i.e. a seemingly unlinked number of ad hoc steps).

It’s all just a question of state of maturity. Best practices are typically tried-and-true, evidence-based protocols. On-the-fly “invented” processes where steps are carried out by knowledgeable and experienced professionals can be the basis for future best practices, and, with some analysis, unlinked steps can be linked and assessed and promoted to best practices.

None of this will give you the missing “M” in BPM for any process that is complex and includes steps that require specific skills for performance.

Enterprise Resource Allocation (ERA) software when linked to ACM (Adaptive Case Management) software allows you to accommodate traditional structured “BPM” processes, invented processes and pure ad hoc process steps.

Here is how it works.

Build your process maps by defining and linking steps. Each step needs an instruction component or cross reference for consultative purposes, one or more routing attributes that define the skill(s) required for performance of the step, and one or more forms that can capture data relating to performance of the step (i.e. ranging from a simple “Done” checkbox to a set of forms that can accommodate structured data).

Next, you need software that is capable of carving up your process maps into individual steps that ERA software can use to guide the processing of instances of your process maps.

You will also need to inventory all possible “interventions” and place these in a “menu” to facilitate ad hoc processes of one step.

Now, the ERA takes center stage, automatically posting steps to the Orders’ InTrays of users who are capable of processing such steps.

Steps post, users take action, steps clear from their InTrays. Supervisors are able to exercise oversight over individual user/group workload to level/balance and re-balance workload.

The ERA automatically builds a log of completed steps and posts next-in-line steps to the attention of the appropriate users.

A parallel data feed goes to the organization’s data warehouse for reporting and data mining processes.

The loop is closed by taking results from data mining and using the information to build new processes and improve existing processes.

Radical? It Really Should Have Been

“Just One More Thing…..”

In the classic 70′s American cop series Columbo, the eponymous detective was famous for his “one more thing” revelation of the perpetrator of whatever grizzly homicide he was investigating in that episode. Those eleventh-hour, seemingly ephiphanic moments of clarity, insight and eye-opening analysis are, in reality, extremely rare. In the eyes of successive murderers, Columbo’s seemingly uncanny ability to cut to the chase and mobilise an instantaneous last minute analysis of the evidence appeared to be miraculous. Of course it was no such thing; it was his wish for dramatic effect, to have lulled the murderer into a false sense of security that they had got away with it. Columbo was one of the greatest fictional detectives of his generation, he knew who had “done it” for some time.

This is the last in a series of five blogs exploring how radical plans can so easily  easily be derailed.

 5 Reasons for “the Radical” Becoming “the Ordinary”:

•  Diluting the Plan
• Avoiding Tough Decisions
• Inadequate Resource
• Needless and Avoidable Delay
• Beware Contradictory Last Minute Analysis

Beware Contradictory Last Minute Analysis

So what is my point? Why the scepticism of bolts of analytical inspiration just in
the nick of time? I always find it worrying when change resistant individuals in an organisation appear determined to unearth data to disprove a previously proven agreed course of action. Radical change requires courage and steadfastness; for the doubters any sign of weakness, hesitation or nervousness on the part of the instigators will be ruthlessly exposed.

I have witnessed perfectly valid decisions being consigned to the bin on the basis of some creative analysis confidently presented that somehow managed to germinate any tiny seeds of natural self-doubt and worry that may have been present within the decision making team.

Analysis of this type is at best selective and often dreadfully biased. The result is
the same, those who doubted the value of the plan will seize the opportunity to asphyxiate it and to retain the status quo.

A temporary feeling of relief may then pervade the boardroom; congratulation and joy on avoiding a close shave with disaster may give rise to a false sense of euphoria. The risk of fundamental, radical change has been removed, all can return to the familiarity of managing the business; difficult decisions have been avoided; the risk of failure in such a visible form removed: “the pressure is off”. “Radical” will be temporarily removed from the lexicon of the organisation; replaced with the more palatable “Evolutionary”.

Don’t get me wrong; there is a time and place for evolutionary or incremental change;
it is after all the norm. It is what the majority of managers rightly do day-in day-out; they have to possess the skill to continuously improve, to look for the + 1’s. But where radical change is required, where taking a calculated and meticulously planned risk is essential, losing one’s nerve is not only an abdication of responsibility but also a dereliction of duty.

And Finally…….

