Management Archives - Page 8 of 12

Five Key Considerations for Successful Project Management – Operational Excellence

by sincera | Sep 14, 2013 | Business, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

Who is a Project Manager? A simple answer would be: Any person who has a team and is expected to deliver an output, given a set of requirements. A typical Project Manager is often under pressure from the management, customers, third party vendors and the team members.

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or deliverables), undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast with business as usual (or operations), which are repetitive, permanent, or semi-permanent functional activities to produce products or services. In practice, the management of these two systems is often quite different, and as such requires the development of distinct technical skills and management strategies. (Wiki)

Successful Project Management entails achieving all the project goals while remaining within the constraints of scope, time, quality and budget. It is not an easy job – but definitely a very fulfilling and rewarding one. A Project Manager needs to balance many aspects carefully to achieve the project objectives. From my many years of managing projects and project teams globally, I put together this list of key considerations that a project manager always needs to keep his focus on. The following aspects are from practical experience and hence I believe these would resonate well with practicing managers.

Consideration #1 – Forming the Right Team: 80% of the Projects fail due to lack of right team. Assuming the estimations are done well, the project manager should strive to get the right team based on the project type, including system architects, development and test leads and a solid configuration management expert. The critical roles should never be compromised – for example, if you need a carpenter, “you need a carpenter” and a plumber cannot be “adjusted” into that role. Of course there are businesses realities, but the delivery Manager needs to aggressively push for the “right” team. Also, the core team should be intact throughout the duration of the project (or as far as possible).

Consideration #2 – Commitment to Customer: It is essential that the manager sensitizes the team that release plans once locked-in are sacrosanct. On-time delivery is key. Hence it is extremely important that the entire team is fully aligned to the customer’s requirements. The manager must develop an in-depth understanding of not only the current activity/project, but also get a good understanding of the customer’s product road map. The goal is to become a true partner for the customer through excellence in delivery and technical depth/product understanding.

Consideration #3 – Dashboard driven: Metrics can be overwhelming and hence should be viewed as dash-board (aka cockpit panel or a car dashboard). This will provide the right amount of information to know if the project is under control. Standard metrics like schedule/effort variance are of course essential. In addition, customer satisfaction and various productivity measures needs to be tracked. It is also extremely important that the project management is aligned to the business goals. The project manager has to understand all the parameters that impact the project profitability and gets a regular view of the profitability of the project against target.

Consideration #4 – Never Surprise your stake-holders: It is extremely important to keep open and regular communication both within the team and with the customer (say steering group meeting). Just sending Weekly status report is not sufficient. E-mail should not be the ONLY means of communication. If it is important and deserves an immediate attention, please pick-up the phone and CALL. I have not seen any case where phone calls are over-used. Never delay bad news. Also bad news should be accompanied by recovery plan, impact etc. The bottom line is surprises should be avoided. Examples of common surprises – Communicating to the customer about a delay in the release on the date of release, informing the finance team that there will be a 20% revenue drop for the current month, etc.

Consideration #5 – “Thinking” Plan-B: The changing dynamics in the project makes the manager’s role extremely challenging and it is important that the manager does not get into the Panic mode. It is imperative that the Manager “thinks” ahead of the team and is able to predict potential issues and be prepared with alternate approaches (often called plan-B). Proper Risk planning and management is absolutely necessary. This will give greatly improve manager’s confidence in dealing with risks/issues and be prepared for all outcomes.

The above points are some the key learning from my own mistakes and also from the multiple projects managers I have worked-with across many counties. I am sure there are many more considerations that would help in mastering project management, but I believe the above five practical and simple considerations would be among the most critical ones required in project management. No matter what certifications we posses, nothing can beat hands-on experience! Also, no matter how experienced anyone is, there is always plenty to learn in Project Management!!!

G Krishna Kumar is a Vice President in a leading global software company with many years of experience in managing large global programs for software products and services delivery. He is also an avid writer and blogger and blogs on Telecom, IT and Education related topics at http://bloggerkrishnak.blogspot.in/ . Views are personal.

