Significant Activity Over the Last Decade

First of all, thank you to those who took the time to read my thoughts on my blog over nearly a decade. It started out as a fun outlet for expressing my ideas on hot topics and ended up helping many. I am writing this now because the number of hits surpassed 800K inception to date this month. This number might be a little inflated because some actors try to sneak pointers to their content, but I deleted 99% of the invader's thanks to hints from Google. I did use this platform to share my art and music creations, but these posts were not bellringers. I thought it might be good to share the "Greatest Hits" with you. There weren't a lot of surprises for me as I watched trends over time. Other than the US and Russia, Europe dominated the number of hits. All comments will be appreciated, especially topics that you feel would be helpful in the future.  

Net; Net:

I sure have enjoyed writing for you, but I delight in feedback. Please reach out by commenting or sending me a message through Linkedin or Twitter. 

Art Award Lands Nicely

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

James Sinur's Art Recognized 

James Sinur Receives 2022 Best of Glendale Award 

Glendale Award Program Honors the Achievement

GLENDALE November 14, 2022 -- James Sinur has been selected for 2022 Best of 

Glendale Award in the Artist category by the Glendale Award Program.

Each year, the Glendale Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved 

exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are 

local companies that enhance the positive image of small businesses through service to their 

customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Glendale area a 

great place to live, work, and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each 

category. The 2022 Glendale Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are 

determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Glendale Award 

Program and data provided by third parties.

About Glendale Award Program

The Glendale Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and 

accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Glendale area. Recognition is given to 

those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented 

programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

The Glendale Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our 

community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, 

professional associations, and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission 

is to recognize the small business community's contributions to the U.S. economy.

SOURCE: Glendale Award Program

Amazing Journey Album is Now Streaming

 Announcing “Amazing Journey” by the Foxx and Sinur Label is Now Streaming

Everybody has a life journey to experience. This collection of songs takes you down a journey of the search for fulfillment and love. While each song stands alone with unique style and message, together they create a journey for the listener that will evoke various emotions while delighting your ear, engaging your mind, and hopefully moving your soul. Amazing Journey is streaming on all major streaming services. Please try your favorite streaming service. If you don’t have access to a service, there is a CD available.  Click here for a Sample of Amazing Journey

What Others are Saying About Amazing Journey

Amazing Journey is an eclectic mix of many musical styles. The songs take you on a well-crafted emotional journey. Top notch musicianship along with the heartfelt vocals and lyrics make this a very enjoyable project indeed!

Greg Chaisson, Manager of Bizarre Guitar plus bass guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer of Atomic Kings and Badlands, Phoenix, AZ

I really like how this turned out; there are so many different styles at play and it works! The production/mix is tight. Siren’s Song is my favorite, but there’s so much to love here! You should be proud of this CD! I’m impressed!

David McCoy, Former DJ and Digital Consultant, Atlanta Georgia

“Having grown up on theme albums, I miss them with new albums having just a number of songs. Jim and Ethan have put together an album on the themes of life and love. I found myself drawn to the deep experiences in my own life as they came back to life in this album. Highly recommend this exploration”

Craig Hayenga, Retired NASA Scientist, Phoenix, AZ

Winning Change Management Delivers

It matters not what kind of situation organizations find themselves in; change is always present. Change often implies an organizational and individual risk that creates angst. These facts alone should drive organizations to be great at change, but unfortunately, they generally are not. In today's world, it seems like stability is even more elusive, with change and potential change hovering around every corner. Therefore, it puts a premium, making change management a core business capability. What should organizations do to improve the change process to survive, thrive, and capitalize on change? There are three things that I would point to that are enumerated below:

Continuous Alignment on Goals:

Change is no longer a project with a defined start and end. Instead, it is continuous and accelerating. Because of the agility needed in the world today, there is a significant need to keep teams focused on their goals and any change or refinement of those goals. It means that the goals become a first-class visibility object in the change process. Because alignment is crucial because the change cycle will likely be split into many pieces, all progressing while changing the interactions of several advancing teams. There are two key enablers to making this happen. One is a shared repository of goals and all the supporting content for all to see. The other is a strong collaboration and communication capability to keep everyone abreast of progress when goals are stable and changes if the goals shift.

