Category: Outside-In

BPM, Balanced Scorecard, EA and High Performance (presentation)

At a recent performance appraisal this comment was made seriously,
“If you pay me for doing dumb things, I will get really smart at doing dumb things”.

Do you measure people with ‘dumb’ metrics – activities and outputs, or with Outside In measures of results and outcomes? If Balanced Scorecards (BSC) and Strategy Maps fail it is largely as a consequence of having dumb metrics in there – activities and outputs.

So how can we measure the right things and encourage success? Instead of people rushing to deal with a call (because all calls must be less than 2 minutes) how do we measure the meeting of a customer need – effective resolution of a query? Using the appropriate process and performance metrics within an articulated Enterprise Architecture is a good starting point. This presentation leads us to the how of that. Enjoy.

The Customer Experience is the Process – do you really believe that?

The Customer Experience is the Process. What does that really mean and how can that help us reduce costs, grow revenues and improve the customer delivery (at the same time). In this first short presentation James Dodkins (BP Groups Chief Customer Officer) provides us with an understanding.

4. Breakpoints – Identifying them, fixing them and controling them

Do you follow up on others to ensure that activities they are responsible for are being done in a timely manner so you can get your primary work done?

Any time we “check” on something, we are doing so because a Break Point exists.

Do you ever need to “fight a fire”?

Every “fire” exists because of a Break Point, Moment of Truth or Business Rule.

What about meetings? Do you have meetings in order to get everyone “on the same page”?

Many meetings exist solely to coordinate and communicate the actions that need to be taken in response to “break downs” from Break Points and Moments of Truth.

How many actions do you take to confirm something got done, has been completed or to check on something to make sure it is in a particular place, with a particular person, etc?

Actions taken to confirm other actions are behaviors that arise from failures that have occurred in the past (we have learned our lesson) at Break Points and Moments of Truth.

How many times have you had to fill out one or more forms to “document” the fact that something got done?

Documenting normal work is a behavior spawned by process failure at one or more Break Points as a means to “reduce” the number of failures that don’t get “caught.” (This is called fixing the effect – which always leads to the creation of more Causes of Work.)

Remember, any place that a hand-off occurs for any interaction between any combination of people and systems, a Break Point exists.

What do you need to know to put this strategy to work for you? 
It’s simple. You are only five steps away from identifying the causes of work in your organization then eliminating them. You need to have a target, Break Points identified, Actions identified, Cost/Benefit Assessment and your Cost Reduction Plan.

Identity, Expression and reputation (thanks Mathias Klang)

Something for the weekend sir? This is a really good one on the rights and wrongs of freedom.
I really get with the slide featuring Stephen Fry 🙂

2. Breakpoints – the root of all internal evil and yet the Promised land?

That is the size of the prize the Break Points Toolkit targets – the rest of the non-value added work iceberg.
Non value-added work is consuming up to 90% of your employees’ time. Yet many of the approaches to increasing utilization are producing little benefit and may even be contributing to the problem. Yet there is a much easier and direct way to identify the causes of this non value-added work in your organization so that you can start eliminating them today!
A Google search on “non value added work” turns up over 104 million matches. It’s an issue we are all very aware of, one that is a source of continuing frustration because most often when we act to increase our utilization somehow the numbers never seem to hit the bottom line.
So what we are doing isn’t working.
We need something different, something that works. Perhaps there is a statistical method or scientific formula that will help us break through this success barrier?
Actually, all you need is a simple technique that allows you to identify the source of the non value-added work so that it can then be removed! 
It’s kind of like a tumor. Before X-Rays, Sonograms, and MRIs, it wasn’t easy to identify a tumor in the human body. With these tools many tumors are now very easy to identify. They stand out like a sore thumb.

For non-value added work our diagnostic machine is Break Points. They are the number one cause of work in organizations everywhere and yet most of the time we aren’t even aware that we should be looking for them.

Like those advanced medical diagnostic machines, using Break Points as our “cause of work diagnostic machine” makes it easy to identify the sources of non-value added work.

