This kind of bold self-awareness is a hallmark of great leaders. Admitting there’s room for growth takes courage, but it’s a necessary step toward lasting improvement.

“The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize,” is attributed to Shigeo Shingo, a prominent figure in the field of Lean Manufacturing.

Here are four critical questions to help you evaluate your processes and customer experience:

1. When was the last time we thoroughly evaluated what our customers go through to do business with us?
2. Is our process easy and seamless, or does it present unnecessary hurdles?
3. How have we differentiated ourselves—not through our products or services—but through the way we onboard clients, deliver, and administer those offerings?
4. What have we done recently to create a competitive advantage in this area?

At TSI, we thrive on solving these challenges—whether they’re big or small. As process improvement experts, we are excited to help businesses transform how they operate and deliver value to customers.

If these questions resonate with you, we’d love to explore how we can help you create a smoother, more competitive process. Reach out to us today!

– written by: Dan Feely, TSI’s President and Founder – Visit The TSI Team page for more information on Dan and his talented team.

The post How Leaders Look at Process – 4 Questions to Ask Yourself (and improve) appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

• A while ago I was in Montreal checking in a hotel (part of a major chain) at about 10 PM. The night desk clerk spent close to 10 minutes trying to look up my loyalty account, with no success.  Then he informed me I should go look it up, come back down to the front desk, and he would input my information. Note, the per night cost of this hotel was about $300.
• While merely trying to sign up at one of those indoor skydiving places, I discover a poorly organized website that is cumbersome and does not show accurate availability. I called to make a reservation, and after being put on hold for 8 or 9 minutes, the worker says she cannot sign us up.  All because she is too busy.  She asks for my number to call back when she has time, but never actually does.
• My flight is delayed due to mechanical issues (on an airline that I’m a Platinum member); this will cause me to miss a connecting flight and this 1 hour delay, will ultimately cost me 12 hours due to no open seats on other flights to my destination.  I never receive a call or text to attempt to problem solve this.

If you’re thinking, “Dan, if this is all you have to worry about, you have it pretty good”.  Well you’d be right, I do have it good.  These are definitely not awfully inconvenient problems for me. Not even close.

However, if you are a leader at any of these three businesses, or if your organization is not that ETDBW (Easy to do business with), know that you are inadvertently creating a a few lasting impressions:

1. They don’t care about my business
2. They would rather maximize profit on one transaction than have me as a customer for a lifetime
3. My time does not matter to them.

In short, a positively memorable CX matters!  Why?  It’s certainly a logical leap to think that a customer who has an excellent experience, remembers it.  Because of one positive experience, they can tell others about it; sometimes even becoming mini marketers for that product or service.  Further, those that are loyal, having had a positive experience are retained, will buy a product or service over and over.

Consider the following:  Studies[1] by Bain & Company, along with Earl Sasser of the Harvard Business School, have shown that even a 5 percent increase in customer retention can lead to an increase in profits of between 25 and 95 percent.

There are several reasons why this small increase in retention can have such a large impact on profits. Here are two important considerations:

1. Customers are likely to spend more with companies they’ve already done business with. Particularly with small businesses that don’t have a lot of brand recognition, a customer’s first purchase or two can be considered somewhat of a risk. So they are likely to keep the cost relatively small, and then increase spending as the relationship grows.
2. Repeat customers are more likely to refer others. Bain & Company’s research showed that after just one purchase from an online apparel retailer, an average shopper was likely to refer three other people to the site. But a customer that made ten purchases from an online apparel retailer was likely to refer seven different people to the site.

Now, you might find yourself asking: “So what?”  I can tell these organizations do not believe in Design Thinking or Voice of the Customer ways of looking at their processes.

Well, creating a positively memorable experience is HARD! Especially for an organization that has any degree of complexity around the following:

1. The types of products/services your customers want;
2. How easy or hard, fast or slow, manual or automated, simple or cumbersome it is for you to quote/price the right products/services;
3. How easy or hard, fast or slow, manual or automated, simple or cumbersome it is for them to order it, receive it, process the invoice, and actually pay for it.
4. What about the delivery, set up/configuration, training, etc., how seamless are these processes?
5. Do you have numerous people involved, sometimes with “less than ideal” coordination when you think about those involved from a contracting, pricing, order processing/execution, set up, training, implementation touchpoints?

