Commentary
We occasionally prepare brief commentaries on topics suggested by clients or developed from our work with clients. In response to requests from a number of clients, we have made these commentaries publicly available at our Web site. The current commentary archive includes:
An important goal, or just another meaningless term from fad-based management practices? You can make it real and vital by using this term to describe what you value most in your organization. Most of us place highest value on more than one aspect of our organizations, so that we need a definition that captures each of these. Components of an organizational excellence definition typically include values like "great people", "great place to work", "solidly and consistently profitable" and "best products and services". If you can make these measurable, then you have taken the first step toward making this normally vague concept both concrete and operational.
Business process reengineering efforts, including those driven by enterprise software, led inevitably to communication of practices among businesses. As some practices seemed to be more effective or efficient, they came to be labeled "best". But are they really "best", or just "best" in certain contexts? How do they impact process innovation? Could they instead bring you down to the level of your competition?
Cost reduction efforts have passed through two major cost opportunity layers during the past two decades — the first, waste and redundancy, and most recently, business processes and practices. Further progress now depends upon the ability to tackle costs created by organizational obstacles, the third, and probably final, major opportunity layer.
þ Strategic Planning Participation
The typical organization limits participation in its strategic planning process to a dozen or so executives and senior managers. Larger groups — I have dealt with a few as large as 30-50 people — are so unwieldy that the process is rarely productive. Process effectiveness begins to drop rapidly as meeting participation exceeds 15-18 people. Yet, most larger organizations have dozens of key people whose contribution to the planning process could be extremely valuable. To get their input, the usual approach is to rely on each participant in the planning process to conduct informal interviews on strategic issues with their key players. Does this ever happen? Rarely — one-on-one meetings with key people nearly always focus on work-related issues, with strategic planning concerns hardly being mentioned. Here is one way to expand participation without having half your organization at the planning meetings.
þ Strategic Planning Process Productiveness
The most productive part of many strategic planning meetings is the socializing and golf. Meetings themselves tend to be consumed in bringing participants up to speed (who ever reads pre-meeting handouts any more?). Productive discussion typically gets squeezed into a few hours at the end, just as people start drifting away or preparing for their next meeting. Even though the meeting's lengthy preparation phase is often useful from a communications standpoint, it makes the meeting as a whole not very productive. For the few who did prepare, the meeting can be largely a waste of time. Wouldn't it be nice to have most participants come to the meeting reasonably well-prepared on most issues that will be discussed? This would leave the bulk of the meeting for productive discussion of alternatives, priorities and action planning. You may even be able to shorten the meeting itself.
þ Cultural Obstacles to Effective Communication
We are communicating more than ever, if you believe the business press and Internet revolution hype. But, as in most things, more is rarely better. In fact, we are communicating less than ever before. Communication is not just the transfer of information but the primary means of facilitating interactions between individuals and groups. Impersonal e-mail hardly touches this critical function. Most non-electronic communication still suffers from traditional ills and obstacles — among which, culture can dominate.
þ Tapping Organizational Knowledge
Organizational knowledge is one of the most valuable, but also most underutilized, resources available to the majority of companies today. Residing in clients, customers, employees, and others such as suppliers, this knowledge is rarely tapped directly, systematically, thoroughly or routinely. Organizational knowledge differs from normal business knowledge in that it is tucked away in people's heads rather than being tangible in the form of products, services, documents, processes or systems. Access to such knowledge is voluntary and depends greatly upon motivation, available communication channels, interpersonal factors, and a host of other facilitators and obstacles that may or may not be present in each organization. The sad fact is that much valuable knowledge remains with the holder, dormant and unused. So how might such organizational knowledge be of importance to us?
In most multi-office firms, branch office performance varies all over the map. But without considering certain critical differences between offices, performance comparisons can be misleading and wasteful of management time and attention. Many engineering and architecture firms have a number of branch offices. Some have dozens, along with regional offices to manage the large office systems. Offices are added as firms are acquired. Others are created to serve a major client or to provide proximity to a major project. More than a few are located in warmer climates by northern-tier firms. Offices are sited to handle selling in major markets or simply to respond to a partner's geographical preferences. Is it any wonder, then, that there are substantial performance differences?
þ Branch Office or Firm-Within-A-Firm?
Engineering and architecture firms commonly regard branch offices as extensions of the main firm but many offices function in reality as firms within the overall firm. The difference is critical for managing an office effectively and profitably. Branch offices originate in many different ways. Some start as sales offices and gradually add production capabilities. Others appear as established local firms are acquired. Many begin life as project offices and struggle thereafter to find enough local work to justify their continued existence. At any point in time, a larger firm may have branch offices of nearly every type and stage of life.
The main firm's management may regard most or all of the offices as simply remote departments but otherwise an integral part of the main firm. In some cases, management will give the office almost complete autonomy and will view the office instead as an affiliate or subcontractor. Too often, however, the office's role as seen by management differs substantially from the office's actual role. Where this occurs, the branch office may be so affected by the role conflict that it cannot perform either its actual role or management's intended role effectively. Most common among role conflicts is one in which the main firm's management sees the office as a remote department while the branch office management runs the office as a firm-within-the-firm. This conflict can create endless problems in handling head office production, selling for head office vs. local production, moving people in and out of the office, hiring constraints, inadequate access to specialized resources — and the list goes on.
þ Why Measure Client Satisfaction?
Most senior people in consulting firms know generally what their clients want — a good technical solution, delivered on schedule and within budget. Clients also want their consultants to be "responsive". That's about it. If a consulting firm meets these basic client needs, then the client should be completely satisfied. Firms know when clients are not satisfied because clients call the firm's project managers or even a principal to complain whenever something is wrong. No complaints, no dissatisfied clients. Simple. Most project managers, fortunately, are born with knowledge of what it takes to satisfy clients. They can be dropped into project and client manager roles as soon as their technical skills and experience allow. What they don't know can be learned by doing. Those who can't soon move on to other things. So, why would any firm want to ask its clients about their level of satisfaction with the firm's performance, let alone measure it?
þ Using Client Feedback to Assess and Develop Project Managers
Client satisfaction with your firm, and their willingness to give you new work, depends greatly upon their interactions with your project managers. For most projects, no other individuals in your firm have their frequency and diversity of client contact.
In the minds of many clients, your project managers are your firm.
Project managers who can keep clients satisfied while delivering high quality design and related services are your most effective marketing resource. You would probably agree with this as a general rule. And yet, so many consulting firms do not train their project managers but allow them to sink-or-swim on actual assignments. Learn by doing. The best managers thrive, many struggle, and the rest fade away. Technical professionals by nature are focused on their work. They try as best they can to respond to client requests and concerns but reactively in most cases. They act after a problem or issue surfaces. Few project managers have any real sense for the needs, priorities and concerns of clients except what they learn over the years by trial and error. Their learning is often costly to clients and detrimental to your firm. Professional development in various aspects of project management tends to gloss over client issues, dealing mainly in general principles that are easily forgotten. To make the training relevant and useful immediately, project managers need detailed client feedback on active and just completed projects.
þ Acquiring Information and Knowledge Using Software
Using software — both standalone and Web-based — for the typically costly and time-consuming task of gathering essential information and knowledge holds the promise of both reduced cost and better, more complete information. We are in the early stages of this endeavor, having developed and tested a number of basic tools in a limited range of field situations. Current efforts should yield a more complete array of essential tools and a clear picture of their applicability.