And once we have identified them we can take action to eliminate them. That’s where we are going next.

 

Moments of Truth are fine but what about …

Breakpoints an Introduction
The last few articles have focused our attention on the primary cause of all work in our processes – Moments of Truth. Fix those and the benefits are dramatic, immediate and sustainable. However what about this internal work we are doing? All the hand-offs between departments, the relationships with business partners and the wider Supply Chain? That is where Breakpoints come in.

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What you will Learn
The Breakpoints Tool Kit provides the means to tackle internal bureaucracy and reduce/eliminate all those handoffs that cause all that work.
Recommendation
The BP Group provides a program built on 8 foundational methods, techniques and skills which help you to deliver triple crown benefits i.e. simultaneously reducing costs, improving revenues and enhancing service.
The steps are practical, sensible and focused on action. The approach provides direction to people who are responsible for organization performance improvement, process realignment and ensuring ‘outside in’ thinking at all levels of business.  If you fall into that category, the method and techniques will help you realize your performance and process objectives. The BP Group recommends this solid and proven approach to senior executives, managers and process performance professionals.
Ready? We start Breakpoints tomorrow. See you then 🙂
Steve  

PEX and BP Group Certified Process Professional (CPP) May 2-3, London

Just around the corner is PEX Europe in two weeks time.

In association with IQPC and the PEX network we are running a two day Certified Process Programme (CPP). Now in its 7th year the CPP qualification has spread far and wide with more than 25,000 certified across 92 countries. Places are in high demand so if you would like to attend book here and the PEX team will help get you in the room on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd May.

4. Moments of Truth, metrics and dashboards

4. Moments of Truth, metrics and dashboards
Consider a dashboard of MOT’s across the organization. Ownership can be assigned to each and every MOT and they can be actively managed to progressively improve the process. For any process that deserves to exist there is an optimum number of MOT’s to achieve a Successful Customer Outcome (SCO).  What would be the theoretical optimum? One MOT. It is however rare to find that animal, so at a pragmatic level what should be the optimum?
A direct relationship exists between the technology that supports a process, the peoples skill and competence and the clear objective articulation of an SCO. Lower levels of organization maturity (technology, people, process) result in higher numbers of MOT’s. This in turn creates higher costs, poorer service and less than optimal performance.
On a scale of 1-10 (1 bad, 10 good) how developed and supportive is the technology, people skills and SCO development?

A typical dashboard with MOT’s includes metrics such as: Amount, Type, Ownership, Alignment, Trend, Ratio and Impact. We will explain and discuss the latter two later.

Voice of Customer (doh)

Business Process Management – what is it?
http://youtu.be/NO54KXxTp9I

Moments of Truth – what are they?
http://youtu.be/OT_2cqMtrUw

Breakpoints and Business Rules?
http://youtu.be/_8KSN_McWIg

Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s) http://youtu.be/u4keI_kmdxM 

Voice of Customer? http://youtu.be/bTbHrxi1Vq4  


Latest CPP program – Levels 1-8
http://www.bpgroup.org/certification-by-city.html


Linked In (Over 10,000 members now)  BP Group overall 85,000
Certified Process Professionals 25,000+

Exploring the fertile territory of Moments of Truth *** Moments of Truth are the cause of all our work ***

1. Moments of Truth are the cause of all our work.
In fact MOT’s create what we all say is process. Here is a video that explains their origin back in the 20thcentury. For our purposes this 10 part (one a day) series takes us through the understanding, usefulness and advanced application of MOT’s.
Why are they so important? Put simply any interaction with the customer is a Moment of Truth. Any interaction. Combine that with the observation that the customer experience is the process and you can see that MOT’s extend upstream and downstream of our business.
For example Southwest Airlines have innovated their check in process and it happens as you check out of the hotel. That MOT allows them to get the baggage into the loading cycle early and as a consequence it costs less, enhances customer service and ultimately delivers increased revenue (we all want more of that).
Getting a grip on Moments of Truth allows us to make the customers lives easier, simpler and more successful.