Alignment
Last month I delivered a keynote speech to a group of business leaders in Athens, Greece. The HMA had adopted the concept of replacing the old concept of trying to do “more with less” with the concept from our book, “doing more ON less.” I loved the signage for the event. The concept of “more with less” is completely overused and in crisis situations just results in lots of under-funded activities, diffused leadership attention and gridlock of any progress. Doing “More ON Less” is about reducing the focus to the highest impact activities, concentrating funding on those items and focusing leadership attention on just a big initiatives. Here is how the idea of transforming through “More ON Less” could be applied in Greece today. (more…)
Very often I am asked, “do we really need ‘every’ department to participate in our customer experience initiative. My quick answer is usually, “if a department truly has zero impact on customers, then maybe they should be eliminated or outsourced.” Many times this drifts into a follow up question to test the edges, “…well, what about our legal department for example.” I’ve seen this too many times and have a great recent example to share with you on why even legal departments can make a huge difference in customer experience.
Recently while booking a business trip, I found a good deal on a flight on my normal carrier, which is United. After booking it, I realized that the return date may need to flex and was wondering what any change fees or penalties may be for this potential change. That’s when I was hit with this perfect “Counter Point” example where legal language makes all the difference in the customer experience. (more…)
In our strategic transformation work we are often asked the question, “why should we limit ourselves to just three major initiatives?” Executive teams feel that a short list of initiatives is not a stretch for the organization or that it is too limited to create transformational change. The truth is that when it comes to execution, transformational change comes from making major progress on a small number of things. It is about stacking up the resources on the most high impact initiatives that will have meaningful impact on customer value and the customer experience.
Harvard Business Review just published research from Booz Allen & Company that was based on a broad executive study of 1800 global executives. Here are some of the highlights for you to consider and to use with your stakeholders and team to make the case for focus.
* Most executives (64%) report they have too many conflicting priorities.
* The majority of executives (56%) say that allocating resources in a way that really supports the strategy is a significant challenge, especially as companies chase a wide set of growth initiatives.
* 81% admit that their growth initiatives lead to waste, at least some of the time.
* Nearly half (47%) say their company’s way of creating value is not well understood by employees or customers. (more…)
In almost every recent transformation I’ve been involved in, we’ve been discussing the same things. How can we get more done, faster? And there is often a caveat…that we won’t be able to increase spending.Sound familiar? I spend lots of time thinking about how to frame up the situation about focus, selecting a small number of high-impact initiatives, and doubling-down resources on those initiatives. And with so many teams, it seems that a fundamental principle that is undermining high-impact execution is the seemingly logical concept of doing “more with less.” I try to explain the flaw in this thinking, and then Scott Adams, through Dilbert, just nails it! At least in terms of taking a jab at the flawed logic and way that it is received by employees. Here are some practical steps executing a better alternative, doing “More ON Less.” (more…)
In the past five years or so, our transformation work is experiencing a major shift in how to generate the engagement and alignment of all employees in an organization. It is now more common that teams at all levels may not be co-located in a single office, people collaborate across global time zones, and we have learned how to develop social clusters of expertise that extend both through and beyond traditional organizational boundaries and connections. In this post are the beginnings of a list of solutions that are worth exploring. (more…)
While everyone is talking about the need for innovation to serve as the growth catalyst for U.S. businesses, job growth and the economy overall, a group of leaders in the Tri-Valley region is taking action.Last week, the Innovation Tri-Valley initiative (ITV) was launched at a gathering of over 300 regional business, educational, civic and political leaders (news story and press release).
Marty Beard, the key executive leading the Innovation Tri-Valley effort and President of Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, In., recently explained that, “What we are doing in the Tri-Valley may very well be defining a new model for regions around the U.S. to get moving again as leaders in innovation. It is not only an opportunity to leverage the tremendous assets we have, but also a need and an obligation as leaders to do this for our companies and for our country.” Marty’s enthusiasm, determination and drive have helped rally a highly diverse group of leaders into what has become a collaborative effort across the region. (more…)
The Professional Services Journal invited Jeanne Urich, SPI Research, and I to co-lead a webinar on professional services transformations. We share background on the industry-leading PS Maturity Model Benchmark as well as our PS Transformation approach.
If you are responsible for improving performance of a professional services orgnaization or merging services organizations, you will find this webinar valuable in terms of specific benchmark performance metrics from the ”best-of-the-best” and a well proven process for transformation with some tools and case exmaples to apply to your business.
Today I met with about 50 professionals with a variety of experiences with M&A integration at the Association for Corporate Growth. The topic of my presentation was to share the true keys to success that have made the difference in companies who successfuly create shareholder value through business combinations. Several people were interested in getting a copy of the slides so I’m trying out an online publishing tool called DoXtop to easily share these.
In addition to the presentation, I’ve also included a link to a companion article to go with the presentation for those who are interested.
By Michael Kanazawa
This week I had the opportunity to meet with an amazing group of innovators at RKS Design, including Ravi Sawhny, the founder and CEO of RKS, Tom White and Deepa Prahalad. RKS designs products for companies in a very unique way. Rather than work from spec sheets, they go first to customer needs, wants and emotions. This philosophy meets closely with my perspective on customer-driven business strategy and managing to customer experiences, so I was interested in meeting them and learning more.
I didn’t keep it much of a secret that I also wanted to get my hands on one of their beautiful RKS guitars. In 2005 the RKS guitar graced the cover of BusinessWeek in an edition covering the most innovative products of the year! Holding the guitar it was clear why it won the awards and also won the hearts of people like Don Felder (The Eagles), one of my favorite guitarists of all time as well as Ricki Lee Jones, Ron Wood and many others. (more…)
Generating innovations for future growth while the economy is down, capital sources are scarce, and the markets continue to evolve quickly is a challenge facing many organizations today. Given the breadth of companies facing this challenge, I wanted to share some best practices from our experience that are practical and systemic answers to this challenge. (more…)
ABOUT
Michael Kanazawa shares recent insights and tips about the no-nonsense, results-driven approach to driving business breakthroughs found in his new book Big Ideas to Big Results.