+91-80-42023484 contact@sincera.in
Five Skills Key to Successful Business Operations Management – You Could be Great at Operations if..

Five Skills Key to Successful Business Operations Management – You Could be Great at Operations if..

by | Jul 15, 2021 | Business, Business Operations, Career, Leadership, Management, Managing Yourself, Performance, Productivity, World of Work

You cannot be a good business leader unless you thoroughly understand the business operations in your organization and how it links to its performance. I have noticed one big reason business strategies fail – it is the unbelievable reality that senior leadership many a times doesn’t understand the basics of their business. How it runs and what makes it run. An operations mindset is extremely critical for all leaders – No matter how good you are at framing strategy; it also has to get executed successfully for an organization to succeed. This is where the business operations team can play a big role, by not only providing insights to the leadership on the ways to improve business performance through profitable growth and strategic management of costs and risks but also to reduce the gap between strategy and execution through disciplined process implementation. Quite a few big buzz words there. But it boils down to one thing – to succeed in business, you have to understand and be good at operations. I strongly believe an operational mindset is a mental “muscle” that can be developed. For all those who want to develop this muscle or are thinking of a career in business operations, this post is for them.

So without further ado, here are the five top skills/loves that I believe are must-haves for those who want to enhance the performance and productivity of organizations through understanding and improving their operations:

Must-Have #1 – You love people:

Lee Iacocca said:  “In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product and profits. Unless you’ve got a good team, you can’t do much with the other two.” Understanding people across multiple functions and roles and leveraging their strengths is extremely important to meet objectives – in an operational role where you have to work mainly in a matrix structure where you have lots of responsibility but not always the required hierarchical authority, this becomes paramount. You must know how to connect with people and energize and enthuse them. Communication skills, beyond the verbal and the written, the ability to listen and read between the lines is an useful asset to align people to your goals. And all this is not possible unless you have a genuine interest and love for people.

Must-Have #2 – You love numbers:

Does the idea of deciphering lots and lots of rows and columns of numbers spread across sheets give you the shivers ? As they say, the devil lies in the details and to be good at operations, making sense of numbers must excite you. Plenty of common sense plus and an ability to derive meaning out of the different ways numbers can be combined or dissected to arrive at the right performance metrics for early warning signals for the business as well as measuring the results is part and parcel of the operations role. Knowing your numbers and the different levers that can be applied to them makes you the master of the game.

Must-Have #3 – You love wearing multiple hats:

In operations, you have to be put yourself in the shoes of different functions on a day-to-day basis – sales, IT, finance, business, delivery – to be able to understand the requirements from all perspectives and execute on it. A specialist in operations with a generalist bent of mind to connect all the dots in the organization for the right solutions.  You have to become the subject matter expert in many things at the same time. Quoting from an article by Vikram Mansharamani in HBR – there appears to be reasonable and robust data suggesting that generalists are better at navigating uncertainty. Professor Phillip Tetlock conducted a 20+ year study of 284 professional forecasters. He asked them to predict the probability of various occurrences both within and outside of their areas of expertise. Analysis of the 80,000+ forecasts found that experts are less accurate predictors than non-experts in their area of expertise. Tetlock’s conclusion: when seeking accuracy of predictions, it is better to turn to those like “Berlin’s prototypical fox, those who know many little things, draw from an eclectic array of traditions, and accept ambiguity and contradictions.” Ideological reliance on a single perspective appears detrimental to one’s ability to successfully navigate vague or poorly-defined situations (which are more prevalent today than ever before).

Must-Have #4 – You love solving puzzles:

Providing smart and creative recommendations for business process improvement is one of the key areas in which business operations team can be key contributors. As an operation person, you have to identify the problems, dig for knowledge in the vast amounts of available data and then analyze it to arrive at the areas of focus. As per research by Gartner, through 2012, 80% of organizations will struggle to recruit the talent required to meet their business analytics objectives. This needs an inquisitive mind, a persistent approach and deduction skills. If you are a crossword or Sudoku fanatic, you are in the right “zone” here 🙂

Must-Have #5 – You love WORK:

Back end work, strategic work, boring work, last-minute deadline work, grunt work,  thinking work, transactional work, delegated work, filling in for someone else work – your work landscape in an operations role will constantly be changing and switching. So, you must have a great love for work by itself and in itself in all its myriad shapes and forms. If you are particular about doing only one type of work and consider certain types of work below you – this is certainly not the role for you. The duties and responsibilities in this role are fluid and are different from company to company or even business head to business head. I have rarely across a defined job description that remains constant over a period of time in my career. So, your guiding principles and measuring stick for your work should be based on what you want to achieve, not what type of work is needed to get there. A passion for work coupled with an ability to set your own standards for excellence is crucial in this role.

In addition to the above, a  business operations person must be able to exude confidence, have conviction and be firm on what he/she believes is the right thing to do. It is only then that by focusing on some of the points where structure, processes, people and systems intersect, and engaging and influencing all the stakeholders involved to work on those critical junctions, the business operations team can release benefits that ripple across the organization.

What other skills do you think are necessary for successful business management and operations? What have I missed? Please share your experiences below. I would love to hear and learn from you.

Image courtesy – http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelheiss/3090102907

Five Key Characteristics of Good Project Governance: Towards Better Decision Making

Five Key Characteristics of Good Project Governance: Towards Better Decision Making

by | Jul 8, 2021 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity, World of Work

Effective project governance is in demand now more than ever before. According to studies, more than 80% of investors now are willing to pay a share price premium for well-governed organizations. Why? Because Governance addresses the needs to establish structure, hierarchy, sponsorship, ownership, accountability and communication to support enhanced consistency in execution, ownership and delivery. When governance is working correctly, decision-making is no longer the stalling point and the organization performs at an optimal level.

Decisions are the coin of the realm in business. Every success, every mishap, every opportunity seized or missed stems from a decision someone made or failed to make. Yet, in many firms, decisions routinely stall inside the organization, hurting the entire company’s performance. The culprit? Ambiguity over who’s accountable for the decisions. (Harvard Business Review by Rogers and Blenko, 2006)

There are multiple definitions available for ‘Governance’:

  • UNESCAP defines ‘Good Governance’ as the ‘Process of decision-making‘ and ‘Process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented)’.
  • As per Turner (2006), governance of a project involves a set of relationships between the project’s management, its sponsor (or executive board), its owner, and other stakeholders. Project Governance provides the structure through which the objectives of the project are set, and the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance are determined.

Very generic definitions? Let us then go through some more details of Governance concept to understand it well. There are 3 levels of ‘Governance’ in any organization:

a)     Executive layer: This layer is considered as the highest level of Governance addressing the ownership, accountability and strategic alignment of initiatives with the organizational goals and identifies the corporate governance.

b)     Context/Execution layer: This layer sets up the context in which project is being executed and addresses two main components: (i) Establishing right infrastructure of program and portfolio management to link projects to corporate strategy, which ensures the right projects are executed. (ii) To make sure that organization has the capability to deliver the projects successfully so that projects are done right.

This layer mainly identifies the project governance and includes the decision and analysis boards, which take adjustment and corrections from Executive layer and understand the needs for adjustment and correction from the Delivery layer. This layer also takes into consideration partners, vendors and third-party participants in your programs and projects.

c)     Delivery/Individual project layer: This is the lowest working layer where set project objectives are actually executed and attained. Resources at this level are the daily work efforts owners. At this level, program and project management office (PMO) are responsible for the collection and accumulation of the data that support performance reporting. It is critical to keep a daily understanding of decisions, risks, issues and activities that will ultimately impact the delivery of initiative’s outcome. The main stakeholders at this level are Project managers, Technical architects/Engineers and PMO resources.

This three-layered structure, enables linking Project Governance to Corporate Governance and delivery capability. In a way Project governance is the bridging mechanism between corporate governance and project management.

So, how do you ensure that you have an appropriate project governance model and it is good enough per above definitions? Here are the key governance characteristics, identified by United Nations ESCAP, for achieving good governance:

Project Governance Characteristic #1: Sponsorship and Accountability

Recent research has shown that project failure is often not directly attributable to the performance of project managers and project teams. Sometimes, project failure is caused by contextual factors, such as the breakdown of sponsor governance and support.  Project sponsor holds a critical position of power being the Governor who owns the business case and provides a link between project and organization’s management, leading ultimately to the Executive Board.

