At this point in our three phase process; Insight, Innovation and Implementation, we have taken a look at the environment that the company has been operating in and its affect on the performance of the company.
The old adage is; “Hindsight is 20/20”, meaning it is easier to see mistakes by looking back at what happened to create them. It is also very important to use a process to assess these past efforts rather than just rehashing past issues.
Our approach is to use a tool we refer to as WITH³, which stands for:
What In The Heck Happened Here?
It is a 2×2 matrix chart that plots level of organization around a specific past activity (was it planned or random) versus execution (controlled or out of control). What we have found is that each of the four quadrants created by this comparison reveals aspects of the company that are very important to its future direction for growth. Examples might include a company that engages in a number of planned activities but typically has them run out of control suggests they may be strategic but not organizationally effective while a company that reacts to random opportunities and manages them well may need more strategic planning but is also very effective under pressure. In depth use of this tool can even point to departmental interactions that are effective or not and where the true operating success of the company actually stems from in many cases.
It is typical that in reviewing past efforts we see that the company actually exhibits multiple personalities depending on many factors. Timing, size of the project, complexity, creativity, existing operating capacity of the company, etc. all play an influencing role that can often be identified in this exercise. As we have noted in past articles, we often find that the first steps to accelerated growth come from past efforts that were shelved or discarded too early. Revisiting them not lonely helps us understand and identify the capabilities and competencies of the company under the day to day pressures of running the business but also qualifies real opportunities to be revisited but with a more focused, different approach.
You’ll notice that we only delve into the details of past efforts after the organization has expressed its opinions on Influencing Factors and Hurdles/Roadblocks. We have learned that far too often perception is not reality. Defining the existing perceptions before stepping back to assess the realities allows us to compare the two and gain additional insight into the depth and quality of communications within the organization. It also has significant influence on the next step, The Realty Profile.
This is the point where we stop being the probers and listeners and put together our profile based on what we have seen in the company, including all the beauty marks and the warts. That’s why it’s called a reality profile, and not a perception profile. We will compare the perceptions revealed in the first five steps to the past effort details and offer our insights and recommendations on how to proceed.
So now that we’ve caught your interest let’s talk about an example Reality Profile in the next article. As always feel free to contact us if you have any questions or comments.
Gary Gauthier Chief Insight Coach 248-672-1943
Dave Gingrich Chief Innovation 248-420-7723
Implementation Coach
Your first question, if you have been following our progression through the general steps we take in our process, should be “how does this differ from the last post which discussed Identifying Influencing Factors”?
These are easily confused because in some cases there is overlap. One of the easiest ways to understand the difference between the two exercises is that the Hurdles/Roadblocks are often the cause of, or the result of, the Influencing Factors. One example would be the size of the company being the Influencing Factor and an inability to access foreign markets as the Hurdle. Another would be a lack of communication between management and employees being the Hurdle/Roadblock with the Influencing Factor being a closed dictatorial management style.
The steps we have been charting follow a logical progression leading up to Value Creation Associates presenting what we refer to as a Reality Profile of the company to management as the key basis for developing strategies going forward. Now you should start to get a feel for why we call this the Insight Phase.
Other examples of Hurdles/Roadblocks can include issues such as personnel turnover, inability to gather timely and accurate competitive intelligence, departmental political battles, lack of strategy, lack of planning, too much strategy, too much planning, way too much analysis, limited reach to markets due to location or shipping costs and the list goes on and on. Much like the Influencing Factors exercise, doing an assessment by department is often the best and most insightful approach.
OK, Now you are asking yourself what are going to do with all this information? It adds depth to our understanding of your company and opens up internal awareness and communication. It is a critical step in our ability to accurately indentify the real capabilities and competencies of your company that can be used to meet undiscovered needs to provide extra value to customers.
The next step in this “discovery” stage of the process is reviewing past efforts to grow the business; successful, unsuccessful and in many cases, most importantly, incomplete. We often find that companies have in fact identified real opportunities but due to Influencing Factors and or Hurdles/Roadblocks they shelve them or walk away from them too early. Without going through this stage to establish the baseline data, the next major phases of our process, Innovation and Implementation, cannot be effective.
