Do you have the right services?

Coming out of a significant change event is a great time to reassess the various services you provide, especially if you find that your customer’s needs and interests have changed, as discussed in my previous blog.  Even if you are part of a team that provides services to internal customers within your own organization (sometimes referred to as back-office functions), the needs of those client-facing groups may have also changed as they try to adjust and adapt to the changing needs of those they serve, the external or “ultimate” customer.

Gain Perspective with The Portfolio View  A great tool used by for-profits for years is the portfolio analysis. However, non-profits and even departments within an organization serving internal customers can gain insights with slightly modified versions of a Portfolio Analysis.  Originating as the Portfolio Matrix in the 1970s and widely attributed to the Boston Consulting Group, the tool provides a structured method for organizations to comparatively assess the products or services in their portfolio.  It resembles a scatter plot where the x and y axis are used to help plot how each product or services is currently performing based on two variables.  Among for-profits, these two variables are usually projected market growth and market share, however not-for-profits might use increasing / decreasing need (perhaps drawing on a recent Community Needs Assessment), and availability / unavailability of other sources of the service.

The area of the Scatter plot is then divided into quadrants, with each product or service falling in one of these quadrants based on the scores.  Each quadrant has different strategic implications.  For example, if a service has increasing need in the community (plotting “high” on the vertical axis), and there are no alternatives (plotting far to the right on the horizontal axis), it is positioned in the upper right quadrant, where continued high investment will contribute significantly toward fulfilling the organization’s mission.   You can view a more detailed description and illustration on my web site.

The Importance of Balance  Major changes or events, such as the pandemic, often result in a temporary, and sometimes permanent, shift in customer needs and interests, which may provide a solid rationale for repositioning one or more services in a different quadrant.  You may even discover new customer needs that could be added in one of the quadrants representing emerging and / or growing service opportunities.  As you work with a Portfolio Analysis, you might be tempted into thinking that the end game is to be heavily concentrated in that high demand / sole provider quadrant.  Strategically, though, long-term sustainability of your organizations or groups is best achieved when there are services in all four quadrants.  It may help to think of product and services as having an innate life cycle, beginning with discovery, then growth, then maturity, and finally decline.  Having all of your services in the same life cycle stage (or Portfolio quadrant) at once, no matter what stage that is, can have very undesirable effects now or in the near future.

Do you need help is assessing your portfolio against changing customer needs?  Do you need ideas on how to “re-balance” your portfolio?  Contact me at your convenience.

Jeff

A fundamental tenant of continuous quality improvement (CQI) methodology is the Shewhart or “PDCA” cycle developed by Walter Shewhart.  The four consecutive phases in the model are:

• Plan: Recognize an opportunity and plan a change.
• Do: Test the change. Carry out a small-scale study.
• Check: Review the test, analyze the results, and identify what you’ve learned.
• Act: Take action based on what you learned in the check step.

Beyond Process: PDCA is a sequential methodology for testing and evaluating individual process changes or improvements, with applicability in other disciplines including working with Tactics in Strategic Planning.  Strategic Plans, really, are all about change...developing and implementing changes that will help transform your organization or service line from the current state to a desired future state as embodied in a Vision Statement or Goals (or both).  The Shewhart Cycle provides a simple, logical framework for implementing and evaluating individual Strategies and Tactics, helping us decide which ones to keep, and which ones to either modify or abandon.

Measurement in Planning: Successful Strategic Planning requires us to stay fixated on the desired future state, but somewhat flexible on the Tactics.  And it turns out, measurement is critical for both.  With a viable set of Vision / Goal measures, you’ll know if you’re progressing toward the desired future state, making it easier to stay fixated on it.  But which tactics are helping you get there?

That’s where PDCA comes in.  Treat each Tactic like a discrete mini improvement effort.  Be sure to assign one or more simple but meaningful success measures to each one.  Then, use an Action Plan or similar template to Plan and Do each Tactic.  Don’t stop there, however, or you will only be half right.  You need the rest of PDCA to know which Tactics are helping and which are not.  Use Check to examine the measures and assess both what happened in the Do stage and what the impact was.  Then Act...your response can be based on the results of this analysis (see sidebar).

Getting the Most Out of Tactics: PDCA gives us a framework for implementing and evaluating each Tactic...and you will need it repeatedly throughout the life of your Plan, because both the marketplace you serve and the economic sector in which you participate are always changing.  As they evolve, some of your Tactics may become irrelevant.  Meanwhile, you may need to add new Tactics in response to new developments or innovations.

Some Tactics may turn out to be less effective than originally thought when your Plan was developed, or fail altogether, and PDCA provides a disciplined approach for learning why.  In process improvement, this allows us to build all kinds of knowledge, including types of changes that work and types that don’t, and critical implementation success factors germane to your service or product portfolio.  The same is true with Tactics evaluation.

Flexibility and Learning with PDCA: It is much easier to achieve Tactical level flexibility and learn from Tactics that fail if you treat each Tactic as an experiment using PDCA.  However, you need to be more than half right in applying it.  If you only Plan and Do each Tactic, you won’t know which ones are helping achieve the desired future state (and should be kept), and which ones are a waste of valuable resources.

So then, in working with change, you are better off being wrong than being half right.  That is to say, you are better off using the whole PDCA cycle and having been wrong about a Tactic (or a process change), and learning from it, than you are if you only Plan and Do Tactics.

Complete the Cycle...and Learn:  I had a professor in graduate school who was often presented with an alternative or new idea by a student (including me), and asked, “So, do you think this would be better?”  He would always reply with a smile, “Try it and see.”  Notice he didn’t just say “Try it.”  Hi wisdom lives on!

