Metrics that Matter: Ensuring Your KPIs Truly Align with and Support Your Strategic Objectives
No matter your industry, key performance indicators (KPIs) have become the lifeblood of organizational decision-making. Leaders at all levels rely on these quantifiable metrics to track progress, identify areas for improvement, and ultimately drive their companies toward their strategic goals and objectives. But all too often, the KPIs that organizations choose to focus on fail […]
Connecting the Dots: 5 Practical Strategies for Cascading Your Strategic Vision Throughout the Organization
The disconnect between strategy and execution can be the Achilles’ heel of even the most well-conceived plans. Without a clear line of sight between the overarching vision and the specific actions taken by each individual contributor, sustainable success becomes elusive. As business leaders, we pour significant energy into crafting strategic visions—analyzing market trends, defining competitive […]
Bridging the Gap: Aligning Strategy, Metrics, and Daily Actions for Sustainable Success
As business leaders, we’re all familiar with the importance of having a clear, well-defined strategy. It’s the roadmap that guides our decision-making, resource allocation, and long-term vision for the organization. But too often, we find that strategy and execution exist in separate silos, with a significant gap between the lofty goals we set at the […]
Operational Metrics and KPIs: Guiding Success in Buy and Sell Decisions
In a perfect world, a deep dive into the financials of a potential acquisition would be enough to determine whether you should make an offer. Unfortunately, this isn’t a perfect world. So, while considering the financials of a company during the lead up to acquisition is important, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Attractive profit […]
Visual Management Control Systems & the Power of Keeping Score
Back in my days as a site lead in manufacturing, I had an operator who made a common problem all too clear to me. At the end of the shift, I asked him how his day had gone. “It was a great day,” he said. “Well, that’s good,” I said, then asked him what made […]
A Symphony of Success: Linking KPIs to Strategy in Manufacturing
As a strategic planning expert, I’ve seen firsthand how the right KPIs can help manufacturing companies achieve their goals. When KPIs are aligned with strategy, they can provide a clear roadmap for success. They can also help to identify areas for improvement and track progress over time. The Symphony of Strategy and Metrics I […]
Surviving the Tsunami of Labor Shortages
Competitive Business Solutions has years of hands-on skills identifying performance issues like labor shortages and other challenges facing companies today. The Key to success in many cases is a lean and sustainable operating system that gives the management team new skills to successfully operate the company.
Businesses Need to Start Benchmarking Like Sports Teams
Toyota and Danaher are just a couple of companies that are held up as examples of world-class operating systems and best-in-class lean organizations. While there is much to learn from these companies, I contend business can learn as much by benchmarking good sports teams. In fact, most average sports teams have exceeded some of the […]
Bottom-up Metrics Approach
SOLUTION AREA: Operational Excellence, Leadership and Change Management, Acquisitions and Integration
As companies move forward with strategic planning, we often find disconnects between their goals, the actions or plans to achieve those goals, and the metrics used for tracking the performance of those actions.