“Eli Goldratt’s work (Theory of Constraints) has enormous benefits for organizations that have difficulty struggling through the complexity of identifying its constraint, figuring out how to exploit the constraint and align all its internal “pull” and performance systems to the constraint.

I’m of the opinion that some organizations have already incorporated his theories and approaches into their thinking, but further improvements were needed after the benefits of TOC were realized. It is a valid argument that Goldratt’s work would be a lot more widely applied had it been translated into tools and roadmaps.

From a marketing perspective, Lean and Six Sigma have more certifications and tools than does TOC. However, it can equally be argued that tools make things easy; and making a change happen (especially shifting mindsets as TOC does) requires hard work. Again, shifting a mindset is not easy; it requires hard THINKING work. Some times it is richly rewarding when we engage the conceptual maps rather than look for an easy implementation aimed at instant gratification.

TOC thinking is already embedded in the fabric of the “pull” system in my current organization. There is a very useful reference by Spector, E. (2006). How Constraints Management enhances Lean and Six Sigma. Supply Chain Management Review. Jan-Feb, 2006. (www.scmr.com).

Spector (2006) compares the guiding principles, focus and primary objectives of Six Sigma, Lean and Constraints Management. When discussing the guiding principles, he argues that Six Sigma aims to reduce variation, Lean aims to eliminate waste, and Constraints Management aims to manage constraints.

As for focus and primary objective, he argues that Six Sigma focuses on the problem with the primary objective as reliability and predictability; Lean focuses on the Process with the primary objective to achieve Simplification; and Constraints Management focuses on the System with the primary objective of focusing on What Matters Most.

In conclusion, it really depends on where an organization is in its evolution, and where it now chooses to focus.”

“Risk planning and mitigation is an important role in today’s environment. The impacts of natural disasters (e.g. Katrina) have raised general concern about corporate and governmental preparedness in such situations. Relying on “documentation” versus “experience” both has their merits.

I think that “documentation” is needed for coordinating rudimentary tasks (e.g. locating resources, allocating resources, and how to contact resources) and is often the most time consuming. However, complex problem solving can only be performed by people with experience and judgment. I recently coordinated the collation of my present facility’s preparedness for the unfortunate event of different types of disasters and I was surprised to learn the amount of rudimentary work involved before responses can even be developed or problems be solved. I also think that a number of factors will contribute to preferences for “dealing with it when it happens” or “pre-planned documentation”.

First, an aging demographic implies that many of the experienced employees who are capable of “dealing with it when it happens” will be retired. A business case for knowledge transfer from retiring employees to newer employees through pre-planned documentation in this situation would make sense.

Second, IT legacy systems is a tough one because it is not always considered “sexy”, and it is hard to compile a business case for decommissioning foundational technology platforms; yet if these “crash”, it still requires a base code specialist to trouble-shoot and fix. Maintaining a network of outsourced capabilities rather than a comprehensive pre-planned documentation I believe is more prudent in this case.

Third, if the business or technological context has fundamentally changed, it would be hard to argue that experienced individuals will know how to respond to emergencies or catastrophes when many of the cause and effect variables have altered. In this situation, it is prudent to rehearse a response to a simulated catastrophe.

Fourth, it is a high risk situation when various resources / departments who have never had interaction with each other in the past (under normal business conditions) now suddenly have to collaborate in the event of a disaster or catastrophe. Most of the wasted time in this catastrophic situation would be surfacing from the chaos of trying to learn how to communicate with each other.

The trouble with pre-planned documentation is that it potentially could be developed and forgotten, sitting away somewhere on a shelf collecting dust. However, with simulated disasters, like fire drills, it helps to make the experience “real” for managers and employees, and a post-drill analysis of how long it took for everyone to clear the building, how long it took to confirm that everyone has been accounted for, and how long it took to assess the damage, etc., makes the risks and vulnerability of the lack of preparedness very real to managers. Just some pragmatic thoughts.”

“Execution is probably the hardest part of strategy. To quote Keeman and Jackson’s insert in “The Hard Side of Change Management – HBR”, two of three transformation initiatives fail because it was poorly executed.

Concepts are always sexier than doing, and people keep looking for the miracle cure; but quite simply, execution is hard work! One thought here is that strategy development should be designed within the context of strategy execution. In other words, at every stage in the analysis of strategic responses to industry challenges and opportunities, executives should assess the level and probability that each strategic option could be executed given the availability of resources and cultural receptivity to the change required.

The subsequent thought here is that “executors” should be part of the strategy formulation dialogue. On a side note, I participated in a workshop that included a debate on a question posed by the Gary Hamel (author of “Leading the Revolution”): “is it better to have a perfect strategy poorly executed or a poor strategy perfectly executed?”.

