Redefining Operational Excellence: New Strategies for Maximizing Performance and Profits Across the Organization

by Andrew Miller

Overview

Discover new strategies for maximizing performance and profit across your organization through the concept of operational excellence.

Companies must learn that you cannot fire and budget-slice your way to sustainable growth. Our world is too complex, too interconnected, and technology too quick-evolving for organizations to achieve dramatic results simply by eliminating waste and increasing standardization. Maybe these methods worked before—occasionally—but not anymore.

Redefining Operational Excellence boldly claims that the old ways of hunkering down and refocusing the business strategies are no longer viable. Operational excellence is about a mindset, and a company culture that questions current models and focuses not on slashing and subtracting but on adding value, making improvements, and increasing speed.

This groundbreaking guide covers it all—processes, people, and operations—and shares specific strategies to:

• Drive innovation and collaboration
• Engage customers
• Attract and retain top people
• Align strategy and execution
• Optimize speed

Operational excellence is about finding money and performance boosts in hidden areas businesses don't normally look. With this indispensable, all-encompassing resource, you’ll discover where!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814439890
Publisher:	AMACOM
Publication date:	06/11/2014
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

ANDREW MILLER is an operations expert whose clients include the Bank of Nova Scotia, McKesson Canada, 3M Canada, Mount Sinai Hospital, and other world-class institutions. Before starting his firm in 2006, he held senior consulting positions with IBM Business Consulting Services and PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE IS THE RELENTLESS PURSUIT of doing things better. It is not a destination or a methodology but a mindset that needs to exist across an organization. Operational excellence is not about perfection or performing activities. It is about providing dramatic performance improvements and financial growth.

In my more than 15 years of consulting with some of the world’s best-known organizations, I have seen firsthand how some of these organizations rely on methodologies like Lean and Six

Sigma as they try to work toward operational excellence. I have also seen how such methodologies reliably fail to deliver sustainable results. Operational excellence is about empowering employees to use judgment on the front lines, but often an organization uses methodologies that preclude having to use judgment. The methodology becomes a crutch.

That was why I needed to write Redefining Operational Excellence.

After seeing so many organizations succeed briefly and then fail a and others never succeed at all, I wanted to show how organizations can pursue operational excellence in a new way—one that sheds reliance on methodologies and tools and that focuses instead on good judgment in the best interest of the organization and its customers.

To achieve dramatic results, you must create a different culture for your organization—a culture that questions current operating models and focuses on adding value and optimizing speed.

Redefining Operational Excellence will help you define and implement that culture.

It will show you how a culture of operational excellence helps increase profitability, effectiveness, retention of personnel and customers a engagement, empowerment, innovation, performance, and many other positive effects. It will help you achieve money and performance boosts in areas where organizations don’t normally look.

And it will enable you to determine the optimal speed at which your organization can operate by implementing indicators that measure progress and success, not just activity completion.

We will look at what the most successful companies in the world do to reach heights and achieve results they once thought impossible. Do you ever wonder why companies like Disney, Apple,

3M, BMW, and General Electric continue to achieve tremendous success while others flounder? It’s because they operate better than anyone else does; they find opportunities to increase profitability and performance where no one else looks.

Redefining Operational Excellence brings together strategies for enacting the four components of operation excellence—attracting and retaining top talent, innovating and collaborating, aligning strategy and tactics, and acquiring and keeping the customers you want—and provides insights into the value of optimizing the speed (when to act quickly, when to slow down) at which your organization operates.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: THE NEED FOR A NEW DEFINITION 5

Chapter 2: MAKING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE HAPPEN 23

Chapter 3: ATTRACTING AND RETAINING TOP TALENT:

DON’T SETTLE FOR SECOND BEST 46

Chapter 4: THE INNOVATION EQUATION:

THE IMPORTANCE OF COLLABORATION 71

Chapter 5: ALIGNING STRATEGY AND TACTICS TO

ENHANCE PERFORMANCE 99

Chapter 6: ACQUIRING AND KEEPING THE CUSTOMERS

YOU WANT 121

Chapter 7: OPTIMIZING SPEED MAXIMIZES PROFITABILITY 146

Chapter 8: CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE: NOT SO MUCH 170

Chapter 9: INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVES 185

Chapter 10: GETTING TECHNOLOGY OUT OF YOUR WAY 205

Chapter 11: A BRIGHT FUTURE WITH OPERATIONAL

EXCELLENCE 227

Appendix: ARE YOU ON THE PATH TO OPERATIONAL

EXCELLENCE? 237

Index 239

About the Author 245

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Editorial Reviews

"The book is clear and practical, with sensible foundational principles and lots of tips on how to implement his ideas." —The Globe and Mail

“…targets large or small business operations and gives useful examples for businesses on the operational excellence track….examples are practical, relevant and make good sense.” —Vancouver Business Journal

“Book offers a fresh perspective on operations and a roadmap for integrating the markers of its excellence into a company's DNA.” —New Equipment Digest

“The book is very intriguing. It describes a 'new' way of thinking and approaching operational excellence that is refreshing..."—PM World Journal

“… giv[es] your organization tools to decide when to speed up, when to slow down and how to implement a culture of speed optimization.” —Industrial Engineer

“…will assist any organization (retail, services, healthcare, etc.) in redefining its own situations and provide a roadmap for improved operational excellence...recommendations are easy to understand and practical to implement.” –Strategic Finance

From the Publisher