Understanding the purpose and the needs of an organization is critical in order to raise the acceptance of a transformation project. Who we are and what we do affects all what defines a company, it represents the first building block of the organizational DNA.

Some triggering questions might be:  Why does your company exist? What benefits do you or would you like to generate for your customers? What would you like to offer to your customers? Which 'dreams' do you like to fulfill for your customers?

Core competencies are what give a company one or more competitive advantages, in creating and delivering value to your customers in your chosen fields. The company's core competencies represent the second building block of the organizational DNA and supports your company's purpose. 

Triggering questions might be: What is the organizational “Super Power” your are using? Which are the outstanding capabilities, products, skills you have within your organization? Which skills, products or services are you offering that help your customers get either a functional, social, or emotional job done, or help him/her satisfy needs?

Developing and aligning a "True North", your vision, ensures all teams and every team member is focused on the mission and goals of the organization. It is impossible to compete with the world’s best teams unless those are aligned and energy is focused. Your people want to feel motivated, involved and engaged about coming to work, because what they do matters. "Ambition should be made of sterner stuff" - Shakespeare in Julius Caesar.  

The Destination Postcard should be crystal clear, it’s concrete, so it can be seen in all employees heads and it’s motivational: people can understand why it’s a destination worth chasing.

Some triggering questions: Where would we like to be in 1- 3 years from now? How does success look like? How can we visualize our Destination Postcard? What are the forces which may drive against us?

It's not just about making a good plan: you must execute your strategy in an effective and efficient way in order to keep your organization competitive and viable. One can attack all kinds of problems at the same time. Or else, we can find out the minimal effective dose necessary which will improve the overall success and so focusing efforts on the high leverage points. By focusing improvement activities on the constraints you will save a lot of energy and unnecessary effort. The key to success lies in engaging the whole organization from bottom to top and gaining consensus on a select number of goals and breakthrough projects. By aligning strategies within your organization and putting focus on what really matters, more transparency is created in both communication and employee motivation. 

Triggering questions might be: How do we achieve the vision and the targets? How are targets and improvements broken down into the organization? How is the company dealing with challenges? How do we achieve horizontal, vertical, cross-functional, bottom-up alignment? 

Products and services for customers are not produced by functions, but rather by processes which tend to cross function lines, transforming value across departments. High process capabilities are the key leverage points in order to consistently  deliver high quality service at a constant rate for customers. Often we find companies reviewing, analyzing and improving their processes every decade, and soon they find those processes obsolete and mismatched to evolving technologies, regulatory and market conditions. In a fast changing environment, improving processes are the corner stone of a successful strategy execution. Understanding your processes and their interactions within the system and their impact on the effectiveness and the efficiency of your organization allows to evaluate the highest leverage points. This will help to focus process improvement activities on the constraints that directly impact global performance, the return on investment for these efforts is necessarily higher. Concentrate on the 1% of the system that determines 99% of its performance.

Triggering questions might be: What are your key delivery processes which are adding value for your customers? Which are your key support processes? How much waste is in the processes?  How good is the service? How does value flow through your organization? What are the adding value steps?

Most organizations today are organized and measured by department and member contributions to “functions, divide work between managers and workers, a very old organizational form promoted by Frederick Winslow Taylor more than 100 years ago. Work in most companies is organized the way the organization chart is set up. Executive leaders may operate as a team but are focused, individually, on the management of functions. Managers think vertically to optimize their area, department, or function. Strategic priorities are translated into function goals and objectives. And so improvements are prioritized and addressed within department processes and competencies. This way horizontal flow of value to customer easily gets lost. We believe that such organizational forms in today’s turbulent times have serious consequences: loss of responsibility, transparency and productivity. 

Triggering questions: Is the current organizational setup able to sustain the core processes? Is the customer and the value added processes in the center of an organizations attention? Are the teams supporting the value chain set up with largest possible autonomy, able to maintain their own existence? 

To make employees feel completely involved in the organization, "satisfaction" with the workplace alone is not enough. An employee who is satisfied with his salary is not necessarily fully supporting the organizational goals. Satisfaction can be connected to passivity - employees can be satisfied and yet still be indifferent. The stronger the engagement, the more likely the employee will act in the interests of the employer. And the more engaged employees are, the more productive the organization will be. Leaders must therefore actively involve the people most affected by the change in its implementation, from bottom to top. This will help ensure employees at all levels of the organization embrace the proposed changes.

Some triggering questions might be: Who are the “right“ employees that can drive and sustain a transformation? What and when is the best way of involving and engaging employees? Who are the key employees to kick-start a project? What is the training level? Do managers work on the systems and processes or do they think in function?

A control system is necessary in any organization in which the activities of different divisions, departments, sections, people and so on need to be coordinated and managed. Most management and control systems are past-action-oriented and consequently are inefficient or fail. For example, there is little an employee can do today to correct the results of actions completed two weeks ago. Few organizations realize that a company plan must provide the framework for the company control system. If missions, goals, strategies, objectives, and plans change, then controls should change. Unfortunately, they seldom do. Although this error occurs at the top, repercussions are felt at all levels. Often, too, the standards of the control systems are derived from previous years budgets rather than from current objectives of company plans The result is that employees at lower levels are simply given "numbers to make" based on factors of which they have little knowledge and over which they have practically no influence.

Some triggering questions might be: How do we measure success? How is this linked to the shop floor? How often do we measure? Doe we have more leading or lagging indicators? How can we make low-cost and very ingenious visualizations? How is it embedded in our PDCA cycle? How often do we meet to review and take actions? How strong are those  controls? What tools are we you using?