Don't find fault, find a remedy....

I am inspired from the quote “Don’t find a fault, find a remedy…” and past thirteen years working on various short term and long term consulting assignments I have found one thing in common … most of the enterprise solutions and process improvements programs often “fail” because corporate strategic objectives are misconstrued, or because processes and systems are not aligned with your business necessities and the fault finding starts. We need to move away from addressing the need and start understanding the want. The need is met and so is the business running, what is required is meeting the wants of the customer and that can be accomplished by understanding the strategic objective. Unless one sees the big picture all process improvements are penny wise pound foolish…. I have so far engaged with more than 40 – 50 consulting assigments with various customers both internal and external and all are focused on cost reduction, optimization, cycle time, efficiency resulting in operational excellence and EBITDA improvement as a central theme the biggest ever challenge I have successfully conquered is bringing business change at an organizational and individual level and shifting / transitioning individuals, teams and organizations from a current state to a desired future state such that the change made are fully aligned to the corporate strategy and business objectives.

My projects are usually slow compared to others but what I have discovered when I fall back is at least 60% of my changes are cemented so strong and have become the DNA of the organization which gives me immense satisfaction.  Often one will discover a situation where you are slipping on the budgets, on the targets, on the schedule and that’s the reality… may be the estimation has gone wrong or the gathering stakeholder commitment and involvement is delayed nonetheless it’s very very important that the customer alignment and the user community buy in is of at most priority.

Advising and partnering to provide the customer with an integrated end-to-end approach in a consulting mode looks easy the difficult part is the EXECUTION… here is where the metal is tested, often situation arises when you are standing alone and need to figure out a way to gather momentum of the user community to embrace the solution and the stakeholders start owning it.

Many a business units add new channels in response to customer demand, with inconsistent processes and disconnected views of the customer supported by individual back office systems and the lack of communication to the shared service functions raises the challenge in operating efficiently. Coupled with poor understanding the voice of the customer affects the business and the noise starts this is where most of the times I get involved and start the due diligence activity and backtrack to the origin to find out the root causes to resolve them…

It’s a RAT RACE out there and a rush to win the customer contract we often forget our fundamentals of communication and this is exactly where the chaos starts. Every individual is a leader in himself and the challenge is he/she ends up making decisions without involving the larger community and lands into issues mid-way during the execution, the margins start to look week and the pressure mounts on the EBITDA slipping to amber and then into red start showing signs of distress coupled with few more decision that impact the people involved … low morale … attrition… cost pressure… everything start looking terrible in a few weeks … alas… had you stepped out from the RAT RACE and looked at the big picture…

Well… cutting things short… fall back and check in your respective organizations if you have a strong communication tool which enables and connects the Sales Force with Delivery…  if you don’t have one and are still dependent on outlook start investing in a CRM and ensure this CRM is fully implemented and tracked such that your forecasting and pipeline info is reaching the right audience in the organization … else you will someday be  left alone and will have to stand alone… though you will not give up and ensure the projects are completed… but seamless execution needs strong communication and partnering to run as a well-oiled engine... instead of find faults one should learn lessons from the past and incorporate as a best practice to move on… J