How to Be a Brand U
Be prepared Solicit everyone’s input Develop an agenda Follow an agenda Take smart risks Respect difference Judge not, unless you be judged
Practices
Taking the ‘Right’ Road
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost
Tulip Mania and Social Media
What do tulips and Internet and Social Media stocks have in common? Maybe a lot or nothing at all? But, read on. What’s the best way to describe what’s happening on the Web? Folks are searching for the right metaphor to explain the current frenzy over Internet stocks. The Dutch tulip mania illustrates what happens …
Use Technology to Transform the Organization
The machine rules. Paul Ambroise Valery, Philosopher Today’s electronic world (e-world) is transforming work by creating new work processes. Just about everything we do in business interacts with technology. Computers and information technology have evolved into organizational nervous systems. They touch and ultimately transform the entire organization. Brand U’s know how to use technology to …
Organizational Transformation Killers
No compelling sense of urgency Flavor of the month Lack of vision Lack of senior management support Middle management hinders the process Fear of learning new tasks and methods Key stakeholders not consulted No understanding of the technologies surrounding change Euphemism for being fired Imposed on the organization Underestimating implementation requirements People, team, and organizational …
Staying Flexible During Transformations
The external customer in varying degrees is usually the driver of either a transformational or an incremental process change. A radical transformation may ensue if the customer is very unhappy with a product and may litigate because of health, safety, or environmental concerns. Or, the customer is simply unhappy with performance or product quality. Or, …
How To Be a Brand U Organization
Develop a vision of the new process Create a project management structure Identify customer requirements Flowchart present processes Define value in each process step Identify process disconnects Eliminate unnecessary work steps Identify and understand sources of variation Conduct gap analysis between the present process and new process Train people Proceduralize the new process Monitor …
Process Centered Organization
Hammer and Champy popularized the idea of a process-centered organization in their book Reengineering the Organization. They said organizations should be core processed and other key activities should be outsourced and project managed. Hammer tells a story where he visited a vertically structured company where Sales, Marketing and Engineering were silo departments focusing on internal …
Finding the Best Organizational Structure
As the above Roy Ash quotation says, every organization is trying to define the best structure to stay competitive. Also what works one day may change the next. And, that’s been the basic lesson of the Internet. It has forced all organizations to ask ‘what’s the best way to do business?’ Functional hierarchies, fragmentation of …
Hammer and Champy’s Brand U World of Work
Reengineering is here to stay All operational systems and processes must be viewed as integrated systems Fundamental questioning of everything in business is here to stay Current management skills have to be updated Employees will be making more day-to-day decisions Middle managers are an endangered species Learning marketable skills is the only measure of …