Personal business value at the activity level.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few weeks as France's key public infrastructure systematically goes on strike. It's more concerning to see what is happening in the Middle East, as Pakistan looms on civil war, but this is not a political blog. It does show the importance of contingency planning and tying personal value to workers activities. Companies need to map job related activities to the importance and alignment to a companies mission and vision statements. I can't say it will prevent a country wide strike or civil war, it will create good will and increase worker productivity. It will go along way in building a stronger foundation if each activity is directly mapped to success.

In France, the waves that are planned on Nov. 13, 14, and 20th, are in the transport, energy and even the civil servants are planning a work stoppage.

The fundamental reason for this is worker angst, there is no personal value match to activities and worker discontent sits in. The affects could be as small as worker productivity for a few idle minutes, or it could be company or country widespread as in the case of France. The ability to measure, requires a plan at the activity level.

Bottom Line: Define at the activity level success factors. Articulate where and how that activity aligns to company mission and vision. Reward behavior that drives unproductive means out from every employee and activity they do.

Simple as ABC, if you dont compete you can't win!

Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is used to identify functional process activities, describe that process in regards to where it fits into the overall business objectives and it’s alignment to goals, mission and company vision. It is a more accurate management system than traditional cost accounting. Although hard to attain because of a lack of standards and metrics, ABC is more valuable because it identifies opportunities to improve business process effectiveness and efficiency by determining the "true" cost of a product or service. The key differentiation and silver bullet is that it must be mapped to corporate performance goals and be used as an initiative generator to fuel top line savings and bottom line growth.

Bottom line; You can’t cost if you don’t measure. If you don’t measure you can’t change. If you don’t change you can’t compete.

Getting more with more. The IT funding quagmire.

According to recent research, it is clear that World Class Companies spend more on IT than their peers. To build the case for an increase in IT funding, CIO's need to focus on developing their organization's key strengths . There are six key areas that should be considered:

Product Innovation
Project prioritization
Operational excellence
Brand mastery
Customer intimacy
Business strategy alignment
Aggressively outsource non-core functions.

IT investments should align to one of those disciplines. CIO's need to stop and inventory current practices to avoid wasting money on maintaining functions that are not core competencies. An increasing number of companies are asking third parties to take on tasks such as finance, human resources or indirect purchasing. I don't think there is anyone that can say that the accounts payable function delivers a competitive advantage. Taking out non-productive projects, programs and activities will enable self-funding improvements in the future.