Having lived this firsthand, I know onboarding new clients/customers is not only challenging, but it is very time-consuming, and candidly, frustrating.  Now with even more awareness in the marketplace around this elusive goal of creating an ideal customer experience, the typical customer is more perceptive to whether you (or any) organization is truly “easy to do business with”.

In fact, check out this article on customer service expectations – https://www.alltius.ai/glossary/millennials-gen-z-customer-service-expectations 

If you feel that you may have some opportunities for improvement in this area, TSI can help. We’ve created a very hands-on training workshop that is short + sweet, and worth your investment. You will learn solid foundation of concepts and perspectives as well as tools to be used so they may be applied for your organization. If you are interested, email us at tsi@transforming.com.

The post Why a Positively Memorable Customer Experience (CX) Matters appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

Recently, on a videoconference call, the CEO for one of our clients remarked with a lot of urgency that the company needs to take this opportunity, caused by the slowdown in business, to finally address some of the process issues that have been causing consistent issues with the on-time and accurate delivery of customer orders.  To me, as a self-proclaimed “process zealot” and occasional contrarian, this was music to my ears.  This is primarily because some organizations have become overwhelmed by the fear today’s events are causing, they become paralyzed and do not take the opportunity to address challenges and employ useful tools such as Lean or process improvement, for performance challenges they have in their own organization.

My hope is that this article gives you at least 3 useful ideas to take back and put in practice.

TSI’s Experience with Process Improvement, Lean and Project Management

At TSI, we have been consulting and training in the area of process improvement and Lean Project Management for over 25 years. We have helped many organizations think about efficiency and effectiveness differently so they can make substantial financial and operational gains by implementing Lean or some variation of Process Improvement.

We have also trained others on Lean and Process Improvement throughout the years. We want to use this post to focus on process improvement, Lean process management and some of the different variations of process improvement there are.  Here, we will answer the question “What is lean management?” and explain the difference between Lean, Six Sigma, and Business Process Management (BPM), basic Process Improvement.  Heck, we’ll even define what a process is.  Best of all, at the bottom, we have provided a summary table for you that describes the various methods of process improvement along with some of their relative strengths and weaknesses.  Feel free to share this with others too.  Some might say this makes for a great birthday present.

Lean and Process Management Fundamentals

Let’s start with some basics – What is a Process?  In short, it is the recurring work you (or your team or colleagues) do. Here is a classic definition that will help distinguish a process from merely a “task”: A process is a sequence of activities, triggered by time or an event, that is intended to produce a specific result (hopefully of value) for an internal and/or external customer.

In simple terms, when you think about your organization, it is very likely the following occur:

A more granular way to describe these are as follows;

• Procure to Pay
• Idea to Offering (think New Product or New Service Development)
• Market to Order
• Quote to Cash
• Order to Cash
• RMA (Return Material Authorization) – Sales Return Cycle.
• Forecast to Delivery
• Financial Plan to Report
• Issue to Resolution
• Plan to Inventory
• Business Management.

In addition to these, one can create additional lists of process if you think about other disciplines such as Human Resources, Information Technology, and others.  And, based on the industry you are in, there are other unique processes related to the unique aspects and regulatory requirements of that industry.

Sometimes when we think about processes, we draw comparisons to sports and since it is almost football season, the “play” an offense might run is another example of a process.  This might start (or is triggered by) with thinking about the play, calling the play, lining up for the play and then executing the play.

As you can imagine, this might provoke you in thinking: are we running the right plays (or processes) to win? Are we running the plays correctly? With the right people or under the right conditions? Do we need better equipment (or technology) to allow this play to work better? Do we even have a “playbook” of processes? What does it “cost” us to run a play and what is our rate of success? Thinking about processes as more than just a transaction, but in the context of their lifecycle is quite revealing – more on that in a later post.

Lean Process Management and Project Management Fundamentals

Now that you are a process expert, let’s talk about the approaches one might take to improve the work, or processes they do.