What is your learning from your project management experience? What other consideration/s do you believe are critical to ensure the success of a project? Krishna and I would love to hear back from you.

Pic Courtesy : http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-02-08/

5 Quotes on Operational Excellence for Successful Business Operations

by sincera | Sep 8, 2013 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Startups, World of Work

Very few people have the ability to capture their thoughts into a few words – words that leave a lasting impact, words that continue to inspire over decades or centuries and words that speak to you and give you your personal “eureka” moments. Think about it, Aristotle lived between 384 BC and 322 BC – more than 2300 years ago and what he said then continues to influence us now. Among his many pieces of wisdom passed down through the ages, and before modern management or its terms were invented, he defined business operations and operational excellence –

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

So my post today combines two of my passions – operational excellence and quotes that inspire me in this area. I have chosen my five favourite Quotes on Operational Excellence that to me most accurately reflect the principles of successful Business Operations –

Quotes on Operational Excellence #1: Build a Cathedral –

“Organizations should be……. no less than Cathedrals in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair of diverse individuals is unleashed in passionate pursuit of … Excellence. Our job as leaders—the alpha and the omega and everything in between—is abetting the sustained growth and success and engagement and enthusiasm and commitment to Excellence of those, one at a time, who directly or indirectly serve the ultimate customer.

7 Steps to Sustaining Success: You take care of the people. The people take care of the service. The service takes care of the customer. The customer takes care of the profit. The profit takes care of the re-investment. The re-investment takes care of the re-invention. The re-invention takes care of the future. (And at every step the only measure is EXCELLENCE.)” ~ Tom Peters

Quotes on Operational Excellence #2: Get Everyone on the Same Page –

“The best, most efficient, most profitable way to operate a business is to give everybody in the company a voice in saying how the company is run and a stake in the financial outcome, good or bad …. A business should be run like an aquarium, where everybody can see what’s going on — what’s going in, what’s moving around, what’s coming out. That’s the only way to make sure people understand what you’re doing, and why, and have some input into deciding where you are going. Then, when the unexpected happens, they know how to react and react quickly.” ~ Jack Stack, “The Great Game of Business”

Quotes on Operational Excellence #3: Follow the Right Order of Operation –

“Values should underpin Vision, which dictates Mission, which determines Strategy, which surfaces Goals that frame Objectives, which in turn drives the Tactics that tell an organization what Resources, Infrastructure and Processes are needed to support a certainty of execution….

While successful leaders address all four areas, the best leaders always start with why followed very closely by who. Then, and only then, do they work on the design of what and how.” ~Mike Myatt

Quotes on Operational Excellence #4: Process First, Technology and Tools Second –

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” ~ Bill Gates

Quotes on Operational Excellence #5: Discipline Matters – Close the gaps in Execution by Following Through –

“Follow-through is the cornerstone of execution, and every leader who’s good at executing follows through religiously. Following through ensures that people are doing the things they committed to do, according to the agreed timetable. It exposes any lack of discipline and connection between ideas and actions, and forces the specificity that is essential to synchronize the moving parts of an organization. If people can’t execute the plan because of changed circumstances, follow-through ensures they deal swiftly and creatively with the new conditions…” ~Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan – “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done”.

These quotes reveal the corner-stones of operational excellence – people, processes, technology and continuous improvement. There are many more quotes that inspire and I have left out some that I have already quoted in my past posts. I would love to get your favourite quotes on Business operations and Operational Excellence here – maybe do a part 2 of this post. So, if you enjoyed this collection, spare a moment and leave a comment.

Five Strategies to Improve the Quality of Data – Business Operations Performance Management

by sincera | Aug 7, 2013 | Business, Business Operations, Management, Performance, Productivity

Without improvements in the quality and completeness of data captured at source, changing the processes and systems will have little impact. Good data is the lifeblood of any business and requires effective management like all other assets – Excerpts from the PWC report: Put data first.

