Archive for the 'Strategic Management' topic

According to another post at the Business Change Forum, corporate governance is one of the top 10 problems of 20^th century management. The corporate governance problem is caused by outdated 20^th century management methods used today that do not organize and manage the actual business and cannot provide complete and accurate management information on the actual business. A myriad of different management structures are laid over the business that describe the corporation differently and produce many conflicting ways a corporation can be reported. We govern by enforcing policies and rules, because we do not understand the substance and reality of the actual business.

Now there is a solution to the corporate governance problem, Result-performance Management (R-pM), which organizes and manages the actual corporate business to utilize capital in performance to produce value in results. R-pM plans results of value needed for success, capital investments to provide solutions of worth, and performance in the utilization of capital to incur costs to create result value-added. R-pM plans the strategic business in strategic results to produce and capital solutions to be developed to produce the results. R-pM plans value creation and capital development through period by period result goals. Corporate governance can manage strategic value creation as the current business converges on the approved strategic business.

Shortcomings of 20^th century management that produce poor corporate governance

20^th century management organizes the corporation by laying an organization structure over the business, so the business cannot be managed. [more...]

Most managers think that they manage their business

Do you manage your business? What is the definition of the business that you manage? Ask a manager if he manages his business, the normal response is yes. Ask for the definition of the business they manage, and they do not have a precise definition. Most will describe the enterprise rather than the actual business.

No company, corporation, institution, or other enterprise manager manages the actual business today. The managers employ 20^th century management to administer the enterprise. It is impossible to manage the business today, because the business has never been defined properly or organized.

The business to manage has never been defined and actual business management has never been taught

What is the enterprise business? There are many conflicting and imprecise definitions for the word “business”. Proper definition of the business is hampered by the definition of performance to include both the utilization of capital in actions executed and the results accomplished. Business schools and management books teach 20^th century management to administer structures laid over the business, and do not define the actual business or teach us how to manage the actual business.

Outside of R-pM, there is no source of information on the real-life fundamentals of actual business organization and management. Since there has never been a precise definition of the business or teachings or books on actual business management, managers do not know what to organize in order to manage the business.

R-pM provides a precise definition of the business

So today, results, capital solutions, and performance in the utilization of capital to produce results continue to be confused by the definition of performance. We must separate results and capital utilized from performance using Result-performance Management (R-pM) in order to define and manage the business. [more...].

20^th century management does not enable governance of the corporate business

20^th century management used by corporations today prevents actual governance of the corporation business. Organization and management structures are laid over the business preventing actual business management. Corporation management receives mountains of reports against structures laid over the business. The reports are inconsistent since each structure defines the corporation differently. The reports are incomplete since actual business data is not captured and reported. There is no consistent framework for business management and governance. The corporation strategy map or corporate plan is different from business processes, projects, and functions, used to direct the corporation, which are different from the chart of accounts, activities for costing, or quality structures used for corporation control. These structures may have their own reporting that is different from corporation management reporting through various performance management control panels, scorecards, etc. The structures laid over the business prevent good corporate governance of the actual corporate business.

Corporate governance is through compliance with rules and regulations

Since the corporation is unable to manage and govern the actual business, corporate governance is not positive in ensuring that the business is properly governed. [more...].

20^th century management lays reporting structures over the business

Since the business is not organized or managed the actual business cannot be reported. Management reporting is against the myriad of organization, management, administrative, and other structures laid over the business. Each structure employs its own terminology and information systems to produce reports on the structure. This produces a myriad of unrelated management reports for plans, business processing, resource planning and utilization, manufacturing, supply chains, customer relationships, accounting, quality control, financial management, human resource management, information technology management and on and on. The reporting possibilities create information complexity with no specific framework to relate all the reporting. Despite all the reports and complexity, there is no direct reporting on the actual business.

We try to bring together information from the diverse structures by adding special 20^th century reporting structures, such as:

• Performance management: Control panels, dashboards, scorecards and various other structures to capture and report information
• Strategic enterprise management: Structures to consolidate defined information from specific information systems
• Data reconciliation: Structures to gather and redefine inconsistent data from diverse systems
• Decision support and drill down: Structures to allow management to search and find information in diverse systems
• Categorization: Structures laid over information to reconcile and restructure information and to manage records, documents, reports, content, and other information sub-sets

These various reporting structures and supporting information systems constitute a large overhead and contribute to rather than solving information and business complexity problems. Management information produced is inconsistent, inaccurate, and incomplete in terms of what is actually happening in the business.