The dialogue reinforced Stephen Covey’s analogy that “it is better to climb a ladder slowly, and once you reach the top appreciate that it is leaning against the right wall”. In other words, perfect execution of a poorly devised strategy could quickly sink a company. But, the counter-argument was that a company with an “execution” culture can quickly alter course when it believes it is heading down the wrong path. Another thought is that execution relies almost exclusively on an organization’s culture of accountability.

If people are not held accountable for delivering results, then “execution” will not stick. An approach to build a discipline of accountability is to include “execution” as a leadership trait that counts for 50% of an employee’s overall performance rating. Lastly, only once a culture of accountability for delivering results takes root should the focus on project management tools be shared.

Quite often, an organization will first resort to project management tools without first considering its culture of accountability for delivering results. Tools may assist execution, but will not drive execution without a discipline of results-orientation. A useful reference for strategy execution is Bossidy, L & Charan, R. (2002). Execution. The Discipline of Getting Things Done.”

In my view,  motivation is the drive (energy) to act. The source of this energy could be either negative (e.g. I’ll lose my job) or positive (I’ll get the reward / promotion).

Inspiration on the other hand is the drive to contribute to something that is much larger than oneself. The source of this energy could be a belief system (that is not self-serving) or the ultimate desire to leave a legacy. Searching for the source of inspiration is often a journey of life-long reflection and willingness to experiment with multiple experiences in order to reflect on them. I think that the internal anxiety associated with mid-life crisis is the realization that death is half a life away and that one is not living the purposeful life that fully leverages one’s natural gifts and talents.

I started to reflect on my posting after watching the movie: Invictus – about President Nelson Mandela and the captain of a rugby team (Francois Pinnaar) inspiring a nation-building during the Rugby World Cup in South Africa in 1995. I was very much a part of that experience still living in SA at that time.

Like inspired members of a sustainable high performing organization, this team became more than a just a rugby team; they became a symbol of pride and unity for an entire country. A true success story, this movie shows us how individuals in a team or organization given low chance to succeed or win can truly transform into a high performing organization or team when its members are inspired by a cause or a legacy.

Effective leaders identify and tap into this source of inspiration and help its team members develop a self-concept or belief that they can achieve more than what they think is possible. By no means is this the only thing that effective leaders do; they should also be getting the right people on the bus, have the right business strategy, etc; but the necessary recipe for high performance is inspiration. Management text books do not cover this; at worst they wrap it up into motivation.

My thoughts are that capital is flowing towards where it can optimize economies of scale for cost competitive products to take advantage of lower input costs (i.e. labor in emerging economies).  And economies of scope where most of the investment is in capital equipment (e.g. in N. America where labor is relatively more expensive) and where there is a captive market for high value high margin products.

I believe that transferring skills and best practices to emerging markets is part of the natural evolution of globalization and of any emerging country’s economy leveraging their cost advantage to enter the product value chain. As some economists argue, emerging countries can “leapfrog” to the upper part of the product value chain and compete directly with the “sending” countries from which they received the knowledge, experience and best practice.

Regardless of where any country is positioned on the product value chain, I believe that capital will flow in any capacity (capital intensive or labor intensive / high tech or low tech) to where there is a captive market for high value or cost competitive products. For me, competition is the by-product of the transfer of knowledge, experience and best practice. This is a good thing because it forces the “senders” to evolve their practices, which in turn can potentially add new types of goods and services to the global market. This is a dillemma for American global corporations making decisions about capital allocations in different countries.

Someone quoted to me once a statistic he heard on a National Public Radio (NPR) show where it argued that, regardless of off-shoring, 90% of the global value chain profits go back to the country where the product was innovated (and legally protected). I have no reason to disbelieve his interpretation of the show’s discussion, and if true, it it does demonstrate reward for continuous innovation even if it does not present a favorable employment picture in the country that was the source of the innovation. 

However, I believe that the ultimate purpose should be a more efficient global supply chain. But, this utopia is only possible when all markets are open. As we know, this is not the case.

Many contributors agued in favor of a CMO. Octavio Bellesta argued that  its role is increasingly supported and encouraged in managing the transformational processes of change, working in tandem with Human Resources, the CFO and Public Relations to: (1) minimize the repercussions of the change process on the organizational climate;  (2) ascertain from a risk management perspective the financial issues relevant to transformational projects; and (3) to articulate an effective communicational strategy.

These are good points. As Allison Murray argues, such a CMO could also be great at recognizing resistance and helping others to psychologically transition through the change. I especially like her reference to flooding the grapevine with the right kind of juicy gossip, communications, conversational techniques, etc.

Storytelling is such an effective tool to influence the grapevines to transform the hallway and social conversations from “victim” to “victor” in the change process. I remember reading a book (Springboard) about how story-telling in a change management strategy can ignite action. Identifying and preparing change agents to influence the story-telling is very important. Diffusion techniques can help, built on the work by Everette Rogers.

