The Critical Link of Activities to Business Results
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| Freedom from
Project Surprises Newsletter - Issue #51 |
July 2009 |
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If
you were asked to comment on an assessment of the last year's
continuous improvement, what might your review look like? Would it be a
list of actions and activities completed, or might it be more in terms
of impact - as in business results of the activities? Consider that the
most important aspect of any improvement initiative is a direct
correlation between the activities and a measurable business result. By
framing a project in this way there will be alignment of actions,
decisions and resources with those intended results.
Jeff Jorvig, The IC Coach
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News of Interest to New Product
Development Teams
 Review
results
of this months poll on the key
contributors to project delays here.
You must have LinkedIn account to view. For this that don't have one I
would be happy to email you the current results. The question posed was
"What do you
consider as the greatest contributor to IC project delays?" and
the winner is - Requirements Closure
by a healthy margin.
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process here and be in control of your
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Leadership Quote of the month:
"Leadership
is not magnetic personality that can just as well be a glib tongue. It
is not 'making friends and influencing people', that is flattery.
Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising
of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a
personality beyond its normal limitations."
-- Peter F. Drucker |
Making the Critical Link of Activities
to Business Results
Here's
a deep question for you to consider - "What is the reason a company has
groups of employees organized as divisions, operations and
departments?" What is their reason for existing? They exist solely for
the reason of producing a positive impact on revenue, either directly
or indirectly.  Every
organization, sub-organization or organizational silo must be viewed as
an element of the revenue generation machine.
It's
easy to fall into a thought pattern where you believe the decisions and
actions responsible for profitable revenue reside somewhere else, in
fact you may be thinking that right now. When this view occurs within
an organizational unit, results become unrelated to the big picture
business objective of revenue. Improvement actions and objectives take
on a form that produce localized, narrowly focused results. The trouble
is any localized positive change may have little or possibly negative
impact relative to producing revenue. Without a critical emphasis on
business results, any process improvement change can end up being an
expensive trip to nowhere.
When starting an initiative that is
intended to produce a higher level of efficiency, never loose sight of
the fact that the result must always be measured as the impact to
producing profitable revenue. Any efficiency change must have an
outcome that impacts at least one of these: 1) enable quicker revenue,
2) provide increased revenue, or 3) improve revenue margin. If the
initiative can't be measured against some aspect of impacting revenue
results, it is not a properly framed improvement project. Make no
mistake, the name of the game is "making
money"
- bottom line.
A
highly effective efficiency change will result by developing a
strategy, aligning objectives and building a team with an objective of
revenue impact as the motivation. And yes, for proper financial
emphasis it will always mean project participation outside your
organizational silo; it may even be wise to consider outside
leadership! Broad
participation is essential to dilute the incestuous pool of same
thinking that cripples real change. Focus activities only on
results that matter to the business!
Leadership
isn't a position, it's a process that produces the desired
results. If
you don't produce results, if you don't execute-you're not a leader.
--Vince Lombardi
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| Driving
Activities
that Matter to the Business
How would you define activities that matter? I
am sure most of us have
been involved in projects that did not produce intended revenue, and
that is certainly a long list of activities that did not count.
Activities that matter will produce the intended results, and in our
world, the results must be profitable revenue. At the start of any
project (improvement or product development) we generally build a case
to convince ourselves that the projects activities will have a
financial impact. Somewhere along the way the alignment to profitable
revenue may fade, and in many cases this transformation goes unnoticed.
Below are some concepts to guide you towards a higher level of
activities that matter.
Broad Involvement
The
only way to ensure your direction is sound is to make sure you have
broad involvement. The quickest path to activities that will not matter
is by way of a small team of like disciplined same-thinkers. Stir up
the pot and involve those who will make things uncomfortable, the ones
that are not members of the same-thinkers camp.
Commit to Continuous
Alignment to Revenue
There
is only one result that counts - revenue. If your proposed activities
can't be successfully aligned to a financial business impact this
should be a clear warning. Product development activities are generally
always tied to revenue, whereas improvement activities are not. Any
improvement activities must have a defined impact on revenue, as in a
return on investment (ROI). Monitor the revenue assumptions on a
regular basis. Are they still valid as the project progresses? Put a
system in place to keep tabs on evolving assumptions and is prepared to
kill a project that falls out of favor with revenue impact.
Understand the Past
Why
did you put so much effort into activities that did not matter? Project
history is extremely important and is the key to a better future. If
results of a product development or improvement project were
unsatisfactory, it is essential to understand why. Get to the root
reasons and make changes in your process to mitigate these reasons for
future activities. Failure to understand the past will guarantee a
continuation of wasteful activities in the future.
Have a Clear and
Engaged Sponsor
Any
project needs someone to carry the flag high, keeping the team excited
and focused on the benefits of a projects success - a project sponsor.
The importance of this is even greater where the activities are related
to an improvement project. Sponsors must also ensure the continued
reality of financial benefits for the project and be prepared to bail
out if the advantages fade.
Application of these four concepts
will definitely improve the impact of project activities, when honestly
applied. These are not easy and will push you and your organization
into uncomfortable territory - with results that will be noticed.
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| How I
can Help
"Providing solutions to the systemic project challenges that
quietly steal early revenue opportunity"
- Discovery
& Solution -
Do you need to find and remove the the barriers to a predictable and
streamlined new product flow? Maybe you need to understand the history
of past failed project activities. Our Discovery & Solution services
provide the results you need.
- Are you short
on resources? I can provide Design Engineering, IC Design Team
Leadership, Process Improvement Leadership and Project Management
services.
- Process
streamlining - Is something in your new product workflow
troubling you? I will work with your organization to engineer a
solution.
- Requirements
workshops
- I will facilitate the timely closure of a high quality set of
requirements for a specific product. If you have a complicated project
where requirements closure is critical, this would be an ideal
candidate for a workshop. More information can be found here.
- NPD team one day workshop to improve planning, execution and monitoring skills for
design projects.
- Web based NPD workflow management.
- Ready made downloads:
schedule, checklist, analog design guide.
- Increase management bandwidth via Virtual Design Manager.
- Full listing of common services here.
Contact me today via email, 480-895-0478 or
877-895-0478 |
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Feedback
To increase the value of this newsletter for you I would like
to hear your comments.
- What do you like or not like about this
newsletter?
- What subjects would you like to see covered in
the future?
- How is the format?
- Ask me a question related to new product
development and I will anonymously post and answer it here in this
section.
Please email me here with any questions,
comments or suggestions that will help me better serve my readers. I
would enjoy hearing from you.
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