There is a lot of focus in businesses today to adopt a data – driven culture. The management expects accurate and reliable information faster and more efficiently to enable data-driven informed decision-making. And with good reason – a focus on data can transform the business. Following the path of data to information, information to insight and then insight to action can help increase revenues and decrease costs (and risks). Recently, I have been struggling with the first step – source of data. No matter how advanced the business intelligence tool used is or how well the analysis is done and presented, unless the quality of the source of data is good, it is a case of Rubbish in – Rubbish out. Unless data used and presented is seen and believed as trustworthy, the whole purpose of the exercise is defeated. Instead of spending time analyzing, gathering insights or identifying the actions, a lot of time is spent in arguing over the accuracy of data, explaining gaps on perceived discrepancies or doing complicated workarounds to ensure reporting is not impacted while data quality issues are sorted out.

Based on my experience of what works and what does not and insights gained from the lot of reading I have been doing on this topic, here are five strategies for getting a handle on source data quality and making data quality improvement an ongoing, productive exercise:

Strategy #1: Create a cross-functional data governance team – This is an important first step to set the right structure, authority and accountability for the data improvement initiative. The intent is not to get into the “death by meetings” scenarios but to break the data “silos” and bring the right people together (across the end-user, creator, administrator and analyst groups) to make informed decisions about the who, what and how questions. The team will define the processes, business rules, roles and responsibilities involved in the creation, management and consumption of data across the organization. The team will also serve as a forum for assigning priorities and escalation point for data issues. This ensures that data is being cared for across the organization and balanced decisions are taken.

Strategy #2: Identify the broad level root causes – There are many reasons why the source data could be wrong – it could be related to extracting data from different source systems with conflicting information, errors at the time of manual entry of data, unclear understanding of what data needs to go where or which business rule/logic is the right business logic to be applied to a particular set of data. The more you dig, the more possible sources of error you could find and in enterprise scenarios, the steps you take to fix root causes today may rise tomorrow as a multi-headed monster with a whole new set of root causes. Hence the suggestion to identify the broad level root causes. The way to do this is to not attack the whole set of data in one instance – apply the 80/20 rule and select a few segments of data to dig into. This will increase your chances of isolating the causes better and resolving the major issues faster.

Strategy #3: Sustainability – Systems and People – Cleaning up the source data cannot be a one-time exercise. We are constantly adding new data or changing existing data. So it is important to keep in mind whether the solution to the problem is sustainable in the long run. A temporary flurry of activity and a few tweaks in the systems will do just that – fix the issue temporarily. We know that the more you reduce manual intervention of data, the better your chances are to reduce errors. This is where automation comes into place – the aim should be to have automation solve identified data discrepancy areas. The higher the percentage of automation, the more sustainable and efficient the initiative would be in the long run. And in the short term, training and constant communication to build awareness among the creators of data will help reduce errors. Tools and best practices training sessions should be an integral part of the data improvement strategies.

Strategy #4: Forget Perfection – It is not going to happen – Remember that perfect data by itself is not the end objective. It is the insight that data is used to generate that is the main goal. Don’t drop that ball by not moving forward on analysis till all imperfections in data are sorted out – ship out the data once you have reasonable confidence that it is accurate within a certain range. We have to balance efforts and time (to improve the accuracy of data) with the outcome needed. If your data is off say 5-10%, it is “good” enough to start using for analysis and the next set of actions. Data quality improvements have to be considered as a work-in-progress iterative process. As Jim Harris says here – “A smaller data quality emphasis SOMETIMES enables bigger data-driven insights, which means that SOMETIMES using a bigger amount of lower-quality data is better than using a smaller amount of higher-quality data.”

Strategy #5: Measurements and Metrics – Last but not the least, my favourite topic – metrics. Data experts have identified certain standard dimensions that impact data quality – Relevance, Accuracy, Timeliness and Punctuality, Accessibility and Clarity, Comparability and Coherence (some definitions of the dimensions here). Why measure? How else can we show the progress of our efforts and how do we build the business case that justifies investment into the data quality improvement initiative? Through a few simple, “right” metrics. And what should be the main factor while choosing the metrics? The usefulness and relevance to the end-user – if we can’t link the metric directly to the impact on business performance, then it is not a metric that is useful or relevant. Anish Raivadera, Data Quality expert has written an extremely useful eight part series on such metrics based on the above data dimensions here.

