Category: Outside-In

Can South Africa ever grow again? – the burning platform

Adam Craker, IQ business CEO Opens the Growth event

New report identifies constructive steps for business in South Africa.
At IQ businesses annual conference more than 200 partners and customer organisations shared a discussion focusing on the challenges and opportunities for South Africa over the next few years. 


Underpinned by excellent research now published at www.growth.co.za delegates welcomed sessions from Allon Raiz – Business Incubator Tzar, Alan Hosking – management thinking guru, Ivor Chipkin – Academic thought leader, Steve Towers – Customer Experience Champion, Adam Craker – CEO IQ business (and host), Bruce Whitfield – TV journalist and personality, Alon Lits – GM Uber South Africa.

Alon Lits, GM of UBER, South Africa

Alon Lits held the delegates attention with the groundbreaking and thrilling story of Uber’s South African adventure over the last two years. Transforming the lives of over 2,000 new drivers and more especially providing a remarkable service to citizens across Johannesburg and Cape Town. As with every innovator and disruptor the road hasn’t always been a smooth one however one by one the road blocks have been shifted and some exciting complementary innovations lie just around the corner.

Inada Club is a great networking location in the heat of Joburg

Adam Craker shared his recent discussions with government and business leaders from across the continent, underlining a conference sentiment that it was time ‘to get on with it’ despite red tape and governments mixed support.

Delegates appreciated the leadership of IQ business and the fantastic venue (Inanda Club) which encouraged networking during the brunch.

Allon Raiz was introduced via his recent video and through the use of language born of frustration with government apathy caught everyone’s attention. Interviewed by award winning financial journalist Bruce Whitfield he encouraged action rather than words, and doing rather than saying. As one of Africa’s leading entrepreneurs his call to action rings true for so many.


Academic Ivor Chipkin offered a perverse and interesting perspective suggesting that rather than sweeping away regulation and red tape we should instead standardise towards a common approach. It is futile trying to fix the seeming duplication of so many government functions. He also stressed that government is there to do that – govern, and we shouldn’t expect that to be necessarily business friendly. Food for thought there.

Changing our perspective is encouraged by Alan Hosking. If we became more Outcome focused then perhaps we can see our way to a more positive future. His talk centred around his research and findings published in his new book, and was a refreshing balance of optimism coupled with suggested approaches.

Steve Towers then suggested a pragmatic ‘go back and do it’ call to arms. By creating better Customer Experiences and moving Outside-In growth focused companies consistently win the triple crown – reducing costs, growing revenues and improving service simultaneously. By way of examples BMW, Jaguar Rover, Emirates, Indigo and Apple (of course) were reviewed, finishing with an example of a banks onboarding process, that achieved 90% cost reduction, 70% year on year growth and top ranking for customer service (from 5th).

The conference was a quick fire enjoyable meeting of minds with Adam Craker receiving a well deserved delegate pat on the back for the efforts of IQ business to get the theme of Growth front and centre in the quest for South Africa’s future success.

You can request the report Activate growth.co.za from info@iqbusiness.net or the website www.iqbusiness.net

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Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success

Certified Process Professional Masters  Champions (CPP-Master) Program

An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries.
The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service.
Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.

Become a qualified CPP-Master and demonstrate your professionalism http://www.bpgroup.org/book-class.html



Telstra’s finance transformation: A journey to excellence

Transforming the processes in the Finance arena – video interview

 “Partner with the business and drive Outcomes”

So often the backoffice is regarded as the last place to fix the customers experience. Here we see an approach about fixing internal customers experience utilizing Outcomes based thinking coupled with key interactions. Result is a significantly streamlined Finance function, enabling the frontline to deliver better Successful Customer Outcomes.

The Finance Transformation Summit in Australia
http://www.financetransformation.com.au/ – November 10-11, 2015





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Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success

Certified Process Professional Masters  Champions (CPP-Master) Program

An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries.
The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service.
Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.

Become a qualified CPP-Master and demonstrate your professionalism http://www.bpgroup.org/book-class.html

12 All New Tracks to transform your thinking forever

http://www.pexweek.com

The Annual conference that is PEXWeek 2016 is now open for registrations.

 

WHAT’S NEW IN 2016?

