Time to Reformat?

Are we there yet? Try to sift through the media hype and you will come to the ‘I don’t know’ answer. It is extremely difficult to determine if the global economy is climbing out of hibernation or slowly sinking into a state of coma. The equity markets continue to behave like a buoy in the middle of hurricane Paula. However, from my vantage point there is still free cash and buyers in the economy; consumers are still making purchases. Granted not to the degree of a decade ago, but big ticket items are changing hands.

With the ebbs and flows of consumer spending, and with a hungry pool of commercial entities, how does an organization attract buyers to itself; in essence, away from other vendors? For many organizations they undergo a myriad of ‘strategies’ in hopes that something sticks. Success in this economic climate and beyond rests on, I believe, two main ideas. Success comes down to attitude and economic agility.

The attitude for successful sales is one of understanding your clients and prospects. The organization needs to understand the needs of their audience with the correct products and services. In unison with the right products and services comes the understanding of who the organization is; a niche high-end supplier vs. a low cost volume discounter. Through the understanding of the vendor’s market niche, sales are gained on a definitive quantity; value, price, options, etc.

Bottom line profits are the result of two entities, sales and managing costs. To drive the life blood [profit] of survival internal cost management must be scrutinized. For many the word ‘scrutinize’ equates to radical cost cutting measures similar to ‘slash and burn’. I have seen many organizations slash the very budgets that keep them visible in the market place. These line items include marketing, sales and R&D initiatives. It boggles my mind how an organization can expect long term survival, when it eradicates the market presence initiatives [marketing, sales] and the basis of product evolution [R&D].

What these organizations fail to realize is that their real wealth rests within wasted processes in their organization and not in programs that will assist in weathering the storm. For many years I professed the mantra of continuous process improvement. To that end, I always professed that an organization must view its processes and procedures under the microscope and at each step ask the question ‘why’. It is only through questioning whether a process or a step adds value will one determine those defunct processes.

For many firms, time has overlaid new policies on the tails of old policies, new procedures get back-ended onto existing procedures and at no time does any one stop and try to unravel this thick mat of policies and procedures. I always believed that in every organization there are a few processes that are near the peak of efficiency, and only minor adjustments are needed to gain optimization. However, after an in depth analysis of several large organizations I have realized this was not the case.

I have always believed the best way to gain new insight into existing processes is to bring an in outsider to oversee that process area. Many years ago I had the privilege of working with an organization which had all of their senior executives on a three year rotation through the executive management ranks. The philosophy of the organization was to increase sensitivity of the executives for various departments. However, a byproduct of which turned out that efficiencies in processes were gained. Bill Taylor, in his article Trading Places: A Smart Way to Change Your Mind, expounds on the value of how the most innovative ideas come from outsiders.

I believe the greatest success in effectively scrutinizing processes comes by way of an outsider with the idea of breaking what isn’t broken. In their book, If it Ain’t Broke, Break it!, Kniegel and Patler demonstrate that organizational success isn’t the product of doing things the same old way. Success is the product of breaking the existing rules and thereby breaking away from the pack. The pack of current competitive forces.

So after years of adding more applications to the system, more processes and procedures to the mix, the agility of the organization is crippled by the weight of all of this ‘stuff’. Just as computer geeks profess, when applications start running slow – it is time to reformat the drive and reload the operating system. For most organizations, now is the time - clear the clutter, get a fresh perspective and reload the organization with a fresh ‘operating system’. This may be your last chance before a system crash!