Data is everybody’s business. Whether we create, share or consume data, we all should be concerned about quality of the data in the organization. Unless this awareness about the importance of the quality of data and the role that each function (and not just IT) plays in ensuring the right quality of data is ingrained into the organization as part of the culture, we cannot tap the full power and potential of the available data.

Coincidentally, today I chanced upon the shareholder letters written by Jeff Bezos, Amazon and I cannot conclude this post without excerpts from there that I felt was particularly relevant to this post. His 2005 letter was based on business decisions and their dependency (or not) on data:

“Many of the important decisions we make at Amazon.com can be made with data. There is a right answer or a wrong answer, a better answer or a worse answer, and math tells us which is which. These are our favorite kinds of decisions….As you would expect, however, not all of our important decisions can be made in this enviable, math-based way. Sometimes we have little or no historical data to guide us and proactive experimentation is impossible, impractical, or tantamount to a decision to proceed. Though data, analysis, and math play a role, the prime ingredient in these decisions is judgment….. Math-based decisions command wide agreement, whereas judgment-based decisions are rightly debated and often controversial, at least until put into practice and demonstrated. Any institution unwilling to endure controversy must limit itself to decisions of the first type. In our view, doing so would not only limit controversy —it would also significantly limit innovation and long-term value creation.”

So, what do you think? What other strategies would you recommend for improving quality of data? Who is responsible for source data in your organization? I would love to hear back and learn from you.

Picture courtesy : http://www.flickr.com/photos/ocdqblog/5065103584/

Five Must-Dos to Improve Employee Engagement – Transform the Zombies into Humans

by sincera | Jun 30, 2013 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

Did anyone watch any good zombie movies or shows lately? I did unfortunately and the thought running through my mind watching the zombies in there was that we have our own version of zombies in the corporate world. Think about it – some people leave their minds and hearts out the moment they check in at office – put in the hours, do what they are told to do, do their best not to get “committed” and definitely not care…and then there are some for whom work is personal, they care, they come to work to learn and grow, they build relationships at work and in general just have fun.. Employee engagement, also called worker engagement, is a business management concept. An “engaged employee” is one who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about their work, and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization’s interests. The opposite of employee engagement is a zombie employee. A zombie employee is a disengaged employee that will stumble around the office, lower morale and cost the company money. (Wiki). Valid analogy there, don’t you think? And that brings me to the topic of today’s post – Employee Engagement – Transforming the zombies into humans.

Concentrating on employee engagement can help companies withstand, and possibly even thrive, in tough economic times. Gallup researchers in 2012 studied the differences in performance between engaged and actively disengaged work units and found that those scoring in the top half on employee engagement nearly doubled their odds of success compared with those in the bottom half. Take a look at the table below from Gallup that clearly establishes the connection between employee engagement and critical performance metrics:

So what surprises me is why senior leadership often times just pays lip service to such an important aspect of business performance and growth. One annual engagement survey, a bit of brouhaha over the survey results if they are not good enough against benchmarks, a few actions handed over to the HR teams and then business as usual till the next survey results which of course will not be any different from last year or the previous year.

Employee Engagement initiatives must be enmeshed into the day-to-day operations of the company – I firmly believe that if you take care of the people, the company results take care of themselves. And when I think of the “people” factor of operational excellence, Tom Peters always come to mind. His “Excellence Now” philosophy is centred on People First and I will be quoting him liberally in the must-dos below. He says that an organization is first and foremost a “CATHEDRAL” dedicated to human development. So how do you build and sustain this cathedral on a day-to-day basis? Here are five principles that I have seen work:

**Must Do #1: Hire for attitude and culture “fit” –**

Adaptive organizations will have workforces which are hired for attitude and character and proven teamwork as much or more than for skill. In all my years of managing people, I have never had to give up on a team member for lack of skills. Skills can be developed, attitudes is another story. Your hiring process needs to build this focus into sourcing profiles; conducting interviews and doing reference checks (get tips in this post). Trust me, one talented terror in an influential position can throw cold water over all the good work done by other engagement initiatives. So, you have done a mistake in hiring or promoting a talented terror (a high performer with lousy attitudes), quick – go undo it fast!