  • 13 new themes, 12 new tracks and 18 new workshops

  • Site visit to Taylor Farms, including a workshop with their COO

  • CPP Training Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 (Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced)

  • PORTS as a PEX Sport: Each speaker must refer to their Plan, Outline,Realization, Traps and Status of the current programs

  • PEX Globe and PEX Surgery- A diagnostic consultancy session: Network with cutting edge practitioners or get consultants to review your project

Listen to what some of your colleagues are sharing from this years event – and why you should register soon for workshops, conference and PEX Certified Process Professional training Levels 1, 2, 3 & 4 – we will be covering off Customer Alignment, Process Optimization, Innovation and Performance Management.

I will be there with the team 🙂


Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success

Certified Process Professional Masters  Champions (CPP-Master) Program

An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries.
The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service.
Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.

Become a qualified CPP-Master and demonstrate your professionalism http://www.bpgroup.org/book-class.html

How do you make Customer Experience Management Real?

Customer Experience Management (CEM) has become an established strategic objective for progressive organizations. How can we integrate this Outside-In thinking and practice into our own businesses?

It is customer centricity… but not as we know it.

Do you want to get in the picture? Join us soon at a session in a city near you…


Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success

Certified Process Professional Masters  Champions (CPP-Master) Program

An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries.
The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service.
Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.

Become a qualified CPP-Master and demonstrate your professionalism http://www.bpgroup.org/book-class.html

Customer Journey Maps in a cul de sac

Faddy time again. Now don’t get me wrong we really do need to understand the customer, what

 

constitutes success and how we should play the game to win the triple crown consistently. What I don’t get with is this fascination with pretty diagrams full of fancy graphics and arrows purporting to be Customer Journey Maps.

 

Oh I know the top team were sold the idea by some new age consultancy who with religious zeal often get engaged to map our customer journeys across the enterprise. Swathes of people can get sucked into these workshops which then produce an output that certainly looks pretty, and may well be understood at a very abstract level.

Worst of it is the task then of actually integrating the CJM’s into the real business, the nuts and bolts of process, systems and people. And of course we typically discover the CJM guys don’t do that stuff, you need to engage an expert for that.

So how do we break this cycle of wasted money, exhausted resources and mislead top teams? How can we produce, from the get go, representations that talk to the top team, architects, process people, systems guys and people people? Is there a way to produce a unified picture that we can all relate to?

Let me share two short videos that I hope for you and many more shine some light into these very murky shadows.

Steves view on Customer Journey Mapping
http://youtu.be/vccl-OkdjI0

And what is the best way to deploy Customer Journey Maps
https://youtu.be/KaMwqVkkH5c

 

 
Do you want to get in the picture? Join us soon at a session in a city near you…

 

Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success

Certified Process Professional Masters & Champions (CPP-Master) Program

 
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries.
Now in its tenth year, the program utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service.
Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
 
Become a qualified CPP-Master and demonstrate your professionalism http://www.bpgroup.org/book-class.html
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Holacracy – fad or freedom?

In a world of hyperbole it would be easy to look ignore this books claim of ‘revolutionary’ and the abolition of hierarchy . More of the same copy-write promises that quickly prove unfounded when you delve into the first chapter? Not so with this one.

Some folks may already know of Brian J. Robertson from his early days as inventor of the Commodore 64. And yes I can hold my hand up to that one also having spent many late nights mastering donkey kong in an earlier phase of existence. Now Brian plays in Google and his insights provide a powerful read that most likely will cause you to reassess the way you think of management systems.

You can get the book here 
http://bit.ly/holacracySteveTowers

We will be covering more on the theme of Holacracy quite soon. Let me know your thoughts.

Do you want to get in the picture? Join us soon at a session in a city near you…


Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success

Certified Process Professional Masters & Champions (CPP-Master) Program

An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries.
The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service.
Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.

Become a qualified CPP-Master and demonstrate your professionalism http://www.bpgroup.org/book-class.html

The Hell of Holacracy (for some die hards)

In the recent post about Zappos and Googles innovative approach to doing business we themed ‘Holacracy’. Talk about push back from the traditional command and control types labeling the approach as ‘pulp science’.