Focus on Watching the Change:

In an emergent world, change management must provide Just-in-time feedback to all recipients in a synchronized fashion, so all can act on it appropriately. Change sponsors often only look at the emergent change's operational and tactical results. It is a significant miscalculation. Sponsors need to be laser-focused on the actual change process itself. This way, the results will align with expectations, but more importantly, drift can be detected early to adjust during the change process. The sponsors will lead the way to the teams keeping a sharp eye on the progress of the change management process.

Upscale Team Change Skills:

Because of the increased frequency of the multitude of sources of and impact of today's change, organizations had better make change management a core competency. In some instances, this will become a survival skill, whereas, in other circumstances, it will be a necessary part of a game plan to win. As we all know, people are the key to change, and they have an emotional tie to the changes. While they might like the vision, some folks fear the change. Here, empathy is crucial in keeping leaders and team members on an even keel. In addition, clear visibility and effective communication are necessary without all the overhead of meetings.

Net; Net:

Change management is crucial for organizations to succeed and drive outcomes. It is common knowledge that study after study points to a 70% change failure rate. On the horizon, all organizations are seeing more change coming. We are at a critical juncture to "Get Great at Change" or else. The convergence of more change than ever and being poor at it paints a grim picture. Change management has risen to the top processes to get great at. You can't just hire a consultant that works with your executives and declare change; you must get much better at the change management process to make changes effective. It should become a core competency.

Additional Readings:


There is one organization that gets it and helps you grow competency in change management that doesn’t take a vacuum cleaner to your pocketbook. Here is a pointer to some of their writings

Change Itself is Changing

Don't Stop Believing in Change

Big Change is Enabled by Cared For People

Art for the 3rd Quarter 2022

 I decided to return to my traditional digital art and produce some colorful pieces. I also tried a sponged piece just for grins. Let me know what you think of these recent fractals. If you want to enjoy some of my past pieces, click here. Next quarter, I'll probably do some more experimentation. 

                                               Starlight

                                              Emergent

                                           Neon Strings

Survive Changing Change

The good news is that organizations know an organization must change to succeed and drive business outcomes, but change management is complex today. The bad news is that change itself is changing from "point-in-time" to "all-the-time," and organizations had better get great at it because change rates are accelerating, as you read this post. It is on top of the fact that organizations have traditionally struggled with the change in calmer times. There will also be more relaxed times to catch the collective organizational breath. If you believe the numbers floating on the web for traditional change failure rates, the cards are stacked against organizations. It's time to turn the tide, folks.

Change is Changing:

Change is becoming emergent and real-time. Change is no longer a project with a defined start and end. It is continuous and accelerating. Today we have significant opportunities with digital technologies to automate and shrink time and costs out of our processes. Still, things are changing so fast that optimizing with automation is becoming a big challenge. Today our customers, employees, and partners are under tremendous pressure, fueling the fire of change. Customers want organizations to shift from a product, service, and process-driven approaches to empathetic outside-in sensibleness. We ask people to move from fixed to flexible efforts along with our underlying organizational infrastructures. We ask them not to fear change but to embrace change as the new normal.

Change Management is Changing:

In an emergent world, change management must provide Just-in-time feedback to all recipients in a synchronized fashion, so all can act on it appropriately. This kind of feedback allows recipients to adjust their behavior and witness the effects of these adjustments on performance and outcomes. This information must be personalized in a way uniquely relevant to the users in their context and contributions to the greater group goal. It will often include sidestepping the hierarchy to create direct connections among people while stakeholders can watch the adaptation. The intermediaries must not get in the way of resolution. Change management will have to build empathy, community, and shared purpose as people are no longer in a common location to collaborate. Providing an outlet for colleagues to share and see all the information, including progress and commentary, is essential. In this real-time change, world progress must be demonstrated visibly while linked to changing goals. The problem is that today’s methods, tools, and techniques are too slow and not goal-led, with real-time progress immediately visible.

Three Key Coping Mechanisms to Survive:

· There is a need for real-time dashboards where active watching and learning can be encouraged and assisted. It gives timely information in a customized fashion to the right people.

· There is a need for features that help with situational analysis so that decisions can be assisted and carried out in a thoughtful and timely fashion, with or without automation.

· There is a need for a goal-directed set of collaborations that give guidance and shared visibility to all the roles implemented and affected by the changing change.

