April 2, 2009

BE DiFFERENT Practices #2, #3 and #4 - Renew your Organization

This is the third instalment of the series that explains how to renew your organization for growth and prosperity.

BE DiFFERENT Practice #2 - Focus. Focus. Focus.
The next step is to develop a number of objectives and action plans that enable your strategic renewal plan. Avoid the pitfall of many organizations that think this is a brainstorming exercise where the more objectives you can define the better off you will be. Not the case. This BE DiFFERENT requires that you define the minimum number of objectives that will allow you to achieve 80% of your renewal strategy. You need to apply your scarce resource only to the issues that will yield renewal success so figure out a handful of things to do - the critical few - and get on with them.

BE DiFFERENT Practice #3 - Modify Your Business Processes
Once you have created your renewal strategic game plan, it is critical that you analyze your business processes and either modify them or completely re-invent them to be compatible with your new plan.

Don’t assume your existing processes will work; they were created to execute your old plan not the new one. The reason why this is so important is that you will be looking for operating costs to cut and unless you change the way you do business, across-the -board expense reductions might negatively impact the way you deal with your customers - product fulfillment, quality of customer service, maintenance services and so on.

Strategy drives Process: this is the BE DiFFERENT renewal process.

BE DiFFERENT Practice #4 - Cut the Crap
Strategic renewal is just as much about NOT doing things as it is about choosing a new direction and embarking on the journey.

Once you have determined your renewal path, you need to rid yourself of all activities that are now irrelevant. I call this practice CUT the Crap: eliminating all resource consuming things in your organization that are not relevant to your new plan. Most organizations have difficulty doing this; they relentlessly hang on to the comfortable activities of the past and wonder why they can’t make headway on their new course.

The fact is, you don’t have the bandwidth to continue with the past and adopt a new set of priorities for the future. Assign a ‘Cut the Crap’ champion for your team and charge them with the task of cleansing your internal environment of things that are not consistent with your renewal plan.

Here are some examples of crap: products, services, customers, mass advertising, training programs on off-strategy topics, technology projects that can be postponed and discretionary line items associated with the past.

Stay tuned for more. Cheers, Roy Osing

Blogs in the BE DiFFERENT Practice Series:
Introduction
Practice #1 - Renew your Strategy
Practices #2, #3 and #4 - Focus, Modify Business Processes and Cut the Crap
Practices #5 and #6 - Be Anal about Execution and Set Cost Objectives
Practices #7 and #8 - Plan on the Run and Customerize your Marketing
Practices #9 and #10 - Dazzle your Customers and Sell Intimate Relationships

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Posted 4.2.09 at 05:12 pm by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment