Developing good governance
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Trust and confidence are the most significant casualties of the financial crisis. All organizations are under greater scrutiny. With good governance, businesses are expected to explain their business practices, show critical relationships, justify their remuneration models, discuss their succession plans, and make a broader contribution to society.
They must answer to investors, regulators, and the public. With globalization, many organizations are engaging with a more diverse mix of stakeholders, each wanting different kinds of information.
The digital technologies are transforming the way we communicate. People can see – and say – more about the organizations that serve them. New forms of risk are also appearing, and the regulatory burden is increasing. So, the pressure to be transparent, accountable, and socially responsible is more significant.
What does this mean for your business?
Any organization that wants to survive will have to embrace new regulations and technologies, manage further risks, and prepare for the future with robust succession planning for boards and management. That means most organizations will need new governance models.
Top management will also have to assume more supervisory responsibilities, and simple compliance with the rules will not be enough. Management must communicate its governance policies, processes, and organizational culture to all its stakeholders. It will also have to go beyond traditional reporting and address issues such as sustainability and tax contributions.
Transparent disclosure is the key to building trust and changing the way stakeholders and the external markets view your business. However, transparency alone is not enough. Demonstrating good governance involves creating an authentic dialogue with stakeholders, not just communicating openly.
What we do
Working with you to achieve excellence in governance
There is urgent interest in the problems of boards, and a growing demand for more accountability. Boards do not think about or debate governing; they do it. Many boards look for more effective governance in the form of new board structures. Generative governing supplies a different approach. Most relevant, it offers a new governing mode and mindsets, with their related practices, to old challenges.
It is in deciding what the real problem is that leaders exercise their most significant power. Leaders influence their organizations by:
- framing the problem
- determining what the organization should pay attention to
- supplying ways of looking at it
While formal organizational processes like mission setting, strategic planning, or program development are sources of power, effective leaders understand that framing the issues drives these processes. This aspect of leadership is generative thinking.
Good governance is about the processes for making and implementing decisions. It is not about making ‘correct’ decisions, but about the best possible means for making those decisions.
Proper decision-making processes, and therefore good governance, share several characteristics. All have a positive effect on various aspects of the organization including consultation policies and practices, meeting procedures, service quality protocols, board member and officer conduct, role clarification and good working relationships.
It all starts with the right strategy
What to change and what to change to — People make developing strategy much harder than it needs to be. For some focus too much on the tools: environmental scans, SWOT analyses, customer analyses, competitor analyses, financial modelling, and so on. Others think it’s all about the broad, conceptual, future-oriented, big picture stuff. Still other times, people think that strategy is what happens when you think about changing directions. The reality is that strategy is at some level about all those things.
Next, is achieving the strategy
How to change — By engaging in a feedback-rich process, we inspire leaders to explore and develop fresh perspectives as they move from an understanding of what needs changing to how to change it. Organizations are better at creating a strategy than implementing one. Some see it as daunting as changing the engine on a plane in mid-flight!
Our approach focuses on organizational alignment to make sure that strategy achieves the desired results, while the day-to-day activities continue to get done. We set up processes to capture good ideas for future consideration.
Organizational Alignment
Good governance focuses on optimized alignment of its structures to your overall strategies. We view these structures collectively as “governance chains.” Good governance means that you ensure that all resources increasingly contribute to achieving your mission and vision. Our analytics enables you to align your goals and set priorities for success objectively.
What is governance?
Governance is the framework of rules and practices by which a board of directors ensures accountability, fairness, and transparency in a company's relationship with all its stakeholders (financiers, customers, management, employees, government, and the community). This framework consists of:
- explicit and implicit contracts between the company and the stakeholders for the distribution of responsibilities, rights, and rewards
- procedures for reconciling the sometimes conflicting interests of stakeholders per their duties, privileges, and roles
- procedures for proper supervision, control, and information flows to serve as a system of checks and balances
Promising practices
We customize best practices for use by your Board:
- Establishing the Board's role as "nose in, hands off"
- Building a robust and qualified board of directors and evaluating the performance
- Defining roles and responsibilities
- Emphasizing integrity and ethical dealing
- Assessing performance and making principled compensation decisions
- Engaging in effective risk management
An excellent first step to strengthening your corporate governance and increasing confidence is through an internal audit function. We tailor our approach to match your risk profile and budget.
More transparency and accountability
Stakeholders and the public are demanding more transparency and accountability in the oversight of organizations of all kinds. Despite this intensifying focus on governance, many directors do not fully appreciate their oversight responsibility. Under current legislation and common law, directors have overall responsibility for the organization and the strategy for achieving its purpose. Directors who neglect these responsibilities put the organization’s sustainability at risk.
The Board's obligations include:
- overseeing all aspects of the organization’s management and operations
- making decisions in the best interests of the organization
- considering the impact of its decisions on shareholders (members) and other stakeholders
A director's obligations include:
- exercising the care, diligence, and skill that a prudent person with similar knowledge and ability would use in comparable circumstances (“duty of care”)
- acting honestly and in good faith in the best interests of the organization (“duty of loyalty”)
Ensuring your organization has a good governance framework makes sure that the organization is productive, accountable and delivers on its mission, ethically and sustainably. Shareholders and the public expect this Board oversight.
Driving Good Governance
Governance involves a set of relationships with an organization's management, its board, its shareholders, and other stakeholders. Governance supplies the structure for setting the goals of the organization and the means of reaching those goals and monitoring performance. What works in one organization may not necessarily apply to other businesses.
Good governance needs the sound business judgment of board members and management. It recognizes the interests of employees and other stakeholders and their essential role in contributing to the long-term success and performance of the organization. Other relevant factors to be considered include the decision-making processes about environmental, anti-corruption or ethical concerns.
Governance policies play an essential role in achieving broader goals concerning investor confidence, capital formation and allocation. Poor governance affects the cost of corporations to get access to capital for growth and regulatory oversight. Together governance rules and practices give the framework.
Good Governance Reassure Shareholders
Good governance protects and reassures shareholders' and stakeholders' rights. As mentioned above, good governance is situational. However, some common elements underlie good governance. We do not advocate any board structure. At a minimum, your governance model must articulate:
- the authority delegated to management
- rights and fair treatment of shareholders
- key ownership functions and involvement
- needs of investors the role of stakeholders
- disclosure and transparency policy
- responsibilities of the board and its officers
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Practically speaking, assessing integrity is really about asking the right questions that will get to the core of a person's character (in addition to standard tests/assessments, "job auditions," and role-play exercises). But first, whoever is on the interviewer's seat must be skilled in the science of performance interviewing. Here are twelve questions you may wish to use:
- Tell me about a time when you experienced a loss for doing what is right. How did you react?
- Tell about a time when your trustworthiness was challenged. How did you react/respond?
- Tell about a specific time when you had to handle a tough problem which challenged fairness or ethical issues.
- When was the last time you "broke the rules"? What was the situation and what did you do?
- What would you do if you suspected that an employee was stealing?
- Describe a situation where you saw an employee or co‐worker do something you thought was inappropriate. What did you do?
- Think of a situation where you distrusted a co-worker/supervisor, resulting in tension between you. What steps did you take to improve the relationship?
- When working with people, in general, describe your preferred relationship with them. (this question is used to assess honesty and the capacity for open communication.)
- What values do you appreciate the most in a team environment? [you're looking for things like honesty, fairness, openness, transparency, and inclusiveness in your answers.)
- If we ever got into a bind with a client, would you be willing to tell a little white lie to help us out?
- What would your current/past manager say makes you most valuable to them? (Besides intelligence, energy or technical and hard skills, listen for clues that point to integrity.)
- What are the characteristics exhibited by the best boss you have ever had, or wished that you have had? (A person of integrity will mirror those they follow or look up to, so listen for clues.)
Remember: No integrity = no trust. Your hiring team must ensure that, no matter how talented, experienced, and smart job candidates are, they will protect your company, your employees, and your customers by hiring people every person can trust.
Do you want to be assured that you are getting a high performer?
Let us know! We are incredibly passionate about Behavioral DNA and the impact this scientific insight can have on you and your business. Using our Best-Fit Staffing process, we can predict, with 85% reliability, if a candidate is likely to be a high performer. We can assess your final choice or assist you through the whole process. We evaluate candidates against benchmarks of top performers in the same role, so you know that you are genuinely getting a high performer. Not just the best of a bad lot! We evaluate the 15 applicants in your “A-list” pile, identifying the five to interview and we conduct a complete analysis of the final two or three. We then provide the new hire with an employee development plan. You complete the assessment online, we then provide you report and personal feedback via video call. We offer the service worldwide. Contact us at successfinder@allenvisioninc.com. We’d love to hear from you!The rapid surge in the price of Bitcoin has brought discussion on cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) into the mainstream. But why all the hype? Before diving into such topics, it is important to have a foundation on the technology behind cryptocurrencies: blockchain.
Blockchain is shorthand for a whole suite of a distributed ledger technologies that can be programmed to record and track anything of value, from financial transactions, medical records or land titles.
This video is an accessible introduction to blockchain technology: how it tracks and stores data, how it fosters trust, and how it facilitates peer-to-peer transactions without the involving middlemen like bankers or lawyers.
Blockchain’s potential for underpinning online interaction is limitless. But, much like the rise of the internet, this new technology brings with it complex questions around governance, international law, security, and economics.
The blockchain is a public ledger where transactions are recorded and confirmed anonymously. It’s a record of events that are shared among many parties. The blockchain is actually managed by distributed nodes. These nodes all have a copy of the entire blockchain. Nodes will forever come and go, synchronizing their own copies of the chain with those of other users. By distributing copies and access, the chain can’t simply “go down,” or disappear. It’s a decentralized system that is both sturdy and secure. More importantly, once information is entered, it cannot be altered. Here is blockchain explained in fewer than 100 words
You (a "node") have a file of transactions on your computer (a "ledger"). Two government accountants (let's call them "miners") have the same file on theirs (so it’s "distributed"). As you make a transaction, your computer sends an e-mail to each accountant to inform them.
Each accountant rushes to be the first to check whether you can afford it (and be paid their salary "Bitcoins"). The first to check and validate hits “REPLY ALL”, attaching their logic for verifying the transaction ("Proof of Work"). If the other accountant agrees, everyone updates their file.
This concept is enabled by "Blockchain" technology.
Surely it's more complicated?
Yes - but as a concept, not much more. Complexities come in the implementation and the journey to realize value from such implementations. The above example will, of course, be overly simplistic for some — but may be a starting point for others.
In a traditional environment, trusted third parties act as intermediaries for financial transactions. If you have ever sent money overseas, it will pass through an intermediary (usually a bank).
It will usually not be instantaneous (taking up to 3 days) and the intermediary will take a commission for doing this either in the form of exchange rate conversion or other charges.
The original blockchain is open-source technology which offers an alternative to the traditional intermediary for transfers of the crypto-currency Bitcoin. The intermediary is replaced by the collective verification of the ecosystem offering a huge degree of traceability, security, and speed.
In the example above (a "public blockchain"), there are multiple versions of you as “nodes” on a network acting as executors of transactions and miners simultaneously. Transactions are collected into blocks before being added to the blockchain. Miners receive a Bitcoin reward based upon the computational time it takes to work out:
- whether the transaction is valid and
- what is the correct mathematical key to link to the block of transactions into the correct place in the open ledger.
As more transactions are executed, more Bitcoins flow into the virtual money supply. The "reward" miners get will reduce every 4 years until Bitcoin production will eventually cease (although estimates say this won't be until 2140!). Of course, although the original blockchain was intended to manage Bitcoin, other virtual currencies, such as Ether, can be used.
How Blockchain Works
Why do I need to know about Blockchain?
There are three reasons why you need to know about Blockchain:
- Blockchain technology doesn\'t have to exist publicly. It can also exist privately - where nodes are simply points in a private network and the blockchain acts similarly to a distributed ledger. Financial institutions specifically are under tremendous pressure to demonstrate regulatory compliance and many are now moving ahead with Blockchain implementations. Secure solutions like Blockchain can be a crucial building block to reduce compliance costs.
- Block-chain technology is broader than finance. It can be applied to any multi-step transaction where traceability and visibility are required. The supply chain is a notable use case where blockchain can be leveraged to manage and sign contracts and audit product provenance. It could also be leveraged for votation platforms, titles and deed management - amongst myriad other uses. As the digital and physical worlds converge, the practical applications of Blockchain will only grow.
- The exponential and disruptive growth of blockchain will come from the convergence of public and private blockchains to an ecosystem where firms, customers and suppliers can collaborate in a secure, auditable, and virtual way.
Source: Blockchain explained... in under 100 words — Richard Bradley, Director, Deloitte
Seven Reasons to Hire Allenvision
We believe that your success growth is mutually beneficial. We offer strategic insights and process to jointly determine what needs to be done. Unlike many consultants who will tell you what to do, we work with you to show you how to do it. While we are happy to undertake the complete implementation of a project, we prefer to transfer knowledge, coach and teach your team how to do it.
From filling a short-term executive gap to the implementation of a major program of organizational structural change — hire Allenvision. We provide valuable expertise and insights to help you achieve your goals and execute a strategy.
When is the right time to hire Allenvision?
What on-going steps should you take to ensure you get the best out of a client-consultant relationship?
- External validation: Allenvision has a broad overview, understanding, and external perspective. We use an evidence-based approach in all of our work. A second opinion can provide reassurance before making a critical business decision.
- More time and cost-effective: We focus on a project and see it through on deadline, without distractions and day-to-day pressures. This often makes bringing us in much more time and cost efficient than running a project in-house.
- Specific knowledge, skills, and experience: Allenvision gives you the opportunity to bring in niche skills, without the commitment of employing someone.
- Ability to challenge: Our objective position means Allenvision can bring a fresh perspective. We are not afraid to challenge, and our unique position means we can do so without the fear of reprisals that your employees might have.
- Impartial advice: Hiring Allenvision can offer you a way to reach or justify a desired conclusion and avoid internal conflict. This can be particularly valuable in stressful situations such as job cuts and significant operational or strategic changes.
- Knowledge of best practice: Allenvision works with multiple clients and often serving various clients facing similar problems across different sectors.
- Access to information and resources: Allenvision specializes in dealing with matters related to people, money, and governance. We can bring in data and systems that may not be financially viable for your company.
Overall, Allenvision brings a wealth of strengths to your business and can deliver a full range of services. So, if you are seeking a solution to a particular business problem, developing your employees, creating succession plans, undergoing organizational change or can see new market opportunities but lack the resources to follow them up, Allenvision may be the answer you need.
Learn more about our team members and partners.
Good governance means that the board makes sure that all resources increasingly contribute to achieving the organization’s mission and vision. Our governance alignment program provides analytics and methodologies give boards and management with the tools to rapidly model, assess and optimizes your organization. This requires generative thinking and governing.
Good governance is accountable
Accountability is a fundamental requirement of good governance. The organization must report, explain and be answerable for the consequences of decisions it has made on behalf of the people serves — shareholders, customers workforce and other stakeholders.
Good governance uses generative thinking
Boards govern more effectively when they take a leadership approach to their work.
- The fiduciary mode — the stewardship of tangible assets. This mode is the bedrock of governance. Fiduciary work makes sure that organizations are faithful to its mission, accountable for performance, and compliant with relevant laws and regulations. Without fiduciary mode, governance has no legitimacy. If a board fails as fiduciary, the organization — not to mention its shareholders, stakeholder (i.e. donors, clients, employees, or community) — could be harmed. This is the central focus of most board work.
- The strategic mode — develop the strategy with management to set the organization’s priorities and course and to deploy resources accordingly. Without the strategic mode, governance has little power or influence. Some boards are more about staying on course than setting the course.
- The generative mode — boards and management frame problems and make sense of ambiguous situations. This shapes the organization’s strategies, plans, and decisions. Most organizations lack frameworks and practices for this work and boards become bystanders to it — even though it is central to governance. Governance must focus on optimized alignment of its structures to overall strategies. Few boards are good at being engaged in generative governing.
Good governance focuses on optimized alignment of its structures to your overall strategies
We view these structures collectively as “governance chains.” Good governance means that you make sure that all resources increasingly contribute to achieving your mission and vision. Our analytics enables you to align your governance chains for success objectively.
Good governance is transparent
People should be able to follow and understand the decision-making process. This means that they will be able to see how and why a decision was made clearly – what information, advice and consultation were considered, and which legislative requirements (when relevant) were followed.
Good governance follows the rule of law
This means that decisions are consistent with relevant legislation or common law and are within the powers of the board.
Good governance is responsive
The organization should always try to serve the needs of shareholders, customers workforce and other stakeholders while balancing competing interests in a timely, proper and sensitive way.
Good governance is fair and inclusive
Feelings of well-being results from shareholders, customers workforce and other stakeholders are considered by the board in the decision-making process. This means that all groups, particularly the most vulnerable, should have opportunities to take part in the process.
Good governance is effective and efficient
The organization implements decisions and follow processes that make the best use of the available people, resources and time to make sure the best possible results.
Good governance is participatory
Provide an opportunity for anyone affected by or interested in a decision to take part in the process of making that decision. This can happen in several ways:
- provide interested parties with information
- ask for their opinion
- offer the opportunity to make recommendations
- make them part of the decision-making process
Aligning organizational structure with its strategy is essential for an organization to deliver its plans and achieve success.
Here is how we define:
- Strategy is how your organization goes about its work is its strategy (vs. your strategic plan document). This includes the plans that set out how your organization will use its major resources to meet specific goals.
- Structure is the way the pieces of your organization fit together to meet a common goal. The structure is much more than an organization chart. It is the people, positions, procedures, processes, culture, technology and related elements. It defines how all the pieces, parts and processes work together.
- Alignment means that every human, organizational, technical and financial resource increasingly supports and contributes to the achieving strategy in a fashion that is: demonstrable, measurable, efficient and effective, and comply with your principles, policy directives and constraints.
- Workforce is the resources to deliver your plans. It includes staff, partners, outsourced work, and consultants.
Do not view structure separate from strategy
Your organization’s structure is a powerful force. It can support your efforts or work against them. You cannot direct your organization to do something for any length of time unless the structure is capable of supporting your strategy. Task overlap creates confusion, inefficiencies and lack of accountability because it is not clear who does what by when. A strong foundation for long-term productivity requires you to structure your entire workforce to avoid task overlap and confusion.
With our Governance Alignment Program, you optimize your structure. It provides a platform to adjust the structure every time you adjust your priorities.
Aligning structure with your strategy improves efficiency, promotes teamwork, creates work together, and reduces cost. Structure and strategy are dependent on each other. You can create the most efficient and team oriented structure possible and still end up in the same place you are or worse if a good strategy is not adopted. Great your strategy right first.
With a clear focus on what you want to do, align your structure in such a way to best do this. Be thoughtful. Divide responsibilities for optimal results, create branches and decide whether each effort or group participation is the best method for it to meet your goals. The structure needs to support strategy. The strategy is fluid. When you change your strategy, you must make sure your structure supports the new strategy. Otherwise, the existing structure pulls your organization back to its old strategy.
When you make major changes, you must carefully think out every aspect of the structure required to support the strategy. Every part of your organization, every person working for it needs to focus on supporting the vision and direction. Integrated all the effort and resources support the strategy.
It takes the right structure for a strategy to succeed
Management that is solely focused on results can have a tendency to direct everyone on what they need to do without paying attention to the current way your organization works. While members of the workforce may carry out these actions individually, it is only when their daily work supports strategy that your organization’s direction is sustainable over time.