Change Case Studies:

Hard benefit case study on a large scale 

Human touch case study 

Net; Net:

Change management is crucial for organizations to succeed and drive outcomes. Over 75% of organizations want to add more change management initiatives in the coming years. It means investing in better change, even if it is like "Nailing Jell-O to a Tree." It will require a shift in organizational culture while applying a new generation of digital communications as we engage our constituents in real-time and continuous. 

What Have Folks Been Reading Lately

 During the third quarter, the interest in real-time business visibility was accelerated, emphasizing situational analysis. It makes total sense as events worldwide are interconnected and emerging, causing organizations to make the right decisions and apply the proper actions in a more timely fashion. This effort depends on unifying various data sources, usually in the cloud these days. You can see this in the pie chart below measuring the third quarter 2022 topics. It is also interesting that Northern European countries are keenly interested in these topics as they respond to war-related moves tactically while dealing with more strategic shifts related to climate and supply chains. See the offshore (non-US) hits by country. typically northern Europe is an early adopter of new technologies that link to business outcomes. YTD for 2022 shows an increased interest in customer-pleasing efforts as we slip into a downturn where the fight for customer loyalty will be crucial. So the quest for automation for profitability will have to be taken in light of customer acceptance. 

Life is an Amazing Journey

 We are pleased to bring you seven new original songs that follow an amazing journey seeking self-understanding and love. Please enjoy the short clip that samples each song by clicking here. Join us in this exciting pre-release by ordering the CD and learning how this multi-generational team got together Just send an email to jim.sinur@gmail.com to start the process. The full release will happen in October if all goes well. 

                                                            Cover

                                                            

                                                               Song list 

                                                          Contributors

Don't miss your opportunity to be part of our musical journey by emailing me at jim.sinur@gmail.com

Situational Awareness is Now at the Front Line of Business

As of this writing, we see unprecedented times, and the sands are shifting all around businesses. While organizations can't stop the moving sands of interacting situations, savvy organizations keep their strategies in line with adaptable critical success factors. Today all organizations have to deal with a changing brew of external factors while managing their internal network of resources dynamically. All of this as the interactions of these forces emerge. Keeping a solid balance and learning to play offense in challenging times will depend on becoming much better at situational awareness. Situational awareness is being aware of what is happening around you in terms of where you are, where you are supposed to be, and whether anyone or anything around you is a threat to your health and safety. Therefore, situational awareness is becoming a priority business skill, but it includes opportunities too. This awareness must be built and tested before the battles of keeping organizations on course emerge to create muscle memory for proper decisions and actions. Situational awareness is essential for survival at a minimum and a great partner for gaining an advantage.

Looking around us, we can see emerging and morphing external and internal forces playing together to contribute to the challenge of staying on top of situational analysis, significant in-context decisions, and on-point actions. How long to keep up the course with the active strategy and policies is also in the mix. Here are lists of external and internal factors that are active right now. I’m sure you could easily add to these lists, which will shift and change over time to make an appropriate balance more challenging. To complicate matters, organizations must manage their spending, secure talent, and accelerate digital to keep up with current trends. All of these factors are changing at the feet of the executives who must deliver radical productivity and speedy innovation while practicing a boundary-less mindset.

External Factors:

· Persistent Inflation

· Economic Headwinds

· Supply Chain Constraints

· Energy and Food Insecurity

· Pandemic Fatigue

· Climate Crisis

· Shortages

· Cyber Crimes / Ransomware

· Wars / Conflicts

· Social Unrest

Internal Factors:

· Skills Scarcity

· Lack of Experience

· Adaptability

· Keeping Goal Focus

· Flexible KPIs

· Vigilance

· Keen Project Management

· Continuous Improvement

· Lean Operations

· Smart Automation


There are three-time slices that organizations must keep their focus on or suffer from getting blind-sided.

Predictive

Much of situational analysis focuses on immediate situations. However, organizations must project beyond the current state and try to predict the twists, turns, and combinations of factors that could present a significant threat or an ample opportunity. It is where digital assistance from AI and Analytics combinations can add tremendous value, especially with newer visualization techniques.

Real-Time

Keeping an eye on all the moving parts of "What's Happening Right Now" is a tremendous challenge for organizations overwhelmed by the tsunami of data, information, and advice coming onboard. Again digital assistance can help by recognizing signals, events, and patterns that the human eye can't possibly watch.

