rebuild your operational plan based on what you are trying to
accomplish in the one-year period against the ten-year goals. This
means your plan’s time span is getting shorter each year. The com-
mon trap is to also extend the life of the business plan by one
year—always keeping a ten-year time frame. This is dangerous
because you fall into the trap of strategic planning creep. Allow
your plan to perform or mature for a number of years before you
move the ten-year goals. My clients seem to get three or four years
completed on their ten-year business plan before they move the
end goals. This allows them to check assumptions, qualify the accu-
racy of their numbers, and measure their sustained performance.
The recommendation, therefore, is to let your plan run a few years
before radically shifting goals. Minor adjustments are necessary and
acceptable, but don’t abandon your goals and plans in the first year.
Tracking the performance of your plan is easy. The numbers
can be tallied. The actions can be checked off for completion. The
real problem with performance is not measurement but rather
accountability. What do you do when the plan is not being ful-
filled? Investigate the reasons for not hitting the targets carefully
before you take action. Consider these questions:
■ Is it normal statistical deviation? No one can accurately pre-
dict where your performance will fall on a projection
chart. The plan may be off because of normal statistical
deviation, or what is called the zig and zag. The issue is
how far off you are from where you wanted to be. Is 5 per-
cent deviation (i.e., a subjective percentage you set)
acceptable? Can you live with 10 percent deviation? If the
deviation is not in the end acceptable, you must go back
into your plan to look at the data. Reexamine information
such as sales projections, costs of doing business, and prof-
it margins to find the source of plan failure. Make correc-
tions accordingly. Remember, shortfalls are compounded.
The further you get behind the further you get behind.
The efforts to catch up expand exponentially.
Implementing and Sustaining Your Business Plan
327
■ Is it a failure of the management team to implement? This is
the most common cause of plan deviation. Repeatedly I
find teams not fulfilling promises made in the action plan.
Once the planning session is over, business as usual pre-
vails. The individual or team doesn’t follow through with
commitments. The antidote for individual failure or non-
compliance is to tie the results of the plan into your per-
formance reward program. People have a tendency to do
the things for which they are rewarded. Consistent failure
to perform takes on a whole different meaning that begins
with coaching, progresses to performance counseling, and
finally ends with termination. The sooner you legitimate-
ly get rid of nonperforming management, the greater your
chance of hitting your targets.
Measuring Everyone Against a Business
Performance Model
There are three levels of performance you must consider when for-
mally tracking your business plan (see Figure 12-3). The perfor-
mance is tied specifically to the annual targets of the business plan.
This standard keeps each level focused on doing mission-essential
work, not extraneous, fun activities. These levels are:
■ Level 1. Organizational performance (business plan track)
■ Level 2. Team performance (business plan track)
■ Level 3. Individual performance (performance review pro-
gram)
Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan
328
Figure 12-3. There are three levels of performance that must be tracked against the business plan. They are
organizational, team, and individual. All lead to the strategic goals.
At the first level of performance measurement the company as
a whole must be held accountable. This demands command
responsibility. Managers are responsible for all that their units do or
fail to do. Performance measurements are not complex at that level.
The question is simple: Did the company hit the plan it estab-
lished? If yes, the organizational performance is acceptable. If the
answer is no, then excuses are not acceptable. If a company fails,
then the president must be responsible and should answer to the
board of directors for his or her failure to provide appropriate lead-
ership and managership of the organization and its plan. It is that
simple.
Likewise at Level 2, managers are held accountable for their
teams using the same command responsibility concept. The vice
president is held accountable for making the sales figures or the
research and development vice president is responsible and
accountable for bringing new products in on schedule. Vice presi-
dents answer to the president in the same fashion as the president
answers to the board of directors—no excuses. Their appropriate
bosses likewise hold other team leaders such as plant managers
accountable.
Level 3 performance is the individual measure of what is done
and how well it is done. The performance review items normally
found in human resources documents must accurately reflect the
actual tasks the individual does each day to accomplish the annual
targets. Again, no extraneous work should be allowed. The key is a
fully qualified individual focused on mission-essential items. The
business plan must include provisions for leadership and manager-
ship training to fill expected skills shortfalls. Don’t ask people to do
jobs they are not trained to do without providing them support.
This training is looped back to the performance review system. How
well were the lessons learned in training applied to perform the
job? This criterion ties any company training activities to the busi-
ness plan, prevents training for training’s sake, and makes account-
ability for skills integral to the individual performance review.
Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan
330
Establishing Two Types of Standards of
Performance
To successfully implement processes at the three levels, manage-
ment must set and maintain its standards. This is a stabilizing fac-
tor in any organization. There are certain performance levels that
must be held constant. In widely fluctuating situations it becomes
difficult to know what performance factors are satisfactory and
what are unsatisfactory.
Management must improve its standards. Standards are not
fixed points or objectives, but rather the start points for doing a bet-
ter job the next time. Once performance is fixed in place with the
maintenance of standards, improvement begins.
Two types of standards exist: stabilized and evolving. Stabilized
standards are the standards that tell individuals how their perfor-
mance is measured. Goals and objectives usually contain standards.
This helps provide stability to the work situation. As the stabilized
standards are met and improvements in the workflow occur, the
standards are shifted upward. These standards are said to be evolv-
ing as the system becomes fine-tuned. There can be no improve-
ment (the ultimate goal of process mapping) if there are no stan-
dards, they are not disciplined, or they are not allowed to evolve.
Standards carry certain characteristics that help the organiza-
tion form, shape, and project consistency in its story. These may be
found in company documents such as the Standard Operation
Procedures or policy manuals. Too few standards are a lack of disci-
pline while too many standards could become overwhelming. Seek
a working balance. The standards should have the following char-
acteristics:
■ They become the individual authorization and responsi-
bility to carry out work.