So join us soon to understand more about delving into Past Efforts and how we can gain valuable insight from history.
Call: Gary Gauthier-Chief Insight Coach 248-672-1943
OR
Call: Dave Gingrich-Chief Innovate/Implement Coach 248-420-7723
TO SCHEDULE A FREE PRIVATE PHONE CONVERSATION
Now that we have a sense of why you have decided to work with Value Creation Associates, it is time to delve into the factors that resulted in the existing condition of your company. In a broad sense, we refer to these as the “Influencing Factors” and there are a few ways to uncover them. But first what do we mean when we say influencing factors?
These factors are those outside and inside circumstances that set boundaries, place limits, offer opportunities, and create the conditions the company must deal with as it seeks ongoing success.
One of the best ways we’ve found to approach this is by addressing these factors as seen through the eyes of your employees and by various disciplines or departments.
Some examples might be: what does the engineering team believe are the key influencing factors? They may say the customer specs are too tight or the package required for the design is too small. Quality may say the equipment is too old or incapable of holding tolerances or the material supplied varies too much. The manufacturing floor personnel may say the lighting in the building is too dark or the tooling is worn out. Purchasing may say the suppliers are always late and the customers’ schedules are unrealistic. You get the point. We are trying to paint a picture of the conditions the company is faced to operate under both from a perceived and a factual basis. In many cases we’ll find the list is long but when boiled down to truly influential factors can be a real eye opener.
Allowing the personnel in each department to make their own list, in some cases with very little restriction on what can be mentioned, can be a real learning experience. The real question is often whether the personnel feel comfortable sharing their thoughts with management. We’ll need to assess this with you to help make sure the information we gather is more than just the gripe of the day versus the actual longer term details.
Once we have this list of factors we’ll then discus each in detail to determine the source, the impacts and the results created by its influence. In some cases we will not be able to change them but once identified and understood be better able to deal with them. Those that can be changed will be identified and contribute to the strategies we help establish to move the company forward.
In our next article we’ll talk about Hurdles and /Roadblocks – Real and Perceived. Knowing or being able to determine the difference can be crucial to breaking new ground in performance and growth of the company.
Call today to begin our process FREE.
Value Creation Associates LLC
Gary Gauthier-Chief Insight Coach 248-672-1943
Dave Gingrich-Chief Innovation/ Implementation Coach 248-446-2626
Why wait any longer to begin your future prosperity? A simple call to Value Creation Associates LLC for a complementary FREE consultation can make an enormous positive difference to your bottom line by the end of 2010.
Our unique 3 phase approach is guaranteed to produce results fast. We begin by “baselining” your present situation and documenting just how you got here. Then we develop a strengths and weaknesses matrix. After thorough discussion and brainstorming, we develop a thorough review of market potentials for either new products or new customers or both.
Generally Innovating new products for current customers is easiest. We’ll help your thoughts and maybe ask your customers how and where we might be able to help them grow through the use of your existing capabilities. This virtual partnership approach develops a strong sense of Team and is very productive right out of the box.
Our next activity will be to take our skills matrix and look into the future and into new markets to devise a range of potential new opportunities that will be evaluated and ranked for both size and time potential for return.
Once a definite direction is selected and prioritized, we assist with Implementation by developing a list of whatever skills and training might be needed to fully realize the desired outcome. Our final help is to develop a fully internalized process to conduct these three phases continuously.
Call today to begin our process FREE.
Value Creation Associates LLC
Gary Gauthier-Chief Insight Coach 248-672-1943
Dave Gingrich-Chief Innovation/ Implementation Coach 248-446-2626
After we have completed the steps required to assess the level of insight you have into your own company and the outside world in which it functions daily, our next step will be to work toward establishing “Clarity of Purpose”.
