Here, we focus on solutions for optimizing processes. Organizations are only as good as the throughput from all the processes involved in producing the product or service they offer. A focus on process effectiveness is critically important for an organization's success because how you develop and deliver your products or services also creates the people requirement and the resource requirements (costs) yet most organizations don't focus enough on their processes and on the HOW.  

Consider the following:

• The more unpredictable things are in your organization, the more the opportunity you have for improvement.

• More importantly, the more unpredictable, the more variation there is in your processes and to improve things, you'll need to have an accurate assessment of the sources of this variation and then implement a program to reduce the controllable(special) causes of variation.

• Regarding variation, most organizations operate between a 2 and 3 sigma level which means they create many thousands of errors, mistakes and undesirable issues for every million opportunities. Studies have found that between 20 and 30% of your revenues at this level can be wasted dealing with these issues.

• These same studies have found even while it's going on, leaders of organizations are oblivious to the opportunity.

• A big picture focus on how each person and activity affects the cycle from initially producing a customer solution until receiving payment for it can itself product big savings in costs and create growth opportunities.

• W Edwards Deming determined back in the seventies statistically, that 94% of problems in business process were caused by management - his focus was on highly tangible process such as those in manufacturing or printing.  There's not much evidence this has changed and in fact, with regard to knowledge worker/office/administrative processes, it's probably considerably higher.  Do your managers have the tools to address?

• While in the very tangible manufacturing sector, there are 8 types of waste to focus on, in administrative and knowledge worker organizations, there are 20 sources of waste that once identified can be removed or greatly minimized

• There are 17 barriers to effectiveness in organizations that when focused upon can lead to tremendous growth opportunities.

• There are 9 sources of innovation, that when focused upon can transform many organizations. 

• We can guarantee you that by inter-relating your organization's strengths and weaknesses with the opportunities from a systematic focus on the 20 sources of waste, 17 typical barriers and 9 opportunities for innovation, opportunities and threats, that large-scale opportunities to improve costs and create growth opportunities will result.  

The AGILEdge People-Process Performance program incorporates the recommendations above and is a program which creates understanding, facilitates thinking and effective decision making, leads to effective actions and as a result improves people and processes in organizations for greatly reduced costs and improved competitiveness and growth prospects.