Post Audit

It is also imperative for organizations to learn about past realities and the "Mach-Testing" of likely scenarios. Analysis of actual situations without the pressure of immediacy is crucial for preparing for future conditions. In addition, this process can create test beds for practicing situational awareness and adaptation.

Net; Net:

Situational awareness must become a competency before time catches up with old-style management practices. An organization's processes must be as change-proof as possible by staying adaptable. This adaptability must be guided by key insights from all three-time slices supported by both emerging and established digital business infrastructures. Keeping up with changing performance indicators and flexible/smart automation is essential to stay in business. Is it easy to practice strategy changes while to operations and tactics? One thing is for sure. There are methods, tactics, tools, and techniques that can make it easier, faster, and more effective. Some of the blog posts listed in additional reading might help the reader. In addition, a couple of vendors can help with this approach. Wizsm & Tibco.


Additional Reading:

Frictionless Management

Real-Time Fast Boards

Management Cockpits

Real-Time Strategy

Management by Wire

AutoPilot Management

Linking Strategy to Operations Easily

Art for the 2nd Quarter 2022

 I decided to go back to my traditional digital art and produce some colorful pieces. Let me know what you think of these recent fractals. If you want to enjoy some of my past pieces, click here  Next quarter, I'll probably do some more experimentation. 

                                                 Crystal Galaxy 

                                                   Neon Bee

                                                Grape Panther 

What Were Folks Reading in the First Half of 2022?

 Organizations are working to stay on top of all the emerging conditions. It puts a premium on linking operations on point with the strategy even though the gap seems to widen daily. Speed is becoming more important, and staying on top of the ever-growing data sources. While the benefits of digitizing are delivering revenue and cost savings, keeping efforts sharp and on-point is rising in visibility even with stable strategies. The readers are flocking to reality-based transparency on operations, emerging strategy adjustments, and keeping the whole organization focused on goals as they evolve and change. 

As usual, the US readership dominates the numbers, but it seems northern Europe is getting more interested in focusing on balancing digital innovation efforts with operational survival. 

Budgeting Technologies for 2023

If you thought budgeting was difficult in the past, this round of budget planning for 2023 would be like nailing jello to a tree. Yes, we will all be looking for ways to cut costs, mostly through smarter automation and intelligent selection of projects that promise to deliver improvements in costs, revenue, and customer satisfaction. This will require a more focused approach to goal-led efforts while dealing with everchanging goals. This will require focusing on goals while they are stable and developing super skills in situational analysis, decisioning, and actions. This post will focus on the technologies that contribute to goal focus and understanding the habits necessary to deliver competence in situational shifts. Consider investing in these five areas to get the most business bang for the buck, and don't slack on innovation within these key technologies. 

Goal-Led Collaboration

According to surveys done by Harvard Business Review and Microsoft, organizations are not as good at goal-led approaches as they would like. Only 38% of executives said that their staff has a clear and ongoing understanding of the goals that count. These same executives said that key company activities are 27-44% out of alignment with goals. At the same time, meeting times have skyrocketed 252% in the last two years. This needs to change, and organizations need to change this trend even in stable times. Here are two case studies to prove the value of Goal-led Collaboration. The first is a B2B Supply Chain Case Study. The second is an approach to solving a difficult societal problem   Goal-led is proven and low cost and brings together the chaotic communications we deal with daily, and doesn't require a big investment. Start with establishing a goal cycle and support it with good technology 

Management Cockpit with Focused Data Science

The era we live in is filled with unexpected events and new situations, putting a premium on situational analysis assisted by technologies such as situational AI, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Event Management, Real-Time Fast Boards, and Situational Management Cockpits. Going for all of these simultaneously might be a budget burden, so I would suggest starting with event/pattern recognition with Fastboards plus various kinds of learning/discovery technologies (AI & Mining). Practice decisioning alternatives by establishing management cockpits for dealing with emerging situations and scenario planning with responses. This is an evolving and emerging set of sciences that have gone from backroom planning to the front lines of business. A stronger link between strategy change and operations will be vital, along with a link with Goal-Led approaches.