1. Nothing – Believe it or not, most organizations do very little to map, analyze and improve their processes.  Why?  It’s likely that most of us are creatures of habit and tend to do the same work, day after day, even when the results are less than expected.   If you decide to invest in improving your processes, know that you are in an elite group of those willing to take a chance and invest in your organization.

2. Basic Flowcharting – The next most common approach is an organization that creates a simple flowchart of the work that is done.   Like the example below, this can be very effective to illustrate the work that is done in a visual manner. Quite simply, this map simply orients on the steps and branches in a process.

3. Business Process Mapping (BPM):  More often than not, business process mapping involves creating a more detailed and robust process map like the one below.  As you can see in this example, there are “swim lanes” that depict roles or departments and the work they do.  Also, you see information flows, handoffs, metrics and pain points described.

Doing this activity alone is a GREAT START since knowing who does what and what the handoffs are is essential to “run the play” in the manner that it is designed.  But realize that the process map, in its “current state” form, is like watching the game film of a play being run.  You should see how it actually happens, not how you would like it to be run.  Don’t be surprised by fumbles or misalignment of steps; all of this is very common and simply adds to the value of you doing this exercise.

4. Process improvement – Process improvement is following a structured approach to define and analyze processes (generally defined in a predetermined scope of work) while being very intentional about improving one or more aspects of the performance (i.e., cost, quality, service speed and/or compliance).

Here one may take one of a few paths, listed here from least disruptive and time-consuming to most:

• Continuous Improvement (CI) – Continuous improvement is incrementally improving a process a little bit at a time.  Sometimes this is referred to as Kaizen, which was made popular in Toyota Production System.  This theme is to “Do what we already do but do it better”.  Ultimately Kaizen builds a culture of sustained continuous improvement, focusing on eliminating waste in all systems and processes of an organization.

• Lean – Lean (or Lean Process Management) was originally developed for manufacturing and was primarily focused on removing all types of waste from a process.  In recent years Lean has evolved to work in service-oriented processes and focus not just on removing waste, but also on maximizing value in processes.  Now, Lean Process Management is coupled with Project Management resulting in Lean Project Management, Software Development and even corporate Start up activities. In fact, the Lean Start Up approach has become as popular as Lean Project Management in recent years.

  As it pertains to process improvement, TSI sees Lean Process Improvement or Management being used in a fairly similar manner as BPR (as defined below).

• Six Sigma – Six Sigma is an approach that seeks to improve the quality of the output of a process by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing impact variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses statistical methods and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization who are experts in these methods (known as black belts).

• Business Process Reengineering (BPR) – BPR is “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed” (per Hammer and Champy).  In BPR, organizations need to map their current state processes, analyze those, and then create future state processes, while paying attention to key process metrics as part of the analysis.  TSI’s methodology shown here – covers these steps in greater detail.

5. Voice of the Customer (VOC) – VOC is an approach that leverages customer input to understand and define the customer’s requirements, usually prior to delivering a product or service to them.  This can be done in parallel or completely separate from a process improvement engagement. In simple terms, VOC can anchor a future state process based on what the customer truly wants – often different than what we perceive the customer wants.

Lean and Process Improvement Synopsis

While this was intended to cover the basics, we hope this is of value to you, particularly if you are wrestling with how to approach your own inefficient processes. Please don’t hesitate to pass this link on to others. 

The post Everything YOU Ever Wanted to Know about Process Improvement and Lean, but Were Afraid to Ask appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

I have to admit, as sure as that HBR article just over 34 years ago by Michael Hammer, Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate (FROM THE JULY–AUGUST 1990 ISSUE) sparked my interest in this area and sent a lightning bolt of perspective change through a wide variety of organizations, I was wondering if there was another article or trend that somehow I missed that no longer made being efficient relevant.

From our experience, working with some of the fastest growing companies, as well as progressive higher education institutions, looking at how to make or keep an organization focused on efficiency, quality, customer satisfaction and profitability has never been more relevant.  But, to be fair, a lot of things have changed in the past 34+ years.

