Sharp Focus Functional Solutions
Don't reinvent the wheel.
There's no such thing as a canned solution.
Both of these statements are good advice.
Quite a dilemma, eh?
Work your weak link with proven (but custom) solutions for new capacity and capabilities.
Every business is a system. Every system has a constraint…a weak link in its value chain…a limiting factor that impacts the ability to attain more of one's goals. If a constraint were not present, a business' performance would be infinite. Even then best managed operations fall far short of that pipedream.
This common sense view of complex systems is at the root of a philosophy of management known as the Theory of Constraints (TOC), the basis for Focused Performance solutions.
Nothing New Under the Sun
While a particular business' constraint is very tightly linked to its particular situation, there are several common sources of limited performance. At least one of them may sound familiar to you.
Resource and Capacity Constraints – Both production- and project-based operations may feel like they are constrained by the amount of work their resources can accomplish.
Time Constraints – Sometimes it isn't the amount of output that feels constrained, but response time. Projects delivering services or designs simply drag on and on. Or, in a more physical situation, the time required to produce products requires a make-to-stock approach, but there is still a struggle to keep the right goods in the right place at the right time.
Sales and Marketing Constraints – You've got plenty of capacity; there just isn't enough demand to take full advantage of it.
Human Behavior Constraints – Conflicting goals, conflicting actions, and conflicting people make it difficult to accomplish anything. The inability to address issues in an aligned manner get in the way of optimum performance.
Starting Point Solutions with Customized Implementation
Focused Performance offers proven programs for comprehensive implementation of constraint-based solutions for such limiting factors. "Starting point solutions" for production, supply chain, and project management constraints provide a robust common sense direction for the solution. Revised processes, software and hardware can go a long way to dealing with the surface issues without reinventing the wheel.
But even these basic functions have at their root "policy constraints" deep in the paradigms and assumptions that drive how an operation is managed. Unless this "thoughtware" is also addressed with highly customized changes, the original problem is likely to re-emerge after a brief promising improvement.
Particularly, "Sales and Marketing" and "Human Behavior" constraints are based in erroneous assumptions or misalignments that require a bit of logical diagnosis to bring to light. Focused Performance brings possible directions for their solution, and more importantly, a set of thinking and communication tools for Stakeholder Focus scrutiny that leverage the firms experience and intuition to quickly turn these generic directions into custom solutions.
Sharp Focus Solutions for Immediate Constraint Breaking
Sharp Focus solutions are designed to address an organization's current constraint, usually in a surprisingly short amount of time. (At one end of the scale, a Drum-Buffer-Rope Production Management solution can be designed in about a week, with visible results typically realized in a month. At the other end, a Project Focus implementation for a multi-project organization can take as much as 3-6 months to schedule all existing projects and bring the full management system up to speed.)
A truly complete Sharp Focus solution often involves two main deliverables. One is typically logistics related and usually highly oriented towards one internal function (i.e. production, distribution, project management, etc.) The other is usually market oriented, and addressed through the creation of an "unrefusable" Market Focus offer that leverages the new capabilities of the improved internal performance. After all, you don't want to just give away the benefits of your new capacity and capabilities, do you?
Call today!
If you recognize some of the constraints mentioned above, call Focused Performance to explore the possibilities of how a proven generic direction can become a unique custom solution for your "weakest link."