Business management reporting must be against the current and planned business

In order to report the business the actual business must be organized, planned, directed, and controlled as explained in previous articles. Actual business reporting is provided by Result-performance Management (R-pM) by reporting the three components of the business:

• Results: The economic outputs of value and quality produced across the business
• Capital: The investments in capital as specific solutions that must be acquired and developed to provide the capability to produce future results and that must be utilized in business performance to produce actual results
• Performance: The deployment and utilization of a specific capital solution to incur costs and provide effectiveness in producing a specific result in a performance domain

The business can be reported only by organizing the actual business as current results produced, invested capital available to the business, and performance in the utilization of the capital to produce results. [more...].

20^th century management lays structures over the business to control the enterprise

The operations and development of the enterprise today are controlled by structures laid over the business for:

• Financial and statistical accounting through a chart of accounts structure
• Cost accounting through activity, center, and product structures
• Capital development control through project structures and asset registers
• Quality control through TQM, six sigma, and other quality structures

The control provided by each of these structures is limited to known entities and certain elements. Financial control covers capital for tangible assets and finances for cash receipts and expenditures, cost control is limited to known costs against selected elements like activity or project, non-financial control is sporadic depending on individual management, and quality focuses on performance producing selected end-product results.

Accounts record accrued and actual receipts and expenditures from point money comes in to the point money is spent. There is no control of the business cycle from the point money is spent until value is created to enable money to come in. Accounting control is enforcement of rules and principles rather than providing accurate information for business control.

Capital development lumps costs together as a project or tangible asset. The range or performance solutions developed are not controlled and may be classified as intangible assets. No method or information is provided to plan and control return on specific capital investments in performance solutions. Projects are not organized to capture development costs for implemented solutions and plan value-added to the business from solution utilization. Capital worth numbers are sporadic for some asset and liability solutions, but real capital worth in the capability to produce future business value is unknown.

Each structure is separate from other structures and uses its own terminology and definitions to describe the enterprise. Each structure introduces high costs and much effort to collect and report information. But, none of these overlaid structures can control the actual business.

The actual business must be controlled for each component of the current and planned business

In order to control the business the actual business must be organized, planned, and directed as explained in previous articles. [more...].

20^th century management used today lays various plans over the business

20^th century management cannot plan the business directly because the business is not organized. The enterprise is planned through various structures laid over the business. These overlaid planning structures include:

• Strategic plans using such structures as maps and corporate plans
• Financial plan and budget structures
• Information technology plans and enterprise architectures
• Capital development plans and investment analysis structures
• Operational plan structures

Each of these planning structures uses its own set of entities to describe the enterprise, uses different information systems, and requires its own support staff. Each plan must be maintained and updated with actual progress against the planned entities, and reported. The plans plan the enterprise in various ways depending on the particular structures implemented. It is difficult to understand and manage the actual business from these plans.

None of the overlaid plans plan the actual business

Since the business is not organized, the business cannot be planned. The results produced by the business cannot be planned as an interrelated set. Some results may be planned in isolation as separate entities such as product sold and revenue received. The plans are usually created from estimates rather than a period by period build up from the existing business. [more...].

20^th century management plans the future enterprise and does not plan the business

20^th century management used today develops strategies and plans using maps, corporate plans, budgets, etc that are laid over the business. Corporate plans plan the corporation and are unable plan the strategic value to be created by the business and the capital development needed to create strategic value. The business is not planned and strategies and plans become invalid as the business changes. New plans try to bring the enterprise plans in closer alignment with the current and future business.

The business is “the utilization of capital of worth in performance to incur costs to produce value in results”

Result-performance Management (R-pM) is based on the definition of the enterprise business as “the utilization of capital of worth in performance to incur costs to produce value in results”. This definition includes the current business that must be conducted every day to utilize capital the enterprise invests in to produce results needed for business success. The definition also includes the future business that must be the objective or the business strategy to produce strategic results utilizing capital that must be available when needed?

The management strategy plans the business at the strategic horizon

The strategic business is “the utilization of capital of worth in performance to incur costs to produce value in results at the strategic horizon”. The strategic business is described as management strategy capital. The business strategy, strategic business structure, and business plans to execute the strategy are management strategy solutions.< [more...].