From TSI’s perspective, here are the top 5 things that have happened to process improvement over the years:

1. It has evolved and now incorporates User Experience (UX), Customer Experience (CX), Transformation or another synonym. Plenty of process definition and analysis is still being done, but it’s done with a greater awareness of what the total experience is.  Further, many organizations are more holistic, looking not just at processes (or operations) but people, culture, technology, strategy, metrics and a number of other dimensions. This is one of my favorite ways that PI has evolved.
2. Tightly coupled with ERP, CRM and other major systems – years back, many organizations optimistically and naively assumed their new ERP/CRM would fix their processes automatically. “We’ll just implement the same processes that (insert Software Product/Vendor name) implemented in (insert similar company name) and we’ll be fine”. Sadly, these organizations learned this is a fallacy and implementing an ERP without looking at processes is a recipe for disaster or just wasting a lot of time and money.
3. Process Renovation – Some organizations are taking a fresh look at the processes that have been re-engineered 10-20 years ago. In some cases, as their business model has changed with acquisitions, divestitures etc. and they realized that it is time to take another hard look at how they operate.  Just because you did this in 2005, does not mean you shouldn’t do it again.
4. Nothing – believe it or not, some organizations missed that wave 34 years ago and still haven’t taken a fresh review of how they operate. Unfortunately in many industries such as retail, publishing, higher education, pharma, high technology manufacturing and many others, we have seen the peril of failing to proactively streamline processes, systems and customer experiences.
5. Lean/Continuous Improvement/Six Sigma Culture – some organizations have reaped the rewards and feel strongly that a periodic review of how they operate is one of the most differentiating characteristics in the marketplace. They strive to be “Operationally Excellent” in all aspects of their business from how they go to market, develop products/services, hire new employees, pay vendors, service customers.

Your Call to Action

In summary, after 34 years, this notion of “process re-engineering” that was set in motion by an article describing a project at Ford Motor Company is alive and thriving.  Granted, this is taking on more adaptive and holistic dimensions, but I would ask you to contemplate the following:

When is the last time you reviewed how your company is to do business with through the eyes of your customers?  When is the last time you analyzed these areas?  When is the last time you had an outsider who is committed to telling the truth, assess your organization? 

TSI (transforming.com) is a leading performance improvement, process re-engineering, technology strategy and organization change management consulting firm based in Chicago. We collaborate with our progressive growth-oriented and higher education clients to define and implement recommendations that help our clients become more efficient, cost effective, higher quality and more customer focused.  Dan Feely is the founder of TSI and can be reached at dfeely@transforming.com

The post 34 Years Later – Is the Discipline of “Process Reengineering” Still Relevant in 2024? appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

Transforming Solutions Inc. (TSI), was engaged by a Southwest University Health Science Center to create an organizational culture of continuous improvement. As background, the institution is one of the nation’s premier graduate academic medical centers, with five schools that specialize in patient-centered education, research and health care. They are part of the University system. 

Spearheaded by the Chief People Officer, the University sought to explore new ways to address problems and continuously improve through guidance and training to transform the institution into one that embraces LEAN and Agile in an employee-centric and pragmatic way. 

Starting with pockets of exposure to Agile and LEAN methodologies, the University wanted TSI to help the overall organization take this, along with other cultural attributes (such as their vision, mission and values) and transform the culture to improve quality and gain efficiencies. 

TSI’s Approach and Role

Approach

To accomplish the identified goals, TSI engaged in the following:

• In the initial phase, the University sought to develop and prioritize processes for improvement and initial process improvement implementation for critical need areas to help build a business case with proven effectiveness and value for further buyin. This work intended to implement and share best practices and training with internal LEAN coaches and key stakeholders for process improvement, establish a usable, sustainable communication plan, evaluate improvements through metrics, and estimate return on investment for the improvement initiatives.
• In the second phase, TSI was asked to develop a Continuous Improvement methodology to be shared with University staff through training with follow up coaching. This methodology was intended to be sustainable and usable for improvement initiatives across the University. 

