Supporting Prioritisation Across The Business
on May 11 in Priority, Understanding tagged Prioritisation, Teamwork by KeithBit of food for thought today.
We have been working with a client recently on a simple, clear way of prioritising both strategic and day-to-day demands on time (in this case for the IT department).
If It’s Too Hard, Abdicate It…?
At Critical Action, we’re great believers in the principle that managers and leaders can’t create two independent sets of priorities for strategic (”we must improve the business”) and tactical (”we must keep our users and customers happy”) activities, and abdicate to operational staff the balancing of the two in the real world.
That’s not fair, because the balancing act is actually the difficult bit, and it’s also not smart, because we’re losing control and visibility of service quality and progress of improvements until it’s too late and someone presents us with a problem.
Consistency and Trust
As leaders, owners and managers, we need to be thinking about these difficult real-world choices before we “hand down the priorities”, and consulting with our teams on how to make prioritisation work.
The start point for our work this week was to help come up with some simple principles that could be applied across all aspects of work, which would help answer the question “what do I do first?” and also, support us in explaining to users and customers why their request (important as it is) is not top of the queue. It also helps your staff, because they know if they are being given a tough time, you will back them up on their correct prioritisation. It’s about consistency and trust.
The initial list for this client was (from top priority down):
- Data integrity (e.g. is it accurate and up to date)
- Data security (e.g. is it adequately protected against incorrect access)
- Customer-facing (e.g. are we pleasing or letting down our customers)
- Operational efficiency (e.g. are we wasting our time, duplicating things or creating errors)
Of course, you could debate any of these areas (particularly the top two), and the priority will most certainly be different for individual businesses. However, thinking of your own short list, and debating the priority is an interesting exercise to go through, and can’t but help improve the joined up view of priority across and throughout your business.
A short, clear list encourages us focus on what’s really important for the success of our organisation. What’s the list for your business?
Planning Improvements - for startups?
on Mar 19 in Blog, Planning tagged People, Planning, Technical by Keith
In my last blog post, I outlined three key stages we use to help businesses improve, and I covered the first area (Commercial Imperative - the “why do it?”):
This time around, we’ll look at “Planning Improvements“ - how to change the way your people do what they do, and how to give them better tools. These are the old classics of “people, process and technology”.
- Commercial Imperative - what’s the case for doing it - the “why”
- Planning Improvements - the what, where, how of action/change
- Taking Action - the who and when to make change happen
Hold on. You’ve only just started - how can you improve!?
Well, we believe you can, and should, make improvements every day.
Read the full article…
Since 2012 is “the year of the startup”…
on Jan 12 in Blog tagged by Keith
I’ve read a good number of headlines and articles lately that proclaim 2012 to be the year of the start-up. I suppose there are optimistic and cynical ways of viewing why that might be, but I thought I’d use this as the inspiration for putting my thoughts down in some blog posts aimed at the newer business.
Decide, Design, Deliver
We do a wide range of work, sometimes with long-established businesses, sometimes with start-ups.
Read the full article…
Lower price? OK, use it more…
on Nov 16 in Strategy tagged Analysis, Selling by KeithIt’s been a really busy few months, and what we’ve loved is that much of the work has been really creative.
Our bread and butter is helping businesses dig into how they do what they do, and looking for how we, they and their staff can make incremental improvements. Very satisfying.
The work we really love though, is to look at the situation and help an organisation come up with fabulous new stuff - great, unexpected, (positively) disruptive ways of doing things.
We came up with a really intriguing business model for Qton Solutions (a favourite client of ours because of the idea-storms we generate together!) to consider.
Read the full article…
Learning online - 85,000 at a time…
on Sep 26 in Understanding tagged Community, Future by KeithKeeping the Mind Fresh
I’ve always tried to do at least one course or qualification each year which is nothing to do with “the day job”. This is partly for relaxation, but also because doing radically different things forces you to think differently Lastly, it reminds me what it is like to have to start from scratch again, acquiring knowledge and skills. It keeps the brain fresh.
For example, I went to night school and studied British Sign Language for 4 years (after starting out with just a one year introduction course!). I followed that with a course on welding - slightly different. After that, I started Pilates classes (I’ve broken too many bones to go back to rugby again).
Read the full article…
This month’s reading…
on Sep 20 in Strategy, Understanding tagged Future, Strategy by KeithI’m re-reading a couple of my business books this month, both of which I felt it was worth mentioning. Both are thought-provoking, and full of practical things to try, even if you don’t agree with everything in them.
First up is “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis. Not just an interesting manifesto/thought piece, but also interesting to look at 2009’s predictions through 2011’s lens!
Second is “Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion” by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini, which never fails to give me ideas for new things to try and new ways to look at old problems.
If you’ve not read them, give them a try - I’d love to know what you think of them.
Technologies Supporting Business Continuity
on Aug 12 in Planning, Understanding tagged Technical, Unbreakable by Keith
Business Continuity is a broad church, meaning different things to different businesses. It’s also very much a people thing; after all, it exists to keep people in jobs, delivering to customers, whatever happens.
That said, we have recently been involved in designing and deploying a fair few technology implementation projects within our process and systems work.
What is clear is that over the past year, and probably in the forthcoming year, there are a number of technologies which have come of age, or are due to have some significant upgrades that should transform them.
Read the full article…
Can Short Assignments Deliver?
on Aug 02 in Taking Action tagged Strategy by KeithSome time ago, founder Keith Shering was being filmed for our intro video; and in the spare time at the end, the cameraman shot some off-the-cuff footage of Keith answering his questions.
In this short video (approx 3 mins), Keith considers whether you can start to make a difference to a business with just a few hours work.
Link to video: Can you make a difference in a few hours? (link to YouTube), or click on the video below.
Chortling With The Chimp
on Jul 13 in Taking Action, Understanding tagged Teamwork by Keith
This brief blog post is a hat-tip to MailChimp, the service we’ve started using for the Monthly-ish Updates recently.
I smile almost every time I use the service - instead of “email sent”, “details updated” or “new subscriber”, you get funny little lines like:
Fine piece of work!
You totally deserve a raise!
The MailChimp Crew
Read the full article…
Talentropy?
on Jul 04 in Blog, Strategy, Understanding tagged Action, Analysis by KeithWe’ve been playing with words, images, emotions, icons and so on for some branding work we’re doing on a new offering. Something that fell out of this was a word that I just liked the sound of:
Talentropy
Then I thought a bit more about it - the flow of talent. This seemed like quite a useful concept to me.
As business owners, managers and leaders, there are two crucial concerns - creating value for stakeholders (owners, shareholder, staff, investors, communities, etc.) and finding and keeping good people for our teams. Value and Talent.
Read the full article…