Looking Outside-In

The BP Group is 20 years old in September. Over the last two decades people who have participated in our training and consultancy and have captured some of my comments. There are over 200, many clearly inspired by my heroes ‘giants’ in business and life. The list here are the ones most often referred back to me πŸ™‚

How much do you need to know, to know you know, you know enough?

The Customer Experience is the process (Steve Jobs)

If things are changing faster outside than in, you will fail.

You don’t have a choice about where to start. You can only start where you are now!

Are you aligned to Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s)? Or are you just moving the chairs on the deck of the Titanic?

If you do not know who your customer is you do not know what you are doing.

Stop managing and measuring outputs. Start managing Customer Expectations and measuring the SCO.

Can your people clearly articulate their contribution to the SCO?

This is a once in a 600 year thing. The invention of the printing press (1436) and now Outside-In (1997).

Does your technology help with the SCO? If it doesn’t scrap it!

Technology is the emans to the end, not the end in itself. It is just the same with pen and paper.

To link process with performance we need to rethink what we mean by performance.

We shouldn’t keep looking back at the past to define the possibilities for the future.

Does your process start and end with the customer? If it doesn’t you are fixing the wrong thing.

Someone said the Chinese are coming. They are wrong. The Chinese have been and gone. This is what you are left with as a consequence!

Moving Outside-In isn’t a choice. It is a pre-requisite for success in the 21st century.

Are you measuring Activities and Tasks (Inside-Out), or Outputs and SCO’s (Outside-In)?

The only reason a process exists to is to help achieve a Successful Customer Outcome.

Can you connect every single task with the Successful Customer Outcome?

Who pays your salary? Yes it is the Customer.

Check your companys reports. How often is the customer mentioned? If they are not it shouldn’t surprise you that the business is failing.

If you aren’t managing Customer Outcomes you aren’t managing the most aspect of your business.

Look beyond the Output. How does it contribute to the Customer Outcome? If it doesn’t stop producing it.

The customer is not my job? Get Real. The customer is everyones job!

Evolving Outside-In is not a destination. It is a journey.

The process map is not real. It is a collective hallucination.

New www.bpgroup. org features FIVE Outside-In Blogs

The BPGroups new website now features five blogs from leading thinkers and CPP Masters in the field of Enterprise BPM & Outside-In.

To visit the blogs: click http://www.bpgroup.org/blogs.html and review the drop down menu -enjoy!

Successful Customer Outcomes
Steve Towers – 160 articles on the theme of Outside-In

BP Community
the original BPM community – Events, Resources, community & Links

Outside-In from Janne Ohtonen
Words from the wise from the author of OIDash

The Process Ninja
Craig Reid Scottish through and through however now from down-under

OutsideIn Service Management
Ian Clayton shows us the way with Service Management

If you recognise a good Outside-In location let us know: rachel.smith@bpgroup.org

Gaining Customer Insight

(Whether they are the primary customer who pays your salary or the one in the department next door!)
  1. Identify the Issue/Opportunity and determine the Process to Review. 
  2. Decide who is the Customer.
  3. Understand the Customers current expectations.
  4. Clarify the customers view of what is a successful outcome.
  5. Identify what it is the process currently does that impacts customer success (negatives and postives).
  6. Develop SMART Successful Customer Outcome Statements of Intent.

Successful Customer Outcomes & Process Excellence

Creating Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s) must begin with the understanding that process is a means to an end, not an end of itself. I do not want a doctor, a medical or a diagnosis. What I need is to get well.
We also should avoid another trap. That is capturing requirements on the solution rather than describing customer needs. All the customer focus groups, surveys and quality reviews are looking at current stuff, not on the SCO. Therefore they are limited and may even completely derail customer delivery, sometimes with tragic consequence.
Processes that clearly align with SCO’s achieve five times the success rate of processes that have a poor fit with customer need.

The Future of Business Process Part 2: Outside-In, Lean Six Sigma, BPM and all that….

β€œNot everything old is bad and antiquated and not everything new is shiny and good. The real secret to success is to combine the best of both.”
Rene Carayol (left),  Senior Executive & Former Board Member for Pepsi, Marks & Spencer, IPC Media & The Inland Revenue

The world’s leading companies have come to realize that only when their customers are successful, will they be successful. In pursuit of their market leadership not only they need to spend time to look inside their business to know how things are getting done but also look outward to get deep understanding of their customers.

