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South Africa, South Africa, South Africa, South Africa, South Africa, South Africa, South Africa Business Processes, Business Process Management
Michael Hammer defines business process as "an organized group of related activities that together create a result of value to customers.“ Each word in this definition is important: ØA process is a group of activities, not just one. Value is created not by single activities, but by the entire process in which all these tasks merge in a systematic way for a clear purpose. ØActivities are related and organized. They present a stream of relevant, interconnected activities that must be performed in the right way to produce the desired outcome. ØAll the activities in the process work together toward a common goal. People must all be aligned around a single purpose, instead of focusing on their individual tasks in isolation. ØProcess are not ends in themselves. They have a purpose, they create and deliver results that customers care about.
In far too many organizations, senior management's traditional functional mindset represents one of the most significant barriers to change. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the traditional functional paradigm has done more to impede customer focused, business performance improvement over the past two decades than almost any other factor. This way of thinking stands in the way of executives understanding and improving the flow of cross-functional activities which create enduring value for customers and shareholders. It promotes the type of thinking that impedes the effective deployment of enabling information technology. It promotes also 'silo behavior' and turf protection, and an undue pre-occupation with organization structure. This mindset contributes to the mistaken belief that if it was somehow possible to properly define the boxes on the organizational chart, and fill in the names of the "right" people in the key boxes - then the organization's performance will automatically improve. Yet, little is further from the truth. Further, it encourages a distorted view of performance measurement and executive rewards, shifting focus away from meaningful measures such as the timeliness and quality of services provided to customers, and towards less significant measures around functional departmental performance. It reinforces a task focus and traditional command and control behavior, where questions such as 'What is the scope of my responsibility?' and 'Who are the key subordinates who can help me look good?' are foremost and top of mind. Moreover, traditional functional thinking has also led to outdated management practices in the areas of goal setting and problem solving and it stifles innovation. So what to do? How can you transform the traditional functional mindset such that your organization is designed to make it easy for customers to do business with the company and easier for employees to better serve the company's customers? An effective way of transforming the traditional functional mindset is to embrace enterprise business process thinking and install enterprise business process management (EBPM) practices. What does this involve? Frankly, it requires a lot of very hard work, and concepts which will make some of your executives very, very uncomfortable. Why do it? Simply because the benefits of making this mental model transition are significant. Strategic Management
Enterprise strategy can be formulated and implemented at three different levels – corporate, business unit, and functional or departmental level. At the corporate level, you are responsible for creating value through your businesses. You do so by managing your portfolio of businesses, ensuring that your businesses are successful over the long term, developing business units, and sometimes ensuring that each business is compatible with others in your portfolio. Products and services are developed by business units. The role of the corporation is to manage its business units, products and services so that each is competitive and so that each contributes to corporate purposes. Corporate Strategy fundamentally is concerned with selection of businesses in which your company should compete and with development and coordination of that portfolio of businesses. Corporate level strategy is concerned with reach; competitive contact; managing activities and business interrelationships; and management practices. Business Strategy includes battle plans and tactics to fight your competition. A strategic business unit may be any profit center that can be planned independently from the other business units of your corporation. At the business unit level, the strategic issues are about both practical coordination of operating units and about developing and sustaining a competitive advantage for the products and services that are produced. Business strategy deals with positioning and differentiating the business and/or products against rivals; cross-functional process management; anticipating changes in technology and customer perceptions and adjusting the strategy to accommodate them; influencing the nature of competition through strategic and political actions; and building strategic partnerships and co-innovating with other business units, partners, and customers. Functional Strategy deals with operational methods related to functional business processes and value chain, and value adding activities that you choose for your business. Functional level strategies in R&D, operations, manufacturing, marketing, finance, and human resources involve the development and coordination of resources through which business unit level strategies can be executed effectively and efficiently.
Top Manager, CEO Six Attributes of Successful, Long-term CEOs 1. Creating, Communicating and Executing a Clear Vision, Goals and Strategy. An executive's success is affected by the ability to communicate a vision for a company's future, helping employees to navigate through change and motivating them to achieve specific goals. 2. Delivering Results. Today's businesses – especially those publicly held -emphasize the bottom-line more than ever. Tolerance levels for poor performance are dropping. There is little margin for error. That makes the ability to produce results a very important factor impacting tenure. 3. Acting with Integrity. Those who operate with integrity consistently adhere to a code of conduct and have an underlying value system that is manifested through their behavior. 4. Maintaining Key Relationships. To have a long-term view you need to have strong political ties, good shareholder relations and the skills and knowledge to allow people to understand and buy into the long-term view. A successful relationship with the board of directors is of particular importance. 5. Exhibiting Appropriate Leadership Style and People Skills. A poor leadership style and people skills ultimately have a negative impact on an executive's tenure at their own firm. Some executives can clearly get the job done quickly, but the 'dead bodies' left in their wake can take years for the organization to recover. 6. The Cultural Fit. A candidate for a top job might look great on paper, but must be culturally compatible in order to build relationships and add true value. Often, hiring managers or boards emphasize the need to challenge old thinking and move in new directions. But if an executive is too far out of step with an organization, the resulting culture clash can overwhelm the benefits. |
