Disruption Without Interuption

  

Disruption Without Interruption should be the mantra for all business strategies because it describes perfectly the objective for all strategies. What we are seeing in the business world is a period of continuous waves of disruption that I believe have been triggered by the COVID-19 recovery demands and requirements. The world is not slowing down and disruption begets disruption which then begets more disruption. While the tipping point may have been the COVID-19 pandemic, the difficulty in responding has been related to the waves of disruption triggered by continually developing events and even disasters. These are not black swan events, instead we seem to have entered into a black swan time period or era.

Based on the above, I believe the business response must focus on a strategy that is informed and guided by a robust Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program. This strategy and program is based on a solid foundational process of continuous improvement practices that have been proven and reinforced over time that incorporates a robust risk management process. It is important to develop a program to manage and maintain the strategy through quickly changing demands and new disruptions that is both flexible and focused on moving forward. This can only be done by understanding the demands and cause and impact of the current disruption and most importantly the potential for pending future disruption. This Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program is the foundation that supports your business success through these turbulent times.

Dirruptions and competition are probably two of the key influencers for every business. The interesting thing is that competitors and market competition plays the greater role in business strategy. Looking back over the last nine months shows that disruptions in business, whether supply, demand, or the ability to recover from disruption through an efficient supply chain produced a tremendous impact on business, the market and consumers. It is very clear that a Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program is an extremely important, if not critical, aspect to any business continuity planning. What's more, it is also very clear that the cycle of disruption is quickening rather than slowing and the importance of these capabilities is critical to the survival of any business in this environment. I also believe that the importance of taking the long term view and developing a plan and process for sensing and then responding to these disruptions is also of the highest importance especially to the long term success of the business.

In order to manage disruption and implement, and most importantly maintain, Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program and strategy it is important to focus. Focus is required for all strategic initiatives and the challenge is overcoming the day-to-day interruptions, disruptions and challenges that seem to continually interrupt your focus and energy. The challenge it seems is to define a process or incorporate tools that allow you to reduce the need to focus on these interruptions and the perfect tool for this challenge is robotic process automation.

There are many tools, expertise and capabilities available now that can help in developing a robust Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program to help your business, and the market, to react to disruptions and eliminate or reduce the resulting interruption and impact. Artificial Intelligence and Automation, such as process automation and RPA, are important tools to first sense and then respond to disruption. Other factors in developing a robust program frankly is imagination and consistency in applying imagination. This practice is produced through a commitment and encouragement from leadership that would come from elevating the role to a 'C' level responsibility. I also think audit controls and procedures must be modified to place increased importance on a Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program to limit the impact of the business.

RPA would allow the monitoring and even automated response to many of the daily interruptions and challenges and this would allow leadership to maintain a greater focus on the higher value objectives of your Dynamic Risk Sense and Respond program. In addition benefits this demonstrates:

1. Commitment to RPA by implementing daily leadership tasks
2. First hand leadership experience demonstrating RPA allows automation of routine tasks to allow focus on value add tasks
3. Roles change to focus on higher value activities rather than job elimination

This ability to automate the routine to allow focus on high value activities may be one of the most significant benefits of RPA from a business and market perspective. I am beginning to think that one of the best and most efficient ways to demonstrate value is to increase the focus on senior leadership implementation. We see hundreds of examples and discussions on the benefit of automating repetitive processes and tasks from an operational and customer support perspective and I suggest adding senior leadership tasks and activities to this list.

The challenge to the program is complacency! Business must fight complacency and the tendency to slowly allow these types of programs to whither.


Tom Brouillette

Contact: tbrouillette@ncspartners.com

@ncspartners


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Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.