TSI collaborated with the University Leadership Team to identify and prioritize business processes to implement a practice-based training and mentoring program to enhance LEAN and Agile understanding and development of implementation skills. TSI created a training program for continuous improvement and led a cohort of leaders through process improvement methodology using processes that were identified as critical processes including Budgets, Contract Administration, HR Hiring, and the University Leadership as a pilot. Once the pilot was complete, phase two was implemented that provided full training and mentoring to the cohort for implementation of business process improvement and other continuous improvement strategies throughout the University Health Center and coaching for growth and development for future Continuous Improvement sustainability at the University.

Role

TSI served as a methodologist, project manager, continuous improvement leader, trainer, coach, and facilitator throughout this project. TSI provided and tailored its methodology as the basis for the methodology that is currently in place. After that, TSI evaluated trainees and quality of deliverables after they were trained and did a variety of “hands on” activities to get familiar with the tools. 

Results

This project was viewed as a huge success. Based on TSI’s involvement the University achieved the following:

• Developed and used a repeatable methodology to use on areas deemed “ripe for improvement”
• Took dozens of areas through the methodology which resulted in hundreds of improvement ideas implemented
• Trained over a dozen practitioners thus improving their skillsets
• Realized tangible savings, from the improvement ideas mentioned above, that resulted in hard dollar savings of over $1 million dollars annually.

The post Transforming a PMO and Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

Lo and behold, through repetition, successes and errors, as well as my good friends at the Project Management Institute (PMI), my hypothesis was proven to be accurate.  At the time, I was checking the boxes and reaping the reward as a Project Manager.  Yet, not every Project Manager saw the same success.  Was I that much better at managing projects than my peers?  Or was something in the system hindering them from realizing success?

The Ecosystem of Project and Portfolio Management

Not until I moved into consulting (and began holistically working with organizations of all shapes and sizes), did I conclude the approach of managing projects was not as singularly focused as I once thought.  Rather, there is a much more complex “ecosystem” in which project managers operate.  This ecosystem is the key to truly effective project management, and truly effective project management is a key input to the ecosystem. Although many organizations are beginning to understand this concept, those same organizations are struggling to materialize its value.

PPM Defined

Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) is the foundation of the project management ecosystem.  According to the PMI Community, “Project Portfolio Management is the centralized management of one or more portfolios, and involves identifying, prioritizing, authorizing, managing, and controlling projects, programs, and other related work, to achieve specific strategic business objectives.”  Conceptually, PPM is no new concept.  It has been around for years, but has especially blossomed alongside shared service centers like the Program Management Office and the recent trends of transforming IT organizations from cost centers to value centers.

The PPM Hierarchy 

At TSI, I’ve helped organizations understand its current state of PPM capabilities and
evolve using our PPM Maturity Hierarchy.  Beginning at the Level 1 “Infancy” stage (or whichever stage an organization currently sits), the objectives is to evolve the organization’s PPM capabilities to a Level 4 Optimization stage and beyond.

Level 1 – Infancy:  Organizations within the Infancy stage tend to manage projects in a reactive manner, singularly focusing on the execution of individual projects.  The organization often scrambles to stay on top of daily demands.  Work is captured on a project by project basis with little to no transparency of synergies and risks between projects. Project financials and risk is not monitored closely.

Level 2 – Emerging Discipline:  The Emerging Discipline stage replaces project by project decision making with identification of the best collection of projects. Organizations at this stage are successfully prioritize and align projects with strategic initiatives.

Level 3 – Initial Integration/Value Management:  Within the Initial Integration/Value Management stage, organizations are introducing technology, models and tools to quantify the value derived from projects.   This allows organizations to identify projects within the pipeline that provide the most “bang for your buck”.  Proactive, standardized PPM enables value driven decision making.

Level 4 – Optimization:  Once the Optimization stage is reached, the focus of an organization moves to maturing the PPM capabilities.  This involves a focus on optimizing process, analytics, quantitative metrics and improving value creation.

Level 5 – Innovation:  At the most advanced stage of PPM maturity, Innovation, PPM has full buy-in from executive leadership.  It is now a core competency of the organization that utilizes best practices and processes. The organization is now focusing its attention innovation and continuous improvement.

