The Sign of the Times: Operational Effectiveness

Whether one is running a business or a high profile high rewards product groups, operational effectiveness. Politicians are also bantering this same message.

The benefits of well-played operational effectiveness usually means the reduction of costs, the minimization of response time and the mitigation of risk. It starts by increasing the quantity of productivity-driven practices, standardization of procedures and using the correct technological devices.

There is no perfect system. It is a process of continuous improvement.

Bridging the gap between risk management and cost effectiveness is the key to operational effectiveness. In a future post, we will discuss this matter.

The Big Tangible Picture

We believed that this trend will continue. There is a limitation to everything. Sooner or later, the non-innovative, but competitively efficient medical hospitals will have to compete against each other for a large piece of the pie, for the purpose of survival. While the strong organizations occasionally acquire the weaker organizations at some point of the game, the smarter organizations will thrive by focusing on becoming competitively innovative.

Based on historical data, there is always a possibility that the customer base might suffer on the long run. This is the sign of the times.

Building operational effectiveness is the fundamental basis for establishing strategic power.

The Possible Truth of Our Strategic Being

Is the competition gene embedded in us? ...

Having it is not enough. To properly compete, it begins with a process. ... A process that integrated the assessed intelligence to the plan and then to the action of influence. You can read more about the process by clicking on this link.

Idealistically, it is important to have the right order of resources, relationships, intelligence, economics, logistics, etc. ...

Occasionally, one's position does not always have the right order of essentials for that moment . Processing the act of adjusting, adapting, enduring and evolving is the only alternative.

"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." - Donald Rumsfeld.

Compass Rule: Read the Big Tangible Picture (BTP) before deciding on a strategic move.

Summary: When one's back is against the wall, one must adjusts and evolves while never losing track of their goal and their settings.

The Art of the Focus (8): Stop and Become Aware.

A strategy usually would not work if you and/or your team is not focused on the big picture and the components within it. One cannot just think about being focused. (Just like one cannot think that he becomes a leader and therefore he/she becomes a leader. That "new age" type of thinking does not work with us.) Pragmatically, it is a repeated practice of centering, focusing, experiencing, reflecting and reviewing. .

One learns how to become focused by understanding how to center him or herself through the feel of wholeness. It is important to slow down and stop. Stand and slowly observe one's surroundings. After awhile, one begins to become aware of oneself, one's own surroundings and the terrain. Many hours of this unique practice allows one to operate steady and instinctively. Instead of concentrating oneself on a target like a light from flashlight, he/she starts to focus like a laser beam pinpointed on a target.

There is no real magic ritual to this unique practice. It is the practice that requires many hrs of practice. Ancient daoists believed that it is what propels the other practices..

The Origin of the Way

The way begets one;

One begets two;

Two begets three;

Three begets the myriad creatures.

The myriad creatures carry on their backs the yin and embrace in their arms the yang and are the blending of the generative forces of the two.

There are no words which men detest more than 'solitary', 'desolate', and 'hapless', yet lords and princes use these to refer to themselves.

Thus a thing is sometimes added to by being diminished and diminished by being added to.

What others teach I also teach.

'The violent shall not come to a natural end.'

I shall take this as my precept.

- Dao De Jing, 42 (D.C. Lau translation)

Our hardcore martial art associates believed in this category of practice and performs it daily. For more information, you can learn more about this unique practice from the following sites: Cook Ding's Kitchen, Smiling Tiger.net, ChinafromInside.com, The Wushucentre.net and Emptyflower.net

“In order to await the disordered; in tranquility awaits the clamorous. This is the way to control the mind.” -AoW 7

It does not matter if the strategic players are Sunzi enthusiasts, John Boyd's OODA fanatics, Clausewitz's zealots, Game Theory's practitioners or Blue Ocean's extremists. A team can only build, connect and lead with almost any strategic approach if they are focused from the start. ... Whether they can prevail with it, that is a different story.

The Art of the Focus (3): Do Easy

Comprehending the big tangible picture enables one to do things quite easy. He or she would automatically recognize the state of the grand settings in terms of the positives, the negatives, the risks, etc. ... Do you know the practice of Do Easy?

