Background
A defense company I worked for wanted to get into the Sonobuoy business. At the time, one company dominated the market and usually received the largest share of the Navy contract. A couple of other suppliers got the balance of the production quantity to keep it a competitive business.
My company developed a win strategy based on a ¼ scale prototype and purposely under bidding the competition. It worked. They won the largest piece of the production contract. Continue reading
When you were a kid, people told you what to do. Later in life, the same. We don’t like to be told what to do.
When we think about delegation, it comes with this baggage: that being told what to do is a drag. We only take it well from people we really respect. We don’t want to be that awful Do this! person, and we don’t want to be resented by people we’re delegating to. So, it’s easy to fall into the trap of not delegating enough. Continue reading
Redefining the BIA – Usefulness and Uses
If we agree on the basic premise that Business Continuity can be defined as sustaining what is critical to the enterprise’s survivability during periods of discontinuity; then we must recognize that the activity known as the Business Impact Assessment (Analysis) or BIA needs to be redefined. The BIA, as currently practiced does not necessarily achieve the following:
Senior management have to come to grips with the fact that Digital Transformation is not an Event but rather the operating environment of 21st century business.
Like music, photos, TV, and data, once something becomes digital it becomes a consumable and moves from the domain of the specialised expert to a public commodity. As with Blockbuster, Borders, Capital Records, and newspapers, businesses based on non-digital product are the hand-crafted hobbies of the 21st century. Craft markets will exist into the future but they are generally not profitable and rather a labour of love. Continue reading
Operational Excellence is a term you’ve probably heard a thousand times. So what is operational excellence—what is the definition of operational excellence— what does it mean? And why is it important? Before we can be it, we have to know what it is. If I were to stub my toe on it, what would it look like?
Let’s start by differentiating operations from operational. Operations is about processes, whereas operational deals with systems—even entire enterprises. Accordingly, there must be a difference between excellence in operations, or process excellence, and operational excellence. Simply put, excellence in operations is efficiency—doing things right—but operational excellence is effectiveness—doing the right things. Continue reading