Is your organization looking to take the next step in Project and Portfolio Management?  Do you have questions on where to get started? If you’d like to brainstorm with one of TSI’s consultants, or have any questions on how we help organizations similar to yours, feel free to reach out to me directly at dfeely@transforming.com. You can also visit our website at transforming.com for more information.

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I have been involved with change-oriented initiatives for decades. Not only have I read many books by the best-known organizational change management (OCM) gurus and authors, I helped create TSI’s internal OCM methodology. Even after spending many hours learning about how to process change, I struggle to recall anyone providing suggestions on how to PREPARE for change.

Too often, change is portrayed in an overly-simplistic manner that assumes if you have a kickoff, communicate to stakeholders, have a party or two to celebrate something good, then it will fall into your lap. I can honestly say that from my involvement in over 250 transformation projects, I have never seen this happen. Sadly, truthfully, change is messy.

We periodically lead OCM training workshops for our clients and a variety of OCM practitioners. Oftentimes, someone will make a remark that the OCM lead has “earned their glass of wine” at the end of the week. And if there are any experienced practitioners in the group who truly know how hard the change is, they will say, “I think you mean they earned a case of wine, not simply a glass”.

Given my experience leading transformations, and having earned a glass or two of wine myself, I have some suggestions for Executive Sponsors, Project Leaders, Team members, and Subject Matter Experts.

1. To Executive Sponsors – get yourself prepared emotionally that change will not go perfectly. When it doesn’t, don’t freak out. When you hit bumps in the road, that is your signal to lean in and see how you can support change even more. As some folks might say, “You need to Boss up!”. Your involvement will make a difference. Keep in mind that every change-oriented project is about your organization’s culture – what it is now and what you want it to be.
2. To the Project Leader – make sure you are giving yourself some mental and emotional capacity to regroup and take several swings at this; maybe more than several swings. If you lose traction and want to give up when it doesn’t go perfectly, you are merely reinforcing a culture of status quo.
3. To the Team Member and/or Subject Matter Expert – As the next wave of leaders, you MUST support change initiatives. How are you going to do that? Are you an advocate of change or chirping about what doesn’t work? Your involvement needs to accentuate the positive, and if you see gaps and problems (and you will), position yourself to help fix them.

With these suggestions in mind, I leave you with this thought: change can be exciting and does not need to be feared. It can get ugly at times due to the unknown, but don’t forget that with change comes opportunity! Being able to adapt as an organization and move in common alignment will not only reap direct benefits of change, but will stimulate indirect benefits like growing deeper bonds as a result of tribulations and hardships.

The post What Change Is REALLY Like (versus what you read about) appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

I wasn’t completely right (not the first time that happened).

To make a very long story short and tie it back to another favorite topic – process transformation – let me share a few things I’ve learned. These lessons are courtesy of the many hours I’ve spent making brick oven pizzas from scratch.

1. The Right Environmental Conditions are Essential

It took longer than I care to admit to learn how to create a proper fire, as well as how to heat up the oven. These factors, as you can imagine, are essential to the process. Apologies to any of you who may have been victimized by our early undercooked, bland experimental pizzas. Likewise – during process transformation – the stakeholders, capacity to change, self-awareness, case for change, and other factors are 100% essential. Trying to change, without any one of these is like trying to bake a pizza on a cold pizza slab. Take a look at our Change Readiness Survey for a more detailed look at these factors.

2. Preparation results in a better experience and outcome

As illustrated both above and below, having the right ingredients and proper tools that are organized in a logical order will make all the difference in the output you deliver. The methodology one uses to map, analyze, and improve the process is critical. While the organizational culture and other factors that change are sought, if the facilitator/practitioner knows his or her approach well, they can get the analytical and creative input needed to transform the process. To that end, TSI’s 6-Step Methodology is a solid framework. Yet, depending on circumstances, it can be adapted. Those of us who use it on projects may also adapt it to fit each of our styles.  But in the end, we know which tools and techniques work. This way we can leverage these and deliver a meaningful project to our clients.

