Step 1: Understand Your Unique Challenges and Goals

We conduct an initial interview with the senior leadership to gain an understanding of their goals and improvement objectives. We then spend from a half to one full day onsite interviewing key stakeholders to gain an understanding of the business system and what is currently blocking the performance of the organization.

Step 2: Presentation of Root Causes

Even rather complex organizations have only a few key underlying constraints that block them from achieving much higher performance levels. We clearly demonstrate to Sr. Leadership what their system constraints are and how they limit the performance of the overall business.

Step 3: Proposed Solutions and Value

Since a system’s constraints are the key factors that control the overall performance, they form the basis for the most powerful solutions. We describe solutions to meet or exceed the organizational goals and show the direct link to the improvement in net profits. Once there is alignment with the proposed solution, we work with the client to calculate the bottom line value to the business. It is important to us that the profit our clients gain dwarfs what they pay for our services. If we are unable quantify significant results (i.e., show excellent ROI), we will not move to the next stage.

Step 4: Services Agreement

This step in the process is more a formality than a decision point. It is our expectation that everyone has already reached consensus on the challenges, objectives, scope, measures, value of the project and the fees. We have also reached mutual agreement on what is expected from both parties to reach the defined objectives. We formalize the expectations with a written services agreement.

Step 5: Implementation

Throughout implementation we utilize effective means of communication, reporting results, maintaining alignment and overcoming obstacles. The major steps of an implementation are:

Develop Clear Picture of How the Business Should Operate: We lead the client to develop a clear picture of how the entire business should be synchronized and aligned to maximize its overall performance. We call this developing a picture of What Good Looks Like.

Find the Longest Levers: We perform a gap analysis to compare the current business operation to the picture of maximum performance. We utilize our understanding of the system constraints to find the few key areas that will have the biggest performance impact and quantify the expected timing and results of those improvements. We do continuous assessments to ensure we are always focusing efforts on the longest levers.

Execute: We partner with our clients to develop and carry out the specific actions required to achieve the project objectives. We provide ongoing training and coaching as necessary in such a way that minimizes any distractions from day to day work. We continue our engagement until the client has the capability to maintain the results beyond the conclusion of the project.

A significant concern of many of our clients is, “how are we going to add this improvement work to our already full (and most times overflowing) plate”. It is imperative that people will quickly be able to contribute to the change effort and effectively execute their current role. By providing focus on and alignment to the system’s longest levers along with more efficient ways to perform the work, hidden capacity is uncovered and time is made available to make improvement part of our clients’ normal business processes.