Posts

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective – Creating Event Certainty, part 2 of 3

/in /by

Oil from the ill-fated British Petroleum (BP) leased Horizon Deepwater rig continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico – the massive oil slick already contaminating the coastline of several Gulf States, injuring wildlife, and threatening to evolve into an unprecedented ecological disaster. In the over forty days since the leak first began, both BP and U.S. government agencies have been ineffective at mitigating the effects of this accident. Recent reports, however, suggest this didn’t need to be the case; that the U.S. government should have been better prepared to handle such an accident if it had truly learned from readiness exercises conducted over the past eight years.

Investigations by The Center for Public Integrity and ABC News revealed the U.S. government conducted oil response drills in 2002, 2004, 2007, and 2010. These drills revealed several concerns regarding the United States’ preparedness to handle such an accident including inexperience, poor communications, and conflicting roles.1 The investigation also showed these vulnerabilities went uncorrected; resulting in diminished effectiveness of the government’s response when the actual accident occurred.2, 3

Large scale exercises involving multiple government agencies are often incredibly expensive and highly disruptive – though not as expensive as the events they seek to prevent or mitigate. Not acting to eliminate deficiencies identified during these learning events is simply irresponsible. Unfortunately, the impact of this negligent behavior is only now being recognized – far too late to for those irreparably harmed by the BP oil leak.

StrategyDriven Recommended Practices

Self assessments and other activities identifying emergency response vulnerabilities are nearly worthless unless organization leaders act to resolve deficiencies and improve subsequent performance. Without this corrective action, unnecessary uncertainty knowingly persists.

Whether developing the response to a newly identified risk or an opportunity to improve existing response plans, organization leadership should consider implementation of the following actions to ensure their organization is ready to appropriately respond when an adverse event occurs:

Contingency Planning and Response Readiness

  1. Prioritize and act on assessment findings. Companies don’t have the unlimited resources needed to pursue every opportunity and preventative measure. However, actions to mitigate or prevent shortfalls that represent significant risk to the organization should be funded, acted upon, and monitored for ongoing success.
  2. Put in place those mechanisms that will help your organization mitigate, transfer, and avoid risk realization. Every company should have a portfolio of contingency plans to deal with adverse circumstances and marketplace opportunities. Also consider adding contingency plans to deal with the adverse impacts brought on by another company’s actions if the significance of those impacts warrants such action.
  3. Prestage personnel, procedures, materials, and tools to respond to events as they occur. To be effective, a response must be timely. Prestaging personnel, procedures, and materials enables an organization to mobilize quickly when an undesired event occurs.
  4. Conduct follow-up maintenance and inventory checks of prestaged procedures and materials. Regulations and policies become change and methodologies become outdated necessitating the periodic review and updating of prestaged procedures. Likewise, materials spoil (exceed their expiration date) and tools need periodic servicing to maintain their effectiveness. And all of these items are at risk of being misplaced, lost, or stolen which demands periodic inventories be taken and replacements made as needed.
  5. Practice, practice, practice. Practice provides experience which drives response readiness. Additionally, changes to procedures and new personnel create the need for refresher and initial training.

Final Request…

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective PodcastThe strength in our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us and sharing your perspectives regarding the StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective podcast on iTunes by clicking here. Sharing your thoughts improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective podcast!

Sources

  1. “Training Exercises Showed Gaps in Government Preparedness Before BP Oil Spill – Inexperience, Poor Communications, Conflicting Roles Cited,” John Solomon and Aaron Mehta, The Center for Public Integrity, May 11, 2010 (http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2079/)
  2. “Before the Gulf Oil Spill, U.S. Training Exercises Revealed Preparation Gaps,” Matthew Richmond, Fair Warning, May 17, 2010 (http://www.fairwarning.org/2010/05/before-the-gulf-oil-spill-u-s-training-exercises-revealed-preparation-gaps/)
  3. “Coast Guard officials told of potential oil spill response problems years ago,” Ben Raines, Alabama Live, May 21, 2010 (http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/coast_guard_officials_have_kno.html)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:19 — 8.7MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Leadership Inspirations – Influencing Others

/in /by

“The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and influence their actions.”

John Hancock(1737 – 1793)
Founding Father of the United States of America, signer of the Declaration of Independence, President of the Second Continental Congress, and first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

The New Thinking on KPIs, part 2 of 4

/in /by

The characteristics of KPIs

KPIs represent a set of measures focusing on those aspects of organizational performance that are the most critical for the current and future success of an organization. There are only a few KPIs in an organization (no more than 10) and they have certain characteristics.

KPI characteristics include:

  • Non financial measures (not expressed in $s, Pds etc)
  • Measured frequently e.g. daily or 24/7 (KPIs are not measured monthly)
  • Acted upon by the CEO and the senior management team on a daily or 24/7 basis
  • All staff understand the measure and what corrective action is required
  • Responsibility can be tied down to a team
  • The KPI has a significant impact on the organization e.g. it impacts on most of the critical success factors and balanced scorecard perspectives
  • Positive movement affects all other performance measures in a positive way

When you put a Pound or Dollar sign to a measure you have not dug deep enough. Sales made yesterday will be a result of sales calls made previously to existing and prospective customers, advertising, amount of contact with the key customers, product reliability etc. I label any indicator expressed in monetary terms as result indicator, see below for more explanation.

Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!


 

About the Author

David Parmenter, author of Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs and Pareto’s 80/20 Rule for Corporate Accountants, is an international presenter who is known for his thought provoking and lively sessions, which have led to substantial change in many organizations. He is a leading expert in developing winning KPIs, replacing the annual planning process with quarterly rolling planning, accelerating month-end processes, and converting reporting to a decision based tool.

David’s work on KPIs has received international recognition with clients in Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Perth, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Tehran, Prague, Dublin, London, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh. David is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales and has worked for Ernst & Young, BP Oil Ltd, Arthur Andersen, and Price Waterhouse Coopers.

David’s recent thinking is accessible from www.davidparmenter.com. He can be contacted at [email protected] or telephone +64 4 499 0007.

This articles is an extract from his “Implementing winning KPIs” whitepaper which can be downloaded from http://davidparmenter.com/how-to-guides)

How to Lead An Online Business

/in /by

First and foremost, find an idea you love.

Whether it’s ice cream, bean bags, or shirts with funny slogans, find a product or service you’re passionate about selling. I started my career as a marketing executive. One day, I was invited to dinner with Japanese business associates. The dinner was a great success, and afterwards we moved to a Japanese tea house where, following tradition, everyone removed their shoes. I looked down, and I had two different socks on – one with a hole in the big toe. I sat cross-legged for an entire evening, trying to hide my foot. I’m passionate about helping executives avoid such embarrassments by allowing them to buy fine-quality essentials in one convenient place online, and have them delivered to their doorstep. Because wouldn’t it be wonderful if your sock drawer could replenish itself?

Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!


 

Return to the Tactical Execution Forum

About the Author

Samy LiechtiFollowing his studies of economics and business administration at the University of St. Gallen, Paris and Toronto (earning the title of lic. oec. HSG in 1993) Samy Liechti was a marketing and communications consultant for various agencies in Switzerland and abroad, working with numerous prominent brands. Samy Liechti has been Blacksock’s managing director ever since its foundation in the summer of 1999.

Be a GPS System for Change

/in /by

As change agents, we find ourselves regularly challenged to get the buy-in and follow-through we need. We often start with a great premise and desired outcome, but few tools to enlist the necessary buy-in.

Two things must happen before change will occur:

  • the people in a system must recognize, manage, and buy-in to all the elements of the suggested change,
  • the system must comprehend that a solution will maintain the integrity of the whole.
Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it
by Sharon Drew Morgen

 

Every day, business people face critical buying decisions – from new software to revamped website design to employee training programs. But all too often, the long lag time between recognizing the need for a new solution and actually purchasing and implementing it leads to lost sales, lost opportunities, and lost productivity. Thought leader Sharon Drew Morgen has uncovered what keeps organizations from moving forward and in her new book, Dirty Little Secrets, she reveals what potential buyers need to know to expedite the process of bringing positive change to their companies.

Dirty Little Secrets offers dozens of examples to clarify precisely how buying decisions can be facilitated through the right kind of questions, including an in-depth case study of a marketing manager who recognizes the need for a better website and wants to bring in an external design team. Sharon Drew explores what happens when he stumbles in the dark trying to bring his fellow managers, the internal tech team (which is responsible for the current site), and the CFO (to whom the tech team reports) on board. She then presents the same situation using Buying Facilitation®. The result? “Decision facilitation” enables a smoother, faster process that leads to a better outcome for both the marketing manager and the design firm.

Unfortunately, we’ve never been taught how to help manage the behind-the-scenes – and often unconscious – issues necessary to create and maintain systemic change. We’ve operated on the assumption that with a rational initiative and good communication folks will know how and why to adopt the change – and if they don’t, we handle their resistance.

I suggest there is a more effective way to be successful: become a GPS system and lead the change from the inside out.

Be the GPS System, Not the Consultant

During change initiatives, we often don’t manage the unconscious issues that underlie the status quo and will shift during change. People will take no action – or will resist any request for change – until they address these in a way that maintains internal congruence. But because they are often hidden, we tend to ignore them until it’s too late.

Before designing a change initiative, we need to:

  1. understand the details, associations, and historic import of the internal systems issues that created the problem that will be changed,
  2. figure out how it has been maintained and held in place daily,
  3. recognize the new rules, roles, and relationships that will emerge post-change,
  4. help folks manage the differential in their beliefs between who they are now and who they will be, to help them accept change on a personal level first.

When we attempt to use negotiation skills or OD skills at the wrong time in the change cycle – and almost all change agents attempt to get folks to agree to change well before they have figured out their personal routes through their change issues – we are delaying the change and opening up the possibilities for rejection and sabotage.

Current strategic change models only manage the ‘push/information’ half of the change process. Let’s add a ‘pull/buy-in’ skill set.

To ensure buy-in to change, become a neutral GPS system to navigate followers through the old and new systems issues that will shift, and help them create their own new rules, roles, and relationship patterns.

Help them develop the sort of environment that will both match the change and manage the personal, idiosyncratic elements that have made the folks successful in their pre-change situation.

As part of your new GPS skill set, become a decision facilitator and lead change where it begins: within the system that created the need for change to begin with, and through the people who will be leading the charge.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and the new book Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. She lives in Austin, Texas.