This defines what you are really trying to do with your company and how Value Creation Associates can assist you to get there. We all know how easy it is to get caught up in the day to day grind of running the business. It is exhausting in many cases in good times and worse in the economic climate we are now facing. It is crucial that we take a step back away from these daily tasks and put time and effort into visualizing the future state of the company. This comes from our definition of what we want the company to become and where we want it to go.
As the tag line from Albert Einstein on our business cards reads; “Insanity; doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results”.
If we spend 80% of our time attending the daily needs of the company and the other 20% looking back on what might have been there is obviously no time left to chart the course for change in the future.
It truly does turn in to a rat race when we are pulled and tugged in every direction daily to get through the day; stuck as a slave to reaction rather than plotting the course to be proactive. This may sound a lot easier than it really is but stop and think about it; when was the last time you and your staff actually spent quality time doing any type of assessment on what is driving the company today and how it can be changed? My bet is not recently and not with any preparation to maximize the outcome potential. The use of outside experienced advisors such as Value Creation Associates can help turn this scenario around.
To be effective it takes a real commitment on the part of the management team to be open to outsiders evaluating the company’s performance and the organization’s effectiveness. There is little doubt that some will have difficulty doing this but it is not our intent to point fingers at anyone, all of your team contributed in some way to the current state both for the better and the worse.
Your company must have the courage to be realistic about the situation. Facts, data and reality must replace conjecture, opinion and speculation. It is unfortunately entirely normal for a company that has exhibited some degree of success to go through a period when it becomes too introspective and isolated from the outside world because it is focusing on the effort require to maintain the success.
When this inward focus happens the organization becomes vulnerable to competitors who are expending the effort to stay actively engaged with the needs and actions of their customers’ businesses.
So what’s next?
Now that we’ve contemplated a dose of reality, in the next article we’ll discuss one of the beginning stages of strategic planning; “Influencing Factors”, what internal and external actions, events, pressures are the most influential in the success and ongoing health of your organization.
Until then, we urge you to call us at:
Value Creation Associates LLC
Gary Gauthier: Chief Insight Coach 248-672-1943
OR
Dave Gingrich Chief Innovate/Implement Coach 248-446-2626
Is it just me or does it seem we business owners spend way too much time, like maybe a month or three, developing a detailed business plan and budget for next year (and maybe a few years after that).
It also seems that by January’s end, the plan is either obsolete or no longer thought to be possible, and we have already blown the budget. Why do we go through such a futile effort every year when we know it won’t do any good anyway?
A better way to operate a business might be to spend this scarce time and energy creating extra value for your customer by following a robust process that institutionalizes the constant identification and evaluation of new products, services and niches for your business. Remember that only those companies that continuously increase their value to their customers more than their competitors will survive an economic downturn such as the one we are in today. Creating this increasing value for your customer is the ONLY way to prosperity.
REMEMBER IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CUT YOUR WAY TO PROSPERITY!
Business papers are full of sad stories of a company, the best maker of widgets in the world, that went bankrupt from an intense focus on narrow excellence rather than striving to diversify the business by finding alternative uses for unique and highly valuable skills already part of the business’ portfolio.
Our program starts by teaching businesses how to do careful, in depth introspection to determine just what skills, talents and passions are present TODAY as a baseline for going forward. This INSIGHT then forms the detailed starting point for a process that uses these skills to INNOVATE alternative customers, industries, and products or services that can be launched quickly and inexpensively to broaden the business’ revenue stream and fatten the bottom line.
It may be seem strange that we insist on looking inward before the any look outside to determine what market opportunities may be present that can be exploited with existing capability. Indeed without a detailed skill inventory, any outward look is futile because it is impossible to be selective when there is no agreement on the best target for your present weapon because you don’t know what that weapon is.
You could be trying to kill an elephant with a pee shooter or a mouse with a howitzer. Both are exercises in frustration and sheer nonsense.
Call us to find out how we can assist your introspection TODAY so your 2010 can be better than your 2009!
Call Dave at 248-446-2626
or Gary at 248-672-1943
CALL NOW!