Must Do #2: Be Transparent –

This ties in with trusting people and giving them respect. Build an environment of information sharing and transparency at all levels. Problems – share it across and enlist support. Mistakes – Admit it and gain credibility. Successes – Celebrate sooner rather than later, big or small doesn’t matter as long as everyone’s invited. Ask people the “What DO You Think” question often and then act on the feedback (while letting people know that you are on it) – simple way to show that you respect your team and the greatest source of wisdom for you. Senior leadership should share a workable plan to support their vision and ALWAYs back up words with actions to inspire confidence and trust. Employees who don’t feel significant rarely make significant contributions.

Must Do #3: Create Policies and Processes with People First philosophy in mind –

If you want to WOW your customers then you must first WOW those who WOW the customers! There are so many ways to provide the best employee experience and not all of them will cost money (though your return on investment here would be much higher than say. capex investments) Offer competitive base salaries linked to value creation (ever heard the idiom, throw peanuts and you will get monkeys?), link variables to achievable business goals, have a great rewards programs that includes both cash and perks, provide tools and technology environment that help and not hamper employee productivity, take feedback from all employee levels when designing pay and benefits programs. CARE and be FAIR, in short.

Must Do #4: Help People Succeed –

Boss Job #1 is serving employees, helping employees not just “do good work”—but helping them succeed and grow. This one is about people and leadership development and training – about providing career advancement and growth opportunities. Give self- assessment tools and self career management training for all employees so they move to becoming the CEOs of “YOU Inc.” Build the ABSOLUTE BEST Cadre of 1st LINE MANAGERS … or BUST! Provide alternatives to job growth ladders and create and maintain an effective and widely accessible internal job posting process. Create a strong mentoring/buddy culture. Design training programs as a game and fun for everyone. An organization can only become the-best-version-of-itself to the extent that the people who drive that organization are striving to become better-versions-of-themselves.

Must Do #5: Connect, Get Personal and Make Work Fun –

This is part of my company’s vision statement and something that I strongly believe in. Each one of us can get this right – it is simple. As Dee Hock, founder, Visa said – “Ph.D. in leadership. Short course: Make a short list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don’t do them to others. Ever. Make another list of things done to you that you loved. Do them to others. Always.” Need I say more? We just need to keep this in mind in every interaction, every meeting, every communication that we have in the workplace. Give before you get. Appreciate people who do this always and encourage and participate in fun at the workplace. And the more of us who do this, the more this culture spreads getting engagement levels up slowly and surely.

To sum up, here is the leadership/management manifesto for Employee Engagement from Tom Peters himself: our job as leaders—the alpha and the omega and everything in between—is abetting the sustained growth and success and engagement and enthusiasm and commitment to Excellence of those, one at a time, who directly or indirectly serve the ultimate customer.

So what do you think? Do you think Employee engagement initiatives are a waste of time ? How have you transformed zombies into humans in your organization or in your teams? What do you think I have missed in the points above? I would love to hear back and learn from you.

Five Key Considerations for Efficient Knowledge Management – Business Operations Performance Management

by sincera | Apr 27, 2013 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

If a man empties his purse into his head no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest ~ Benjamin Franklin

What is knowledge? Is it the information we gather from various sources available in today’s always-on and seamlessly connected world? Is it the data we deal with in our daily life?

Well, not really! Data is the raw material used to create information. Information is just data in context. Information and Data are not Knowledge until we know how to extract value out of it. Knowledge is the understanding the significance of Information, filtered through people’s skills acquired through experience, and trends and patterns.

How we extract value out of available data and information, and how we club this with lessons learnt through experiences, ideas and competencies, is where knowledge management comes into play.

Knowledge management is the disciplined approach to achieve organizational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, sharing of lessons learnt and continuous improvement by managing knowledge as a strategic asset. It focuses on processes such as identifying, creating, representing, sharing knowledge and enabling adoption of insights and experiences. It is a dynamic approach as Knowledge depends on how, when, and from where it is acquired.