Weak sponsorship not only in terms of resources but also in providing clear and timely direction, investing required time to the projects they sponsor and appropriate project management experience to have good understanding of their own role, are the common problems seen in sponsor governance failures. Your project/initiative should have a solid buy-in from the sponsor (can be executive management) and should be aligned to the organizational goals to make it a success.

Clear definition of roles and responsibility brings accountability. Who is accountable to who varies, depending on whether the decisions or actions are taken internal or external to function/organization.  In general each defined role is accountable to those who will be affected by its decisions or actions.

Project Governance Characteristic #2: Transparent with well-defined communication channels

Transparency means the decisions taken and the enforcement done is in an open and easily understood way. It means that information is freely available and directly accessible to those who will be affected by such decisions and their enforcement. It also means that enough information is provided and that it is provided in clear and concise forms and  through the right medium of communication.

Accountability (Characteristic #1) cannot be enforced without transparency.

Communication is the vehicle that powers the entire governance model. Establishing structured communications will maintain linkages throughout the three levels of governance and assure that the organizational strategy, mission, vision, and desired outcomes are maintained and aligned with the execution. This alignment can provide assurance to the organization, knowing that the outcomes of the performing initiatives are meeting its goals, as the predefined process provides the proper oversight to the responsible people. Well defined PMO (Project management office) reporting process to communicate on the initiative performance across three layers of governance plays a key role here.

Project Governance Characteristic #3: Responsive, Effective and Efficient

Good governance requires that institutions and processes try to serve all stakeholders within a reasonable timeframe and produce results that meet the needs of stakeholders while making best use of resources at their disposal i.e. decision making processes, to be supported by timely, reliable and relevant information. The requirement for timely information indicates that the reporting effort should be minimized. And reliability of information should be ensured by exposing correct current project status. Efficient project management and PMO processes are very significant to maintain the integrity of the information used to keep Project dashboards up-to-date for keeping stakeholders informed about the progress, metrics, performance, change requests and results of the project/initiative.

Project Governance Characteristic #4: Participatory, Equitable and Inclusive

Participation is a key to good governance and as such needs to be communicated and organized. At project level governance, main participants can be the Sponsor, Middle management, PMO, Project manager, Third party vendors, Partners and Customer. Ensure that all the participants feel that they have a stake in the decisions and do not feel excluded from decisions taken. Since there are several actors and as many view points, good Governance requires mediation of the different interests to reach a broad consensus. Communication of the consensus reached, to all stake holders, should be done in transparent and timely way. In general for project governance, your PMO is a crucial body for defining and managing project processes to deliver the business case outcome, defining how the project will be monitored and controlled and in keeping stakeholders involved as well as informed.

Project Governance Characteristics #5: Follow a rule of law.

During the decision-making process, law of land should never be ignored and to ensure that, good Governance requires fair legal frameworks that are enforced impartially. This is where a good understanding of contracts and agreements with customers becomes important. Accessibility to these and project terms and conditions need to be in place along with well-defined guidelines for dos and don’ts.  All decisions also need to be made considering the mission, vision and values of the organization so that the spirit in those words is reflected in all the action on the ground.

With knowledge of these characteristics, it is clear that governance is an ideal which is difficult to achieve in totality; however, actions must be taken to work towards this ideal with the aim of making it a reality because as Napoleon Bonaparte said – Nothing is more difficult, and therefore precious, than being able to decide.

So, review your current project management governance model, see if these characteristics are well-built in and if there is room for improvement. I hope that these characteristics can serve as guidelines for you to make your project a model for Good Governance.

What are your experiences with project management governance and what challenges have you faced in good governance model establishment? Please share with us so that we can learn more from your experiences.