Intelligent Automation 

A major contributor to cost reductions will be automation and its intelligent application of it through project selection and implementation. In addition, the automation will have to go from static automation to dynamic and smart situational automation. It means that automation will move from mechanical focused speed to intelligent and adaptive approaches that are sensing, learning, deciding, and acting properly at the moment without losing sight of the situational context. This will mean moving on from just Low-code and single-dimensional RPA to include smarter technologies that are goal-led as well. There are many forms of digital automation that might be considered here, but I would suggest driving the choices around the business outcomes of goals. Click here for a link to digital technologies organized by business outcome

Human Augmentation

It is clear we will need to get the most out of people to make progress. I would suggest organizations look from the outside in to get the most bang for their technologies. This means that customers, partners, and collaborations outside your organization get priority instead of just optimizing your cost per transaction. This means looking at the real end-to-end journey for all of your outside constituents first to impact their goals and your organization. This way, your processes are in synch with customer goals and journeys  Once the processes are in synch, your employees and contractors will have an easier go. However, skill augmentation of employees is still a real issue. Leveraging voice analysis and AI learning in real-time can be a big boost. Having an AI coach in an employee's ear is also a long-term goal. 

Real-Time Data Fabric/Mesh 

A smart data mesh that leverages hybrid data sources in real-time is an essential building block to support the other four technologies listed above. While the physical locations of any data is a big issue, having a logical business-focused data catalog that helps both people and technologies to leverage data from real-time to archival data. This is a long-term goal that requires regular investment to help with the real management of data in a proactive manner. It will start with a unified database and extend to a catalog-driven data fabric/mesh This is the real way to deal with data sprawl, but the investment is long-term and infrastructural in nature. 

Net; Net: 

While there will be belt-tightening, there are ways to prioritize technology investments that will still provide long-term delivery while incrementally providing contributions to today's profitability pressures. It's a tricky balance to invest in digital progress while keeping operations on point and able to adjust to constant change. Look to this space for a discussion on dealing with change by leveraging situational methods, practices, and technologies. 

Linking Strategy to Operations Easily

While it is never easy to link strategy to operations, specific approaches, methods, techniques, and technologies can make it easier. Today, all organizations are challenged to drive growth and optimize business operations in a compliant and socially enlightened way. Change is being imposed by changing conditions that may imply opportunities or threats. It is on top of organizations wanting to better their customer relationships, products, and services. Therefore, high-performance decisions and actions must be delivered under all strategic, tactical, and execution/operational conditions. IT means prioritizing responses dynamically. This blog will explore the priority of efforts organizations can take optimizing on ease.

There are three states organizations can be in and out of based on what’s happening in and around them. Often all states are happening at once in various proportions.

Steady State

This state is where the change winds are light. it is often the calm in the periods between significant changes or when complex change settles back to a more normal pace. It is where typical dashboards, management reports, and balanced scorecards can be designed and implemented with management keeping an eye on early change indicators.

Adaptive State

This state is typically in an active change period like we are going through with COVID, war, and supply chain challenges. Here, there is dynamic and real-time observance looking for events, signals, and note patterns. Once detected and oriented, decisions can be made for actions throughout the organization and the contexts it operates at the moment. Often these are imposed changes.

Planned Change State

It is where management with a clear mind can plan programs and projects from the evolution of operations incrementally to total transformations. It is often where new markets are targeted, new products/services are introduced, and mergers/acquisitions are planned for future execution involving programs and projects.

Figure 1 Strategy Links


Linking Strategy to Operations on the Easy Curve

Listed below are the categories of activities that have your operations linked to strength. They are listed in order of ease to attempt. Organizations can go way over the edge to make any of these more complicated than they need to be, so this order is advisory. It could be different for your industry, type of organization, or your culture. Keep in mind that the closer to the core of Figure 1 (operational views) and stable strategies, the easier it is to link strategy to operations. As organizations approach the outer rings of figure one, especially in the adaptive state, the more difficult linking moving strategies to operations becomes. It is essential to understand that methods, tools, and techniques help with the outer edge and handle the whole "link to strategy" continuum depicted in Figure 1.



Performance Management

Performance management starts with human visibility and automated notifications. It could be as simple as a standalone dashboard or as complex as a functionally integrated management cockpit looking for patterns and events in real-time.

Process Optimization

Processes must constantly get better as customers demand a better experience, and exceptions are noted, analyzed, and dealt with within manual and automated processes. The optimization process often includes mining, visualization, and analysis. In extreme cases, advanced formulas and AI play a role. Scopes can expand to whole B2B chains.