Organizations now clearly believe that Intellectual capital is a strategic and valuable asset that can be managed as effectively as physical assets which will set them apart from their competitors and drive their success.

So, how do we establish Knowledge Management and its underlying philosophies within an organization? The key is in bringing cultural change within the organization by making it knowledge based, working with people to increase their ability in the organization to influence others with their knowledge and encouraging free flow of ideas.

Here are five key considerations to take into account to set up an efficient Knowledge management framework in the organization:

Consideration #1 : Identify the Key drivers for KM

Key drivers for KM are:

Mergers/ Acquisitions/ Downsizing
Employee Attrition
Globalization

According to data from Deallogic, U.S. companies have spent $219 billion on mergers and acquisitions so far (February) in 2013, a sharp increase from 2012, when firms spent just $85 billion during the same period. And U.S. firms are slated to have the biggest year in M&A activity since 2000.

In such an environment, it becomes highly important to manage different knowledge models of two organizations getting merged or involved in acquisition. And if the merger is between the companies who were formerly competitors, the strategic alliances that are formed between competitors to pursue an opportunity, the workforce, the changes in technology, global teams and diverse stakeholders, are just a few of challenges we face without a proper KM framework in place.

Employees who leave the organization take their knowledge with them which actually results in Knowledge attrition for the organization. And there a challenge is to establish a system for knowledge transfer or transition before employee exit to avoid the cost of ramping up new employees. In absence of knowledge assets, learning curve for new employees becomes even more difficult.

Global culture and global environments necessitate virtual teams – this demands knowledge sharing and seamless accessibility to the stored knowledge irrespective of location. E-learning is one of the effective mediums for managing knowledge across the globe.

Identifying the key drivers for KM in the organization helps in arriving at the mission and the appropriate frameworks that best fit the organization.

Consideration #2 : Focus on What Values KM can add

Many successful organizations fail to realize full value from their investments in projects by not learning lessons in the process. This further means that organizations then fail to continue those processes that were successful in the process and fail to discontinue those that resulted in errors and rework ~Ernst & Young (2007)

Every project/process offers several learning opportunities to generate knowledge and increase both individual competencies and organizational assets. A creative approach to KM can result in improved efficiency, higher productivity and increased revenue. Structured knowledge management provides the following business benefits:

Improved customer satisfaction with fastest response times
Ideas can be shared and innovation encouraged
Decision making is improved with access to facts and past experiences
Enhanced Cross team communication and inter functional problem solving
Redundant processes and process handling are reduced, hence business operations becomes more effective and margins improve
Ultimately revenues increase by getting services and products faster to the market

Business operations performance improvement and revenue gains as a result of KM are indicated by numerous organizations, for e.g. Ford Motor accelerated its concept-to-production time from 36 months to 24 months and the flow on value of this has been estimated at US $1.25 billion, The Dow Chemical Company saved $40 million a year in the re-use of patents, Chase Manhattan, one of the largest banks in the US, used Customer relationship management KM initiatives to increase its annual revenue by 15%, and Pfizer credits KM practices for discovering the hidden benefits of the Viagra drug.

Look at the processes in your organization and identify the specific benefits in the short and long-term that knowledge management could bring in to the business. It is important to tie in the knowledge management initiative to measurable impact to gain agreement and support from key stakeholders in the organization.

Consideration #3 : Define clear objectives of KM

Before you jump into KM, you must first gain clarity on what you are doing and why and then spread the awareness around the objectives. The message should be absolutely clear without any ambiguities which will help in building strong trust and credibility. Creating a successful brand around a KM initiative takes a lot of effort – the cultural immune system of any organization is highly volatile when it comes to knowledge sharing and collaboration. The main factor that contributes to the volatility is the fact that technology is breaking the barriers and conventional hierarchy is losing its influence. People take the “knowledge is power” adage too seriously and hoard the knowledge sometimes – thinking that sharing the knowledge would result in loss of their control or influence. KM is all about bringing cultural change. Hence it is important to define the objectives and build the awareness and enthusiasm around these to make people more comfortable to become active participants of the KM initiative. Motivating people by recognizing the value of employee’s knowledge and by rewarding them for it not only benefits KM but also improves employee retention rates.

