Archive for August, 2007

Aug 8th 2007 Complexity Questions

  • Does our organization have an operational definition of complexity?
  • Do we know how much complexity we have – quantitatively not anecdotally?
  • Do we know how much value and cost the low-volume, nonstandard variations generate? Are they a source of profit or a sinkhole? Are they constraining our ability to be responsive?
  • Do we have checks and balances to keep complexity under control? Are they set up in a segmented fashion – eliminate, accommodate, and separate? Is there an explicit feedback process or are decisions made in a one-off fashion?
  • Has your company’s complexity – the number of SKUs, components, platforms, brands, and so on – grown over time? Has it grown by design or by default? Do you know which complexity is absolutely necessary to generate value?
  • Do you periodically go through bursts of frenzied complexity-reduction activity without knowing exactly where to stop?
  • Do you know what your drivers of complexity are? Do your product profitability estimates account for the full cost of complexity and the value of variety?
  • Do your functional managers meet regularly to discuss complexity and how to manage it? Are these discussions guided by a complexity strategy?

Source:
As Simple as Possible
by Kenneth Keverian
Boston Consulting Group, July 15, 2005

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Aug 7th 2007 Business Design Innovation Questions

As you evaluate new businesses or consider reinventing your current business design, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Is our current business model strong and sustainable?
  2. Is our business in tune with shifting customer priorities and the changing environment?
  3. Are we playing by the same set of rules for success as the rest of our industry?
  4. Have the traditional rules suddenly changed in the past year?
  5. How can we play by more innovative rules?
  6. Are we playing by the right rules, but executing poorly on our strategy?
  7. If so, are our main execution issues about:
    • defining and delivering value to customers?
    • improving operations?
    • aligning our organization?
  8. Are we using the potential of the Internet and other digital technologies to improve our business?
  9. Do we know how to adapt our business design to future challenges

Source:
Business design innovation: Transforming ideas into results
by Rick Wise
Mercer Management Journal, Issue 13

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Aug 6th 2007 Business Model Questions

  • How do you make money in this business?
  • What are your costs?
  • What value are you creating and for whom?
  • Can you describe what business you are in and how you will get paid in 4 sentences or less?
  • Six months from now, what business will your customers want you to be in?
  • Twelve months from now, what business will your customers demand you be in?
  • Is your business model sustainable? How are you going to maintain the ability to price at a rate that’s higher than your cost in the face of competition?
  • Is your business scalable? Can it get big very, very quickly? What are the associated implications?

Source:
Are You Enjoying Globalization Yet?
by Adrian J. Slywotzky
Mercer Management Journal, Issue 20

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Aug 5th 2007 Business Design Audit

Customers
Current customer selection

  • What is our revenue mix by customer?
  • Where does profit come from?
  • Is the origin of revenue and profit changing?
  • Who are our most profitable customers?
  • Which customers are showing growth?
  • Which customers are integral to our strategy?

Customer service

  • Which types of customers choose us?
  • Why do those customers choose us?
  • Are we making money off that differentiation?
  • Why don’t customers choose us?

Strategic direction

  • Are our current customers the ones that we want?
  • Will they be who we want in five years?
  • What customers are similar to our current customers that we could also satisfy?

Market trends
Customers

  • Who holds the power in the market? Why?
  • What do they want?
  • Where is the power going?
  • Where is the value going?
  • What can we learn from our most demanding or innovative customers about the future?

Competition

  • Who is our primary competition?
  • What do they know that we don’t?
  • Why are they beating us?
  • Who will be our primary competition in five years?
  • Where could we compete that we aren’t?

Markets

  • What is the nature of the environment in which we work?
  • What trends exist in the market?
  • What are the risks?
  • What new markets are developing?

Our strategy
Customers

  • What do customers buy from us? Why?
  • Is our strategy aligned with customers?
  • What skills must we develop to better service customers?
  • What unique skills do we have that customers value?

Trends

  • What are the implications of the major trends for our strategy?
  • What are we recognized for?
  • What could we be recognized for?

Competencies

  • What are we recognized for?
  • What could we be recognized for?
  • Are these the same as the competencies that the customer desires? Why not?

Source:
Are You Enjoying Globalization Yet?
by Adrian J. Slywotzky
Mercer Management Journal, Issue 20

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Aug 4th 2007 After Action Review Process (a supplement)

  • What did we try to do?
  • What did we actually do?
  • What caused the difference? Were we dealing with conflicting agendas?
  • What do we need to do more of? What else can we do?
  • What do we need to do less of? Are any processes weak or assumptions wrong?

Source:
Thought Partnerships: The Muscles For High Performance Thinking
by Daniel D. Elash, Ph.D.
CEO Refresher

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Aug 3rd 2007 After-Action Reviews

The U.S. Army effectively instills the habit of dealing with facts by conducting “after-action reviews.” They take just 15 minutes, and they occur after every identifiable event — big or small. This review involves asking four simple questions:

  • What was supposed to happen?
  • What actually happened?
  • What accounts for any difference?
  • What can we learn?

That’s it. No memo gets filed; no one gets called on the carpet — although if someone left a mess there, it has to be cleaned up.

Source:
Listen Up, Maggots! You Will Deploy a More Humane and Effective Managerial Style!
by Thomas A. Stewart
eCompany Now, July 2001 Issue

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Aug 2nd 2007 5 Key Questions to Ask Before Divestment

  1. Rather than getting rid of an entire business unit, can you disassemble its operations and outsource the costly or cumbersome functions?
  2. Have we pushed technology as far as we can, or are there still new ways it can cut costs, increase productivity and improve operations?
  3. Do you have all the candidates for disposal on the table, not just the ‘dogs’?
  4. Is it possible that the business you thought of as core is actually your least important one?
  5. If you do decide to get out of a business, what’s the best way to exit?

Source:
Corporate Governance: The Stakes are High, the Standards are Not
by Justin Jenk
Accenture

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Aug 1st 2007 Learning Questions

  • What did I think I knew that turned out to be untrue?
  • What did I think I understood until later discovering that my understanding was incomplete?
  • What learning process do I seem to follow? Are any essential steps missing or poorly performed?
  • What cues can tell me when I need to un-learn and re-learn?
  • Do I explore special techniques to help me code and retain new material?
  • Do I make a practice of looking over my experiences reflecting on lessons learned that I can apply towards improving my performance next go-round?
  • Do I make a practice of staying alert to the emergence of new ideas in my field and in related areas?
  • Am I open to new ideas, willing to look for the strengths in them and able to defer judgment of them?
  • When I learn a new concept, do I make an effort to look for applications beyond those that were made known to me?
  • Do I practice of applying new ideas in my work?
  • Am I willing to part with a model, paradigm, or theory that I have long used successfully and come to rely on?
  • Am I aware of the limitations and weaknesses of the models, paradigms and theories whose “truth” I have come to take for granted?
  • When I sense myself feeling emotional resistance to a new idea, do I afterwards explore the idea through logic in an effort to be objective in my evaluation? 
  • Do I revert to old, outmoded learning’s at times when through a little effort I could access the new?

Source:
Learning, Un-Learning and Re-Learning
by Charles Albano, Ed.D.
LeaderValues

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