Archive for the 'Result Management' topic

Separate organization and management structures have always been laid over the business causing complexity

Since the beginning, enterprises have implemented organization, process, account, performance, project, IT architectures, administrative functions, and other structures. Each of these many structures must be maintained and managed producing business complexity. Many conflicting entities that define each structure produce information complexity, prevent consistent and accurate management information, and require high-cost information technology overheads. Each structure is fixed and rigid and conflicts with the ever-changing business. Periodically, reorganization and change management is required to bring the fixed structures into closer alignment with the business.

Experts have wanted to find one structure to organize and manage the enterprise as one consistent whole

Over the years, there have been many efforts to create one simple and consistently-defined structure for complete and consistent business data capture, reliable communications, accurate management information, use of common solutions, business collaboration, and other needs. The answer, so far, is to lay higher-level management structures over existing structures to reconcile data from various unrelated structures and to consolidate information. However, until now, no one has defined the one integrated structure that can replace all existing structures and be used to organize and manage any enterprise in any industry.

The one integrated structure has existed all along; it is the business

There is one structure. It has been there all along! That structure is the business itself! [more...]f!

Some enterprises take pride in their business complexity

When you talk to a company manager about employing a standard solution the response is often “Our business is too complex for a standard solution”. This is said with a measure of pride in being associated with a complex business. Is a complex business something to strive for or to be proud of? What is the alternative to a standard solution? Do non-standard solutions simplify the business? What is better, simplify the business to use standard solutions, or continue to develop non-standard solutions that compound existing complexity?

Business complexity is eliminated by organizing only the business essentials

Enterprises today introduce business complexity as soon a they implement an organization structure that is laid over the business. Since the business is not organized, they must lay more structures for strategy, accounts, business processes, performance management, etc over the business in order to manage the enterprise. Each additional structure introduces more entities with conflicting definitions to be managed and increases business and information complexity.

Business complexity is a misnomer. The business is not complex; enterprise management through rigid structures laid over the changing business is complex. The answer is to clear away contrived overlaid structures and organize the business for simplified 21^st century business management. All business organization, planning, direction, control, reporting, and governance employs the current and strategic business structures and only the essential business data entities.

Business complexity is accepted as normal in today’s enterprise

Business complexity is built in to 20^th century enterprise management methods, so business complexity is accepted as normal. We have no straightforward method to identify and root out business complexity and then to prevent future business complexity. [more...].

Business performance utilizes capital available to the business to produce business results

Business management defines the business as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. Every business in the world invests in capital, in order to have the capital needed to produce output results. Every business in the world must produce specific economic output results in order to be successful. Business performance is the actual utilization of capital to produce results.

20^th century business performance includes both actions executed and results accomplished

The 20^th century definition of performance used in business today includes both the actions executed and results accomplished. This definition causes many 20^th century management problems and prevents actual business definition and management. Business performance management, capital development, business processes, management reporting, key performance indicators, etc mix both performance and results produced together as performance. This causes problems today in actually distinguishing and separating results produced from the performance executed. Sales performance includes the both utilization of human salesmanship capability in actions executed and the volume and value of sales accomplished.

21^st century business management separates results from performance to manage the performance producing a result

Actual business performance does not include things accomplished or business results. [more...].

Change Management is one of the top 10 problems of 20^th century management!

Business change cannot be managed directly because the business is not managed

Business change is a mystery to the 20^th century enterprise because the business, the activity of providing goods and services, is not organized and managed. The enterprise is organized and managed through organization and management structures laid over the business. 20^th century “business change” is not change to the business, but is change to structures laid over the business. Most “business change” lays new organization, process, or system structures over the business with little positive change to the business itself. The rigid new and old structures are separately defined and conflict with each other and the actual changing business. Since the business is not managed, the value created by change cannot be planned or managed and the return on change investments cannot be measured.

The solution is to organize the business for direct management of business change

Business change is a change to either an output result produced by the business or a capital solution utilized in business performance. When the business is organized and managed, business change automatically reorganizes the business and can be managed as the routine. Business management organizes results and capital solutions to change the business as the daily routine. Business change projects involve capital development to increase the value of results or to enable new results, by implementing new or improved capital solutions. If the enterprise does not manage results and capital solutions utilized in performance, it is difficult to manage change to results, capital solutions, and performance.