3. Pizza (& Process) Is Best Consumed When You are Starving

In the early days of our pizza making, when our oven needed an extra hour or more to be at the right temperature, some of our guests got quite hungry (maybe even hangry) while they waited. Then, when the amateur pizza finally came out and was instantly devoured, I was amazed to hear how much folks enjoyed it.

Obviously, the product was not stellar, but the reaction to an average pizza was.

In terms of transformation, this reaction makes me wonder how a better way of process transformation may be considered.  

Are your constituents starving for improvement, or they relatively fulfilled?  Is the impetus to change being forced upon a group or is there a “pull” for change?

Give that some thought when fashioning your approach or selecting your next area to transform.

If you are ready to transform an area within your organization, let’s connect! If you are still selecting your next area to transform, learn more about how we serve our current clients.

The post What Making Pizza has Taught Me about Process Transformation (and organizational change management) appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

Personally, I agreed with all of those principles and, especially for organizations that needed a different paradigm about doing business, this made perfect sense….at least until a recent conversation I had.

Let me tell you about an experience I had, which highlighted the potential shortcomings of treating your customer like a customer. 

I had a meeting with a doctor (I’ll just refer to him as Bob) that I’ve known for many years and he shared a perspective that impacted my view of this “customer centric” perspective. Now if you are scratching your head that an MD could teach us something about being customer focused, then get behind me in the line for skeptics. Perhaps we’ll save the blog about how the healthcare industry should transform for another day/blog.

So during our conversation, Bob said “yeah, we’ve had consultants come through the hospital telling us that we need to treat our patients more like customers. We shouldn’t simply view them as a queue of work that will always be here or, even worse that we treat them in a manner that indicates how inconvenient it is that they are seeking our services at times that are not always convenient.”

Bob went on to say something that stuck with me.  He said “I became a surgeon so I can heal people. So they can walk out the door in significantly better shape than when they arrived.  For me, if I simply reduced this to a ‘customer relationship’ whereby they have a need, I have a service and they pay me for that services, it completely depersonalizes what we do here. In fact, that defeats why I became a doctor in the first place”.

I reflected on that a bit, especially in the context of some recent articles and books about servant leadership.  Does this mean we now need to treat our customers like a patient?  Or act like doctors?

So much of the time we get consumed with important metrics, that we don’t want to ignore, but this begs the question, how can we think about our organization beyond the typical revenue per customer, average spend, customer loyalty/retention and other measures.  Hmmm, so much to ponder here.

Like you, over the years, I have seen a few trends and see a few more on the horizon and I would like to share a few takeaways:

• Hiring people whose mission and/or personal value system is aligned with that of the organization is the single best action leaders can take so that an organization’s culture and how it operates the majority of the time, is in turn with your most important stakeholders. I’m not an expert in recruiting and assessment best practices, but it would seem that the big challenge is how do we assess this alignment with the candidates we are considering? How do we truly know if a candidate is all talk and no walk?
• I would argue that no amount of training, empowerment, job enrichment or compensation will, with integrity, overtake a disconnect between an individual’s values and the culture an organization is striving to embrace over the long term.
• Those of us that are in the business of providing a service, have a lesson, if not an obligation, to consider. How aligned is our personal mission with that of the service we provide?  Are we providing: consulting, financial planning, legal, educational, insurance, hospitality, health and wellness and other services merely for the money or are we truly in it to get our “customers” to a significantly better place?
• The same standard holds true to anyone providing a product – are you selling the product to meet quotas or is it truly the best solution for the customer’s need? How have you integrated the “voice and needs of the customer” into the continual evolution of the product?
• The patient/customer has an obligation here too. If this relationship truly has integrity, how ready is the patient to follow the treatment protocol? By the way, here is an excellent change readiness survey if you need to assess how ready your organization is to change.

In summary, organizations own the responsibility to create and cultivate an environment where the mission of the organization and the personal mission of its employees are aligned.  Beyond that, enabling employees with the proper processes, policies, technology, analytics, training, reward mechanism and physical environment can only serve to keep an organization thriving.  As you know, this takes time. It takes an intentional focus.  The best time to start this was last year.  Then second best time is now.