As per International Data Corp (IDC), following are the top objectives for knowledge management initiatives:

Capture and share best practices
Enhance internal collaboration
Improve Customer relationship management
Better Competitive intelligence
Build Intellectual capital

Consideration #4 : Ensure data accuracy and completeness

Data quality is a critical aspect of knowledge management, source and accessibility of data to KM should happen in a defined and structured manner. If the quality of data is questionable, the value of data goes down and if major decisions are made based on this data, these actions may wrongly influence organization’s objectives. Data is a valuable organizational asset and should be managed carefully by ensuring adequate quality, integrity, security, availability and effective usage.

Assess the current state at each stage of the Process and define guidelines for right data, right time and right tools and infrastructure to arrive at high quality and accurate data for your KM initiative.

Consideration #5 : Earn a strong Fan Base to drive KM acceptance

Buy in from people at all levels is required for knowledge management to be a success. Creating a strong case study on the benefits of using KM helps – Identify a willing group and implement a set of initiatives around KM (e.g. Knowledge Map, Build taxonomy to capture the K- Map, Identify SMEs, and scout for content and disseminate the same) and build a story around the same. This will be like a story board where the user narrates a live example of a crisis or some critical situation and how KM has intervened and helped. Also create a picture of current state and the desired state and how this gap is narrowed down by implementing a structured KM. For example the project can be an application maintenance services for a client. The kind of skills required (L1, L2 etc) in terms of managing the applications, number of tickets generated around each of the technology area within the application and resolving the customer issues can noted down. Now bring in the KM system and process and observe the change like reduction in number of tickets, L1 person handling L2 tickets etc. Map the same to productivity numbers. This has a high impact as people can relate to their own situation and will be open to try KM out.

Use Metrics wisely. A perfect blend of qualitative and quantitative metrics should be available to the management to assess the current level of improvement – either top line (revenue) or bottom-line (customer satisfaction through higher productivity). This justifies the investment that an organization is making in terms of resources and technology infrastructure that supports the KM framework. Theorizing the intangible nature and value of Knowledge Management will not convince the leaders as much as measurable indicators that prove the business benefits will.

In summary, every organization wants to perform at its best in delivering products and services with enhanced gross margins, reduced cycle times and in maintaining consistently delighted, satisfied customers. Knowledge Management can act as one of the catalysts in speeding up the process of achieving these organizational objectives.

The value of Knowledge Management relates directly to the effectiveness with which the managed knowledge enables the members of the organization to deal with today’s situations and effectively envision and create their future – Gene Bellinger

What are your experiences with KM setup in your organizations? What challenges have you faced in KM establishment? Would love to hear and learn from you.

T0day’s post is a collaborative effort with Kavita Verma and Ramprakash L – both of whom are SMEs in this area. Thank you, Kavita and Ram for your inputs.

Five Strategies to shift from a Cost Cutting to a Business Growth mindset through Operational Excellence – Business Operations

by sincera | Nov 20, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

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Do more with less is a common refrain in any margin focused organization. But this management guidance should come with a big “Handle with Care” sticker. In the enthusiasm to meet cost cutting targets, sometimes organizations forget the “doing more” part and only focus on the “with less” part. By the time, the realization sets in that the growth engine has stalled, it is too late. And most likely, you are left with an organizational culture where “fear” rules supreme and “fun” is a word that belongs outside the work-place. Result – Bottom line improves in the short-term but starts declining after reaching a threshold. With stagnant or diminishing top-line, no amount of cost cutting can help improve profits dramatically after a certain point.

High performance is multi-dimensional – putting the entire organization’s focus on just costs is counter-productive. While margin improvement is crucial, good solid revenue growth is even more important to build a sustainable, profitable business. And these two goals should not be in conflict with each other. With some discipline and mindset changes enforced in day-to-day business operations, one can successfully do the balancing act so that the organization does not lose its focus on growing revenues while keeping a tight control on costs.

