We live with such uncertainty today that only one thing is sure: change and adaptation are inevitable and what brought success to businesses in the past may no longer be valid. Trying constantly to “keep up” is exhausting. There is a much better alternative that is, instead, invigorating. Rather than keep up, businesses can step ahead of the game. Companies can rise above their competitors by rethinking what they do and how they do it and reorganizing the way they work. Most importantly, there is a reliable method to achieve this.
What your competitor doesn’t know but you can find out
Over 1,500 companies in the world are using the Theory of Constraints (TOC) at various levels to improve their business and competitiveness. One of the most powerful applications of TOC is the set of steps that allow companies to ask all the right questions to find out what is limiting them in their efforts to achieve significantly more. Every company has within it a wealth of intuition, but this wealth can become trapped beneath a pile of “mental models” or assumptions that have gone unchallenged. TOC offers a way to dig down and discover this wealth and to break down any limiting beliefs standing in the way of achieving fundamentally more with the resources that companies already possess. All of this is achieved through language because we create our reality through language. By asking exactly the right questions through a precise procedure, TOC can reveal the limiting beliefs not just of a company but also the entire supply network it is part of. With this information, a company can create truly breakthrough solutions that set it apart from any competitor. The process uncovers what the market actually needs and the most effective way to supply it in a way that no one else has thought of before.
Strategy and actions to rise above the competitors
In just a few sessions, any company, small, medium or large, can move from an often disparate set of non-verbalized hunches to a clear cut picture of the forces that keep them from achieving their goal. Moreover, the process leads to a precise description of the needs that craft the psyche of the organization and this goes a long way in helping to understand the “why” they are stuck. But the process does not end here. A strategy is only as good as its execution. Once a breakthrough solution has been identified, TOC provides a straightforward and intuitive method to establish all the macro steps required to introduce the change into reality and their correct sequence. Following this stage, we then break it down further into all the tasks/actions required to carry out these macro steps. The process makes transparent not just what to do, who does it and when, but also why the actions make sense. These actions can then be scheduled into projects using available resources (finite capacity scheduling) to ensure timely and accurate completion.
In our 25 years of experience of working with many different sectors internationally, we can state that there are 5 main areas that companies need to address to rise above their competitors:
1.Process variation (Quality)
2.Synchronization through a constraint (Flow)
3.Conversations throughout the Network (Involvement)
4.Communication of the Value Proposition (External Constraint)
5.PDSA (Feedback/Continuous learning)
We can safely say that no Top Management strategic retreat session delivers a tangible and operational output like the process we refer to in this post. It also embeds in the company a method for continuous innovation. If you would like to learn more about how to reframe, rethink and reorganize your business, contact us at intelligentmanagement@sechel.ws – you’ll be glad you did. Your competitors? Not so much.
Intelligent Management has been guiding organizations to understand a systemic approach to manage complexity, radically improve performance and growth for over 20 years through our Decalogue management methodology. The Network of Projects organization design we developed is supported by our Ess3ntial software for multi-project finite scheduling based on the Critical Chain algorithm.
See our latest books Moving the Chains: An Operational Solution for Embracing Complexity in the Digital Age by our Founder Dr. Domenico Lepore, The Human Constraint – a digital business novel that has sold in 41 countries so far by Dr. Angela Montgomery and ‘Quality, Involvement, Flow: The Systemic Organization’ from CRC Press, New York by Dr. Domenico Lepore, Dr. .Angela Montgomery and Dr. Giovanni Siepe.
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