2011 Enterprise Resolution: Get In Shape… A Smarter Way

Happy New Year!

Each year, most of us find this season is the time to reflect and think about goals for the new year… a healthier life, smarter financial planning, etc.  And, there are no shortage of marketers touting easy solutions to losing weight, exercising, and healthier, wealthier living.

The Well Intended

For people looking to lose weight, despite well intended efforts, and initial success towards a desired goal, it is statistically proven time and again, that most people tend to revert back to old habits, poor diet choices, and reduced exercise until they find themselves back to their former self.

The Delusional

And, then there are those who perhaps were once fit, but have allowed their life behaviors to decline, yet still ‘believe’ that they are healthy.  They look perplexed when their pants no longer fit, or are winded walking up the stairs.

The Achievers

For the few that succeed in achieving their goals, and making an enduring lifestyle behavior change, a few key success criteria are:

1. Setting healthy goals,
2. Consistent, continuous monitoring,
3. Feedback and adjustment,
4. A community of support.

Corporations have been banging this thematic drum for many decades.  “You cannot improve what you don’t measure”, “you can expect what you inspect”, and other popular management truths attributed to many wise advisors (Lord Kelvin, Deming, etc).  And, many methodologies have been introduced and propagated to help companies identify unhealthy operations and implement solutions to improve productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness.   Theory of Constraints, Business Process Reengineering, TQM, BPM, Six Sigma, Lean,…

Surely, with all these impressive methods and certified executors, corporations would have achieved nirvana long ago.

A recent study from MIT Sloan Management found that nearly 60% of all corporate Six Sigma initiatives fail to yield the desired result.  The study found that while corporations may have had initial bursts of success, assessing their progress two year later showed that over half of the hundreds of process improvement initiatives had not attained their desired goal, and had reverted back to declined performance.

The study found that organizations became ‘bogged down’ in data collection and analysis, and were distracted with other business responsibilities.  Key leaders were often reassigned leaving less capable managers to continue the effort; and the study also found a general lack of incentives or performance appraisals tied to the success of process initiatives.

The article continues by positing some valid and commonly cited solutions, among them, ‘executives need to directly participate… not just support these projects’, ‘performance appraisals need to be tied to successful implementation…’, and ‘extended involvement of a (process) improvement expert is required’.

While these recommendations are valuable, we would submit, that’s not good enough.

A Smarter Way

Over the holidays, my daughters politely told me that I was ‘getting flabby’.  While in the mid-life phase, I’ve always been athletic, active…seemingly fit.  Yet, I obviously didn’t notice, (or chose to ignore), that my suits were not fitting well, etc, and rarely, if ever, stepped on a scale.  After a weighing and research for my appropriate weight and BMI, I was easily 25-30 pounds overweight.

Call me ‘Delusional’.

The traditional solution approach would be to start a diet & exercise regimen, and check the weight every week or so.  Desiring not to end up as ‘Well Intended’, I decided to monitor and track my daily calorie intake, specific exercise activity, weight, and other health metrics.  To make the effort easier, I downloaded a free iPhone app, MyFitnessPal (there are other great choices, but this one is amazing).  It is a cloud database app that helps set healthy goals, permits very easy entry of foods consumed (automated calorie and nutrients assigned)  and physical activity (automated calories consumed), provides feedback on progress to the goals, and encouragement to continue making progress. If desired, it is easy to setup a community via Facebook or other social media networks, to provide shared experiences and gain further support to goals attainment.  Information is accessed and edited via smartphone, tablet, or PC via commonly used browsers.

Easy.  Fact-Based.  Responsive.  Supportive…  And, admittedly, addictive to use.

Smarter Way to Get and Sustain Enterprise Performance Improvement

The same approach will work in business for you personally, and your company employees, departments, and enterprises.

Approaches like BPM (business process management, DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control), and others provide effective methodologies and tools to help companies identify inefficiencies and improve operations.

But, one pitfall the Sloan MIT study found was that the organization became ‘bogged down’ in data collection.  Companies spend enormous, and we believe unnecessary, amounts of time and money with external consultants and internal analysts to collect (point-in-time, static) data and assemble into spreadsheet analysis (frequent manual consolidation).

Collecting and aggregating data is hard work, requires significant manual effort, and is subject to bias.  A better approach would be to implement a continuous monitoring, cloud data base, activity monitor and feedback system into the workplace that would automate the empirical capture of where workers spend their time, with business process context, personal feedback, aggregate management insight, and the potential to integrate with existing systems.

An even higher level of value would come from all this activity integrated with a community intranet or private social media construct, a BPM Suite, and a Business Case ROI engine to provide management with an effective means of predetermining economic performance outcomes (business case) and the resulting operating and financial results of the initiative (realtime ROI analytics).

The only way to reach sustainable enterprise improvement is to:

1. Establish a true baseline operating performance    (current weight),
2. Analyze and determine goals                                   (desired weight)
3. Implement continuous activity monitoring tools,     (automated data collection)
4. Provide addictive feedback & support group          (reporting and encouragement)

Bizappia assists companies in implementing these type of capabilities to enable empirical baseline performance insight, build predictive financial yield models for projects, and Realtime Goal and ROI Analytics.

BTW:  After 10 days back in the demanding business schedule, I’m actively in fitness regimen and daily monitoring, lost 7.8 lbs, and with the feedback received, feel motivated and inspired to reach and sustain my ideal fitness goals….  Talk to me next year!

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