The Power of Strategic Operations

GBlackwell

Developing a strategic operation plan is essential to ensure
a valued delivery of any product or service. 
If you believe that valued quality can occur without purposeful intent,
then you may also believe that a dictionary can be created by randomly
generating characters.  
An organization must develop a broad set of policies and procedures
firm to produce the maximum value from all resources of a firm.  The policies and procedures must also align
with the business’ long-term mission.  
Policies extend corporate decisions to staff members that do
not possess the authority to make corporate decisions.  With policies integrated in its operations, a
company can speed and improve responses for internal and external customers by preemptively
extending decisions to lower-level employees. 
With a parallel purpose, Procedures document optimal methods that
produce a specific result.  While
Policies and Procedures differ slightly, both predetermine effective actions to
produce the greatest amount of value.
The challenge, especially for young, rapidly-evolving
start-ups, is the constant change of internal and environmental factors.  However, change does not excuse the need for
structure.  Change actually supports the need
for structure.  While policies and
procedures are documented, both should continuously adapt to organizational
change, customer demands, and learned knowledge.  I refer to this concept as “Agile-Structure”.  Another common term is “Best Practices”.
Regardless of the term, operations must not allow their
policies and procedures to become unyielding routines, dictated by inaccessible
executives.  Instead this structure
should become a technique to produce value more effectively than simply performing
in an ad-hoc manner.  Organizations must
be adaptive, listening actively to their employees, investors, clients, vendors,
and the community.  With well tuned and
applied policies and procedures, a company can increase the value and quality
of its products and services.







Gordon Blackwell




Technology &
Entrepreneurial Evangelist



Raleigh, NC


"Some see things
and ask Why...  


I dream and ask Why
Not..."


Author
Unknown


 










GBlackwell1/23/2009 8:57 AM