CPM and Innovation

Failing to understand and embrace change and innovation can be costly. Did you know that the WSJ reports that over 20 companies were removed from the S&P 500 index in this past decade? What happened? They failed to innovate on one level or another.

IBM CEO Study Reveals the “Change Gap”: One of the most comprehensive CEO global surveys by IBM in late 2009, of over 1,000 leaders of the largest global enterprises, revealed the following astounding insights:

• Organizations are bombarded by change, and many are struggling to keep up.

• Eight out of ten CEOs sees significant change ahead, and yet the gap between expected change and the ability to manage it has almost tripled since the prior year CEO Study.

• CEOs view more demanding customers not as a threat, but as an opportunity to differentiate. CEOs are spending more to attract and retain increasingly prosperous, informed, and socially aware customers.

• Nearly all CEOs are adapting their business models; two-thirds are implementing extensive innovations.

• More than 40 percent are changing their enterprise models to be more collaborative.

Research into several award-winning companies that are thriving in this down economy reveal that they have been innovating their CPM practices. A few examples: more

What goes into measure selection and design? How do you know you have the right measures? Have you considered the law of unintended consequences? So often I receive calls from companies that started with a viable strategy only to have the measure drive the wrong results. How does this happen? Maybe we call this segment “When bad things happen to good strategies”? more

What do you do when your Balanced Scorecard/Dashboard light is red? Most companies react by scrambling a team, with good intentions, to fix the issue but fail to realize appropriate results. Has your Chief Performance Officer evaluated the right improvement tools? How many methods does your company use: one, two, or many? more

I am sure most of us have played Scrabble when an unsavory opponent proposes a blatant “made up” word that is worth 100 points. We smile with comfort that the rules or “order” say No, Not so fast, let’s consult the dictionary. What about today’s real world? Who took my dictionary, as the analogy goes?

Is your company finding it hard to make decisions in light of the current imbalance between order and disorder? A simple description of “order” exists when contracts, agreements, and partnerships are predictable and honored by their respective parties. An equally simple description of “dis-order” is when those basic business principles are broken. Today, is DIS-ORDER trumping ORDER? Yes. more

How do you identify underperforming areas in your organization? How do you address underperformance? Do you have a business improvement toolbox with a disciplined problem-solving approach? How do you prioritize projects to drive improvements?

These are just a few questions that the CPM officer and office deal with on a daily basis. Let’s touch on a few. more