The fundamental problem of 20^th century enterprise, the failure to organize the business

The generally-accepted definition of the enterprise business is “the activity of providing goods and services“. Therefore, the activity of providing goods and services must be organized in order to organize the business. However, 20^th century organization theories organize “the enterprise” into organization units, positions, functions, reporting relationships, etc. to produce a contrived “enterprise organization structure” that is laid over the business. The organization structure is the fatal error of 20^th century management. Once an organization structure is laid over the business, the business can never be managed.

The business must change continually, while the “enterprise organization structure” remains rigid. The rigid organization structure hampers business change, creates change management problems, and eventually creates pressure for reorganization to contrive a new “enterprise organization structure” that is aligned closer to the actual business. If the business was organized the organization would change with business change.

Result-performance Management (R-pM) organizes the business for 21^st century management

Result-performance Management (R-pM) organizes the activity of providing goods and services into a business result-performance structure. The business activity is organized into capital defined as specific performance solutions. The business goods and services are organized as specific results that are produced by utilizing specific performance solutions in business activity. The organized results to be produced across the business and the organized capital invested in performance solutions are combined to organize the business, by deploying specific solutions to be utilized to produce specific results to organize performance. The cost-effectiveness of each solution utilized is managed against the value-quality of the result produced. By organizing the business, instead of the enterprise, the business itself is used as one structure to integrate enterprise organization and management.

20^th century theories organize the enterprise and not the business, dooming the enterprise to problems

Many organization theories and methods were developed throughout the 20^th century promoting different ways to organize the enterprise. Organizing and reorganizing the enterprise became big business for management authors and consultants. The problem is that once the enterprise organization structure is implemented over the business, the enterprise is doomed to unsolvable 20^th century problems, for the following reasons: [more...]:

20^th century management reports against structures laid over the business

The generally-accepted definition of enterprise business is “the activity of providing goods and services”. In order to organize and manage the business, we must organize and manage both the activity or performance involved in providing and also the goods and services provided to our customers.

20^th century management does not provide a structure to do this. Instead of organizing the business, an organization structure is laid over the business to define organization units, functions, and positions. Since the business is not organized, management structures must be laid over the business. A business strategy defines visions, objectives, owners, requirements, and other entities. The chart of accounts defines centers, objects, and codes. The business process defines process objectives, stations, performance activities, performance quality, and other entities. Information systems have their own built in file structures and entities. Cost accounting gathers known costs against activities, centers, selected final products, or other entity. Performance management systems require reporting on other sets of entities concerning the process, training, customer actions, etc. The many structures laid over the business produce business complexity and hide the actual business.

Overlaid structures capture vast amounts of data and report mountains of information, but not on the actual business

None of these structures captures actual business data or reports actual business information. [more...].

Result-performance Management (R-pM) organizes the actual business for 21^st Century Management. 21^st Century Management is based on directly organizing and managing the enterprise business.

The primary differences between R-pM and current 20^th century management are:

• R-pM separates 20^th century performance into two separate entities; results, the economic outputs of value produced by the business, and performance, the utilization of capital in the business
• R-pM defines and organizes the enterprise business rather than the business enterprise by structuring the results produced across the business and the capital utilized as performance solutions to produce results
• R-pM organizes the enterprise business, each part of the business, and all enterprise undertakings, such as projects, through an integrated business structure to replace all 20^th century structures
• R-pM replaces 20^th century administration with capital management to provide the capabilities to professionally manage all capital in development, implementation, operation, and support
• R-pM plans, records, reports, and manages actual business data in result value-quality, performance cost-effectiveness, result value-added, and capital worth, rather than reporting inaccurate contrived structures laid over the business
• R-pM manages the business in three dimensions, result management responsible for each result produced, performance management responsible for each performance solution utilized, and corporate management responsible for creating strategic result value over time in operations and development

These differences are discussed in the following paragraphs.

R-pM separates results from performance

20^th century management defines “performance” to include not only the performance, such as human performance, that produces a result but also the result produced, such as sales performance. This definition prevents results and performance from being managed properly as separate entities. 20^th century performance management, business processes, information systems, etc mix results with performance.

R-pM separates results from performance to manage results as one set of results produced by the enterprise business and to manage the capital employed by the business in performance as one set of performance solutions. Results have different attributes from performance. Therefore, result data is captured and reported separate from performance data.

R-pM organizes the enterprise business, rather than the business enterprise

20^th century management organizes the enterprise by laying an arbitrary organization structure over the business. [more...]