The Stratam Group: Process Excellence

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Process Excellence

When to call for Process Excellence:

A merger or acquisition has left multiple ways of doing things and coordination has
gotten worse.

The company wants to compete on speed of innovation but processes all take longer
than expected.

Projects continue to cost more or suffer more delays than expected.

Frustration and distrust are dominant aspects of relations between disciplines, functions,
or regions.

Customers (internal or external) continue to complain about the same things; perhaps
you've gotten quicker at responding but the core problem remains illusive or embedded.

What we do

We conceive of processes in the broadest possible sense: how people coordinate action to fulfill the purposes of the enterprise. At the heart of our approach is identifying the network of commitments that link individuals, groups, and functions, and focusing and simplifying interactions to produce greater outcomes with less effort.

We map your current network of commitments.

We work with your teams to redesign the networks so that promises people make to each
other execute the new strategy.

We work with teams to establish new strategically oriented measures of fulfillment.

We coach managers and staff through new meetings for making requests and promises,
reviewing projects, and making key decisions.

We look at communication and coordination systems to make sure they are managing
what they should be managing, rather than generating information overload.

Our method produces deep results surprisingly quickly. At a major automaker, we reduced cycle time for service delivery by over 73% in less than three months. Our approach also produces continuous improvement by providing customer feedback at every important process interface.

“In 2002, we embarked on a new, innovative strategy to reduce the costs of producing hydro plants. The strategy required a major change of our company, in processes, tools, and even culture. Chris Davis and his team led the work for changing processes and culture. Over the next year, Chris and Charles Follett led teams involving experts from all our major global centers to design the most efficient, customer-centric processes in the industry—all based on networks of interconnected commitments. They trained our experts to mobilize these new processes and to introduce a commitment-based style of work. The results of our strategic initiative have been outstanding."
—
—Hubert Lienhard
—President
—Voith Siemens Hydro