Quality Management

The processes, production lines, and supply chains need to be optimized, but these results must also be dealt with in terms of quality and customer delight. It is crucial to devise ways of inspecting and getting feedback on quality. It can be manual or automated. When automating and training technology from data and experts, the complexity can get edgy.

Governance/Compliance

While compliance is essential to stay active in markets and geographies, the methods are often emergent. While the rules may be evolving, the processes and constraints are continually developing as target dates loom.

Risk Management

As every organization has a specific risk culture, it is difficult to assess risk. While it is often easier to determine the frequency of a chance happening, the threshold for particular actions is often a challenge. The skill level of the decision-makers has to be high, steeped with deep knowledge, and often experienced with projections.

Program/Project Management

Managing a goal-led approach to delivering improvements or necessary changes is often a big challenge. Keeping everyone up to date with changes and getting all skills to collaborate equally is a big deal. Tracking change effectiveness leveraging before and after deltas is always a chore.

Strategy Management

Knowing the right strategy for current or emerging conditions is very difficult. Often it requires deep planning to recognize patterns of opportunity or threat. Then, once detected, a bevy of analytical/simulation models usually has to test responses in uncertain situations.

Net; Net:

Is it easy to link strategy to operations and tune tactics? I would submit that it depends on the situation and the emerging strategy. One thing is for sure. There are methods, tactics, tools, and techniques that can make it easier, faster, and more effective. Some of the blog posts listed in additional reading might help the reader. In addition, there are a couple of vendors who can help with this approach.  Wizsm & Tibco.


Additional Reading:

Frictionless Management

Real-Time Fast Boards

Management Cockpits

Real-Time Strategy

Management by Wire

AutoPilot Management

Gain Significant Results with Goal-Led Collaboration

Several savvy organizations had picked up on the power of goal-led collaboration and applied them to real-world situations. Here are two very interesting case studies that come from very different directions but share the common benefit of customer delight.

The first case study is attempting a problem that folks have been struggling with for decades. Many people have dreamed of helping children with Autism. Click Here for an impressive benefit case study that will warm your heart. The tangible benefits, while unrealized right now, will be delivered later. The intangible benefits for patients and families will start the evolution.

The second case study is about how a B2B focused organization delivered tangible and crisp benefits that were impressive during the initial times of COVID. The benefits made everyone in the CX suite grin from ear to ear. Many of us would love to deliver a 29% increase in revenue while reducing costs by an impressive 30%. All of this while reducing the time to deliver from 6 weeks to 2 days. Click Here for an impressive hard benefit case study that would make most of us proud.

Transforming While Attaining Stretch Goals

It's hard to imagine making a significant transformation within a large multi-national B2B organization while dealing with the complications of COVID and supply chain issues. However, this case does just that while attaining the triple crown of business benefits of increased revenue, decreased costs, and a significant value increase by reducing the "time to respond." This organization achieved impressive results by leveraging an outside-in approach to customer outcomes while driving results with goal-led collaboration. As a result, they were able to expand during the time of COVID on a large scale. Let's check this case study out.

The Challenge

· The order to dispatch cycle was six weeks on average, creating problems for all customers.

· The customers were also delayed in providing products and services to their customers/dealers.

· The complexity of change across multiple markets and countries

This large organization has leadership in three major business sectors. First, it must continue providing products and services while significantly changing the ordering process, compounding problems downstream. Second, this 3+ billion-dollar revenue company has to improve across all 100+ countries it services. All of these forces were being affected by the COVID impacts. Third, the innovation required will insist on including the customers and the customers of the direct customers.

The Solution

It started with understanding the current situation and what the customers wanted. This was done leveraging an outside-in approach to creating customer confidence. This organization used the CEM Method to guide the process that helped discover the customer's real needs, design customer profiles around the real needs, and deploy smoothly. These efforts were managed with goal-led collaborations that linked actions to outcomes from the sponsor all the way to the doers with clear visibility.

· Providing solid and stable providers

· Providing products/services as and when specified

· Run without disruption

The Benefits

These benefits were derived from goal-led collaboration guided by the CEM method, continuous optimization individually and collectively aimed at the primary goals. There was a significant reduction in order dispatch resulting in cost reduction and revenue increases while increasing customer confidence in the uncertainty of COVID

· Order dispatch time reduced from 6 weeks to 2 days

· Increased revenue by 29%

· Reduced costs by 30%


Net; Net:

This approach generates happier customers with significant changes to business results. This case study reached the triple crown of increased revenue, decreased costs, and more value by leveraging goal-led collaboration while looking at the problem and solutions from the "outside-in."

