Business results are measured in many ways by different organizations but the fundamental measure remains ROI in some form or the other. It is all about creating value for the stakeholders. This is true for non-profit organizations too – money will not be spent if it does not return its worth. Business results are a product of the quality of strategy chosen by the management and the quality of execution of the strategy. In the execution of business strategy, there is a need to use various tools and techniques of management. These include Structure, Roles & Responsibility definitions, MIS (Reports), Meetings, Measures, Approvals, Policies (norms & standards), Processes and Procedures. While business strategies get reviewed and re-tuned to the business environment on an ongoing basis, the tools and techniques of management are not reviewed as frequently and over a period of time, cause organization to slow down and prevent the strategy from giving the best results. Business Results Enhancement is about re-tuning the organization and finding the right balance of management tools & techniques and arriving at The Sweet Spot — where business strategy is effectively supported by effective execution. Finding the Sweet Spot: Too many meetings cause waste of time but too few may mean poor understanding of approach, direction and strategy. Too many reports (making and reading) may cause a waste of time while too few reports may lead to limited knowledge of what is happening, overlaps, duplication and associated waste of time and costly resources. Approvals are a method of control against wastage and misuse but too many approvals slow down the organization, compromising the very reason for the existence of the organization. While bureaucratic procedures may cause delays in processing of transactions on the one hand, but having no defined procedures may lend itself to incomplete compliance, poor controls and unpredictability. Policies, which are made for supporting the business, may actually become an impediment if they are allowed to outlive their ‘use by date’. Hence it becomes critical to design and deploy an execution model that maintains a balance between flows & controls, between speed & bureaucracy, between means & ends and between stakeholder value & ease of operations. Finding and aligning to The Sweet Spot is the way by which the management of an organization finds the right mix of various tools, techniques and approaches of execution and creates an efficient organization that supports the business strategies in a cost effective manner. Fine-tuning to The Sweet Spot – A continuous process: In these days of fast changing environment, it is not enough to just find The Sweet Spot. The real challenge is to remain close to it at all times. In other words, there is a need for periodic review and fine tuning to ensure that the organization remains in the ‘effectiveness’ zone. Symptoms of being away from The Sweet Spot: While the impact of being away from The Sweet Spot on ROI becomes visible only after the problem has taken roots the early warning signals are visible in the system almost on a daily basis. These visible signs differ from organization to organization depending on the industry, level of education and maturity of people involved. Here is an indicative list of not-so-sweet symptoms that give us an early warning: - Customer complaints - Cost over-runs - Decisions start to take longer to implement - Inconsistent turn-around time for transactions / tasks - Inconsistent compliance - High number of ‘human-errors’ - Loss of transactions - Requests for expediting specific transactions - Finger pointing between functions - Increased attrition levels (specifically at the middle level management) - Senior management has to chase transactions (managing complaints) - Emergence of power-centers (over a period of time) - Increased dependence on specific individuals The above symptoms, in different measures, can be seen in almost every organization and it is for the management team to take a preventive / corrective action before they start to affect the ROI. The Process Excellence (PE) function in an organization is accountable for finding The Sweet Spot and make continuous efforts to align to the same.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 08:14:50 +0000
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