Performance Manager » Process

Strategy vs. Execution: What’s More Important?

admin — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:48:12 +0000

Strategy Formulation vs. Strategy Execution is like architecture and construction: equally essential, and wholly interdependent. One cannot fulfill without the other.

Without good blueprints, the house you build will be ugly and sub-functional, maybe dangerous (sounds like too many enterprises we all know, right?). With good blueprints but bad construction, the house you build may be nice looking, but certainly sub-functional and definitely dangerous.

Practically speaking, while both Strategy Formulation and Execution have their challenges and difficulties, we’ve seen… Read more

Automating Sales Operations: Why & How

admin — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 05:45:03 +0000

These days, few if any organizations are still manually managing their sales processes.

That being said, let’s state the obvious: using Excel to do anything is computer-enabled manual processing, but it is not automation. Nor is using fragmented and dis-integrated tools for all of the elements related to sales and selling. Just as the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, automated Sales Operations management is only as useful and effective as its weakest element.

The goal of selling is to generate more revenue and profits by acquiring, retaining and enhancing profitable customer relationships. The goal of Sales Operations is to… Read more

Actions & Outcomes in Sales & Service

admin — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 07:51:14 +0000

Getting right to the point: the desired goal and outcome of sales, customer service and relationship management initiatives is improved profit.

Profit growth results from retaining valuable customers and cost-optimizing customer service. Valued customers are acquired by the Sales process and enhanced and retained in the ongoing Service process.

Until now, these outcomes could only be measured after the fact, after the actions, often too late in the workflow to improve behaviors and performance.

But, that is finally changing… Read more

Getting & Keeping Workforce Engagement

admin — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 23:36:23 +0000

Lest we forget, it’s your workforce that actually does the work to execute strategies to fulfill your goals and objectives. And, if your workforce isn’t “bought in”, or engaged, in your goals, objectives, strategies, and action plans, those simply won’t be achieved.

Getting, and keeping, workforce engagement is critical to success. It depends on the performance management equivalent of financial “materiality”: Relevance. For your goals and strategies to be successfully accomplished, they need to be aligned, relevant, and meaningful to the nature of the workforce, and their… Read more

Lifecycle-Driven Workforce Incentives

admin — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:59:36 +0000

When it comes to paying incentives/commissions/bonuses, at a high level, we’ve seen success with the general rule “reward individuals for events, reward teams for processes”. But, there’s more precision needed to make incentive compensation plans produce the optimal strategy-aligned results.

Using the wrong metrics and incentives as they relate to both customer and workforce expectations, and to market/competitive conditions, will not yield desired strategic outcomes.

From our vantage point, incentive/bonus/commission compensation plans need to reflect not just overall enterprise strategic objectives, but also local market/channel Customer, Product and Employee Lifecycles; including full consideration of cross-dimension Customer, Employee, Market/Competitive Profiles. Read more

Strategy on the Street

admin — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:03:53 +0000

Tracking & Reporting Individual Workforce Member Day-to-Day Performance: How Does Your Organization Do It?

Successful strategy fulfillment depends on effective strategy execution, and that depends on accurate, timely and relevant communication, and use, of performance objectives and results information (among other things, of course).

What specific process and technology enablers does your organization employ to put “Strategy on the Street” and make it work?

How Fast Would You Run in the Dark?

admin — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:38:39 +0000

It’s 3AM and it’s almost pitch black outside. The damp chill of the dead night air is on your bare arms. You can barely see your hand in front of your face.

An unseen voice tells you will be running a full marathon. Suddenly, someone points you in a direction and tells you run as fast as you can. Then, they disappear.

How fast would you run? How long would you run? And, at what point would you simply… Read more

Getting Employee-Centric

admin — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 07:59:35 +0000

While Financial Resource Management (FRM) and accounting generally have very coherent and internally consistent processes and procedures, most workforce-related initiatives and processes are fragmented, inconsistent, and often contradictory; sometimes in open conflict.

To succeed, organizations must implement and sustain full alignment of human resource, technology, and line of business process initiatives and activities, with complete rigor and integration.

In the same way that enterprises have worked to organize themselves across lines of business to be “Customer-Centric”, so too should they do so across administrative and functional lines of business (through line and staff, front- and back-office) to make processes and procedures universally “Employee-Centric”. This will optimize workforce Certainty at all points, and achievement of desired performance results. Read more

Strategy-Driven Execution…?

admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:32:25 +0000

I read a Discussion on LinkedIn recently where the question was posed: what do you think about the effectiveness of Strategy-Driven Execution?

When the dizziness passed and I got back up into my chair, my primal response was: hold on… is there anything ELSE that should conceivably be driving business process Execution, except Strategy?

And, if you have an answer for that other than ‘no’, then all my mind can visualize is… Read more