Try telling that to some of the most successful companies on the planet…

Origins of Holacracy(with credits to wiki)

The Holacracy system was incubated at Ternary Software, an Exton, Pennsylvania, company that was noted for experimenting with more democratic forms of organizational governance. Ternary founder Brian Robertson distilled the best practices into an organizational system that became known as Holacracy in 2007. Robertson later developed the Holocarcy Constitution  in 2010, which lays out the core principles and practices of the system, and has supported companies in adopting it.

The term holacracy is derived from the term holarchy, coined by Arthur Koestler in his 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine. A holarchy is composed of holons (Greek: ὅλον, holon neuter form of ὅλος, holos “whole”) or units that are autonomous and self-reliant, but also dependent on the greater whole of which they are part. Thus a holarchy is a hierarchy of self-regulating holons that function both as autonomous wholes and as dependent parts.

Here’s the video from the author of the book (July 2015)


Influences and comparable systems

Holacracy has been compared to sociocracy, a system of governance developed in the second half of the twentieth century. Sociocracy had a significant early influence during the incubation of Holacracy, though Holacracy has increasingly differentiated away from it since then.Sociocracy particularly inspired the development of the circle structure and governance processes (described in more detail later) within Holacracy. Holacracy is designed for organizations and fundamentally differentiates the roles of the organization from the people working in it.
In its emphasis on iterative governance, adaptive processes, and self-organization, Holacracy draws inspiration from agile software development principles and the lean manufacturing process. Holacracy is highly compatible with stakeholder theory as its board structure allows for multiple stakeholders to be represented in the governance of an organization and for multiple organizations with shared interests to be linked at the governance level.

Essential elements

Roles instead of job descriptions

The building blocks of Holacracy’s organizational structure are roles. Holacracy distinguishes between roles and the people who fill them, as one individual can hold multiple roles at any given time. A role is not a job description; its definition follows a clear format including a name, a purpose, optional “domains” to control, and accountabilities, which are ongoing activities to perform. Roles are defined by each circle —or team— via a collective governance process, and are updated regularly in order to adapt to the ever-evolving needs of the organization.

Circle structure

Holacracy structures the various roles in an organization in a system of self-organizing (but not self-directed) circles. Circles are organized hierarchically, and each circle is assigned a clear purpose and accountabilities by its broader circle. However, each circle has the authority to self-organize internally to best achieve its goals. Circles conduct their own governance meetings, assign members to fill roles, and take responsibility for carrying out work within their domain of authority. Circles are connected by two roles known as “lead link” and “rep link”, which sit in the meetings of both their circle and the broader circle to ensure alignment with the broader organization’s mission and strategy.

Governance process

Each circle uses a defined governance process to create and regularly update its own roles and policies. Holacracy specifies a structured process known as “integrative decision making” for proposing changes in governance and amending or objecting to proposals. This is not a consensus-based system, not even a consent-based system, but one that integrates relevant input from all parties and ensures that the proposed changes and objections to those changes are anchored in the roles’ needs (and through them, the organization’s needs), rather than people’s preferences or ego.

Operational process

Holacracy specifies processes for aligning teams around operational needs, and requires that each member of a circle fulfill certain duties in order to work efficiently and effectively together. In contrast to the governance process, which is collective and integrative, each member filling a role has a lot of autonomy and authority to make decisions on how to best achieve his or her goals. Some have described the authority paradigm in Holacracy as completely opposite to the one of the traditional management hierarchy; instead of needing permission to act or innovate, Holacracy gives blanket authority to take any action needed to perform the work of the roles, unless it is restricted via policies in governance or it involves spending some assets of the organization (money, intellectual property, etc.)[14][15] Holacracy is thus highly biased toward action and innovation: it defaults to autonomy and freedom, then uses internal processes to limit that autonomy when its use in a specific way turns out to be detrimental.
Holacracy specifies a tactical meeting process that every circle goes through usually on a weekly basis. This process includes different phases to report on relevant data, share updates on projects, and open discussions where any circle member can add to the agenda. A particular feature of this last phase, known as “triage”, is to focus discussions on the concrete next steps needed by the individual who added the agenda item to address his or her issue.  The intention is to avoid large, unproductive discussions dominated by the louder voices.


Could you thrive in an holacracy?

How can you Link Process with Strategy to significantly improve Performance?

Do the math and the Top Team are as confused as hell. Are we all doomed?

For instance Google searches reveal a plethora of various experts claiming dominion over the process truth. Is it any surprise that the top team are confused. Who should you believe about improving and connecting process, strategy and performance? How can you get it right with so much potential mis information?