As much as there is a time for being cautious, for being risk averse, there is also a time where being courageous, confronting ones doubts and taking a calculated risk for the greater good is the correct thing to do. It is those very situations where the five pitfalls described in this series should be avoided, where resolute leadership is required to galvanise the organisation and to set it on an upward trajectory. You never know, it might result in the achievement of the fabled, and frankly overused, “Paradigm Shift”!

Neil Jones is founder and managing director of let’s implement limited.
His primary focus is to provide clients with the approach, tools and techniques to deliver implementation excellence throughout their organisation, thus improving ROI.

Neil achieves this by assisting organisations to create the required emphasis and behaviour surrounding the implementation of business initiatives and projects, ensuring that the enthusiasm for a plan, project or initiative is maintained until it has been fully and successfully implemented, reviewed and evaluated.  

neil@letsimplement.com                   07879 884140

The question is which needs to come first (strategy/goals/objectives or processes).

Until processes focus on customer satisfaction and can be seen to be supportive of strategy/goals/objectives, we have a dysfunctional organization so how do we get to the stage where we have congruent strategies, goals, objectives and processes?

If a client can take on a mindset that corporate strategy/goals/objectives need to be re-articulated in terms of customer satisfaction and agree that deliverables are the result of transforming inputs to outputs (processes), then one can start in silos with process documentation. The organization needs to get to where process owners develop and maintain their own processes.

Clearly, this requires technology because the job does not end with a Visio diagram if the processes are complex. But, running processes is downstream from building and improving them so there is some time to choose appropriate software. It’s always a bad idea to pick software and then try to figure out what you can do with that software.

The problem with developing processes within silos is that processes typically overarch silos so others need to play a pivotal participative role and this may be IT or it may in a larger organization be a business analysis unit or it may be an outside consultant.

My observation is very few BPMs are able to take process maps and use these as templates to guide the processing of instances. The key capabilities that are missing are automated resource allocation/leveling/balancing of process steps, then, at a practical level where you have to accommodate a mix of ad hoc and structured interventions, there is the basic question of how in that mix to achieve governance?

So, bottom line, there are too many tasks to be done in strict linear sequence (three years from now the client will still be stuck on re-articulating strategy/goals/objectives) so things have to go forward on several fronts.

There is no way to do this without a lot of dialog and project planning/monitoring and control and after 54 years (Polaris project/Admiral Rickover/1957) we still have a tried and true methodology and supportive software called Critical Path Method (CPM) that works and works and works.

Radical? It Really Should Have Been

When mañana, mañana just doesn’t cut it:

In this, my penultimate blog in the series exploring 5 of the reasons why radical plans often turn out as far from radical, why they can materialise as pale imitations of their former selves, I focus on the bane of implementation; needless delay.

5 Reasons for “the Radical” Becoming “the Ordinary”:

•  Diluting the Plan
• Avoiding Tough Decisions
• Inadequate Resource
• Needless and Avoidable Delay
• Spurious Analysis

On the basis that if you ignore something for long enough it will go away; delaying the implementation of radical plans because it is the easier option may seem like a reasonable and risk reducing course of action. Whilst it is impossible, so the saying goes, to avoid the inevitable, it is possible to avoid the imperative as there is always a legion of reasons why
there is something else that should be done first.

He Who Hesitates is Lost….

Fighter pilots have to make life or death decisions in a split second; they know what they have to do, what their mission is, what success looks like and how their mission is going
to be executed. If they lose their nerve or delay a decision they might not only fail the mission, but also lose their life.

The parallels between the military and commercial life are clear where opportunities for fundamental change not only require management foresight, single-mindedness and fortitude; it also requires willingness and an ability to identify the correct time to implement. Having a radical idea does not mean that those leaders are presiding over a radically minded management team or even one capable of radical change. The idea may indeed be radical, the plan may be ground-breaking, and the potential outcomes may be transformational, but if there is prevarication in delivery, the opportunity may be lost and the most breathtaking plan for the organisation consigned to the “what might have been” file to join the legion of other ‘never to see the light of day’ ideas whose time will never come again. Delays of this sort should not always be judged as indecisiveness, it may be a
case of simply not mobilising the organisation quickly enough. The result will
however be the same.

If the reason for delay is that the radical plan is the now the wrong plan. That the basis upon which the idea was created has proved to be erroneous, or the market or commercial
environment has changed significantly, then it should of course not only be delayed, but permanently shelved. To embark dogmatically upon a course of action that is fundamentally flawed would be foolish and irresponsible. However if the delay is for any of the following reasons, it should be whole-heartedly challenged by those who sponsor the plan.

