Following the drama and political horseplay of the World Economic forum in Davos, the Global Risks 2012 Insight Report has been published. It highlights the main global risk indicators for 2012, but the real question to ponder is “How ready is your organisation to deal with the challenges and opportunities arising from Global Risks 2012 and beyond.”
History has shown us that many organisations tend to be reactive, rather than proactive to global shifts in economic, political, technological and financial change. Organisations need to be in a position to anticipate, prepare, absorb and future-proof against any adverse consequences, or indeed leverage opportunities arising from the current turmoil. Creation of a robust Target Operating Model or Operating strategy will provide this platform and should be high on any executives ‘to do’ list as a critical piece of strategic thinking to ensure competitive advantage, or simply survival, is maintained.
In both the developed and developing world where pace of change is happening at an exponential rate, identifying vulnerabilities and required interventions in your organisation could put you ahead of your competitors and create an operating design framework that ensures your organisation can respond in the best interests of your customers and colleagues.
At its most basic level, the creation of a simple, tangible view of your organisation across People, Process, Technology and Data is a critical starting point. A classic example is where companies will organise their location strategy, sourcing and supply chain models to be flexible enough to enable shift in supply, in response to political and economic change and unfortunately areas at high risk of natural disaster.
Any manager or executive involved in these sorts of decisions should fundamentally be asking themselves the following questions about their organisations in line with identified global risks:
– Who performs operational activities?
– What business activities are performed?
– Where are activities performed and people located?
– How are activities performed?
Assessing and agreeing, or ‘setting the’ vision’, how you want your business to operate is the foundation for every decision you should make as an organisation. The definition of your own organisation’s strapline, “what will you be doing differently tomorrow, that you are not doing today?” is a fundamental step in the overall process.
Carrying out a simple mapping of your People, Process, Technology and Data against the global risks is the first step to ensuring you define what and how you want your organisation to respond to change.
The following is a useful design framework to help your organisation future proof against global risks:
· Conduct an analysis of your current operating model to identify existing operational strengths, weaknesses and opportunities.
· The future operating model design needs to meet business requirements and critical success criteria.
· Gap analysis of the current and future operating model identifies the way forward: key stepping stones and impacts on people, process and technology.
· A delivery roadmap will define timelines, resource requirements, benefits and costs from this gap analysis to manage business, IT stakeholders and shareholders.
· Always keep in mind the “big picture”. It provides a common language for programme members and stakeholders to ensure everyone is working towards the same end point.
· Delivery and benefit ownership should be assigned per operating model component.
For more information contact Baringa Partners.
Posted by Justin Miles on the 17th of February 2012
