Keith McCaughin

My Consulting Secrets Keith McCaughin

Our resources are finite unless sustainable. Our enterprises must therefore evolve from control and exploitation of resources to sustainability and stewardship. What happened to customer service? It is completely lost when management delegates it to a kluge of impersonal computers off-shored to 'customer service representatives' who know only platitudes spewed from those computers. Can we get any farther away from customer service? Do we even recognize customers as stakeholder in our enterprises?
I have defined a complete set of stakeholders and their influences on any enterprise in its transactional environment. The transactional environment is made up of all parties to the transfer of information, goods, services or funds within the enterprise. The transactional environment includes eight stakeholder types, either organizations or individuals who affect and are influenced by the enterprise. These eight stakeholder types: are:
Stewards: Seek maximum control to realize their vision for the enterprise whether fame, fortune, service, etc. If enlightened, they are concerned with balancing all other forces for the good of the enterprise and its stakeholders. Collaborators: Seek maximum return in common interests while guiding the enterprise in the form alliances with the enterprises. Customers: Seek maximum value from purchasing products or services with the greatest usefulness at the lowest prices. Public: Seek maximum value and autonomy from the enterprise to share in a better quality of life with little or no cost. Workers: Seek maximum autonomy from the control of the enterprise to pursue their own goals as well as the goals of the enterprise. Competitors: Seek maximum autonomy from the enterprise while gaining value by appropriating the organizations market, customers, employees and proprietary secrets. Suppliers: Seek maximum return for their products or services. Regulators: Seek maximum control to gain compliance with laws or policies while seeking return through levying taxes and/or fines. This applies to government organizations but also to non-government organizations with policy and standards authority such as industry and trade associations.
The rules of the schema derived from Ackoff's Control Function and Porter's Value Chain are: Control: The system-control function that is necessary and sufficient for subsequent behavior of the enterprise or its members. Autonomy: - Freedom to act in ways that are not always predictable. Return: - Return on investment or margin, the remainder of selling price less production costs. Value - Fitness for the intended purpose that is greater than the price of acquisition.
Therefore, I propose five steps to help steward any enterprise: Assess Stakeholder EnvironmentBuild Win/Win Strategies for Stakeholder StewardshipOrganize Internal Stakeholders for Stakeholder StewardshipPlan an Interactive Organization, andLearn and Adapt as the Enterprise EvolvesYour enterprise can begin to realize the benefits of implementing the proposed five steps to stewarding the Enterprise in as little as two weeks. The subsequent steps take progressively longer but yield additional or increased benefits. This allows the subject enterprise to evaluate each step as the implementation proceeds and decide whether or not to continue without losing any of the benefits of completed steps. In short the risk to reward ratio is greatly in favor of reward with very little risk.