However, it was Sue McPhail that raised the most important dillemma, in my view, about why this essential service did not reside or emerge within HR in the first place since they already report, in most cases, directly to the CEO. Sue eventually supported a CMO in her post, arguing that Change Management requires a multi-dimensional. There are plent of articles and blogs on HR’s schizophrenic relationship between its transactional present and its strategic possibilities. No doubt our all-time favorite FastCompany article “why we hate HR” accelerated this introspection.

Nevertheless, regardless of the HR profession neglecting or incapable of performing Change Management deliverables, would it not be more prudent to change the focus of HR rather than create a separate entity to deliver this service? It is generally perceived by many that HR does not drive this service, but I am sure that there are examples of corporations where HR already drives this service very effectively.

The challenge with creating a separate entity is that it in itself creates a level of beauracracy (it has to be staffed with overhead) that has to still build partnerships with HR, PMO, the Line functions, etc and face all the typical envious political boundaries similarly to other newly created centralized functions in the past, like Knowledge Management, etc. Another risk of an emerging CMO is its overlapping boundaries with a PMO. Perhaps it makes more sense to incorporate Change Management competencies into a PMP rather than again create a level of beauracracy that unavoidably wants to control Change Mangement activities and then expect Business Units and other functions to complete template reports to make the CMO look good.

Change, and its effects and counter-effects, is so complex on both superficial and deeply psychological levels. Centralized implies control. The type of change that leads to true psychological commitment to the transformation process cannot be controlled.

Nevertheless, if CMOs are inevitable then I believe its natural place is within the Strategy Office with Corporate Communications, PMO and Human Resources reporting into it.”

Some morale boosting events in tough times do not pass the “fickle” test and is hardly remembered by employees as the reason they felt fulfilled in their career with that company. The true test of organizational character and morale in my view is not in good times; but rather in tough and turbulent times. It is the way that employees engage with each other to overcome obstacles that truly breads passion, purpose and loyalty.

The cognitive dissonance associated with fickle morale boosting events during tough times is synonymous with “quick fix” mentalities that quite easily accept that there is pill for every conceivable mental problem out there. It is the culture of instant gratification that reinforces the belief that there can be reward without pain. Scott Peck wrote: “Life is difficult. Get used to it”. Similarly, growth is synonymous with pain. Anyone telling you differently is trying to sell you something – in most cases “drugs” – that only masks the pain. When used appropriately, corporate events can reinforce morale; but it can’t create morale.

For example, a comedian or stage play that customizes their act to the hallway conversations that they’ve heard in an organization can leverage humor to help employees laugh about their work challenges and dynamics, and is a very useful form of catharsis to relieve frustration. A team building session that helps employees to reflect on the strengths of each other is a useful experience to help build further collaboration when it is very easy to blame each other for the environment that organizations find themselves in today. So, events that aim to distract or mask the tough times is doomed to fail to build morale. But, events that induces internal reflection (whether humorously or seriously) can lead to further employee understanding and engagement.”

Many organizations have made major efforts to align business units with core strategies and wider company goals. However, a recent study of 79 international organizations, 70% had revenues exceeding $11 billion US, shows a deficit in business acumen among business leaders. These are the people who are vested in making value creation decisions for their firms. The reasons for the deficit are many. One contributing element is the over-emphasis on soft skills in diagnostic tools and the capabilities of human resources professionals who are preoccupied with organizational climate. We look at the definition of the business acumen competency, its implications and best practices for improving this capability.

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Effective Change Management is about accelerating the adoption of Change in an organization. Conventional approaches to change management attempt to move all employees through the change with the same approach and methodology by first managing endings and losses, creating strategies for moving through the neutral zone, and then implementing strategies for winning in the new “beginning”. In reality however, people are characteristically different in their agility and responsiveness to Change, regardless of which step they are in any change management process. More importantly, managers spend so much time responding to the resistance to change from a few laggards, and with time constraints they become frustrated when the change is not adopted as quickly as they had hoped. But, using techniques used by marketing and sociology re-searchers, managers can accelerate the adoption of change initiatives by differentiating their communication to target opinion leaders as a medium to persuade the majority in the organization.

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A recent study was conducted by the Human Re-sources Planning Society in partnership with the Institute for Corporate Productivity. It concluded that the HR function is not reacting fast enough to the strategic challenges related to organizational growth, and that growth is changing the meaning of what it means to contribute strategically. The study also pointed out that in addition to talent management and leadership development, the HR function must dramatically increase their external focus on markets, customers, and news ways to serve them. Implementing Shared Services, outsourcing payroll and benefits administration, and the implementation of HR information technology systems offers enormous potential for automating a lot of that administrative type work that HR professionals com-plain hinders them from making such strategic contributions, and do tend to place data at your finger-tips. But, once implemented, the challenge becomes one of elevating the capabilities of the HR function to engage the business and leverage the data for analysis and strategic engagement.

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