References:

http://www.unescap.org

Eamonn V. Kelly(2010) , “ The principles of effective project governance” retrieved from http://www.pmi.org

Picture Courtesy: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-09-06/

Five Considerations to Transform Data into Insights through Effective Business Reporting

Five Considerations to Transform Data into Insights through Effective Business Reporting

by | Jul 7, 2021 | Business, Business Operations, Communication, Leadership, Management, Performance, World of Work

Today in businesses, we are not short of data. There are more than enough data points available through multiple channels for us to organize, analyze and review to our heart’s content or discontent as the case may be. Knowledge, insights and getting to actionable recommendations by sifting through this voluminous data is the difficult part. This is where effective Business reporting (or management reporting or enterprise reporting) can serve as a medium to provide knowledge in a form that enables the key-stakeholders to make informed decisions at the right time for sustained organizational success.  Management Reporting is an art and there is no single common method or set of steps to get this right. What does help though is keeping in mind the real goal behind all the reams of business reports you generate – enable the leadership to understand quickly what is going on in the business and to decide what to do with it. The business operations team can act as a primary driver in this area through creating and fine-tuning the business reporting process in the organization.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely ~ E. O. Wilson

I have been doing business reporting for many years now and have to keep reinventing my style to suit the organization I work with every so often. However, I have found the following common considerations useful for making this function effective:

Consideration #1: Focusing on what’s Important –

Take some time to define the goal or the purpose of the report. To do this you need to sit with the primary intended audience of the report and agree on the area of decision-making that they want the report to support – it could be financial approvals, resource allocations, operational planning, strategic directions, opportunity qualifications etc. Once you have the purpose, focus on the primary audience themselves – what is their working style preferences (highlights vs. details), understanding level (use of terminology and technical complexity), position in the organization (authority for info provided and decisions to be made) and priorities (to determine the flow of report). Agree on the format (presentation, word document, excel sheet or visual dashboard) that the audience is most comfortable with upfront – this is important as it allows decision makers to focus on the content rather than the form. With the purpose, the level and the format of the reporting well-defined and understood, it becomes easier to focus on the data needs of the report.

Consideration #2: Source of Data –

Determine the sources that can provide you with reliable, accurate and updated data to generate the report. It is highly unlikely that a single source of data can give you the information necessary to prepare a management report. Data could come directly through systems (if you are lucky) but you may still need inputs from multiple people in the organization to give colour to the data.  So once you know what information needs to be captured, processed, analyzed, and reported, spend time in organizing the information processes and related systems for effective reporting. You don’t want to spend time running around fighting through organizational silos and inadequate data collection systems to get the relevant data in the format you want from the systems or following up with stakeholders endlessly for their inputs. Work with the relevant people to align the systems to your business reporting needs and ensure that the reporting process and timelines are well-defined and communicated with all the stakeholders who need to provide inputs. The quality and integrity of the data sources will determine the quality and integrity of your report.

Consideration #3: Analyzing and Interpreting the Data –

Now that you have the goal, the format and the source of data set, it is time now to extract knowledge from the data, analyze it and interpret it to a form that will lend itself to effective decision-making. With the advent of big data and business intelligence tools, there are many off-the-shelf products that promise useful insights with a few clicks. It would be really nice if things were actually that easy – nothing so far has convinced me to stop using my brain as the best tool I have at my disposal when I do my reporting :). While data and analytic tools can bring in precision and help accelerate the whole process through saved time and efforts, once data from various sources is collated and information is extracted, the real value that an individual can bring in is yes – connecting all the dots together. We need to keep in mind a few questions while sifting through the data and deciding what to present – what do the numbers/feedback/results mean? How do they impact the problems that we have on hand or that could arise and the decisions that need to be taken? What are the options we have for the actions that need to be taken? This approach needs domain experience, understanding of the organizational dynamics and analytical skills (and hence the heavy dependency on the human brain).