The entire business framework that you work in can be used to influence changes in the right direction. Here are five strategies that I have seen business leaders use successfully to shift the organization to a revenue growth mindset in no particular order:

Strategy 1: Budgeting – Put your money where growth is – The key to building a high-performance and growth focused culture is to make sure you consider “‘what“ and “how“ you will get to your destination – the clear guidelines of what you need to do now to reach where you want to be in a specific timeline. And, what better place to define this than in your annual business budget. For example what are the core competencies that you need to develop in the current year so that the growth for the next two-three years are secured? What investments of the previous year have not achieved desired results and needs a change in strategy? What partners and channels needed to be cultivated in current year to be able to stay competitive in the market? While a lot of attention is given on the cost items to achieve the top line for the current year, not much attention is given to the few investments that are needed to accelerate the growth for the longer term. Budgeting is a great tool to ensure that the organization is well prepared and aligned for growth.

Strategy 2: Granularity of Growth – Identify the Growth Drivers – Research shows that having multiple avenues to growth pays off during good times and bad. In the book – Granularity of Growth (Wiley, April 2008), the authors identified that increased market-share is seldom a driver of growth. They contend, instead, that growth is driven by where a company chooses to compete: which market segments it participates in and how much merger-and-acquisition activity it pursues in these markets. The key is to focus on granularity, to breakdown big-picture strategy into its smallest relevant components. To uncover pockets of opportunity, executives need to dig down to deeper levels of their businesses and organizations. And of course, get the execution plan in place for the opportunities identified.

Strategy 3: Clarion Call – Aligning the Organization to the Vision – It is critical that every employee knows and understands the vision of the organization and the strategy for growth. Re-orienting people is not an easy job but it can be done if the leadership can clearly articulate the problem statement behind the vision and the urgent changes that are needed to get everyone on the board. The idea here is to get people really involved and committed to growth – logic and reason have their place, but in initiatives like this the emotions of people have to be tapped. Hence the need for a clarion call (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clarion_call – Appeal, urgent call to action). And also the need for a re-organization too – to move your best people (sales, operations, delivery) from low growth or stagnant business areas to high growth areas to leverage your talent and shake off the inertia.

Strategy 4: Platform for Ideas – Make Innovation more than a buzz word – Innovation is the Petri dish for exponential growth. But without a specific team accountable for innovation (which could be new product ideas, new business models, new markets, new acquisitions or new competencies) the focus on exponential growth is lost in the day-to-day block and tackle for meeting the short-term business targets. One person in the senior leadership should have the mandate to lead this team and the authority to champion and approve initiatives that are separate from the company’s core business and to execute on these initiatives. This provides an ecosystem of a structure, time and resources for a “start-up” within the larger organization to help move beyond the comfort zone and also future-proof the business against risks to existing business.

Strategy 5: Metrics and Rewards –Targets breed Performance – Coming to my favorite topic, setting metrics and commensurate rewards is an important lever to quickly drive and arrive at the behavior needed to go beyond just incremental growth. For example – setting a target of 5% revenue growth year on year with a slightly higher target for profits is quite acceptable but this can be achieved by a little more push on existing services or products. There is no compelling need to look for completely new sources of revenue or new business models. What is needed here is BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals), metrics that can be used to track and measure not only the results but the investments, resources and behaviors that are needed to achieve the goals and of course, equally Big rewards to excite and enthuse the teams to think differently, get out of their comfort zone and act like entrepreneurs.

Profitable double-digit growth can become a possibility and not just a fluke. By thinking proactively and building growth into day-to-day business operations, the cost cutting trap can be avoided. A growth oriented mindset can indeed become part of the organization culture when the management plans and puts in place the systems to ensure that growth opportunities are identified and pursued as diligently as costs are controlled.

What have I missed? What growth strategies have you seen work? How and what have you factored in your plans for next year to enable double-digit growth? I would love to hear back and learn from you.

Picture courtesy : http://www.flickr.com/photos/ytueresburroyyomemonto/2687124044/

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