Transformation initiatives like this one is a good example of the types of challenges that TSI helps our clients with.  Please reach out to us and let us know how we can assist you or your business.

Written by: Dan Feely, TSI’s President and Founder. For more information on TSI’s expert consultants, visit The TSI Team page.

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At one point in my career, I had a wonderful opportunity to speak at a global trade organization in Puerto Rico at their annual conference.  This organization is comprised of many engaged members, largely small and mid-sized business owners, many of whom started their businesses, and compete in an extremely competitive marketplace. Like many organizations, their customers range from extremely discerning and focused on high quality and service, to others who are highly price sensitive and view their services purely as a commodity.

So we titled this speech/workshop as “Defining Your Unfair Advantage” but it’s really about trying to answer a tough question:  What is truly unique about your organization?

As a background, TSI (transforming.com) is a growing consulting firm and like all companies that grow, at one point in our company’s life cycle, we were hitting a plateau.  So a few years back, we put a small advisory group – consisting of a few people both in and outside of the consulting industry.

One of our advisors asked me a basic, yet poignant question.  He asked, “Dan, what is TSI’s Unfair Advantage?”.   In other words, what are the most compelling 1-2 things that you do or you know that completely differentiates you?

So I began going through our services (albeit somewhat generically) – helping to improve a company’s efficiency…help them select technology to run their business more effectively.  And one of my advisors replied “Dan all kinds of companies do that”.

I’ll come back to TSI’s story in a minute, but the real point of this article is about you and your organization.

Understanding Your Unfair Advantage

If I was to ask you, “what is your company’s unfair advantage?”, how easy or hard would it be for you to come up with something unique?  Let me put you at ease – this is normal and it’s something that, just like we did, can be overcome by a little focused thought and work.

Keep in mind the following – a real unfair advantage has the following characteristics:

• Takes investment to define/try/refine;
• Can and should change over time;
• A well-defined and real unfair advantage is one that cannot easily be copied or bought. In other words, it truly creates an unfair advantage for your organization;
• Will likely require you to increase your performance (that may include process, technology or people) in meaningful ways AND includes how articulate your employees are at describing your organization.

Here are 4 great questions you can ponder to get started:

1. What is your organization really good at?
2. How does that compare to what your customers want/need?
3. What are your competitors good at and how does that compare to what you are good at, specifically in the context of what your customers want or need?
4. In parallel, think about this from a customer’s standpoint; are there other alternatives than what they have? This may include choosing not to do the work.

Ultimately this way of thinking is looking at the Value Proposition of your organization doing work that is perceived to be of value – this is the heart of your company’s service offering. Regardless of what industry you operate in, if any one of these dimensions is out of whack, then your business model is out of alignment.

Important Factors of Your Unfair Advantage (UA): 

So now the “nickel question” is, how can you move from defining your value proposition to carving out your organization’s Unfair Advantage?  That is definitely a great question.  At TSI, we see the UA as a function of:

Quality x Originality x Service x Convenience x Price

Therefore, in the context of your target customer segment(s) and your service offering, define the following (this is a great “homework” assignment):

• Quality – what is the quality of what you deliver? What should it be?
• Originality – how unique or different is what you offer compared to your competitors?
• Service – how do you deliver – are you punctual, polite, understandable? Also consider how comfortable your customers are working with you. Think of this as a sort of user interface for your customers.
• Convenience – how accessible are you? This can be defined by location, or your relationship to your customers.
• Price – how much do you charge and how do you charge it?

As you can probably guess, these questions are appropriate for those of you who might lead a department, such as; IT, Finance, HR, Admissions, or any other function.  How are you branding that service?  How should you and what will it take for you to live that brand?

TSI is a leading consulting firm based in the Chicago area.  We help our clients to transform; this includes the work to define key strategies and then bring them to life.

For more information on TSI’s transformation expertise, click here – https://transforming.com/services/business-transformation/

You can request more information about our service offerings by emailing us at tsi@transforming.com. To speak with TSI’s Managing Partner, you can reach him at 847-705-0960 x202, or via email at dfeely@transforming.com.

The post What is YOUR Organization’s Unfair Advantage? Where Do You Begin? appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..