Consideration #4: How Much is Too Much? –

There are two parts to this – the level of detail and frequency of reporting needed. And for what to do here, you have to go back to the purpose of the report and who the primary audience is. For the first part, the reporting team needs to determine the optimal amount of details to make decisions and discard all the other data collected for “just in case” and “good to have” scenarios. Avoid reporting just for the sake of reporting – because you have the data, because you have a lot of time in your hands or you bring in your personal need to impress the management. That way, soon the cost of knowing outweighs the value of knowing. This is why I said earlier, management reporting is an art – you have to balance the how’s with the what’s to hit the “right” spot for the organization. If the report answers these three questions in the best way possible – how have we done so far, where are we headed and what we need to do to arrive at the performance objectives – you have achieved the goal of the report no matter what it is. You also have to set the reporting cadence and communication. How often do you need to generate the reports to ensure that the insights remain meaningful and not repetitive or in the other extreme – hindsight knowledge too late to do anything about? Along with the primary audience, who else would benefit or be affected from the decisions taken by the primary audience from the reported insights? These are important aspects to consider in setting up the reporting process and mechanics.

Consideration #5: Tracking Desired outcomes and Continuous improvement –

Once you get the reporting right, it is time to make it effective in reality. Set up a mechanism to track the decisions made as an outcome of your reports to ensure that all the hard work that has gone into preparing the report is not wasted. Record the minutes and the actions and ensure that the stakeholders are aware and have the additional information they need to act upon the decisions. And finally, as business environments, leadership and performance objectives change, information requirements also change over time. Hence, we need to periodically review the reporting process and the reports themselves and put them through a continuous improvement cycle to ensure that they remain effective and useful.

Does this sound like a lot of work? It is but if you get this right, you have a unique opportunity to expand your influence while supporting the goals of the management because you are helping transform data into insights – critical to creating value and ultimately, increasing the competitive advantage for the organization.

So do you still think business reporting is a boring and non value-adding activity? What unique perspective do you put into your reports ? What do you expect from the reports that your team generates for you? I would love to hear back and learn for you?

Picture Courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26341587@N04/4280203413/

Business Operations Performance Challenges – Five Barriers to Operational Excellence

Business Operations Performance Challenges – Five Barriers to Operational Excellence

by | Mar 8, 2021 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

~A company can seize extra-ordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations. – Marcel Telles~

Top-line (Revenue) and bottom-line (Profit) growth are the two priorities that consistently show up in all reports on 2012 business trends. So, how do you ensure that your profits are growing while staying focused on achieving revenue growth? This is where excellence in Business Operations  becomes critical. Operational Excellence is a philosophy of leadership, teamwork and problem solving resulting in continuous improvement throughout the organization by focusing on the needs of the customer, empowering employees, and optimizing existing activities in the process (From Wiki). When people, processes and systems in a business are operating at 100% efficiency and productivity, excellence becomes a given and business goals and priorities no longer remain a wish-list.

In an ideal world, this should be an easy to achieve state – after all why would anyone not want their organization to succeed or why would systems and process not work at 100% efficiency?   I have written about how Business Operations can drive strategy to implementation in earlier posts. Today’s post is focused on the barriers within the organization that limit companies from achieving operational excellence:

Barrier # 1 – Organizational Silos (or Lack of Collaboration): Continuous improvement can only occur and be sustainable if there is a well-coordinated exercise that combines discrete steps into a combined effort. This is very difficult to do if each function in an organization acts independently and does not take into account how and where other functions can contribute to their improvement plans. Duplicate efforts, battles for credit and “left hand does not know what right hand is doing” scenarios become common-place leading to confusion and counterproductive results. If only everyone could sit together and collaborate to build and act on one plan that has a common goal and clear accountability for the steps necessary to achieve that, operational strategies would be so much easier to execute.

Barrier # 2 – Lack of Granular Information: As Sir Arthur C, Clarke said, it is vital to remember that information — in the sense of raw data — is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these. Financial systems crunch revenues and costs into categories that work well for financial reporting but are not granular enough for effective operations management. Not knowing what you don’t know is a big barrier to do any kind of realistic performance management. Multiple data sources and non-transparency in the sharing of information lead to conflicting information and thus to incorrect planning.  A year-long data and knowledge management strategy is a must for the successful creation of any plan that depends on trends and analysis.

“Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision. – Peter Senge”

Barrier #3 – Not enough Senior Management Commitment and Buy –In: This is one area that needs the full support of senior management in terms of consistency in direction setting and the will to enforce the much needed discipline. The functions are usually not well-aligned to the overall business goals – for example, sales runs after revenue growth and does not care about profitable growth, finance pushes for bottom-line  at the cost of top line improvement, delivery gives meeting milestones priority over costs. The message from the powers above on the business priorities needs to be loud and clear and consistent throughout the organization to create a culture where responsibility for performance is pervasive, accountable, and aligned.

Barrier #4 – Poor Planning for Success: Flawed processes for the basic building blocks of planning, budgeting and forecasting throws the entire year out of balance. Too often, these processes are executed in a top-down manner with no tying-in of the strategic goals to the execution steps. People lose focus and direction when they can’t envisage exactly how they are contributing to the high level goals. Whether it be an annual or a quarterly exercise, clear guidelines for planning and execution of the plans goes a long way to ensure that you retain sufficient control over where and how operations needs to focus on during the period to meet the business goals.

Barrier #5 – Outdated Systems and Technology: Legacy performance management systems and spreadsheet-based processes bog down managers in endless detail and eat up large amounts of their time trying to shuffle between systems and sheets and integrate the output of multiple systems. They spend 80% of time getting the systems to work for them and 20% of time on actually executing on the information (Pareto at work again). This is a huge pain point, and one that champions of business performance management (BPM) initiatives often target first. Getting your technology updated to best support your business objectives is a good investment and worth every penny in the long run – as it frees up your resources to spend more time on analysis and execution.

That said, these barriers are not ones that cannot be overcome with a little bit of focus and a lot of effort. With the right tools in place supported by smart people, realistic planning, and the desire to catalyze positive change across the organization, it is indeed possible to make significant improvements to accelerate the journey towards operational excellence.

I would love to hear back from you on your experiences with performance initiatives? What worked and what did not? What were the barriers that you faced in implementing operational strategies?

Exit Interviews and Why you Should Conduct Them

Exit Interviews and Why you Should Conduct Them

by | Apr 30, 2018 | Management, World of Work

If this is the first time you are coming across this term, “Exit Interviews”, a good place to begin the post would be by explaining what it is. Simply put, an exit interview is an interview you conduct with a team member who is leaving the company. To clarify, an exit interview is conducted with an employee who is resigning, and not one who is asked to leave for reasons already known. While recruiting someone, the conversation with the potential candidate usually involves discussing why the said person is interested in the job. Similarly, for an exit interview, the conversation is about why the team member wants to leave.

And why should you conduct these? Here’s why.

  1. You will get a good gauge of any problems within the company

    The prime reason for conducting exit interviews is to try and understand how you can create a better environment, and work culture. The only way you can take proactive steps towards this is when you know what the internal problems are. It is usually harder to get an honest perspective of what’s not working on the inside, from employees. However, a frank discussion with someone who is leaving, might give you valuable insights into what you may have to engage with in order to bring about positive changes to the work space. A starter question for the conversation could be something along the lines of, “what do you think the company can change to be better?”

  2. You will understand why people are leaving

    High retention and low attrition is one of the goals every company aspires to achieve. Conducting exit interviews with individuals who choose to leave the company will help you understand if there are any issues within your company that need your attention. The reasons for an individual leaving a company are varied, and at times it may have nothing to do with the company. For example, the individual in question may have been offered a better salary elsewhere, or may be leaving for personal reasons, or other reasons entirely beyond your control. It is nonetheless good to understand the reason, just so you don’t miss out on knowing whether there is a problem you can fix.

  3. You create a culture of dialogue

    Exit interviews cost almost next to nothing, unless you mind paying with your time. This is an extremely cost effective technique which also adds value to your HR process. Having a process like an exit interview is a great practice which speaks about your concern, as well as enthusiasm when it comes to the work environment in your company. More than anything else, it shows your willingness to invest in communication and dialogue. This goes a long way in creating a sustainable work environment, which nurture’s its employees. One where they know that how they feel and what they say makes a difference, it matters.

Besides all these reasons, an exit interview is also a great way to simplify the way forward for both yourself, and the individual who’s leaving. Any last minute paper work/ surprises can be avoided with this step. Overall, it provides an opportunity to end the professional relationship on good terms.