This case study was provided and assisted by Parallel  Click here for a link

Case Study Goal Life Cycle Impacts Highlighted in Blue

For an Explanation of the Goal Life Cycle Components, Please Refer to the Blog Posts Below

For a Goal Life Cycle Explanation, click here

For Better Goal Management, click here

For Goal Led Technologies, click here

Autism Transformation Case Study Leveraging a Goal-Led Approach

Most of us are tasked with transformational change, and as a result are challenged to assemble, coordinate, and track the methods, resources, and tools necessary for transformation. While this case study is still ongoing, the expected results will send ripples throughout the health and therapy industries. It's going to change the way treatment plans work for autism forever. It is an innovation that will become a movement because it is newsworthy and worth watching. It leverages goal-led collaboration and takes treatment to a new level of efficiency and effectiveness. Let’s dive into this exciting transformation that promises huge industry change by treating the whole family that autism impacts.

The Challenge

· Most experience delays in getting diagnosed and many are not getting diagnosed at all

· There are waitlists for services, and many are not Receiving the hours they are prescribed

· Care across the services provided is not coordinated

The problems with managing autism from diagnosis to service completion are immense. First and foremost, children are diagnosed late because the hurdles to getting diagnosed are high. It is almost impossible to get approvals from insurance companies to leverage the scarce resources of counselors and move on to the methods and technicians that can help the situation. The other major issue is that the parents are considered in the treatment plans, and the whole household is not considered for treatment. Often getting the autistic family/household to services is quite challenging. Also, the amount of paperwork and red tape is taking away from the scarce treatment resources. Therefore, the failure rate is unacceptable even when permission for counseling is granted.

The Solution

It starts with goal-led frameworks designed to optimize the end-to-end experience for the patient, the family, and service resources. It begins with placing the parents at the center of the process by teaching the value of long-term support for the whole family unit throughout the treatment plan timeline. Next, it focuses on several vital subgoals to get through the insurance authorization and get things going quicker. Finally, it breaks down into these five subgoals that are being coordinated individually and collectively to attain the primary goal:

· Diagnose as Early as Possible

· Get Access to Services as Quickly as Possible

· Activate Parents

· Deliver Care to the Family

· Graduate to New Freedoms

The Benefits

The benefits were derived from goal-led collaboration, and continuous optimization individually, and collectively aimed at the primary goal. There were immediate benefits for more family happiness while unlocking the potential of the child and the family unit in new ways. The parents become educated advocates following a customized and designed plan leading to more direct results quicker. It reduces iterations and false steps, optimizing the service resources. Communication with all parties helps in each case and treats the problems holistically. There is clarity around actions and faster paths to results through following a customized and designed experience. It also enables treating younger and younger children giving treatment momentum early in children's lives.

Net; Net:

This approach generates happier families living to their full potential as early as possible while optimizing the counselors, cases, service providers, and administrative tasks. The goal-based system allows for continuous and constant iteration for better results keeping all parties up to date on the status of people and procedures. It will prove productive for kids at all levels on the autism spectrum. Watch this space for an update.



This case study was provided and assisted by Parallel. Click here for a link



Case Study Goal Life Cycle Impacts Highlighted in Blue

For an Explanation of the Goal Life Cycle Components Please Refer to the Blog Posts Below

For a Goal Life Cycle Explanation, click here

For Better Goal Management, click here

For Goal Led Technologies, click here

What Were Folks Reading in the 1st Quarter 2022?

Organizations are trying to balance innovation with profitability. This puts a premium on better transparency and staying on track with goal-led approaches. All of this while chasing a shifting supply chain plagued by COVID, the Ukrainian conflict, and growing pressures in the Pacific region. Speed to manage change seems to be the focus along with the savings that automation delivers to drive savings leveraged for the bottom line and innovation. Five years ago innovation would be the primary focus without the pressures we face today. Look at the results for the first quarter's readings and see if you have another reason

The offshore activity seems to be consistent with 2021 results with heavier than usual activity in the Northern European countries. 

