You've probably heard these two, seemingly contradictory sayings: "God is in the details" and the "Devil is in the details." Guess what - both are right! You see, it's the details - the little things - that often make all the difference. This is especially the case for businesses. It's those "minor" details that all add up to create a either a positive or negative customer experience... a quality or inferior product... and a successful or failing business. What this means is that getting the minor details right - by systemizing them - is crucial to business success... so that God (not the Devil) ends up in the details! In order to understand what impacts on business performance, it's necessary to understand how each component of a given business fits together. What processes deliver which outcomes... and what outcomes affect which processes... and so on. The best way to gain an understanding of how each part of a business interrelates with another is to prepare a Cashmap - a process map which documents a particular process or system. Then, by viewing the organization in terms of its inherent hierarchical nature, you can decompose top-level organizational objectives to lower levels of the business system (both process decomposition and organizational structure). The upshot is that both the "minor" and the "major" systems will be aligned and the company will be able to achieve better overall results. To explain how this works in practice, consider a coffee shop. A "major" system might relate to the coffee shop's marketing strategy, or how it hires staff, or the environment of the shop. A "minor" system might be the temperature of the coffee served to each customer. You can probably see already how a minor system like consistently ensuring an optimal coffee temperature may have a major impact on the success of the business. Customers won't return to the coffee shop if they can't be certain that their coffee will be hot - but not too hot - each time they visit. But this minor system doesn't exist in a vacuum. Among other things, it's impacted by such other systems as: 1. The hiring of staff (you want to hire people who care about customer service and making a superb cup of coffee); 2. The coffee machine(s) used to make the coffee; and 3. The marketing strategies designed to attract and raise certain expectations among customers about the quality of the coffee served in the shop. So, in order to ensure that the coffee temperature is just right, it's not just a matter of heating the water to boiling point. There are a range of other, equally important systems that will all contribute to whether or not the coffee ends up at a temperature that consistently attracts and retains customers. So... what seemingly minor or major systems are crucial to your business success? By preparing a Cashmap you'll gain a powerful understanding of how the systems of your business interact and affect each other. You'll then be able to see how, in order to achieve the specific outcomes you want (whether it's coffee at a certain temperature, or whatever result applies in your business!) you'll need to align a number of interrelated systems.
Please Rate this Article 5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