The Change Management Problem

20^th century business change is change to overlaid organization and management structures

Even accepting 20^th century management change to overlaid organization, process, information system, account, performance management, and other structures, there are another set of problems. [more...]

Methods like Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, and ISO 9000 Standards do not provide the quality management needed

We have had structures like Total Quality Management (TQM) and the ISO quality system for ISO 9000 standards and certification, which were found lacking as a management method. We also reengineered our business process with BPR, specifically to help us manage performance quality. But, performance quality proved difficult to comprehend and manage. Six Sigma provides another structure for our final production quality. Now we have business process and performance management (BPM) to manage the quality of our processes and performance. Even with all this, we still have not found a way to manage quality as the business routine of everyone in the enterprise.

Customer-determined quality is managed result by result by managing the businss

Quality must be managed as part of the managed business defined as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. By definition, in the business, value and quality are attributes of results, the economic outputs produced across a managed business. Result-performance Management (R-pM) provides the knowledge and procedures to organize the business by organizing results produced across the business as one-off results or as result chains and by organizing the capital utilized as solutions in business performance to produce each result. With an organized business, the company can manage quality as an attribute of results, not performance, and can manage real quality for any result, not just final results from production. [more...].

Alignment is one of the top 10 problems of 20^th century enterprise management!

Alignment covers many problems arising from conflicts between the actual business and overlaid structures

We keep hearing about alignment problems. Alignment problems are caused because the business is not organized. Alignment problems arise from actual business change in results produced and capital utilized as solutions in performance, which remain undefined and unorganized. Instead, the enterprise is organized, planned, directed, controlled, and reported through separate and distinct structures laid over the business. With every business change, rigid overlaid structures go out of alignment with the business. Many solutions are available supposedly to enable alignment. Many books have proposed alignment solutions. However, in spite of all of these solutions and books, alignment problems remain. The alignment solutions attempt to align organization and management structures with each other with nothing to align against. [more...]

Economic output results produced by your company business are not managed today

Every enterprise, including your company business, produces economic outputs. These outputs are results, even though they are not called results and are not managed as entities in a set of results. But, the objective of every company business is to produce products and services and other economic output results in a chain of results that lead to the revenue and profit results. Some results are identified as entities such as; design completed, material item received, machine maintained, product produced, business service rendered, production waste recovered, order delivered, etc and are managed separately.

Other results usually are not defined or managed, such as business organization updated, new personnel recruited, capability development completed, knowledge document created, computer network hour operated, supplies procured, record transaction processed, strategy approved, pricing policy initiated, market study completed, investment justified, etc.

Results are not managed as a set of outputs or accomplishments by your company business today because your company is managed as an enterprise, not as a business. The business is defined as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. Every business in the world invests in capital. The capital solutions acquired and developed from investments are implemented to be utilized in business performance. The utilization of capital solutions in performance produces business results. [more...].

The enterprise today has many unsolvable management problems

Today’s 20^th century enterprises have always had management problems, because they never managed the business “the activity of providing goods and services”. Instead, they laid organization, system, accounting, reporting, and other structures over the business. The business changes, while the overlaid structures remain rigid, creating problems with interfacing, communications, and generally managing the enterprise. The organization structure created silos, which interrupted the flow of goods and services across the enterprise. The solution to the problem was to re-engineer business processes to facilitate the flow of goods and services across the organization units involved.

Business process re-engineering solved some problems, but created others

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) put in business processes leading to one output at the end of the process. BPR generally sped up the production of the final output, but introduced another set of problems. Results, capital utilized, and performance are not defined and are mixed together within the process. Quality management focused on performance quality. The process crosses organization units, which are expected to manage performance and performance quality to produce a final output result to go to the customer. [more...].

Rule No. 5 of the ten rules of 21^st century business management is Operate to optimize operations, result value-added, and the profit result. This rule requires that the capital solutions utilized to produce each result are optimized to be cost-effective and produce a high value-quality result, so that all business operations are optimized.