Check out the following Gus Van Sant's video titled "Do Easy". The purpose of the video is to describe the state of "Do Easy."

(Please excuse the picture that is being displayed on the Youtube link. It came with the video. The aim of that displayed visual is to demonstrate the flowing action of "Do Easy". )


From the "Do Easy" video

" ... Let us now apply Do Easy to a simple test: the old Western quick draw gunfight. Only one gun fighter ever really grasped the concept of Do Easy and that was Wyatt Earp. Nobody ever beat him. Wyatt Earp said: It's not the first shot that counts. It's the first shot that hits. Point is to draw aim and fire and deliver the slug an inch above the belt buckle. ... That's Do Easy. How fast can you do it and get it done?

It is related that a young boy once incurred the wrath of Two Gun McGee?. McGee? has sworn to kill him and is even now preparing himself in a series of saloons. The boy has never been in a gunfight and Wyatt Earp advises him to leave town while McGee is still two saloons away. The boy refuses to leave.

"All right" Earp tells him "You can hit a circle four inches square at six feet can't you? all right take your time and hit it." Wyatt flattens himself against a wall calling out once more "Take your time, kid. ... "

"How fast can you take your time, kid?

Our experience tells us that doing (things) easy might just help you in an extreme situation. ... The first step is to properly assess the big tangible picture. We presumed that you understand the benefits of "Do Easy." ... Do you know the basics for getting the "big tangible picture? ... "

The Art of the Focus (2): The AoW's Viewpoint

“In order to await the disordered; in tranquility awaits the clamorous. This is the way to control the mind.” -Art of War 7

“It is essential for the strategist to be tranquil and remote, upright and self-disciplined, and able to mystify the eyes and ears of his inner circle and the expeditors, keeping them ignorant. He alters his methods of affairs and changes his strategies to prevent others from recognizing them. He shifts his position and traverses circuitous routes to keep others from being able to anticipate him.” - Art of War 11 (paraphrased from the Sawyer's translation)

The Art of the Focus (1): The Basics of Strategy

How can one build or implement a strategy if he or she cannot stay focused?

How does one stay focused? Most of our associates practice various styles of internal martial arts to improve their concentration and to enhance their well being. Staying focused requires an incremental set of skills that takes a few hundreds hours to cultivate.

Performing the act of prioritization and looking at a worksheet of tasks/objectives do not always work. Negative emotional feelings and unanticipated interruption have a tendency of mis-focusing one's concentration and awareness.

Some of our associates recommended the practice of Taijiquan and other internal martial art systems (Yiquan, Aikido, etc.) as a way to stay focused.

To stay focused, the internal martial art systems emphasize the following three points:

• centering oneself to the ground;
• feeling relaxed, grounded, calm and whole; and finally
• extending oneself to a specific target point.

Every professional has their own set of tricks (or mind hacks) that enables him or her to stay focused while avoiding contentment.

What is in your mental tool box of tricks and hacks? What is your "staying focused" strategy?

One can find more information on the topic of internal martial arts at Cook Ding's kitchen, Smiling Tiger Martial Arts , Chinafrominside.com, The Wushucentre.net and emptyflower.net.

Competing in the Global Economy with Processes and Protocols

The origin of any "capital generating" intellectual property can be traced to an experienced team of expert-implementers who was supplied with a well-devised strategic set of experienced protocols.

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December 22, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Protocol Society
By DAVID BROOKS

In the 19th and 20th centuries we made stuff: corn and steel and trucks. Now, we make protocols: sets of instructions. A software program is a protocol for organizing information. A new drug is a protocol for organizing chemicals. Wal-Mart produces protocols for moving and marketing consumer goods. Even when you are buying a car, you are mostly paying for the knowledge embedded in its design, not the metal and glass.

A protocol economy has very different properties than a physical stuff economy. For example, you and I can’t use the same piece of metal at the same time. But you and I can use the same software program at the same time. Physical stuff is subject to the laws of scarcity: you can use up your timber. But it’s hard to use up a good idea. Prices for material goods tend toward equilibrium, depending on supply and demand. Equilibrium doesn’t really apply to the market for new ideas.

