EON Blog

“Hey, we’re starting the Operational Excellence initiative, and you’ve been identified as a stakeholder!”

“We are getting ready to deploy our Operational Excellence initiative…but struggling to define the resources needed for success.”

Resource planning is central to any operational excellence deployment path.  It must occur at the point at which the work begins to translate from a conceptual to a tactical focus. A good resource plan will consider at least three factors: the number of resources required, the competency and experience of the resources, and the resource deployment strategy.

Ideally, your company meetings offer an opportunity for a valuable exchange of ideas between leaders and employees, with plenty of time to discuss the issues that are impeding the company's progress and lots of actionable suggestions that will resolve these problems quickly and efficiently. 

In operational excellence, and in life, setting a goal without fully understanding its scope can turn a project into a frustrating effort to deliver the impossible. Think of these examples:

You can’t just wake up in the morning and “do” operational excellence. Attempting sustained continuous improvement should follow a structured process of deciding “what” and “how” to focus efforts on prioritized problems and opportunities and invest in training workers. Choosing methodology offers many choices. Like any process, deciding on an operational excellence methodology can follow a standard work process. 

We're excited to announce our upcoming webinar, "How to Run Effective Meetings with EON." We'll discuss the different ways that EON users can make planning and managing three common types of meetings easier, more insightful and actionable by using EON. 

I’ve got a job for you. Drive my car from Key West, Florida, to Portland, Oregon. You must:

1. Do this work as fast as possible
2. Don’t waste time
3. Stay safe
4. Don’t break any laws

By the way, my car doesn’t have a dashboard; only a steering wheel, gas and brake peddles, a clutch, and manual shift. Good Luck.

The acronym SMART has been around for decades, helping people to move from pie-in-the-sky goals to practical objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Using this mnemonic as a “hack” when setting goals and metrics can be quite helpful. However, the process of defining and deploying goals includes much more than simply being SMART.

Sun Tzu, who lived more than 2,500 years ago, is credited with formulating The Art of War, a detailed documentation of strategy and tactics that has influenced military generals from ancient Chinese battles to modern warfare. In recent decades, business leaders have referred to this text because its guidance for winning on the field of battle can also be applied to winning in the marketplace.

A vision statement sets the stage for operations and aspirations by defining a long-term goal of what an organization wants to be and how it wants to be perceived.