21^st century business management organizes the performance producing each result

Business operations cannot be optimized unless the business is organized in order to manage the specific performance that produces a specific result. The 21^st century business is organized using Result-performance Management (R-pM) knowledge and procedures, so the business can be optimized, by ensuring that capital solutions are deployed or implemented to produce the proper results and are integrated to employ the most cost-effective performance to produce the highest value-quality result.

21^st century business management organizes capital investments as specific solutions

21^st century business management organizes the capital the enterprise invests in as specific capital solutions that are implemented to be utilized to produce one or more specific results. This allows the enterprise to capture the cost of developing or improving the capital and to assess the:

• Cost of consumption of the capital in operations
• Performance costs generated as solution worth declines over the solution life
• Effectiveness of the capital to produce a high-quality result
• Capacity of the capital to produce a volume of results
• Uncertainty of the performance of the capital and the risk of a poor result
• Return provided on the investment in the capital from the share of result value added to date
• Level of performance of the capital against expectations
• Worth of the capital assessed from result values to be produced over the remaining life

Capital solutions are categorized as business, human, facility, or management capital so that a performance manager with specific capabilities can be responsible for providing qualified solutions. Within each category, solutions are classified as one of three classes; as readiness solutions to prepare an organization responsible for a set of results, as production solutions to be used or consumed in producing each actual result, and as information solutions to support or document results. Capital solutions are integrated by capital class for utilization to produce a result.

21^st century business management organizes the outputs from business performance as specific results

21^st century business management organizes the inputs incorporated and outputs produced by the enterprise as results. [more...]

20^th century management lays a contrived Chart of Accounts over the business

20^th century management used by all enterprises today cannot account for the actual business, since the business is not organized or managed. Instead, an arbitrary Chart of Accounts is contrived and laid over the business. The Chart of Accounts is, by definition, an inaccurate substitute for the business and often contains distortions introduced by management or accounting to meet their own agenda. The chart of accounts is designed to record accrued and actual cash receipts and disbursements and the arbitrary worth of known assets less the worth of known liabilities.

20^th century accounting does not keep accurate and complete records on the actual business as needed for good management and governance:

• Facility records, including accounts, are not managed as capital of worth to be maintained to provide capital solutions needed to produce business results
• Accounting records only a part of the business cycle from the point that cash is received until cash is spent, but does record from the point that cash is spent until cash is received
• Accounting may include statistical accounting within the chart of accounts, but tends to resist keeping full financial records or non-financial records, so that other business records must be kept by other organizations or individuals or fall through the cracks
• Much capital that incurs expenditures or costs against the actual business is not defined as an asset or is labeled as “intangible assets” producing inaccurate net worth and unknown costs
• Important business data on the value of economic output results from the business, the costs incurred to produce the results, the result value-added, and the worth of capital utilized to produce the value-added is not captured or reported
• Accounting is separate from the business rather than being part or every business decision made, both in making the decision and in recording the decision made
• 20^th century accountants are given a narrow education and taught to follow proscribed principles, rather than being prepared to understand and record the actual business and provide information solutions needed for actual business management
• Accountants have a conflict between many masters, the dictates of accounting, the dictates of external auditors, or the dictates of management that pays their salary
• Contrived 20^th century accounting principles are valid only because they are “generally-accepted” rather than fundamentally-valid principles that accurately record the actual business
• Accounting does not view it role as maintaining accurate records of the actual business as information capital and providing accurate and timely information from records as solutions for good corporate management and governance

The limitations of accounting and the information provided by accounting for management and governance is one of the serious unsolvable problems of 20^th century management.

21^st Century Management records and manages the actual business

Rule No. 4 of the 10 rules of 21^st Century Management: Keep accurate financial and non-financial records on the full business cycle in operations and development. The business is defined as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. In order to plan, budget, account for, manage, report, or govern the business, all investments in specific capital solutions, all economic economic output results produced, and each capital solution utilized in performance to produce a specific result must be managed. [more...].