Over the past decades, many economists have sought to define the differences between the physical goods economy and the modern protocol economy. In 2000, Larry Summers, then the Treasury secretary, gave a speech called “The New Wealth of Nations,” laying out some principles. Leading work has been done by Douglass North of Washington University, Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago, Joel Mokyr of Northwestern and Paul Romer of Stanford.

Their research is the subject of an important new book called “From Poverty to Prosperity,” by Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz.

Kling and Schulz start off entertainingly by describing a food court. There are protocols everywhere, not only for how to make the food, but how to greet the customers, how to share common equipment like trays and tables, how to settle disputes between the stalls and enforce contracts with the management.

The success of an economy depends on its ability to invent and embrace new protocols. Kling and Schulz use North’s phrase “adaptive efficiency,” but they are really talking about how quickly a society can be infected by new ideas.

Protocols are intangible, so the traits needed to invent and absorb them are intangible, too. First, a nation has to have a good operating system: laws, regulations and property rights.

For example, if you are making steel, it costs a medium amount to make your first piece of steel and then a significant amount for each additional piece. If, on the other hand, you are making a new drug, it costs an incredible amount to invent your first pill. But then it’s nearly free to copy it millions of times. You’re only going to invest the money to make that first pill if you can have a temporary monopoly to sell the copies. So a nation has to find a way to protect intellectual property while still encouraging the flow of ideas.

Second, a nation has to have a good economic culture. “From Poverty to Prosperity” includes interviews with major economists, and it is striking how they are moving away from mathematical modeling and toward fields like sociology and anthropology.

What really matters, Edmund S. Phelps of Columbia argues, is economic culture — attitudes toward uncertainty, the willingness to exert leadership, the willingness to follow orders. A strong economy needs daring consumers (Phelps says China lacks this) and young researchers with money to play with (Romer notes that N.I.H. grants used to go to 35-year-olds but now they go to 50-year-olds).

A protocol economy tends toward inequality because some societies and subcultures have norms, attitudes and customs that increase the velocity of new recipes while other subcultures retard it. Some nations are blessed with self-reliant families, social trust and fairly enforced regulations, while others are cursed by distrust, corruption and fatalistic attitudes about the future. It is very hard to transfer the protocols of one culture onto those of another.

It’s exciting to see so many Nobel laureates taking this consilient approach. North, the leader of the field, doesn’t even think his work is economics, just unified social science.

But they are still economists, with worldviews that are still excessively individualistic and rationalistic. Kling and Schulz do not do a good job of explaining how innovation emerges. They list some banal character traits — charisma, passion — that entrepreneurs supposedly possess. To get a complete view of where the debate is headed, I’d read “From Poverty to Prosperity,” and then I’d read Richard Ogle’s 2007 book, “Smart World,” one of the most underappreciated books of the decade. Ogle applies the theory of networks and the philosophy of the extended mind (you have to read it) to show how real world innovation emerges from social clusters.

Economic change is fomenting intellectual change. When the economy was about stuff, economics resembled physics. When it’s about ideas, economics comes to resemble psychology.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/opinion/22brooks.html
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/opinion/22brooks.html

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The value of the protocols increases when the Compass Implementer devises his grand strategic process to do the following:

• Assess the grand picture;
• Position the team with the proper plan and the right protocols; and
• Influence the settings with the plan of protocols.

"Having paid heed to the advantages of my plans, the general must create situations which will contribute to their accomplishment. By 'situations' I mean that he should act expediently in accordance with what is advantageous and so control the balance. ... Therefore a skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates. ... He selects his men and they exploit the situation. ... He who relies on the situation uses his men in fighting as one rolls logs or stones. Now the nature of logs or stones is that on stable ground they are static; on unstable ground, they move. ... If square, they stop; if round, they roll. Thus, the potential of troops skillfully commanded in battle may be compared to that of round boulders which roll down from the mountain heights. " - Art of War, 1, 5 (Griffith translation)

Do you have a process that allows you to assess the grand picture, position your team with the proper plan and the right protocols and influence the settings with the implementation of your plan?

With our Compass AE strategic process, you can do all three.

Of course if you have any further questions, feel free to contact us.

Happy Holidays!