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Interviewer: We've heard a lot about transforming the company, agency, or project into a successful performer without risking the organization. What does this mean today?
Milan M: Current economic conditions have everyone looking at ways to improve financial results and outputs in an accelerated timeframe. These are challenging times, and businesses of all sizes need strategies that produce near-term results and sustain success into the future. Often, companies know where they want to go but don't understand how to get there. That's where assessment, alignment, collaboration, cascading, and managing for results come in. Align-accelerate-transform (AAT) is an integrated format for sharpening strategy, identifying important gaps, and building focus, clear line-of-sight accountability, ownership, and momentum at every level. This transition and change format enables executives to keep control and accelerates achieving quantum change during a performance year.
Interviewer: Tell us how it works.
Milan M: You first develop a "vision communications system" for describing the corporate business strategy - the roadmap for success. Once the competitive strategies are understood, you're ready to identify the values that guide you in accomplishing the strategies.
Specific initiatives with goals and measurements come next. Each person and sub-unit uses AAT to align their workplace stretch targets and execution plans with the corporate strategies, initiatives, and values. This step embeds commitments into the annual performance objectives or contracts.
Next you develop the plan and budgets to make success measurable.
Finally, you need feedback, analysis, and action learning. The learning mindset inherent in AAT is the powerful analytic tool that examines all aspects of the enterprise including customers, production, processes, maintenance, and resources. These components are critical to understanding how well the execution is going. By using continuous learning and applying lessons learned, executives and employees make intelligent decisions that drive results.
Interviewer: So a continuous learning loop is being used?
Milan M: You never really finish because the feedback and learning in the final step of AAT feed forward to modify and update strategies.
Interviewer: Is success guaranteed?
Milan M: AAT rapidly increases the likelihood of obtaining results. However, it doesn't guarantee outputs because it's implemented in a human environment where people use judgments to make decisions. There may also be unpredictable political, cultural, and economic factors that affect performance.
Interviewer: What are some ways to make the process take hold?
Milan M: Organizations, whether private or public sector, are human systems of people and teams who work together and communicate across the organization. AAT orchestrates implementation for immediate improvement, using analysis, human resourcefulness, measurement, and focus. But it won't provide the results if people are not intellectually and emotionally engaged. People and teams are important because they understand strategy, know how to use the system, and shape the results. Collaboration across levels brings decision makers, managers, employee leaders, and workers actively into implementation. It increases buy-in and participation across departments and at all levels.
To make the whole process collaborative, managers at different levels are involved in the decision to implement AAT, creating the roadmap for success, values, analysis, initiatives, and measurement design phases. If they do that, they have influence and ownership. Senior executives must communicate the urgency of the AAT process as well as its necessity for sustaining success-or the turnaround, or realignment, or merger, or acquisition, or renewal.
Interviewer: Does this proven methodology work across national cultures?
Milan M: Yes. We have observed that cultures in similar industries are more alike than different around the world. Start by asking management and employees to create words and language in the national tongue, simple and clear. Jointly invent language and phrases that everyone understands in the context of their national culture and the organization's past. Develop language that crosses work cultures, functions, disciplines, and education levels so everyone can use AAT techniques and call them their own. Doing so breaks down communication barriers and fuels employee volition to action.
Interviewer: What are some of the other results?
Milan M: AAT creates a valuable source of information that management uses to make decisions and establish direction. It activates the "big brain" of the organization. With use it becomes an embedded continuous change capability.
For example, it's helpful in making choices about which types of customers to serve, how to replicate the profitability of the best customers, how to reduce costs and improve processes, products, services, and productivity. Align-accelerate-transformation can leverage and support related initiatives, such as strategic assessments, total quality, or business process reengineering, that benefit from employee resourcefulness and accurate cost and performance information. It also leverages performance management by providing new and insightful financial, cost, and production measurements.
Other byproducts have included stronger strategic and management capabilities at all levels, aligned organization systems and culture, and the development of new competitive capabilities.
Interviewer: Don't the management control and financial systems divulge the same type of cost, production, and profit information?
Milan M: The general accounting system is a fine tool for accounting and financial reporting. But it was not designed to provide information for decision making on growth, profitability of customers, channels, or market segments, or on how to reduce production and maintenance costs of key processes. By combining the information contained in the accounting system with customer, product, production, and process information, and overlaying this with employee resourcefulness and intelligence, you can develop a whole new set of targets to increase profitability and growth or reduce costs and improve the bottom line.