blog | Wed, 07/04/2012 – 14:25 | By Chris LaVictoire Mahai
How can you drive the best possible outcomes for your customers and your business? The most successful organizations control their performance chain rather than letting their performance chain control them.
Back up a second – what is a performance chain? I define a performance chain as all the tangible and intangible elements that have to move from the moment you trigger demand until you have cash in the bank; all the ins and outs that have to work together and align to your target customer experience to drive the outcomes you want.
When you boil it down to simple terms, a performance chain is really about flow. Everything has an in and an out. Think of your company in zones that can be viewed based on an integrated understanding of the work moving in, out, across and through as value is defined, created, delivered and payment received.
Highly complex or diversified organizations will have multiple levels of performance chains. Any value-creating process can be mapped this way whether a company has one or 10 or hundreds. Instead of looking at your organization functionally, where work tends to get stuck in the proverbial ‘silos,’ try mapping your organization work flow through the four lenses of speed, predictability, flexibility and leverage. What mix of those four drivers is right for your organization? What balance? Where does speed matter most? Flexibility?
Can you imagine your business as a flow of work? If you are a CEO, COO, a division leader, or a functional leader, can you visualize your company’s performance chain from beginning to end? The flow of work as it moves through your organization? Not by function or department or unit – but the way your company builds value as work moves through your system. The way people move in and out. The way ideas move in and out – or die before implementation.
Focus too much on individual functions or pain points prematurely and you get hung up in the details. As a result, you’ll be less efficient and may even miss the mark completely. You may create a high-performing cell or unit but the entire company – and most importantly the customer – may not benefit at all. When you engage across the entire system, you have a much better chance of peak performance.
This article was located on the Business Excellence Magazine Web Site :
Guest Blogger
Monday, July 9, 2012
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