Center for Inspired Performance

2007-11-19T20:26:00.000-05:00

The Quick or the Dead

I was reviewing my personal “rutter” last night and came across an article I wrote several years ago about how to start a business fast.; and what I meant by fast was moving from conception (Stage I) to cash flow neutral (Stage II) in the shortest period of time. The following was my research and the script we are currently using to grow the company.

Executive Role

1.Create Thought Leadership through products

2.Create Thought Leadership by adding services to the products

3.Physically and behaviorally representing the message (brand)

4.Practicing the executive competencies ala Drucker's “Effective Executive”

5.Coalescing the multiple messages into ONE

6.Mastering Public Relations

Company Script

1.Identify market with under/unserved needs with high economic potential

2.Build the best possible team of subject matter experts, executives, and entrepreneurs with high octane energy

3.Go to market with the absolute minimum product and service offer in the minimum time while staying within the brand

4.Do whatever it takes to delight early customers, spare no expense to make everything and everyone referenceable

5.Develop and Research (not R&D – that's backward) inside customer accounts to close quality gaps on products & services, and develop metrics to measure our performance

So far our report card:

1.A

2.C

3.C

4.A

5.B

It appears to be working as we roll out our offer of a lost-cost, high-quality business assessment that identifies gaps preventing our clients (and ourselves) from growing as fast as possible – a growth rate that is sustainable.

eastman

Managing the Paradox – Balancing the Equation

2005-05-04T17:42:00.000-04:00

As I finish my latest book on fast growth startups and how to play owner/operator/head bottle washer, this description captured my imagination. Regardless of the company’s size, being a CEO is about managing inherent contradictions. If that is not understood and managed by finding the balance, success is just not possible.

Optimum Sustainable Growth = Market Intelligence + Strategic Focus + Human Capital + Innovation & Delivery Processes

Paradox #1: Optimum Sustainable Growth

Doubling your industries average for sales
while maintaining margins and preserving scarce resources

Paradox #2: Market Intelligence

Knowing your markets so well that you can anticipate opportunities
while avoiding paralysis of analysis

Paradox #3: Strategic Focus

Having clarity that aligns and drives performance
while being flexible to an ever changing market

Paradox #4: Human Capital

Attracting, Developing, Retaining your industries best talent
while managing labor costs

Paradox #5: Innovation & Delivery Processes

Institutionalizing best practices to spread excellence and shrink ignorance
while not losing the freedom to create and innovate

Achieving Optimum Sustainable Growth

2005-04-07T07:05:00.000-04:00

The Center for Inspired Performance is your source of best practices for optimum growth; growth that is sustainable, growth that achieves market leadership, growth based upon the most profitable customers.

The Growth Equation

Optimum Sustainable Growth = Strategic Focus + Market Intelligence +Innovation & Delivery Process + Human Capital

Best Practices are:

· Driven by Market Intelligence

· Build a plan for Market Leadership

· That your current talent

· Can execute flawlessly NOW

Optimum Sustainable Growth - Double the Sales, Double the Margin

The road to sustainable (and fast) growth is not for the weak of heart. Less than 10% of companies in the United States qualify as a "cheetah." It takes sales twice your industry average with margins meeting the same hurdle.

Strategic Focus - Create a plan for Market Leadership

All successful growth strategies have some common characteristics:

· Spread the risk - create a portfolio of complementary initiatives

· Take Small Bites - set up smaller growth objectives in complementary areas - rule of 1%

· Balanced Initiatives - blend organic growth (existing clients - existing products & services) with new growth

· Commit to Superior Value - ensure supremacy in one of three areas - price, quality of products & services, overall experience - avoid being average

· Expand Growth Opportunities - management is the constraint, not market demand

· Manage for Growth - managing a growth portfolio as a distinct executive function

Market Intelligence - The Driver of Competitive Advantage

In order to design a strategy that achieves growth, the company must excel at understanding and applying market intelligence about customers, competitors, and the economy's impact on their industry

Keep Current Growth - identify and target most profitable customers to retain
Take Business from Competitors - identify their top customers that match your offer - what will it take for them to shift
Anticipate Growth - identify where the market is headed - what will it take to be first
Move into Comparable Markets - identify and target new markets for existing products & services
Invest in New Offers - identify and target new markets to develop new products & services

Processes - The Core Competence of Flawless Execution

The challenge for most companies is to strike a balance between defining process, steps, and roles with the need to provide the flexibility for creativity and innovation. Successful processes are designed to create extraordinary results form normal, consistent performance. Imagine what is possible when the talent is extraordinary!

Critical Processes

Delivery of Products & Services
Design of New Products & Services
New Client Acquisition
Organic Growth
Selection & Development of People
Performance Self Management

Human Capital - Attracting, Developing, Retaining Talent

The challenge is capturing discretionary performance. Performance that is inspired because it is based upon self-management, each of us striving to exceed previous best performance.

Part of the equation is understanding our role in the show; part is having a well-designed job that maximizes our effort, and finally user-friendly way of tracking performance.

Individual Scorecards
Corporate, Department, Team Dashboards

audio presentation 6 Strategies of Sustained Growth

2005-03-09T17:00:00.000-05:00

companion to previous post

6 Strategies of Sustained Growth

2005-03-09T12:43:00.000-05:00

6 Strategies for Sustained Growth - click to enlarge
eastman

Leading in Real Time

2005-03-08T14:09:00.000-05:00

Running a business with real time information - the dream of most executives and managers has become a reality. Whether you call it Business Intelligence, Real-Time Enterprise, Real-Time Operations, etc., the solution is now available if you have enough money.

The Center’s Performance Guidance System is your powerful and cost effective choice. Our system enables your business to achieve the dream of competing with on-demand information. This capability improves in-the-moment decisions, and makes execution a core competence.

Our Performance Guidance System operates within Microsoft Suite and is resident on individual computers eliminating the need for expensive IT solutions. It is based on individual scorecards that roll-up to corporate dashboards providing a secure line of sight for all members on the business.

Imagine being just one click away from having today's information on customer service, information from current production teams on reduction in cycle time, or how inspired are your front line people this week.

Corporate Dashboards

We base our top line, power user measures on a half-century of improving our library of best practices. Our “critical six strategic elements” (best practices) of optimum growth are bundled in four traditional “gauges” on your corporate dashboard: Operations, Sales and Marketing, Production, Customer Service, and an overall Corporate Summary.

Collaborating with your executive team, we integrate current measures into our dashboards and ensure line of sight to each individual. You can in one location combine the three elements of alignment: contribution to business objectives, participation in improvement projects, and job requirements.

Individual Scorecards

Far more challenging is designing a method of capturing data that does not distract from work or makes unreasonable demands. Our philosophy is to make the electronic system match the requirements of common “day-timer” systems. We use this as our standard and depending on the frequency of updates driven by the job, our goal was a functioning system running on an investment of 15-20 minutes a day.

By taking a few minutes to update the system, each person will have a real time report on how well they are doing to self-manage. When this information is rolled up to your company'’s operations center, everything you need to run it in the real-time is available. Welcome to on-demand, real-time business information.

Predicting the Future

2005-03-08T14:00:00.000-05:00

The challenge of any profession is to make the complex simple. Over our half-century of business improvements, we have directly experienced the complexity of running a sustainable business. Our job is to understand all of the underlying forces and nuances we experienced and make it simple. You cannot execute what is not understood or easily performed.

Predicting the future is not about crystal balls, reading entrails, or interpreting Nostradamus's quatrains. It is about understanding the most fundamental question in business: where is value today and where is it headed?

Our organizational assessment SNAPSHOT is the start of a process to capture an accurate and complete picture of your business. It allows a company to determine where and how value is being created and for whom, and what core competence is required to exercise this competitive advantage.

Once we understand the competitive advantage opportunity of your market and position in that niche, we can help you identify the barriers and causes of gaps. SNAPSHOTs analysis capabilities bring the internal barriers and causes, the upset conditions, to the scrutiny of all effected members of the organization.

Our research group designed SNAPSHOT to be a flexible and customizable assessment to fit your unique issues. It is built on 26 micro-assessments such as Process Management and Baldridge and can even evaluate your readiness for ISO as examples. Our ability to customize is limited only by the creativity of your questions.

The Six Critical Strategic Elements of Growth:

Competitive Advantage: The essence of market leadership, it identifies where the organization can excel and is the matched set for Core Competency Development.

Customer Enthusiasm: The customers experience with a businesss marketing and sales process, the value and quality of the products and services purchased, and their post purchase experience.

Productive Capacity The essence of your business model, it measures the organization's ability to provide products, services, and customer enthusiasm to specified markets. It is the matched set for Core Competency.

Sales Effectiveness: The application of marketing objectives and goals to produce an integrated sales process - funnel management, sales approach and skills, compensation, and quality of personnel.

Leadership Effectiveness: The empowerment of people to bring focus and inspiration on a daily basis that improves their best performance. It is the unique quality of leadership that multiplies the effectiveness of a well run organization or can overcome the worse environment.

Employee Inspiration: The amount of performance the organization can capture beyond what is required. Typically standards are set artificially low. No business is able to sustain itself when people do the minimum. Every successful company has a competitive advantage through its people.

These form the core of our assessment technology; however we are about more than gaining understanding. SNAPSHOTs foundation is smaller, discrete assessments that provide the detail necessary to solve problems and create a plan to win.

Our assessment library includes:

Clarity of Vision, Mission, Values

Competitive Advantage

Vertical and Horizontal Alignment

Internal Operations and Support Processes

High Performance Employment Systems

Core Competence

Performance Management

Knowledge Management

Team Effectiveness & Focus

Learning & Growth

Change Readiness & Management

Customer & Market Dynamics

Organizational Structure

Environmental Dynamics

Horizontal Links to Client Development

Horizontal Links to Market & Innovation

Leadership Effectiveness

Sales Effectiveness

Employee Inspiration

Customer Enthusiasm

Customer Intelligence

Market Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence

Baldridge

Innovation Management

Process Management

Quality Management

Technology Management

Project Management

Management Efficiency

Training System

Productive Capacity

Measuring to Manage

2005-03-08T13:44:00.000-05:00

After spending many years competing against the big 5 consulting firms, we decided to build our own comprehensive organizational assessment. The difference would be its focus on sustainable growth and the ability to change anything or nothing!

We call it SNAPSHOT and the goal is in the name, to provide an accurate picture that identifies gaps between the future and present. It best serves business planning and improvement projects.

Image starting the year or performing a mid-course correction to focus and align your scarce resources to achieve the critical few; the short list of core competence and competitive advantage?

Describe is the ability to track performance in real time; it makes running a real-time enterprise a reality. The challenge is how to build a scorekeeping system that is bottom up? How do we roll those measures up to create individual, group, and organizational dashboards?

The Center tackles the challenge of on-going measurements with our Performance Guidance System. Our solution is a software package that requires no IT support. It resides and operates within Microsoft Suite, and is customized to your unique performance measures.

This bottom-up approach challenges every individual to “their best performance to date”. Additionally it breaks the truth-fear paradox. Most business measures are not designed or used as corrective feedback (TRUING) instead it is employed for blame and faultfinding. The result is fear of the truth! How can any of us run a business when truth is avoided like the plague?

Evaluate is the ability to review results against plan. The Center takes advantage of your current financial software and measurement methods by expanding its ability to review decisions and actions taken during the year.

Most end of year evaluations simply measure results without a clear line of sight to cause and effect. Our critical addition is to back track through the various decisions and actions collected in the Performance Guidance System and SNAPSHOT’s to drive next years improvements.

A partnership with the Center enables your executives and managers to review and evaluate performance over the year. This ability cannot be overstated, you are now armed with your unique best practices to assess, design, align, and execute to achieve optimum growth.

Our Unique Offer

2005-03-08T13:34:00.000-05:00

We have moved our successful big business consulting practice to the mid-market where high growth companies live. We grew weary of trying to “boil the ocean” which is common to all large corporations. We decided to stop fighting bureaucracy and work with clients who shared our sense of urgency for getting things done. Our offer is equal to the large consulting firms with one significant difference, we have eliminated price point as a legitimate objection.

The Center’s two principles have over a half-century of delivering results to the Fortune 1000. Our extended team represents recognized thought leaders in the issues essential to growth: competitive advantage, market intelligence, product and service processes, and human capital.

Where do we look to achieve Optimum Growth for our clients:

Core Measures – Measuring to Manage
Leading Indicators – Predicting the Future
Real Time Indicators – Leading in Real Time
Trailing Indicators – Evaluating to Learn

Our team members at The Center for Inspired Performance all have long standing reputations for achieving results, helping clients reach the next level. Each member has years of industry experience within specific areas of practice:

Strategy and Optimum Growth
Product and Service Quality
Human Capital

Given the nature of the consulting business, the challenge of measurement presented us with two problems. Starting inside our company, how do we effectively measure performance in a labor-intensive business? Then transferring our attention to clients, how do we measure the impact of partnerships? In both cases, our added value was the application of knowledge. Since you cannot manage what is not measured, how do you measure the application of knowledge internally to become the lowest cost provider? How do you manage the application of knowledge externally to create a return on performance for clients? These concerns have occupied our best minds for years.

Our journey brought us to a simple understanding of the role of measurement in business and demands of management.

The application of business measures has three objectives:

Predict: based on a set of Leading Indicators
Describe: based on a set of Real-Time Indicators
Evaluate: based on a set of Trailing Indicators

The Center has collected an extensive list of best practices over our half-century of driving business results. Our organizational assessment SNAPSHOT measures the best practices in six critical strategic elements of growth.

Competitive Advantage
Customer Enthusiasm
Productive Capacity
Sales Effectiveness
Leadership Effectiveness
Employee Inspiration

The Center for Inspired Performance

2005-03-08T12:18:00.000-05:00

How do you tell a story that evolves over fifty years? Like most over powering insights, ideas are tempered by trial and error.

The Center for Inspired Performance is such a story, a culmination of over a half century of consulting experience driving improvements in business performance. We have learned several powerful lessons about building successful fast-growth companies and personal legacies of leadership.

The path to optimum growth is as difficult as walking the razor’s edge; a delicate balance between conflicting forces requiring constant adjustments while steering a plotted course. TRUING
The performance of your business is never better than its worse performing element – the weakest link. Achieving sustainable growth requires a total systems approach for running the company; the whole must always be greater than sum of its' parts. SYSTEMS
Business performance is constrained by its lifecycle – the right amount of energy on the right issue at the right time. What you fix, what opportunities you exploit are based on the stage of growth; all resources (money, time, energy) are scarce and must be optimized. LIFE CYCLE
Business performance is a function of measuring to manage – integrating leading, real time, and trailing indicators; leading indicators to predict, real time indicators to decide, trailing indicators to evaluate. MEASUREMENT
Business performance is ultimately decided at the frontline. No matter how well planned and thought out, the strategy is forgotten in the day-to-day battle for customers and profit. Once the game is afoot, the heads and hearts of the people doing the work is what matters most. INSPIRED

Our approach is collaborative, working closely with executive team, management staff, and employees to identify the true growth barriers. We offer comprehensive assessment tools to benchmark your operations and establish improvement targets. Our job is to get you up and rnning fast, break new ground, and measure our performance by your success.

Our research group ensures a blend of new thinking with hardheaded pragmatism. We are constantly improving what we do and how it is done for one reason – enhance your competitive edge. Our motto is Do It Right, Get It Right; Our philosophy is the transfer of knowledge to your processes. We are not interested in dependency.

Our team loves the work and jumping in the middle of your fire. Part of our success is the people we bring and the team we create with you. Each member has industry specific expertise to ensure you get what you need when you need it.