Do you really know what you think you know?
Far too often your business’ managers are unaware they are using obsolete, or incorrect, information about your customers, the markets you deal in and your competitors.
In many cases your management team has focused inward with such intensity on improving the performance of your business within the building you have become disconnected with the influences outside the building. Often you are operating under incomplete or false information and making critical business decisions that are flawed from the start.
As noted in our last article: “The First Step To Value Creation: Internal Awareness” it is critical to invest the effort, time and energy necessary to stay up to date with what is really happening out there in the “outside world”.
This not only assures important decisions are made with accurate information but also serves to create new lines of communication and stronger business and personal relationships that can play a vital role in your future success. After all business is always person to person.
Two important aspects of any piece of information are credibility and timing. We use the example that it may be more important to rely on information from an entry level engineer received yesterday than information from the general manager 6 months ago. One method to gage both aspects of validity and timeliness is by confirming the details with multiple sources. To do so obviously requires having a number of relationships within your customer’s business, your markets and your competitors. In most cases these take time and patience to develop. Every company should have a contact plan in place to support this important effort.
The internet has opened a whole new channel for staying abreast of what’s happening outside your walls. This is not to say it should be the primary or sole source of information. Personal relationships should be the backbone of your intelligence network.
The internet can also be quite useful for confirming information, seeking entry points and background information to new opportunities and staying aware of competitors’ activities.
We’ll cover the next element of our value creation process “The need to focus – clarity of purpose.” in our next post. Watch for it soon.
As always your comments are welcome.
If you want to explore these concepts further, please call Gary Gauthier at 248-672-1943 or Dave Gingrich at 248-446-2626.
When we talk about gaining “Insight”, we mean researching, openly discussing and reaching agreement on both internal and external knowledge of your company and it’s environment.
Developing internal knowledge involves first gaining a detailed understanding of the company’s history leading to the current state. In other words: “Where are we right now and How did we get here?
The external knowledge is an understanding of what you and your company know about your customers, the market places you deal in and your competitors. To gain this knowledge it can ONLY follow the internal knowledge development process. You gotta agree on where you are BEFORE you can plan a route to where you wish to go.
Value Creation Involves External Focus ONLY After Introspection
In many cases what we find are companies that have reacted to outside influences to become who they are today instead of developing and following both short and long term strategies to influence their own destiny. An in depth assessment of the company’s history and evolution can be very useful in identifying critical junctures that have shaped the nature of the current business.
Introspection Is Difficult And Often Emotional
Analysis of the actions your company took at these junctures, through the use of our WITH³ process, can highlight strengths, weaknesses and other key factors that influence and shape the business. This creates your internal awareness profile. This process can be straight forward but more often than not can also be difficult due to changes in personnel, conflicting opinions and a general difficulty with recollecting the past, especially in the areas of poor performance or failure.
These are the critical areas of introspection essential to your future success with our process. No matter how painful this process becomes, the information gained can be critical to your company’s future success. The more open and frank your organization is about its past, the more knowledgeable we all become in identifying areas for action for the future.
We’ll discuss the external situation analysis in our next post “What do we really know about the outside world or do we really know what we think we know?”
As always your comments are welcome.
If you want to explore these concepts further, please call Gary Gauthier at 248-672-1943 or Dave Gingrich at 248-446-2626.
Research shows some of the biggest, most successful companies were started during an economic downturn. Some of these were IBM, GE, GM, Chrysler, and General Foods.
(True, some have failed spectacularly during the past 80 years, but that is another subject for the future, but that is my point that everyday value creation is critical.)
In fact, if you give the subject some thought, when would it be a better time to start providing problem solutions than when there are so many problems that require solutions?
As we have pointed out in past posts, NO business can prosper WITHOUT providing products or services that provide superior value to the marketplace. Each of these outputs of production MUST excel at solving a very specific customer problem. The key area critical to success is to determine the highest value solution that you can provide because your business is unique and is THE ONLY business that has the ability to offer your unique solution to your customer. The easiest way to determine what value the customer needs the most is to ask open questions and listen carefully to the answers.
