The Management 2.0 book foreword provides a perspective of the value of the business management system described in the book.
Management 2.0 Book Foreword
The management 2.0 book foreword to Management 2.0: Discovery of Integrated Enterprise Excellence is:
A friend, who is a finance executive at a semiconductor company, told me he was involved with a cost-cutting initiative handed down from upper management. My friend’s functional area of the business was a fabrication (fab) line at a plant in Texas. An examination of operating expenses showed a significant expenditure for air conditioning, especially in the summer. The building’s current air conditioner setting was 71.3 degrees Fahrenheit. My friend asked the plant engineers about raising the temperature a couple of degrees to save some money. The plant engineers immediately called a meeting and showed him yield curves; for every 0.1 Fahrenheit degree of change, there would be a drop in yield at the factory. The cost of the yield drop would far exceed the savings in air conditioning costs. It is not unusual for semiconductor fabs to understand their processes that well, with this degree of precision.
Well, it turns out that there are tools for your business that can deliver real insights into precisely what your processes can provide, even if your business is distant from semiconductor fabrication. Organizations that can benefit from these business tools include healthcare, manufacturing, services companies, and virtually any other for-profit or non-profit organization, including school districts and government agencies.
You used tools your whole life; tools have enabled you to do things better or even allowed results that would be otherwise impossible. You used tools in your home shop and your professional career. Sometimes tools are physical things; other times, they are software-based.
Yet, many executives who have risen to their level often lead their organizations based on what others have done, and lots of digging through data and reports to try to figure out what is really happening in their business. When the inevitable frustrations set in, firefighting occurs, the pressure increases, and results are tentative at best. The core of the problem is the lack of practical tools for executives to understand the underlying capabilities of their processes and the steps needed to improve those processes.
Forrest Breyfogle, with his Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) system, provides the tools every executive needs. Forrest has spent the better part of his career studying how business processes operate and which tools and techniques work and the limitations of each. He now offers a structured approach for use company-wide to identify and drive actions that get results. In this book, he introduces these concepts in a novel format. Four golfing buddies share insights from their respective industries and from the issues they face. This book is written with a backdrop of golf to increase the understanding of IEE concepts and benefits from the methodology. This book presentation approach lets Forrest weave in IEE concepts, also showing how lesser techniques fail executives.
So why not just publish a book that details these IEE techniques? Well, Forrest Breyfogle has written that book and several books on various aspects of the topic. The first book, initially released in 1999, Implementing Six Sigma, is considered by many a definitive book on the implementation of Lean Six Sigma concepts and is used as a textbook in many universities. Several other later published books provide the details of implementing IEE. However, this book is needed because too many executives don’t understand that they require tools to run their organizations.
Executives may think that current management tools like red-yellow-green scorecards are sufficient, but these tools can lead to harmful consequences. Conversely, to produce the best results, one should have advanced tools and skills and know-how to use them appropriately and with precision. That brings the challenge of educating many top executives about these tools in an accessible way. This book fulfills the need by first presenting business challenges from different industries that every executive can identify with. He then illustrates associated frustrations from ineffective tools and their poor results. Forrest follows by demonstrating how to achieve success through the IEE Business Management System.
I have worked at two companies two decades apart, where each set a record for the fastest growth in the Fortune 500. Both were primarily engineering- and manufacturing-focused at the time. Many of the top performers started as engineers before they advanced to upper management. What became a common occurrence was that these engineers, masters of rigorous technique and expert users of tools, wanted to wing it as managers. Many of these managers failed in their new roles – they had been up-and-comers as they advanced through the technical-skill ranks but petered out when they went into management. These people were just as smart after promotion as they were before. The problem was that there was not a clearly defined set of tools for these new managers to use to analyze processes and lead their teams.
This book is that vehicle to help many in an organization understand that they need to use the right tools to improve their area of responsibility, just as they used the most effective tools when they started their careers.
For leaders such as CEOs, General Managers, Senior VPs, and Division Heads in any organization, the tools described in this book bring clarity and mechanisms to drive the right, efficient, improvement behavior to their core processes.
Once you’ve studied this book, in written or audio form, you will want to share it to help others understand and get excited about how IEE techniques can improve their company’s performance while lowering the stresses from firefighting and unsatisfactory results.
Imagine thoroughly understanding what your processes are capable of, and the steps needed to address process improvement. Imagine knowing that if your people present this information to you, it means that they are productively involved with analyzing and improving processes. You will have a company that regularly improves, can see those results in real gains, and has operational productivity. And as a leader, you’ll develop a culture based on objective analytics and tangible results.
IEE is the system that you need, providing the tools that get results. Enjoy this book (Management 2.0: Discovery of Integrated Enterprise Excellence) and share it with your friends and colleagues.
Bob Ashenbrenner,President, Durable Mobility Technologies, LLC
Management 2.0 Book Purchase
Management 2.0: Discovery of Integrated Enterprise Excellence is available in several formats.