The last 12 months' activity is certainly worth a study as well

Art for the 1st Quarter 2022

This quarter I decided to do nothing but experimental art. I used a lot of flow techniques and tried a couple of heart-shaped canvases for fun. While Sherry loved one of the pieces and took it for our master bedroom, I'm not sure how others will react to these pieces. While I have had luck selling abstracts paintings before, my fractals seem to get the most interest. Let me know what you think :) If you want to see some of my previous pieces, click here   If you have better names for the pieces, let me know. Thanks to Benoit Lheureux for the title "Discordiant Ripples" 

                                                       Waves of Color

Discordant Ripples

                                                       Turbulence

                                                          Melting Heart

                                                          Heart Flow 1

                                                           Heart Flow 2

If you are interested in purchasing any of my works, contact me at jim.sinur@gmail.com and we can work out the details. 

Key Technologies Supporting Goals

There is a significant emphasis on managing goals and their interactions in today's demanding business world. Today’s goals are not only stretch goals, but they also often appear to be at odds with each other and out of touch with stakeholders' needs. Financial goals which are picking up steam seem to be at odds with digital progress. Savvy organizations balance these goals by focusing on managing goals in real-time and leveraging vital technologies to attain these goals. This post will describe how these key newer technologies support the Goal Life Cycle (GLC) and better goal management. Remember that these are the more modern and effective technical supports for goals. For many decades, most organizations have been limping along with traditional presentation tools and spreadsheets. These conventional tools still contribute to goals but lack the high speed and connected visibility essential in today’s changing business environment.

Collaboration Tools

Collaboration tools have been on fire recently because they speed up communication uniquely. They can support group collaboration, and everyone can either point to or attach content. This real advantage in supporting the GLC, and any adjustments necessary in goal attainment can be communicated rapidly. The problem with random communications that are really fast is that they can inundate the receivers and create distractions. A new variety of goal-focused collaboration tools are gaining momentum as all communications are linked to stakeholders and high-value goals through dynamic repository-based goal models. They are called goal-lead communication tools, and they cut through the noise while adding excellent visibility to all participants.

Case Management

Case management really focuses on goals and milestone attainment rather than activity sequences. Mostly case management is about reaching goals, but it is also rich in information about why specific goals are not being completed. This information can play a crucial role in adjusting goals or identifying anomalies that require innovation and thought. Exceptions are handled well in case management, and it coordinates the appropriate people and systems to act correctly to reach goals.

Low Code

Low code is a way to abbreviate program coding and open the programming world to those who are not tech-savvy. Often a model-driven or drop-down menu approach to creating processes, action steps, and microcode. Low code delivers a faster reaction to underlying processes, and code changes when goals change. Many process and workflow technologies practice the low code approach run by business professionals.

Data Mining

Data mining is a crucial way to watch the physical world of actions/data, and content to adjust goals in the GLC. While real-time mining might adapt the execution of an action in flight, its contribution generally revolves around finding patterns that may require new steps. Mining can involve data logs, extending to content live images, voice, and videos. Mining can handle raw data in context, but it can also reach to add analysis and learning.

Explicit Rules/Parameters

Where goal volatility or conditional action can be anticipated, many application developers depend on rules, parameters, and boundaries outside the system of execution. Goal changes imply changes in rules that can be changed immediately to alter new targets. It helps in delivering the attainment of dynamic or emergent goals. It also enables speedy adjustment to goal changes.

RPA

Robotic automation is a great way to create low-cost and speedy attainment of known goals. They tend to be well-worn paths, but they are closely watched for tolerance variation that could imply reaching for new adjustments in plans and stakeholder visibility. As more intelligent bots emerge and evolve that are data, AI, or algorithm-driven, RPA will create more transparency touchpoints and suggestions for goal adjustment.

AI

Today AI is rich in learnings that can potentially point out the need for goal adjustment and new goals to pursue. AI, as it evolves, will sense, decide and act more proactively, assisting management with the GLC and maybe dynamically automating part of the process to get better goal attainment performance. The roundtripping from learning to changed actions is an area for rich future development for AI.

Net; Net:

While each of these technology supports for the GLC and goal attainment was described in a categorized fashion, we will see savvy organizations and vendors combine multiple siloed technical supports into powerful combinations and even Digital Business Platforms (DBP). Goal collaboration platforms will emerge to lead in the development and maintenance of goals that drive business outcomes that adapt to change and even business scenarios.