Process has indeed come a long way from it humble routes amidst the early industrial revolution and Adam Smiths β€˜Wealth of Nations’.

Although many in Western
economies are (still) in a state of denial, we are undergoing the greatest reorganization in the business world since the Industrial Revolution.

No matter what industry you are in, no matter how successful you are, it’s time to get ready for the world as it will be –a world where your customers have new choices
from a sea of suppliers from
across the globe.

Peter Fingar
  Author of Extreme Competition: Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation
 

One of the first people to describe process was Smith who in 1776 describes a new way for process in a Scottish pin factory. He outlines the production methods and created one of the first objective and measureable enterprise process designs. The consequence of ‘labour division’ in Smith’s example resulted in the same number of workers making 240 times as many pins as they had been before the introduction of his innovation.

Adam Smith participated in a revolution that transformed the planet. He lived at a time when the confluence of factors, political change, emergence of the New World, industrialization and a new optimism that the world could move from the shackles of the past.

In heralding a movement that developed into Scientific Management the foundation was laid that established a way of working that has survived and thrived for 200 years.

And yet now, more than ever, is a time to perhaps take a careful glance back to the past to guide the way for not only surviving the current economic turmoil but to also prepare us to thrive in the seismic shifts of the 21st century β€˜new world’ order where the customer has become central to everything we do.

Leading global corporations are now evolving their tried and tested approaches into methods suited to the changed challenges of customer promiscuity, globalisation, IT innovation and the Prosumer. That is the essence of what we call Outside-In.

“The Customer Experience is the Process”
Outside-In can really be summarised in the statement that β€œthe customer experience is the process”.  We can no longer just look within our organisation boundary to create a sustainable competitive advantage. We have to extend our scope and embrace a broader view of optimising process by understanding, managing and developing customer expectations and the associated experience. We need to articulate Successful Customer Outcomes and let those guide our product and service development as we move beyond the limiting scope of silo pyramidal based left to right thinking.

In 2006 BP Group Research identified the β€˜Evolution of Approaches’ and how steps can be taken to grow Lean Six Sigma’s influence and success into a strategic Outside-In toolkit. In fact the last 4 years are seeing the fruition of these advances with Best in Class 2009 & 2010 Award winners PolyOne, a dyed in the wool Lean outfit, advancing their stock price six fold in 18 months on the back of radical and innovative changes across its customer experience.

Some see Outside-In as the death knell for approaches such as for old style BPM, BPR, TQM and Lean Six Sigma. This is not so. This narrow and simplistic view does not acknowledge the stepping stones available to embrace the new customer centric order. In fact the foundations of our futures are always laid on the learnings of the past with those innovators who recognise the need to evolve leading that charge.

Victory will go to the brave who seize the moment and push forward their approaches into the brave new world of Outside-In. The sector leaders have set a precedent – can you embrace the challenge?

All the Best, Steve

* * *

If you wish to read and listen more on this theme the following references are useful.
Join the community discussing these issues, challenges and opportunities.

Community and social networking – Join the BP Group
LinkedIn
Outside-In The Secret of the 21st Centuries leading companies
Book


Interview Harvard Business Review with HBS
Professor Ranjay Gullati
Video


http://bit.ly/RanjayOutside-In
Interview Wharton Business School with WBS Professor George Day
Video


http://bit.ly/WhartonGeorgeDay
Interview Affecto University with Steve Towers
Video


http://bit.ly/SteveTowersOutside-In
Interview by Megan James (IQPC)
Video


http://bit.ly/MeganJamesOutside-In
Downloadable keynotes and slide shows
Presentations
http://www.slideshare.net/stowers/
Professional – Certified Process Professional program
Qualifications
Don’t give customers what they think they want – Steve Towers
 Article
Evolution of Process Excellence Approaches – BP Group
Research
Outside-In – Interview with Blog Radio’s Gienn Weiss
Podcast
The Best Performing companies Millward Optimoor
Research
UPCOMING CONFERENCES ON THE THEME OF PROCESS EXCELLENCE, ENTERPRISE BPM AND OUTSIDE-IN
Resources

The future of Business Process. What is your take?

Forrester and Gartner, those behemoths of Business Research, are battling for the mindspace associated with that question at the moment.