■ They are transmittal vehicles of individual experience to
the next generation of employees.
■ They communicate individual experience and know-how
to the organization.
Implementing and Sustaining Your Business Plan
331
■ They demonstrate an accumulation of experience within
the organization through their evolving nature.
■ They deploy know-how from one department to another.
■ They serve as a mark of discipline for the organization.
HOW TO SUSTAIN YOUR PLAN: THE FOUR
PLAN ASSURANCE ACTIVITIES
Your plan cannot be launched without support in the background.
There are at least four support areas (see Figure 12-4) for the suc-
cessful implementation of your plan. They are:
1. Business Process Mapping
2. Organizational change management
3. Leadership development
4. Management development
First you must clean up any organizational inefficiency found
in the processes. This is done through Business Process Mapping
(BPM). Don’t delay the implementation of your action plan until
the process improvements are completed because they will never be
finished and must be seen as ongoing initiatives. The BPM can and
should run concurrent with your plan implementation.
A number of organizational change activities may also take
place to support your plan. They may include activities such as
restructuring the organization, an acquisition for growth, or restruc-
turing the debt burden. Strategically realigning the resources and
core competencies may be other examples of the organizational
change necessary to support the future direction of your company.
Leadership and managership behavior must also be aligned
with the plan. Little is accomplished by establishing a vision if lead-
ership is remiss or by setting bold goals if the skill of managerial
efforts is lacking. Actions for improving leadership functions and
management behaviors necessary to match the plan requirements
must be carefully programmed.
Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan
332
BUSINESS PROCESS MAPPING TO IMPROVE
YOUR BOTTOM LINE
To ensure the healthy implementation of your business plan you
must remove heat loss by conducting a series of Business Process
Mapping sessions. These activities are designed specifically to
remove excessive costs from your business processes through elim-
inating unnecessary, overlapping, and duplicate events while
assigning responsibility and holding managers responsible for cost
control and cost containment (see Figure 12-5).
Implementing and Sustaining Your Business Plan
333
Figure 12-4. During the sustaining phase you must pay attention to four
sets of activities required to keep the planning momentum.
Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan
334
Figure 12-5. Business Process Mapping streamlines your internal ways of
doing work. That is your fastest way to increase the bottom line.
Two ways of thinking must be dovetailed for process mapping
to work. First, the manager must be concerned with results. Of
course results are ultimately the profit goal of any business. That
doesn’t mean that profit drives all actions. It simply means that
profit and other cost issues must be accounted for in the thinking
process. You must be results-oriented. This means a concern for
profitability, cost-effectiveness, and financial goal accomplishment.
The second is to think in terms of processes. This means a concern
for organizational discipline and workflow effectiveness. Often the
results become the focus to the exclusion of the process. The suc-
cessful execution of process mapping can occur only if both process
and results are integrated.
Process mapping is inherently difficult for American managers.
This difficulty stems from a basic philosophy ingrained in us. We
are taught to make great strides in actions by “thinking big,”
“stretching out,” or “going for the gold.” The dream of every engi-
neer is to make a technological breakthrough in his or her field.
While this is great for advancing the field of knowledge, it goes
against the purpose of process mapping, which is continual, incre-
mental improvement. This division of philosophies is so pro-
nounced it is seen as a major difference between Japanese and
American business practices. Americans pride themselves on inno-
vation. We like to take great leaps forward by building things first.
This is a successful method of moving a business forward by
bounds. It is like hitting a home run in baseball. It doesn’t happen
in every game but when it does the results are significant. On the
other hand, the Japanese pride themselves on improving existing
creations. They play a steady game by opting for base hits. They see
incremental improvement as the best way to win the game. This is
also a successful business tool. When the two methods are com-
pared in terms of returns on investments as business ventures, the
gradual development or incremental approach historically provides
the greater return.
I suggest a combination of the two approaches. You are encour-
aged to look for opportunities to excel. However, the real leverages
in the business are in the gradual development of a fine-tuned sys-
tem. This will be through process mapping and improvements of
the system itself.
Levels of Processes
There are four generally accepted levels of key business processes:
1. Level 1—Macro Business Activities. These are functions that
are the responsibility of the top management of the com-
pany. They are big picture or major activities that require
high-level decision making and significantly affect the
future of the company. An example may be the acquisi-
Implementing and Sustaining Your Business Plan
335
tion process. The process owners are the president and
vice presidents.
2. Level 2—Companywide Functions. These are activities that
are critical to the company but cut across functional
boundaries. They are owned by a high-level executive but
must be coordinated with other peer executives. Sales
may be an example. While this activity is the responsibil-
ity of the vice president of sales, it must be fully coordi-
nated with research and development, manufacturing,
and shipping.
3.
Level 3—Functional or Departmental Processes. Lower-level
processes fall within the responsibility of a department
and have less coordination requirements across depart-
mental lines. For example, the process of producing a new
design of wallpaper may be the primary responsibility of
the creative department.
4.
Level 4—Unit/Work Group or Individual Processes. Most
processes to carry out business are found at the lowest
level of the organization. Your business is a collage of
many teams and individuals doing daily work. These are
usually routine and often overlooked as candidates for the
process mapping. Yet we know this is where some of your
greatest inefficiencies occur. They may be as simple as
checking in customers at the service department of an
automobile dealership or conducting preventive mainte-
nance on a piece of machinery.
The Payoffs of Process Mapping
Of all the activities that an organization can do to improve its
financial position, challenge employees, and produce better per-
formance, process mapping takes the lead. It is the fastest way I
know to return the greatest amount of resources back into the sys-
tem. Those resources may be dollars on the profit and loss state-
ment, hours saved on manufacturing processes, or quality improve-
Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan
336
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét