Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Jack Welche's Career Pitfalls

1) Misfiring on performance or values - Overcommitting and under-delivering
2) Resistance to change - Failing to embrace new ideas
3) Being a Problem Identifier vs a Problem Solver
4) Winning over your boss but not your business peer group
5) Always worrying about your next career move versus focusing on the present
6) Running for office - it’s totally transparent to everyone but you!
7) Self-importance - exhibiting a humorless, rigid attitude
8) Lacking the courage and conviction to push back on the system
9) Forgetting to develop your own succession plan for when you get promoted
10) Complacency - you’ve stopped growing.

Keys to Strategic Success


  1. Strategic model to set direction
  2. Limit on diversity and complexity level of strategy to stay focused
  3. Assessment of competitive advantages
  4. Drive to development of new ideas and innovative designs
  5. The plan for implementation of innovation

Monday, April 20, 2015

You Think More Than You Think


  • Broad Options Thinking
  • Contrary Thinking
  • Critical Indicators Thinking
  • Fact-based Thinking
  • Group Synergy Thinking
  • Innovative Thinking
  • Insightful Thinking
  • Overview Thinking
  • Single Subject Thinking
  • Strategic or Tactical thinking

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Leading Innovation

  • Lead from within, not from without assigning tasks
  • Provide vision, not detailed plan
  • Change processes standards, and opposing views rather than seeking comfort in the familiar.
  • Take interests in details to motivate rather than to prescribe
  • Promote equality among team members regardless of their expertise
  • Continually ask for advice, insights, and opinions.
  • Assemble groups of diverse independent thinkers, not teams of risk-avoiding managers.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

How to Implement Creative Collaboration within Teams

1.   Set possible but hard goals that require innovation.
2.   Select diverse but relevant individuals who can collectively turn the goal into a successful implementation.
3.   Detail a vision of turning the hard goal into reality.
4.   Determine the current state to gauge the gap with what you want to achieve. See what works really well now and what can be improved.
5.   From gap analysis, detail what is missing and what do you need to do, and where you need innovative ideas that are missing now.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Machiavelli speaks to leaders today

  • A leader is justified when preventing chaos or disorder.
  • If you cause slight injury, you will suffer consequences, if you praise then you will neutralize
  • In a new responsibility, get the hard decisions implemented first, then support and facilitate gradually over time.
  • Luck plays the biggest role and fortune favors the bold.
  • Never compromise with or submit to unethical acts.
  • Remember that no policy is without risk.  Thus, all policies carry risks.
  • The leader’s main job is to protect turf from other leaders.


Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Process Improvement Plans

PDCA
  1. Plan
  2. Do
  3. Check
  4. Act
Kaizen
  1. Preparation
  2. Pre-Kaizen
  3. Kaizen Event
  4. Post Kaizen
5S
  1. Sort
  2. Set in Order
  3. Shine
  4. Standardize
  5. Sustain 
DMAIC
  1. Define
  2. Measure
  3. Analyze
  4. Improve
  5. Control 
Process Improvement Activities
  1. Initial Planning
  2. Detailed Planning
  3. Baseline
  4. Initial Design
  5. Detailed Design
  6. Validation
  7. Implementation
  8. Close

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Questions for Mentoring Auditors

1.      What are you short-term and longer-term objectives?
2.      What is stopping you from achieving them now?
3.      What information and help from others do you need?
4.      Have you written down any plans?
5.      Did you talk about what you want with significant others?
6.      What will you do once you achieve your goals?
7.      Is this what you really want for you or to satisfy others?

Monday, March 23, 2015

Useful Leadership Skills for Governance and Compliance Functions

  • Clever (intelligent)
  • Conceptually skilled
  • Creative
  • Diplomatic and tactful
  • Fluent in speaking
  • Knowledgeable about group task
  • Organised (administrative ability)
  • Persuasive
  • Socially skilled 


Leadership Traits for Governance and Compliance Functions

  • Adaptable to situations
  • Alert to social environment
  • Ambitious and achievement orientated
  • Assertive
  • Cooperative
  • Decisive
  • Dependable
  • Dominant (desire to influence others)
  • Energetic (high activity level)
  • Persistent
  • Self-confident
  • Tolerant of stress
  • Willing to assume responsibility


Wednesday, July 24, 2013

For Strategic Planning, Value Management can

  • Test and validate planning assumptions
  • Identify and confirm stakeholder values
  • Create a shared vision or agreed direction
  • Develop alignment to corporate directions
  • Establish Master Planning principles and objectives, and
  • Define key challenges and strategies

Preserving Process Value by

  • Eliminating or reducing deviations in performance
  • Maintaining operation effectiveness and efficiency
  • Reducing hidden costs (e.g. high transaction costs incurred when changes are made to services, service levels, or demand levels in a trial-and-error manner)
  • Publicizing and substantiating hidden benefits (e.g. reduced lock-in through leasing assets rather than buying them)
  • Uses of automation, web-based functionality, cloud, support tools, etc. to reduce the cost of providing service, and better allow scalability without commensurate cost increases.

Use Value Analysis to:


·         Test and validate planning assumptions
·         Identify and confirm stakeholder values
·         Create a shared vision or agreed direction
·         Develop alignment to Corporate directions
·         Establish Master Planning principles and objectives, and
·         Define key challenges and strategies

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Data Quality Factors

INTRINSIC
· Accuracy
· Lineage
· Semantic
· Structure

CONTEXT
· Completeness
· Consistency
· Currency
· Timeliness
· Reasonableness
· Identification

Data Consistency

Presentation:  Common presentation formats for each data element are defined.  Data elements that are presented in a screen or a form will conform to the defined presentation format.

Presentation completeness:  Each data presentation format can convey all information within the attributes.  Every defined presentation format will be verified to ensure that it can present all values the displayed attribute can take.

Null presentation:  Standards for the presentation of missing information for each data type are defined.  Any data element that may be null must have a defined representation for the absent value. If there are multiple reasons for absent values that can be captured in the data (e.g., "unavailable" vs. "not applicable") there will be multiple null representations.

Capture and collection:  Data entry edits and data importation rules should be defined for each data element.  Participants must apply the defined data edit and collection rules.

Data Timeliness

Accessibility:  Newly posted records should be available to enterprise applications within a specified time period. Policies specifying acceptable time delays must be provided.  Time delays must be measured and recorded.

Response time:  Ensure that requested data is provided within the acceptable time period.  Expectations for response time must be specified.  Requested data must be received by the requestor within the specified time period.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Strategic Alignment Components: Business & IT

BUSINESS STRATEGY
·    Scope – Includes the markets, products, services, groups of customers/clients, and locations where an enterprise competes as well as the buyers, competitors, suppliers and potential competitors that affect the competitive business environment.
·    Competencies – The critical success factors and core competencies that provide a firm with a potential competitive edge. This includes brand, research, manufacturing and product development, cost and pricing structure, and sales and distribution channels.
·    Governance – How companies set the relationship between management stockholders and the board of directors. Also included are how the company is affected by government regulations, and how the firm manages their relationships and alliances with strategic partners.
ORGANIZATION INFRASTRUCTURE & PROCESSES
·    Administrative Structure – The way the firm organizes its businesses. Examples include central, decentralize, matrix, horizontal, vertical, geographic, and functional.
·    Processes - How the firm's business activities (the work performed by employees) operate or flow. Major issues include value-added activities and process improvement.
·    Skills – H/R considerations such as how to hire/fire, motivate, train/educate, and culture.
IT STRATEGY
·     Technology Scope - The important information applications and technologies
·     Systemic Competencies - Those capabilities (e.g., access to information that is important to the creation/achievement of a company's strategies) that distinguishes the IT services.
·     IT Governance - How the authority for resources, risk, and responsibility for IT is shared between business partners, IT management and service providers. Project selection and prioritization issues are included here.
IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND PROCESSES
·         Architecture - The technology priorities, policies, and choices that allow applications, software, networks, hardware, and data management to be integrated into a cohesive platform.
·         Processes - Those practices and activities carried out to develop and maintain applications and manage IT infrastructure.
·         Skills - IT human resource considerations such as how to hire/fire, motivate, train/educate, and culture.
 

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Strategic Value

1.      Cost focus: Drawing on the value discipline of operational excellence
a)      Price products and services at lowest cost
b)      Drive economies of scale through shared best practices

2.      Value differentiation as perceived by customers: Drawing on the value discipline of customer intimacy
a)      Meet client expectations for quality at reasonable cost
b)      Make the customers' product selection as easy as possible
c)      Provide all information needed to service any client from any service point

3.      Flexibility and agility: Drawing on the value discipline of product and service innovation
a)      Grow in cross-selling capabilities
b)      Develop new products and services rapidly
c)      Create capacity to manufacture in any location for a particular order

4.      Growth: How the base of the business will expand
a)      Expand aggressively into underdeveloped and emerging markets
b)      Carefully grow internationally to meet the needs of customers that are expanding their business
c)      Target growth through specific product and customer niches

5.      Human resources: Where people policies fit in
a)      Create an environment that maximizes intellectual productivity
b)      Maintain a high level of professional and technical expertise
c)      Identify and facilitate the movement of talented people

6.      Management orientation: Different aspects of business governance and decision making
a)      Maximize independence in local operations with a minimum of mandates
b)      Make management decisions close to the line
c)      Create a management culture of information sharing (to maintain or generate new business)

The Business Value of IT: Managing Risks, Optimizing Performance and Measuring Results by  Michael D. Harris, David E. Herron and Stasia Iwanicki, Auerbach Publications © 2008 (294 pages)

Attributes of Good Metric

  • Relevant
  • Practical
  • Actionable
  • Reported or communicated
  • Owned