Rose Tania Heathcote

Clear Direction: Drive the Right Change in the Right Way Rose Tania Heathcote

The journey to Operational Excellence is a not a challenge for the feint hearted and can deter even the bravest of organisations from achieving their true potential. To be a world-class, sustainable enterprise means becoming the best at what you do and delivering value to your customers and shareholders. Clear Direction is the first book in the 5P Series and provides a practical road map, based on years of consulting experience in the developing world, which will smooth the ride of your improvement journey and significantly increase your chances of success. It will guide you step-by-step through: o Diagnosing the issues facing your business, deciding what to solve and how to go about it o Articulating the issues and engaging people to help you solve them o Driving the change to get the right things done in the right way It contains the theory, templates, examples and assessments you will use to create your own Clear Direction and bring Purpose to your Improvement Strategy. The chapters included in this book cover similar topics to many of the books available on the subject of Operational Excellence. The principles are not new, and the author fervently believes in going back to basics and respecting first principles provided by the thought leaders of today and past generations. The key differentiator of this book, however, is how these existing philosophies, systems, tools, techniques and methods have been packaged into a management system and presented as a 'how-to guide' for you, the reader. It is a time-consuming process to digest the plethora of material out there in Operational Excellence, in order to define your own 'road map', and it is the goal of this series to demystify this process for you, by clearly and concisely offering the following: 1. To illustrate a path to Operational Excellence that has been tried and tested in developing and emerging markets. Although the book was completed in 2010, the author has spent the past four years (and several years prior to this) successfully testing the approach in Africa and the Middle East to prove it worthy of publication and appropriate to developing or newly industrialised nations. 2. Many of the books available on the subject, document tools, methods, case studies and even diagnostic assessments, which although enlightening, still leave the reader unsatisfied as they do not necessarily provide the structured guidance that many organisations are looking for. The 5P series takes the reader much further, offering sequence, content, purpose, examples and guided steps to follow, steering clear of a one-size-fits-all approach. The books provide specific information to create your own customised, standardised road map to excellence, by homing in on those techniques that will make a significant impact to the business. Very few consultants share the subtle tricks of the trade. Follow the steps and you will see an immediate outcome. 3. Many improvement publications tend to specialise to one particular approach or philosophy. Admittedly, the author has traditionally been 'Lean-heavy' in her own approach, however, in this series, she deliberately focuses on creating a well-balanced style that integrates using the right tool for the job, depending on the particular problem being tackled. The theme of the series of books falls under the banner of Operational Excellence and uses the principles of Lean Thinking coupled with important concepts from Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints and Best Practice that cannot be ignored. By adding the rest of the series to your collection, you start to see the Management System for Operational Excellence emerge. Browse through the content, and start creating your own structured improvement journey.