To carry out such a strategic shift requires a change in your organization itself. A well-thought-out structural change is based on a detailed cause and effect analysis. You do not just change a structure to change it. Make sure the changes support your strategy and your workforce understands the reasons for the change. At the same time, do not just start a better leadership and engagement approach in your company or alter the organizational chart without evaluating how that will affect your ability to carry out your current strategies.
We cover this in detail in our "achieving strategy approach." Our "goal alignment program" provides robust tools and methodologies to create the structure that best supports meeting your strategic goals.
Regulatory Excellence Attributes
What makes a regulator excellent is answered in several distinct ways, each of which gives rise to distinct types of attributes. What makes a regulator excellent? Applying the attributes of regulatory attributes and having a process of assessing the regulator’s outcomes versus the attributes.
Characteristics of a regulator (as an organization)
When defining excellence in terms of characteristics, adjectives will be used to describe the qualities or capacities of the regulator as an organization: e.g., “knowledgeable,” “well-funded,” “adequately staffed,” “credible,” “honest,” “legitimate,” and so forth.
These characteristics do not describe specific actions or outcomes, although they may well be affected by (or in turn affect) actions and outcomes. Rather, they describe a general “state” of the regulator, a standing set of resources upon which it has to draw or a general posture that it holds in conducting its day-to-day operations and affecting outcomes in the world.
Actions (or best practices) of regulating
Another way to define excellence lies in the type of actions the regulator takes in the course of regulating. Attributes as actions might be articulated in general terms, describing the regulator’s actions in the course of regulating. Perhaps using adjectives such as “vigilant,” “serious,” “reasonable,” “transparent,” and so forth.
Or excellence as action might be articulated in terms of specific types of best practices.
- “An excellent regulator takes enforcement actions against the biggest risks.”
- “An excellent regulator uses flexible regulatory instruments.”
- “An excellent regulator adopts a problem-solving rather than a punitive approach to enforcement.”
Outcomes (or indicia of regulatory performance)
Ultimately the characteristics that define an excellent regulator lead to desired outcomes. The actions that it takes also have to align with the desirable outcomes. These outcomes, then, might be what gets used to define regulatory excellence.
Many outcomes, when used as attributes of regulatory excellence, will describe substantive states of the world. For example:
For example:
- effectiveness (impact in terms of solving the problem or achieve an ultimate outcome of concern)
- cost-effectiveness (achieving a specific level of the desired outcome at a low cost)
- efficiency (balancing the desired outcome – i.e., problem reduction – with other outcomes or concerns, such as costs, so as to achieve an “optimal” level of problem reduction)
- equity (a fair distribution of the costs and benefits of regulatory action)
All of these examples focus on substantive outcomes. But other outcomes that define regulatory excellence need to be thought of in process- oriented terms. For example, the key attributes of an excellent regulator’s stakeholder engagement process might be defined in terms of legitimacy or trust by the public. If a regulatory process leaves members of the public feeling they were listened to and respected, that is a kind of process outcome that might define regulatory excellence.
Indicia of performance
Whether substantive or process-based outcomes – will presumably have some connection with a regulator’s characteristics and actions. Sometimes this connection will be instrumental, in that a regulator possessing certain characteristics, or a regulator that takes certain kinds of actions, will be more likely to achieve excellent outcomes. For example, a regulator that is highly knowledgeable (a characteristic) will be more likely to achieve effective outcomes. Or as another example, a regulator that adopts flexible rules (action) will be more likely to achieve cost-effective or efficient outcomes. And of course, outcomes may well feedback to shape a regulator’s characteristics or actions too.
This is an excellent approach. Most organizations under 500 employees do not have an internal audit process. It will give you facts to show those who think you are too small that you are exposed to the same risks as big companies.
Today organizations face an unprecedented confluence of risks. Two-thirds of CEOs see more threats to their business than opportunities. To stay competitive, you must pursue two parallel strategies: risk resiliency and risk agility.
Forward-looking companies have both the solid infrastructure and processes to help them weather any storm, as well as the flexibility to move quickly to meet new opportunities.