• Nervousness of radical change
• Sudden, unexplained and unjustified changes in priority
• Incessant tinkering with the plan
• An unwillingness to focus on implementation
• A diversion of resource
• The project unexpectedly disappearing from the agenda
• Excuses for not implementing that are unfounded

If the plan has survived the decision making process and all indicators still point to the
solution, then it is highly probable that it is still the right thing to do: so in the much overused words of Nike “Just Do It!”

Neil Jones is founder and managing director of let’s implement limited.
His primary focus is to provide clients with the approach, tools and techniques to deliver implementation excellence throughout their organisation, thus improving ROI.

Neil achieves this by assisting organisations to create the required emphasis and behaviour surrounding the implementation of business initiatives and projects, ensuring that the enthusiasm for a plan, project or initiative is maintained until it has been fully and successfully implemented, reviewed and evaluated.

 neil@letsimplement.com                   07879 884140

Radical? It Really Should Have Been

 OK. So who knows how to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?

Rather prophetically as it turns out, I began this short series of blogs on how some organisations manage to transform the radical into the ordinary on Friday 13^th May. This phenomenon amounts to a kind of miracle in reverse…. Would so much have been made of the event if wine had in fact been turned into water? Or a feast fit for 5,000 ravenous souls was somehow to re-materialise (or is that dematerialise?) as five loaves and a couple of fish when they stopped to eat? Or Midas had reversed his touch? I somehow think not.

This is the third in a series of blogs exploring 5 of the reasons why radical plans often turn out as far from radical, as shadows of their potential selves. Previously I have highlighted
how diluting a plan just prior to implementation has a detrimental effect, and in the second of the series, how failing to bite the bullet on difficult decisions can reduce an organisations capability to implement change. This week I am focussing my attention on the importance of providing adequate resource to implement a chosen plan.

5 Reasons for “the Radical” Becoming “the Ordinary”:

• Diluting the Plan
• Avoiding Tough Decisions
• Inadequate Resource
• Needless Delay
• Spurious Analysis

Resource for Success

If a plan is to be far-reaching, if it is to fundamentally change the organisation or operation the planning has to be equally comprehensive. Not only does everyone involved need to know their responsibility, and timescales for delivery but there should be a sufficient
budget to successfully deliver the initiative. Classic, simple project management stuff you may say….. It is!

It is only natural, and indeed good business practice, to ensure that each and every project or initiative is delivered with the highest possible return. But therein lies the rub. The lowest cost option may not be the optimum solution; but whichever cost model is chosen it should be followed through. A deep budget cut prior to implementation, or even worse, mid-project once all the furore and high visibility has waned and where the hard work starts, is a trap that should be avoided. Without the requisite funding the project will predictably be compromised and will either fail to achieve the desired objectives, or the very objectives that were proven to be required may have to be substantially trimmed-back, further diluting the effect. A case of the “new radical” or “postmodern radical” taking sway, where the only thing radical is the amount of cuts made to the budget of  audacious plans leaving them with little or no chance of being implemented.

I deliberately exaggerate to make a point; that far too many superb and creative plans that could make a remarkable difference to the fortunes of organisations are neutered by not
being adequately resourced at the point of delivery. Business leaders and decision makers having taken the courageous step to agree a plan that could bring a step-change in performance should carry that conviction through to implementation, providing sufficient budget to make it happen as intended. I am not advocating a loosening of budgetary control, because therein lies disaster in a different guise: what I am suggesting is that the budget follows the plan once it has been agreed. If there is not enough budget to support a radical plan, do something else, don’t agree the plan and then pull the cash between decision and delivery.

Neil Jones is founder and managing director of let’s implement limited.
His primary focus is to provide clients with the approach, tools and techniques to deliver implementation excellence throughout their organisation, thus improving ROI.

Neil achieves this by assisting organisations to create the required emphasis and behaviour surrounding the implementation of business initiatives and projects, ensuring that the enthusiasm for a plan, project or initiative is maintained until it has been fully and successfully implemented, reviewed and evaluated.

 neil@letsimplement.com                   07879 884140

Reason 2: Avoiding Tough Decisions

Radical Plans Often Require Radical Decisions:

Last week I raised the spectre of commercial equivalent of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” where something originally heralded as radical materialises (pun intended) having as much substance as the clothes the emperor wore on that fateful and apocryphal day. I would advocate that all organisations need their very own version of the little boy who says it as it is, who will challenge even if he or she is a lonely voice amidst a sea of “loyal” subjects. Who announces to the amassed hoards that the “Emperor has no clothes”

The subject of last week’s blog was how radical plans can become diluted as the
doubters sway the decision makers. This week the second of the 5 Reasons is explored; namely how avoiding tough decisions can derail a radical plan.

