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Change Checkpoints and Improvement Milestones

Guest post by: Jim Clemmer

Article Overview: Many paths lead to higher performance. The high performance route is individual and unique for every person, team, and organization. There is no one or best way. What works for me, or anyone else, may not work for you. We can't follow someone else's path. We need to blaze our own trail.

Change Checkpoints and Improvement Milestones

"When you arrive at a fork in the road - take it." - Yogi Berra, major league baseball Hall of Fame player and coach Many paths lead to higher performance. The high performance route is individual and unique for every person, team, and organization. There is no one or best way. What works for me, or anyone else, may not work for you. We can't follow someone else's path. We need to blaze our own trail.

While no route is exactly the same, successful organization change and improvement efforts cover similar territory. Highly successful organizations have passed most of these change checkpoints and improvement milestones as they move toward ever-higher performance levels:

__ Clear and compelling reasons for changing and improving

__ Balanced focus on people, management, and technology

__ Strong ethic of self-determination

__ Comprehensive and balanced improvement model

__ Clear and compelling picture of our preferred future

__ Three or four core values

__ Definitive statement of purpose, business we're in, or why we exist

__ Rich and continuous customer/partner performance gap data

__ Intense exploring and searching for new markets and customers

__ High levels of experimentation, pilots, and clumsy tries

__ Robust process for disseminating team and organization learning

__ Three to four strategic imperatives for each annual improvement cycle

__ Direct links between all improvement activities and strategic imperatives

__ Comprehensive and balanced improvement plan

__ Improvement planning structure, process, and discipline

__ Well designed, proven approach to process management

__ Clarity on the preferred types and focus of all teams

__ Well trained team leaders and members

__ Intense levels of technical, management, and leadership skill development

__ Simple customer/partner, innovation, capabilities, improvement, and financial measurements

__ Active feedback loops that foster learning and improvement

__ Flat, decentralized, and team-based organization structure

__ Systems that serve and support customers and partners

__ Extensive and continuous education programs

__ Effective communication strategies, systems, and practices

__ Partner-designed reward and recognition programs within a vibrant appreciation culture

__ Strong development of change champions

__ Support for local initiatives

__ Annual progress reviews and improvement assessments

__ Frequent celebrations of major breakthroughs and small wins

__ Annual refocus and planning for the next year's improvement cycle

Management teams can use this list in a variety of ways. It could be a simple checklist for the development of improvement strategies and plan. They might have everyone on the team rate how well the organization and/or team is doing in each area now. Or they might have everyone rate the improvement urgency of each of these 31 areas. Another possibility is to have everyone do both rating exercises to provide performance gap data.

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Article Tags: business, leadership, management
Referred by: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com



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Re: Spellcheck? - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":2f894q6j]When discussing the majority of people I would definitely say that most people hit the "Change" or "Ignore" button without thinking too much about the correct spelling of a word. All bosses are concerned about is getting the report to the Directors meeting on time.[/quote:2f894q6j] That probably depends on what the "majority" are trying to accomplish. I have word set to alert me about misspellings and grammatical problems, so I fix most as I go. But I also add names etc to the dictionary because I get tired of seeing the red and green squiggles when I know the info is right. If you're only going to click "Change" or "Ignore" then why bother to take the time to use spell check????? Business people that I work for want the info compiled in a timely manner and they want it right - which is fine because that's the way I strive to do any project. Sending out a memo, letter, report etc with obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes makes the person and the company look bad as far as I'm concerned. Shri
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - Hi GT It is only fairly recently that people in South Africa have been able to get full use of Paypal as we were only able at one time to make payments but not receive them. Fortunately this has now changed. I have received money through Global X Change for one of the affiliate programs that I promote and have found them pretty good as the money is normally transferred directly into my bank account within 2-3 days and I have not had any problems with them. MichelleJ
Re: Obama Wants Social Security for Illegals - [quote="Alan Mater":3kaa8sg4] Obama WILL make changes... but they're not the changes we as a country need or should look forward to.[/quote:3kaa8sg4] Sad but this is exactly how I feel about it. Change is coming - but unless I'm really wrong, it is not a change this country needs. Amazing how much a good speaker with a good speech writer can do. If you paid attention to the things he said "off script" - much of it is frightening. Chris
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You are too young - I don't really believe (I've been into web designing for 7 years now... I started in 2000) there is any web design laws. Besides the fact that you can't use copyrighted images on web design without permission from the original author. Also, any web designs you do you may want to have it copyrighted so other's can't steal your idea's or whatever... of course, you can offer a "Copyright Change" option for a bit more money that will allow you to be able to transfer the copyrights and give exclusive rights to the purchaser. All in all, don't worry about the laws... you should be fine, just remember that if your in the U.S. that if your making over $400 (or maybe its $600) in revenue, you'll have to pay taxes to the government... and please get a LLC, although its not a big thing with web designs, you could get into legal trouble somewhere in the business. Lastly, use contracts for when your selling or use agreements to clear the air so that you can have a safe business and you'll have some backing up if you ever are taken to court.


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