Interesting observation over the last few days as people dust off their Business Continuity Plans as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. Many are finding how much their organisation has changed since last updated and are simply unable to execute the current plan. For some their challenge has been disciplined regular review of BCPs in busy times. For many others… Read More »Keep dust off your Business Continuity Plans
A well-developed Action Plan is primarily a communications tool (and only secondarily a project management tool). It sets expectations. Once improvements are identified, everyone wants to do them all straight away, but this is unrealistic. Given the rigors of daily workload and the fact that robust change takes time, the action plan shows a realistic pathway to delivering improvements –… Read More »An Action Plan is more important than planning tasks
Part 2: Switch the Story. Setting Continuous Improvement targets is misguided. The concept of CI targets implies that these are different and distinct from real business outcomes, and therefore it pits these 2 areas against each other. People mistakenly believe that if they focus on their CI target, then the business outcomes will suffer, and vice versa. Business outcomes are… Read More »CI Programs – Switch the Story
Most strategic plans make my head hurt. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Common (aka frustrating) gaps include: No balance between the critical dimensions of financial, customer, staff and quality/risk Lots of fluff without substance – i.e. no tangible (objective, normally numeric) targets Not considering BAU as a critical part of the strategy It’s this last one that… Read More »Strategic Planning Gaps
I often hear people say “I don’t have enough time to do . . . [insert something apparently not important]” But what if that thing IS actually important? Well, the organisation, the customers and the staff all ultimately suffer. My view is that this situation is actually a symptom of poor communication (and poor accountability) from the management chain. This… Read More »“Not Enough Time” is a convenient excuse
E-I, E-I-O! goes the familiar refrain from the nursery rhyme. It’s very close to the mantra we use for process improvement…. EIAO: Eliminate, Improve, Automate, Outsource Delivering Efficiency and Effectiveness gains in a business process generally uses one of these approaches Eliminate: Critically look at a process (and then each process step) to see what value it is creating. Ask… Read More »Old MacDonald nearly had it right
It’s a fact of life that, as a leader, you will be interrupted throughout every working day. No matter how much you empower your staff to make decisions autonomously, you will always have interruptions. And, there is plenty of research to show that much time is wasted in ‘mental set up time’ as you subconsciously deal with the cognitive shift… Read More »Don’t bother with complex tasks
If with great knowledge comes great power and opportunity, how do you avoid wasting your investment?
In the first 2 parts of this series, we covered the reasons why you really should be creating a better way of documenting your organisational knowledge. But how do you do it without making it too complex, unwieldy and over-engineered? How can you avoid implementing something which is ultimately doomed to be unsuccessful? When designing your approach, consider the guiding principles:Read More »Are you getting benefit from your organisational knowledge investment?
If with great knowledge comes great power and opportunity, who has the knowledge in your organisation?
The majority of organisations have a major issue, staring them right in the corporate face. One that can be solved with a little time and effort. However, time and time again, this issue is not identified, addressed or resolved until it’s too late (or at all).Read More »Who has the knowledge in your organisation?