Forrester leader Connie Moore has just posted the current trends, based on latest research with “10 major thought leaders at large global organizations” and include the following seven points:

  • A major strategic alignment between business process transformation and customer experience
  • Very little concern about technology issues β€” because they believe the technology will work well (and this is not what keeps them up at night even now)
  • A major focus on standardizing processes across the globe so that work can easily flow to the lowest-cost labor at any given moment
  • The belief that processes will run in the cloud (private or public) and that businesses will consume processes-as-a-platform
  • A strong conviction that IT will largely vanish into the business
  • The need for access to global talent pools driving some of the need for business process transformation
  • The expectation that being dynamic and turning on a dime will be critically important
What I will say is that for those of us busy linking Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO) with process for the last several years that first point is no great surprise. Mind you I can also think of some supposed major thought leaders who are still blind to the reason why all our jobs exist – the customer. Aligning everything we do to SCO’s is about connecting the dots between every task and activity all the way to the customer. Jeff Bezos (Amazon) refers to it as ‘working backwards’ aka Outside-In.

I certainly give the thumbs up to Forrester for this efforts, especially since the next couple of weeks sees a couple of Forrester hosted webinars to share their views. Interestingly now Gartner will have to respond otherwise they will see themselves as sidelined into little more than the technical aspects of BPM.

Go read Connie Moores blog at: http://bit.ly/BusinessProcess2020

Do you agree with the points Forrester is making? Contribute to the LinkedIn thread on this theme at:

Recommended Upcoming ‘be there’ events to meet, share and learn:

BPM Leaders hosted by PEX: 
Amsterdam – October 20-21: http://bit.ly/rhqLHP
Leaders Blog http://bit.ly/p6AIuI
 
MasterClass (Led by Steve Towers)
Barcelona –
October 3-7 – Certified Process Professional & Master: http://bit.ly/MastersInBarcelona

BPGROUP CONFERENCE IN ASSOCIATION

WITH IQPC – PEX 2010
Lake Buena Vista, Florida – Jan 16-19: http://bit.ly/PEX2012

 

A New Order of Things – Outside-In – Six steps to Success

There is no easy way to introduce a new order of things however there are some principles that can be followed based on this type of mind shift.

1, Objective and immediate.
The results we achieve with Outside-In are significant and substantive e.g. Triple Crown*. Accordingly any effort should first of all identify the clear tangible benefits.

2. Talk is cheap.
Fine words and phrases will not win hearts and minds without substance. Delivery is key, hence the ‘start where you are’ sentiment. In current projects (where support may be lacking) introduce the techniques within the CEMMethod(tm) by stealth.
Lift the heads of those around you to think of Moments of Truth, Break Points and Business Rules for instance. “Nothing new mate, just some stuff other guys have used within… Six Sigma../..Lean../..EA../..complaince etc. (delete as appropriate)”

3. Build support.
With (2) underway you will build support. That is the point to shift focus and begin the more practical discussion of where and how.

4. Go for broke.
If you are extremely lucky/persuasive and have the top team already onboard go for broke. Discover the worst most problematic issues and set to righting ’em. By fixing the Cause you will remove the Effect.

5. Move on.
It is a 4-500 year shift in mindset (Dee Hock, VISA founder).
It will ultimately transform the planet. The jury is in fact back and the results speak for themselves. So when all looks desolate and casting your pearls before swine is depressing, remind them that they are part of the problem and move on.

6. Make it so.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE it just feels that way when surrounded by flat-landers (doh).
Learn, exchange and do.

Join the worlds first and largest Outside-In community at: http://www.oibpm.com

Once on-board review the subgroups and join the specialist communities – you will
find friends and support as we transform the planet one person,one process, one organisation at a time!

PS. The Outside-In book published in 2010 reviews in detail this emerging trend.
Here is the hardback – http://amzn.to/Outside-In
Here is the eBook version – http://bit.ly/OutsideInApple Link with Steve Towers – http://bit.ly/LinkWithSteve
Follow Steve Towers on Twitter – http://twitter.com/#!/stowers

*Triple Crown: Jim Sinur (Gartner) coined this phrase. Through the delivery of advanced BPM you will simultaneously reduce costs, enhance service and grow revenues. In public sector/not for profits replace revenue growth with delievry of strategic objectives.