If you need help with Tactics, leveraging measures, or learning from failures, in Strategic Planning or any other aspect of management, contact me at your convenience.

Jeff

Front Line Heroes: During unanticipated events such as the current Virus Outbreak, those working directly with customers face even more stress and challenging circumstances than usual.  We are inspired by how they rise to the occasion with patience, creativity, and extraordinary efforts, earning our admiration and thanks.  Their abilities to meet the challenge are often fueled by their experience with, and knowledge of, their customer’s needs, but also their finely tuned listening skills, which are invaluable as customer needs change.

Behind the Scenes Support: While the front line staff are earning the admiration of your external customers (and you), there are other staff helping make that possible.  Indeed, most front line staff that I have had the opportunity to work with readily cite the importance of the support they receive both routinely, and during unforeseen events, from internal work groups or departments.  Those internal team members may not be considered “customer facing” with regard to your external or ultimate customer.  However, their efforts to meet, surpass, and even anticipate the needs of their immediate customer, the front line staff, can make a big difference in the experience of your external or ultimate customer.

Confused by all this “customer” the jargon?  See the side bar at right for the different types of customers in play at most organizations. 

Another Valuable “Voice”:  In fact, the producing group or department may only have internal customers.  They may have little or no direct contact with the more commonly thought of external customers of the organization.  However, just like a department that deals directly with external customers, these internal departments should develop a series of listening posts to have current knowledge of, and to even be able to anticipate, the needs of their internal customers.  Even better, these internal departments can combine knowledge of internal and external customer needs to clarify process and output relationships and to understand their own role in the value stream.

Different Roles, Same Goal: If these internal groups or departments did not support their customer departments well, those departments would be seriously hampered in their efforts to meet and exceed the expectations of the external customers.  Think about the critical role of human resources talent development in building the skills and abilities of all staff to deliver great customer service.  Or, consider the importance of information services in providing the reports and data used by the workforce for daily operations and needed by management to make decisions.

Both front-line staff and those supporting them behind the scenes benefit from ongoing customer feedback.  This feedback can serve a variety of purposes including assessing the impact of process improvements to detecting problems in service delivery.  But customer feedback is also critical in special or unique situations, including unforeseen events.  Used this way, it can help identify how customer needs or expectations may be changing.  Whether it is routine satisfaction ratings or feedback related to an unforeseen event, there are a variety of “Listening Posts” that can be used to obtain the desired information.  The best one depends on what you are trying to learn.

Chain Reaction: When each work group or team tunes in to their respective customer’s feedback and needs, the end result is a great service experience for your traditional, ultimate customers.  So the next time you learn about, or even personally have, a great (or disappointing) customer experience, look beyond the “front line” employees.  I’ll bet one or more internal groups deserve some of the credit (or blame), and it probably has to do with how well they listen to the voice of their internal customers.

If you would like help mapping out your various customers and their respective relationships, or implementing effective listening posts for any of them, contact me at our convenience.

Jeff

When major unanticipated events occur, they often force us to re-prioritize, if only for the time being.  For example, within the broad subject areas of data analysis, planning, and organizational performance, there may be some activities that are postponed until things become less chaotic.  However, unforeseen events may also heighten the importance of other activities, even within those same three broad subject areas mentioned above.  Here are some examples of the kinds of analysis, planning, and organizational performance work that may be more important than ever for your team or in your organization during, and immediately after, an unforeseen event.

• Customer Feedback: How well did your team or organization meet the needs of your customers (external or internal) during the event? Have the improvising and innovation that often come with unforeseen events changed your customers’ expectations?  It may be more important than ever to listen to the Voice of the Customer through surveys, interviews (phone), or focus groups (virtual).

• Organizational Dashboard Development: The improvising and innovation associated with unforeseen events often leads to process changes and new and different outcomes. It may be time to re-assess your organization’s Balanced Score Card or Dashboard(s).  Are different targets warranted?  Are there new metrics that should be added?

• Research and Benchmarking: What are the success stories relevant to your portfolio and core processes that are emerging from the unforeseen event? What can you learn from how some organizations responded quickly and successfully, and how could you adapt what you learn to your own organization or team’s work?

• Portfolio Analysis: Most organizations and teams have products and services at various stages of development and success. Understanding the composition of this “portfolio” before the unforeseen event, and projecting how it might look afterward, helps with assessing the true impact of the event and also with planning for organizational change that may be required afterward.

• Business Plans and Feasibility Studies: The changes brought about by an unforeseen event, both external to the organization as well as internal, sometimes are the inspiration for a major change in a core process or even a new service or product idea. This is the best time to prepare a Business Plan, or at least develop the idea further with a more expeditious and less resource-intensive Feasibility Study.

• Innovation: A common thread through many of these disciplines is the innovation that comes in response to an unforeseen event. The change in circumstances requires a fundamental shift in thinking and a different way of meeting rapidly evolving needs.  What is your organization or team’s level of innovation capability?  As it increases, you not only elevate your competitive advantage, but also your ability to respond optimally when the next unforeseen event occurs.

• Change Readiness Assessments & Change Management: Responding to an unforeseen event, and adjusting to the new norm that often follows, require change in your organization. Some organizations and teams handle change better than others, partly because they are more prepared, having learned and practiced the concepts and tools related to change management.  Taking stock of your change management competency, and enhancing it with education and practice if warranted, will better position you for the next major unforeseen event.

If any of this work seems timely in your organization, you are not alone.  And, if you are short on people power to get any of this done due to re-prioritization or temporary staff reductions, I can help, and at a manageable cost.  Contact me at your convenience...and stay well.

Jeff