It is now 2023 and yet many organisations are still hampered by archaic, stupid and ill-conceived processes. My top six to change would be:

  1. Ascertaining and communicating your organisation’s critical success factors. But David I hear you say, “I know these“. No you do not. Only when these five to eight statements are on a wall of every workplace and every home office are they known. You just have your version. This means you will be travelling in your chosen direction invariably inconsistent with the organisation’s direction of travel. Sorry, there is good news however. My ‘Finding Your Organization’s Critical Success Factors – Toolkit ‘ (PDF whitepaper 115 pages+ electronic templates) will guide you through a step-by-step process.
  2. Ascertaining your organisation’s winning KPIs. Trust me you most likely do not have these. I bet every measure, no matter how meaningless is called a KPI. Right? I developed 7 criteria for a KPI and my ‘KPI Toolkit ‘ (PDF whitepaper 180 pages+ electronic templates) will explain these and guide you through a journey of enlightenment and a step-by-step way forward.
  3. Taking reporting into the 21st century. Well thought through ‘one screen’ reports, with graphics that conform with data visualisation better practise. Board papers that are succinct and prepared using a board reporting tool between 4 to 6 times a year. These being ready within three weeks of relevant month-end. A ‘one screen’ finance report available to the CEO by Day three of following month. My ‘How to write a report that people read and leads to a “Yes”- guidelines, rules, and E-templates to get your report over the line‘ toolkit will guide you through a step-by-step process.
  4. Killing off the annual planning process and any incentive scheme attached to it. The annual planning process is flawed in four main ways. It takes too long and costs too much. It does not help run the business as it is out of date as soon as the ink has dried. It leads to dysfunctional behaviour, building silos and gaming the system. And it encourages decisions about the year ahead to be made too early and often prevents ‘value adding activities’ taking place as they were not in the budget. The annual planning process has to be killed off in a Machiavellian way. First by getting the annual plan done quickly and then moving it to a quarterly rolling forecasting and planning process. My ‘Rapid Annual Planning (Budgeting) in Two Weeks or Less – Toolkit’ (80 page PDF whitepaper + e-templates) will guide you through a step-by-step process. My ‘How to Implement Quarterly Rolling Forecasting and Quarterly Rolling Planning – and get it right first time – Toolkit’ (110 page PDF whitepaper + electronic templates) will guide you through a step-by-step process. Incentive schemes are often designed and approved by those with the most financial interest, no wonder they seldom are beneficial to the organisation’s long term survival. My working guide: ‘Getting Performance Bonus Schemes to Work‘ will guide you through a journey of enlightenment and a step-by-step way forward.
  5. Re-investing in your managers’ training. The first step is to sort out the existing managers, re-skill in 21st century management techniques making this learning a continuous process, getting them to reorder their priorities – putting staff first, reassign some managers to non-management positions or if necessary remove. The second step is to ensure you have a development programme all ‘would be’ managers need to attend. The third step, is to evaluate managers now through what their staff achieve, how good their recruitment is (getting recruitment right now seen as the most important activity any manager is doing), how content and energised their staff are (zero tolerance for managers with high staff turnover) and how aligned managers are to the organisation’s critical success factors. This will move managers away from focusing on individual goals and thinking that managing their staff is a side junket.
  6. Abandon the broken and useless systems, reports and meetings.  Management guru Peter Drucker should be considered the Leonardo da Vinci of management as he will be better understood and respected 400 years after his life than now. He said:

    “Don’t tell me what you’re doing, tell me what you’ve stopped doing.”

    “If leaders are unable to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.”

    “Without systematic and purposeful abandonment, an organization will be overtaken by events. It will squander its best resources on things it should never have been doing or should no longer do. As a result, it will lack the resources needed to exploit the opportunities that arise.”