Operational Leadership

A critical fact is not information. Information can be ignored. To make sure a critical fact is not lost in a river of information, it must bite. Design systems that deliver information that has teeth!
From a presentation by Jim Collins – Co-Author of Built to Last and Author of From Good to Great

Every time I work with, or lead a team looking at an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation, a Decision Support System (DSS), a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, or an executive team implementing a Balanced Score Card, Dashboard, or Critical Success Factors measurement program I bring this quote out. This is probably the best soundbite anyone has ever given me when it comes to designing effective information systems for managing operations.

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Special People

When I am engaged in a turnaround, either as a consultant or interim-executive, people ask me why I almost always bring in two “outsiders” to help me out and what their delegated level of authority and responsibility is or should be.  Since one commitment of a good operating executive is to communicate things as soon as they come to his or her attention, and one of the core values of any good operation should be Clarity (see The five Temptations of a CEO), I thought I would explain the role of two special people:  the Organizational Consultant (OC) and the Communications Consultant (CC).

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