Six Sigma – 20.2 Million
Business Process Management – 273 Million
Enterprise Architecture – 25.5 Million
Customer Experience Management – 95.7 Million

And what benefit is all that process based stuff doing for organization performance? Why is there this disconnect between process transformation (whatever your flavor), performance improvement and Strategic Intent?

Is the disconnect something fundamental about how we think of work? 

Think about how we manage and control most organizations. Yes you probably guessed it, with a model of doing business from the industrial revolution. Is it any great surprise that process and strategy are at best disconnected and at worst the cause of todays business issues as our corporate mindsets are simply not geared for the customer/digital age.

We have got to step up and move our thinking and practice into the 21st century.

So let’s scan the horizon and look at a few of the folks who seem to have it…

Some common themes emerge when you research the Zara, Zappos, Emirates, Virgin, Apple, Amazon, Disney type companies.

Their success is defined by ongoing performance improvements despite the ups and downs of economic cycles, terrorism, climate change and industrial disputes. Performance improvements measured by objective and tangible results including shareholder values, profitability, service delivery and cost control separate these guys from the rest. So what is it?

At first glance could it be the improvements in efficiency and effectiveness through classic process approaches such as Lean and Six Sigma. Might it be shaped by removing non value added activities and streamlining activity? Or given the apparent disconnect between process and strategy elsewhere, and interestingly the lack of attention in these leading organisations towards industrial age approaches, where is this performance kick coming from?

Latest Research
Research now suggests the performance benefit is derived directly by connecting the processes with the customer experience and onwards into strategic intent. Can it be so straightforward? So simple others could emulate this approach?

We can trace the origins to a 1997 speech by Steve Jobs “You gotta start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. Not the other way around.” Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon, actually calls their strategic mission as ‘working backwards’. Put the customer first, then figure out what you need to do to align to achieving a successful outcome.

We have distilled this approach into the CEMMethod so as to train others in the deployment, with two lead techniques to create this understanding – The Outside-In Strategic Matrix (OISM), and the Successful Customer Outcome Canvas (SCOC).

Through this mechanism you can link Process to Strategy in a scientific way. Ultimately there shouldn’t be anything that you do as an organization that isn’t linked to the Successful Customer Outcome and the Strategic intent. Disney refer to this alignment as ‘True North’.

Mature Outside-In companies have a Rewards and remuneration system that further reinforces their efforts. People can literally see their day to day contribution.

It might not be rocket science and that is part of its virtue. We can all orientate our thinking and doing in the same way to unify strategy and process.


References:

Steve Jobs talk in 1997 – https://youtu.be/GnO7D5UaDig

Outside-In
http://www.amazon.com/Outside-Putting-Customers-Center-Business/dp/0547913982/httpwwwstevet-20

Do you want to get in the picture? Join us soon at a session in a city near you…


Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success

Certified Process Professional Masters & Champions (CPP-Master) Program

An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries.
The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service.
Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.

Become a qualified CPP-Master and demonstrate your professionalism http://www.bpgroup.org/book-class.html

Top teams? Results? bah, humbug.

What do the top teams want to see? What do they crave?

Answers on a postcard please…

Seriously though it is results. if what you are doing in the organisation does not contribute to improving the bottom line consistently you are dead in the water. All those fancy projects, training events, greenbelts qualified etc. mean nought if there is no apparent delivery to the bottom line.

Are you projects contributing to the bottom line or are you simply content to come in on time, to budget and achieve the deliverables? Are you content to deliver even more training to the workforce without establishing the true value of the work you do?

And when we say the bottom line contribution we should mean winning the triple crown – lowering costs, improving service and growing revenues. Winning the triple crown in other words.

So self audit time…

The new management approach of Holacracy under the microscope

You may have heard of this popular approach emerging from the likes of Google and Zappos so let’s bring the story up to date with this insightful talk that tells you whether this stuff is for you, and more importantly how we can implement holacracy in our own organisations…


The Q&A session starts at 28 minutes 20 seconds

Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success

Certified Process Professional Masters & Champions (CPP-Master) Program

An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries.
The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service.
Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.

Become a qualified CPP-Master and demonstrate your professionalism http://www.bpgroup.org/book-class.html