Continuous Collaborative Improvement

A continuous collaborative improvement process will become the next generation of a continuous improvement process, it is the incorporation of collaboration across your extended partner network to deliver continuous improvements.  In other words it is collaboration in the delivery of the improvements across your extended partner network.  This process will allow you and your partners to harness the powers of collaboration to increase the velocity and value in delivering improvements and initiatives.  The combination and incorporation of collaborative practices into your continuous improvement programs provides the opportunity to harness the strengths of your partners into the delivery of initiatives and the value for your network is the cross-network benefits that are shared across the network.  

This all sounds like a very optimistic case of ‘rainbows and unicorns’ in your business and partner network.  In order for this to be successful though it will require a great deal of communication, coordination and negotiations across your partner network in order to first develop the collaborative improvement process and then to maintain a collaborative improvement program.  This all starts with the definition of the concepts and the agreement from your partners regarding a set of collaborative principles that will guide the program.  The first step required though is the understanding and interest of your partners.  Once the interest is generated, the next step is developing the principles that will provide the guidelines and methods to working together, making decisions and more importantly to implementing modifications to the process.

The long term viability and success of the continuous collaborative improvement program requires a robust and set of principles that grow and change with the growth and changing requirements of your collaborative network.  This requires a process to review and modify the principles to meet the changing needs of the collaborative network.  This need not be cumbersome or overly complicated or invasive, you must though have a method for your network to evaluate and update the principles as necessary.  These principles are important because they provide the base reasons for your partners to participate and commit to the program.  These principles provide your partners with the assurance that their participation will deliver value and more importantly they also ensure your partners that their concerns and requirements will be taken into account when evaluating improvements.  Without these principles the network partners will be reluctant to participate and share in a manner that will deliver the greatest value.

Robust collaborative principles will provide the guarantee that participants will be heard and will have the opportunity to reap the benefits of the improvements.  This will start as a difficult exercise initially and will become easier to maintain as your partners accept and participate in the process.  This requires care and feeding to maintain though and your principles and guidelines should call this out to ensure compliance.  Your principles will encourage collaboration and your partner collaboration will improve your principles, this is the growth and maintenance objectives that you must support.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Collaboration In Delivery

The time is well past when an organization can spend years delivering a major business initiative, even very large ERP type initiatives must be delivered in phases.  In fact, the pendulum might be beginning to swing back from favoring large monolithic initiatives to a more nimble approach of delivery where interim solutions are delivered that build upon each other.  This nimble approach is one that I am in favor of for a couple of reasons; it supports and encourages a frequent delivery cycle that brings business value more quickly, it supports a process of evaluation of the interim delivery solutions to validate and adjust course as necessary to increase the benefits delivered based on the actual results.  How does collaboration across your network fit into this nimble delivery strategy?

A key aspect supported by network collaboration is the validation and results evaluation process required to adjust strategy and course as necessary to ensure results and expectations are met.  This is enacted through a collaborative continuous improvement cycle that is supported and embraced by your partners.  This requires a review process with your partners to obtain buy-in for your initiative.  This is an important ingredient in itself for any strategic initiative, this is so important because any strategic initiative impacts your partners as much as your own organization.  Providing a method to share results and obtain feedback from your partners in order to validate and improve your solutions will ensure support from your partners because it provides a means for your partners to participate and achieve their own benefits from the initiative.  

With your collaborative continuous improvement network in place and support from your partners you can then begin to increase the velocity of delivery of your strategic initiatives.  Encouraging and obtaining feedback from your partner network and then including and encouraging your partner network to participate in the evaluation will decrease the length of time to perform the evaluation.  In addition, as a result of the expanded information available and the partner expertise and viewpoints as inputs in the evaluation process your evaluation results will come quicker and your course adjustments will come quicker.  The greater number of viewpoints, expanded areas of expertise and also greater volume of data for evaluation and validation will increase the accuracy and decrease the time required for the validation and revisions.

I don’t mean to mislead anyone in making this sound easy because it is not.  This collaboration in delivery will require a great deal of effort from all parties involved in order to first build the process and then to maintain and even increase the momentum.  Your monolithic initiatives will be replaced by this collaborative delivery process and this will require effort to maintain over a long time period.  However I believe the results will far outway any bumps encountered along the way.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Collaboration Is Sharing

I think everyone knows and accepts the common definition of collaboration as working together with one to many partners with similar goals and objectives to achieve a common benefit, or goal.  I have come to realize that another clarification to the definition involves sharing of skills, capabilities and resources across partners with similar goals and objectives to achieve a common benefit, or goal.  This is an important addition to the definition because it highlights the need to share across partners in order to achieve success.  This sharing is the key to a successful collaborative partnership and especially a long term partnership.

The challenge to success is in the long term view and the steps required to develop  and maintain this long term view.  This long term view is very much at odds with the short term view that is general focus of many business activities.  The short term is the generally accepted practice to view projects in a short time-frame; in other words project and initiatives are executed with short term goals in mind (three to six months) and this makes it difficult then to focus on a three year objective.  I know that these short term activities are a simple fact of life now in the business world and I am not saying that you should focus only on long term goals.  I am saying though that you should develop your plans in a manner that allows you to put together short term projects in a manner that not only delivers immediate benefits but also provides a framework, or foundation for future short term projects to develop and deliver long term business change.

This is where the sharing aspect of collaboration comes into play; to support and develop these building blocks to develop and enhance a long term partnership based on mutually beneficial goals and benefits.  Sharing is the flip side of working together, it is the glue that encourages and supports working with your partners to build a collaborative environment that supports your common objectives.  Sharing is the give-and-take that develops understanding and a strong bond across partners to carry the efforts in defining and reaching common goals.  As the collaborative bond grows stronger, the amount and types of sharing will increase bringing a stronger and more valuable partnership.

Sharing information, best practices lead to a greater bond across organizations, which also leads to greater value and return for all partners.  This requires a long term view and commitment that is supported by short term deliverables based on a framework that is robust and flexible enough to support the growth and changes that will be experienced over the long term.  It is important to remember that you do not need to deliver the end objective, it is better to build towards you end objective is steps that allow revisions to support the changing business and consumer demands.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?