Please leave us your comments so we can tune our posts to your needs. That way we can provide maximum value for your time and attention.
Thanks for following our advice.
Contact us at 248-446-2626 with further questions or needs.
Here is a favorite quote from Napoleon Hill. Enjoy!
BEFORE WORRYING ABOUT HOW TO GET MORE PAY,
TRY THINKING HOW YOU CAN DO A BETTER JOB AND YOU MAY NOT NEED TO WORRY.
When you devote your time and efforts to doing your best at every job you do, instead of developing persuasive arguments why you should be paid more for what you do, the pay raises will take care of themselves. When you approach every job enthusiastically in a spirit of friendly cooperation, you distinguish yourself from the vast majority of people whose primary concerns include breaks, benefits, paychecks, and quitting time. Don’t complain about your status or your pay to anyone, not even to your best friend. Word will eventually get back to the boss. Which type of worker would you rather have on your team: one who complains constantly or one who is always helpful, cheerful, and reliable? This positive message is brought to you by the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Visit us at http://www.naphill.org.
We encourage you to forward this to friends and family. They can sign up for this free service at our web site. If you would like to stop receiving these thoughts, please go to http://www.naphill.org.
We are constantly amazed by the number of companies we find that work so very hard to become textbook examples of a commodity; something readily available from a number of sources. They assume that if they do everything their customers ask them to do their future is secure. It couldn’t be farther from the truth.
They spend a significant portion of their customer “face time” with their customers’ purchasing department personnel developing relationships rather than engaged in broad communications to the whole organization to uncover opportunities to develop unique value. They find themselves constantly struggling to reduce their product selling price (and cost) when it should come as no surprise that commodities are driven by the customer to be the lowest price through competitive bidding.
The reality is that although personal relationships are certainly very important to establish and maintain, it is the ability to differentiate and create value that leads to growth and longevity. Most purchasing department personnel have a goal to make virtually everything they buy a commodity to reduce the price, increase quality, broaden availability and reduce lead times.
So the same people most businesses focus their energy on are the people intent on driving them to be a commodity.
So what do we mean by differentiation and value and how are they developed? Early in my career I spent a few years dealing in “commodity” products for the automotive industry. There were numerous sources capable of providing the same capabilities and products. It was a cost reduction war purposely developed by the customer and bought into by the majority of the supply base.
So how did we differentiate ourselves and gain market share?
At the time, scheduling logistics were handled by the production control department of the customer. This was a department separate from purchasing, with hundreds of people, whose job it was to assure the assembly lines were never short of parts. The focus on quality had just begun and the ability to provide quality parts was a major requirement from the customer. Rather than just complying with the production schedules as they were released, we educated ourselves on the ordering process from the assembly plants all the way back to the production control departments. We were one of the first companies in the industry to create a department whose only job was to visit and stay in close contact with the personnel at the plants who were responsible for calculating and managing the flow of parts to the assembly lines.
How did this allow us to create value and increase our market share?
We understood the dynamics from start to finish on how our parts were used and controlled and through our visibility to the manufacturing plants we were also aware of when, where and how our competitors had quality or delivery problems. Having this information we were able to selectively build inventory on competitors’ troubled parts and ship our alternate whenever an emergency and the immediate need for another source arose.
We grew 15% in one year simply from this ability and knowledge!
There are numerous ways to differentiate and create value if the business has the will and commitment to do so. The nature of the conversation with the customer must change to be successful. It needs to move from personal relationship building and discussions on day to day issues to an ongoing open dialogue on how to improve the performance of the customers’ business, not yours.
Your business will naturally benefit from the superior customer value you provide by doing so.
The moral of the story:
Spend at least as much time understanding your customers’ business as you do your own and find and fill the needs they are not expressing on a daily basis.
Next: How to develop the dialogue and create the environment for successful fact finding.
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For more information, call Gary Gauthier at 248-672-1943.