 5 Reasons for “the Radical” Becoming “the Ordinary”:

• Diluting the Plan
• Avoiding Tough Decisions
• Withdrawing Resource
• Needless Delay
• Spurious Analysis

Biting the Bullet:

With any radical plan comes an array of difficult decisions that require careful thought and
handling, and without which the plan will not be delivered in the form intended.

New ways of working and a requirement for new skills and competencies often go hand-in-hand with the implementation of major change. Failure to address the competence and ability of employees is an all too common failure. Difficult decisions over the future
of a loyal, long-serving member of the organisation avoided even though it is patently clear that his/her skills fall short of the new requirements.

A combination of embarrassment, not wishing to pay redundancy, and the avoidance of conflict will put the delivery of the new initiative in jeopardy (which will be a great
deal more embarrassing, costly and difficult to explain than biting the bullet in the first place). Radical decisions sometimes require changes in key personnel; failure to take difficult decisions from the outset will compromise success. Clarity, honesty and doing what is right for the plan is called for as square pegs will always fail to fit into round holes however hard one may try to believe the contrary.

Too often decisions of this type are made once the plan inevitably hits difficulties, remedial action is often too little too late, more expensive, and demoralising for those remaining
with the organisation.

Neil Jones is founder and managing director of let’s implement limited.
His primary focus is to provide clients with the approach, tools and techniques to deliver implementation excellence throughout their organisation, thus improving ROI.  

Neil achieves this by assisting organisations to create the required emphasis and behaviour surrounding the implementation of business initiatives and projects, ensuring that the enthusiasm for a plan, project or initiative is maintained until it has been fully and successfully implemented, reviewed and evaluated.

 neil@letsimplement.com                                    07879 884140

Reason 1: Diluting the Plan

This is No Place for Management by Sound Bite – leave that to the politicians Radical; now there’s a word to conjure with…….. Radical thinking, radical plans and radical action manifest themselves in many forms; in various shades of grey from outright seismic change to the “So what?” heralded as transformational.

Radicalism is, in countless cases, coupled with other less worthy, and significantly more irritating business clichés such as “Blue Sky Thinking”, “Starting with a blank sheet of paper”, “Thinking out of the box”, “Pushing the envelope”, or indeed “Pushing the needle”, or perhaps even embarking on a course of action that will result in a “Paradigm shift”. This, of course, does not in any way devalue radical change, or suggest that it is to be sneered at. It can be the only viable course of action, it may be a commercial imperative, and circumstances may dictate that a more conservative, a less courageous course of
action is not an option.

So, if the so-called ‘radical’ solution is not the object of my disapproval, what is? It is where the opportunity for real and telling radical change is wasted. Too often all the hard work has been successfully done; the problem has been correctly identified; the scale of the change required accurately gauged and the organisation galvanised, enthused and not least of all primed for action but that sadly the implementation of the “radical plan” is flawed. Sadly in these cases the radical transforms into the moderate, the potentially extraordinary ends up very ordinary indeed.

In my experience cases of lost opportunity can be assigned to one or more of the five reasons highlighted below. This Blog is the first in a series of five that will consider
each reason in turn. “Diluting the Plan” explains how organisations often water-down radical plans as they approach implementation.

Reasons for “The Radical” Becoming “The Ordinary”: 

1. Diluting the Plan
2. Avoiding Tough Decisions
3. Withdrawing Resource
4. Needless Delay
5. Spurious Analysis

Who Changed the Plan? Why plans become diluted:

All the meetings have been held; from Board Away-Days to departmental meetings agreeing the plan. Everyone is decided; the only sensible way forward is to embark on a
course of action that can only be described as radical. At the eleventh hour the plan is reviewed at the highest level, a reasonable thing to do with fundamental change. An opponent of change who was, from the outset, against the plan but was placated during the approval process has once again voiced his concern. He manages to create an imperceptible level of doubt in the previously resolute forces for change. All the facts continue to point towards the need to adopt the radical plan, yet without warning the
plan is swiftly adapted, it is diluted to placate the doubters and “de-risk” the initiative. (An overused euphemism for losing one’s nerve)

When the plan resurfaces it is in all but name unrecognisable, a shadow of its former self
and highly unlikely to solve the identified problem. It is often more advisable, when faced with this situation, to start the process of problem resolution from scratch, to ‘can’ the entire project rather than to half-heartedly rework the original plan in a diluted form.

In cases where all the indicators continue to suggest the original plan was correct there is little excuse for “de-risking”.

The next blog in this series will consider how avoiding tough decisions has a detrimental effect on radical plans.

Neil Jones is founder and managing director of let’s implement limited,
his primary focus is to provide clients
with the approach, tools and techniques to deliver implementation excellence
throughout their organisation, thus improving ROI.  

Neil achieves this by assisting organisations to create
the required emphasis and behaviour surrounding the implementation of business
initiatives and projects, ensuring that the enthusiasm for a plan, project or
initiative is maintained until it has been fully and successfully implemented,
reviewed and evaluated.

 neil@letsimplement.com             07879 884140

]]> http://bsicharlotte.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/right-sizing-your-organization-for-recovery/ Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:20:22 +0000 bsicharlotte http://bsicharlotte.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/right-sizing-your-organization-for-recovery/ Many companies faced layoffs during the past year as the economic downturn continued.  If your company was one of those, you may soon find yourself facing the other issue of deciding who or how many people to bring back.  The question “what is the right size for my organization to be?” is an important one – and sometimes a difficult one to answer.  The value of your company is directly affected by how productive your employees are – more productivity generally means more profitability.  If you want to maximize value, you must right-size the organization.

Right-sizing means having the right number of the right people in the right jobs to accomplish your company’s goals and objectives.  With that concept in mind, you should “begin with the end in mind,” as business writer and consultant, Stephen Covey, would say.

Your company’s goals and objectives:  The downturn may have drastically altered your company.  You may have repositioned yourself or changed product lines or markets to make it through the tough times.  Now may be the time to think about who you want the company to be in the recovery.  Do you want to continue with the strategies you adopted previously and make them stronger, or do you believe the recovery offers you the chance to accomplish something totally different.  Define your goals in terms of customers, product/service lines, brand positioning, employee satisfaction, and profitability.  You’ll need to be clear on each of those to go to the next step.

The right jobs:  What infrastructure does your company need to accomplish the goals you developed from the last step?  If you’ve decided new products are the wave of the future, you may need to beef up your Research and Development department.  If you think customer service will be the brand differentiator for your company, your service and sales department may need to change.  If speed to market is critical, your order, manufacturing and shipping processes may need to be expanded.  Flow chart what needs to happen to achieve your goals, and then break those processes into functional jobs that make sense, utilize reasonable skills sets, and maintain adequate controls.  Research best practices in your industry to see how each job can be done most efficiently, and plan jobs to take advantage of those ideas.  (Visit www.kboptions.com if you need help with this step.)

The right people:  Once you’ve defined the jobs that need to be done, you need to give some thought to the kind of people who could best accomplish those jobs.  What skills, education and experience would they have?  What temperament or behavior style would make them best suited to that type of work?  How will you screen potential employees to see if they fit what you need?  In other words, will you know a good fit when you see it?  Get your selection process in place so that you can put the right people into the right jobs.  This applies to your current employees and any new ones you’ll bring on.  We want to plug people in where they can best succeed, not set them up to fail.  (Visit www.altmaninitiative.com if you need help with this step.)

The right number of people:  This may be the toughest question of all.  How many customer service reps do you need to handle 500 customers?  How many billing clerks do you need?  How many sales people will it take to reach your goals?  Determining the answer isn’t purely scientific, but some data can be used to help you with these decisions.  You can find that data in a number of places including your own historical records.  For instance, by using your accounting and payroll records, you can determine how many man-hours you spent to produce a certain outcome (invoices produced per clerk, clients brought in per sales person, etc.)  You can also pull information from your trade association on many of these data points.  Check the association’s website or call to ask if they compile such information and if you can gain access to it.

As always, you must use a little common sense.  Your company isn’t just like anyone else’s, and your way of doing things may require fewer or more people as a result.  But using this information can help you get a “ballpark” read on your staffing plan.

Now is a great time to start readying your company for recovery.  Position yourself and your company for success!