A comprehensive internal audit function plays a critical role in helping your organization achieve good governance—by providing an independent and objective assessment of your risk management strategies and control frameworks.
Check out our internal audit service and how we can support your internal audit team.
- when spending is expanding rapidly
- when revenues and spending are under pressure to contract
Budget cuts may sometimes be necessary
Audit committees and oversight authorities should consider their options carefully before the make a decision to cut internal audit. This services is important for several reasons, as internal audits:
- ensure accuracy of financial reporting — As organizations seek greater access to capital markets, the accuracy of financial reporting becomes particularly critical
- give assurance of efficiency and effectiveness — operational audits and performance audits are among the principal services offered by many government audit organizations
- foster greater accountability by shareholders and stakeholders — accountability over the effective use of scarce resources is vital
- find opportunities for cost reduction and containment — when forced to make difficult choices on which services to continue as revenues falter, your internal auditors are uniquely positioned to offer insights and perspectives to management
Most important of all, internal audit fosters good governance — especially when the effectiveness of board oversight is increasingly being questioned.
Our approach combines five processes, 25 years of achieving strategy as a CEO and the advance teaching of the Rotman School of Business. into our Achieving Strategy method. The methodologies are:
- Theory of Constraints – Eli Goldratt
- Strategic Doing – Purdue University
- Goal Alignment Program – J.A. Harcourt and Kim Allen
- Stats with Why – Simon Sinek
- Lean start-up
In his Harvard Business Review article Five Questions to Build a Strategy former Rotman Dean Roger Martin outlines his preferred approach. He treats strategy — making as developing a set of answers to five interlinked questions. The questions — which cascade logically from the first to the last — are as follows:
- What are our broad aspirations for our organization & the concrete goals against which we can measure our progress?
- Across the potential field available to us, where will we choose to play and not play?
- In our chosen place to play, how will we choose to win against the competitors there?
- What capabilities are necessary to build and maintain to win in our chosen manner?
- What management systems are necessary to operate to build and maintain the key capabilities?
The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a management model that views any manageable system as being limited in achieving more of its goals by a very small number of constraints. There is always at least one constraint. TOC uses a focusing process to find the constraint and restructure the rest of the organization around it. TOC adopts the common idiom “a chain is no stronger than its weakest link.” This means that processes, organizations, etc., are vulnerable because the weakest person or part can always damage or break them or at least adversely affect the outcome. TOC views that all organizations exist to create shareholder value. There are two necessary conditions satisfied customers and satisfied staff. In our approach we expand the view to encompass the entire workforce. Organizations rely on the entire workforce to deliver value to customers.
Strategic Doing teaches people how to form collaborations quickly, move them toward measurable outcomes and make adjustments along the way. In today’s world, collaboration is essential to meet the complex challenges we face. Strategic Doing enables leaders to design and guide new networks that generate creative solutions. It is a new strategy discipline that is lean, agile and fast—just what organizations, communities and regions need to survive and thrive.
The diagram below combines TOC and Strategic Doing for a dynamic process of strategic execution.
For not-for-profit organizations defining shareholder value is often more challenge. In Associations, members may be the shareholders, workforce and customers all at the same time. Thus knowing who the shareholders, workforce and customers is essential to effectively achieving strategy.
The Goal Alignment Program is a rigorous, sustainable governance model where regulatory policy development is integral to the way organization does work. This model ensured that every human, organizational, technical, and financial resource supports and contributes to achieving the objects of the purpose of the organization in a way that is demonstrable, transparent, measurable, efficient, effective, and comply with its principles, policy directives, and constraints.
Starts with Why – Simon Sinek → The idea that great leaders inspire others by putting:
- the Why (the purpose) before
- the How (the process) or
- the What (the product)
These revolutionary philosophies on leadership can easily be used in any professional and personal situation that calls for inspiration and influence.
Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get a desired product to customers’ hands faster. This method teaches you how to drive a startup-how to steer, when to turn, and when to persevere-and grow a business with greatest acceleration. It is a principled approach to new product development.