The current financial crisis shows the need for actual best business management practices

After every corporate financial, management, or governance crisis or scandal the call arises for best business management practices. However, nobody knows what real best business management practices are, since no one has any experience in actually organizing and managing a business. The practices installed are never actual best business management practices, but are a collections of rules and regulations or methods to better manage structures that hide the business and prevent actual business management.

20^th century best practices are the best of bad business practices

20^th century best business practices are a collection of organization, process, system, and administration structures laid over the business for a particular purpose, which have proven effective elsewhere. All 20^th century best business practices are bad business practices, because they add to enterprise overheads and costs, and do not help the enterprise to operate or manage the actual business.

R-pM provides the business definitions and structure for good best practices

Result-performance Management (R-pM) instills best practices across the business for 21^st Century Management. R-pM manages the business by managing the capacity, investment, qualifications, reliability, return, and worth of capital solutions; utilization, cost, effectiveness, uncertainty, and value-added of each capital solution in guided performance; and the volume, total cost, quality, risk, value, and value-added of each result produced. The set of solutions deployed and utilized to produce a result is defined as a capital module. The capital module that produces the best value-quality result can be defined as a best practice. All best practices are then built into the business structure to operate and manage the actual business.

The only way to prevent future corporate financial, management, and governance problems is to use R-pM to organize and manage the businesses. Governments that want to improve local business competitiveness significantly and prevent future crises, must investigate R-pM. [more...]

Your actual business is hidden under overlaid 20^th century management structures

Managers today think that they are managing their business. However, no manager today manages his actual business. Managers manage the enterprise through structures laid over the business. These overlaid structures hide the business and prevent actual business management.

You must learn your actual business and the entities that comprise your business

The enterprise business is defined as "the activity of providing goods and services". The enterprise must directly manage the business to manage providing high-value and high-quality goods and services for its customers. The business is managed by organizing and managing business activity in the utilization of capital in performance and business economic outputs in the results that provide customer goods and services. 20^th century management utilized today does not organize and manage the enterprise business, but rather organizes and manages the business enterprise through structures laid over the business. This causes many unsolvable problems with reorganizations, unknown investments and returns, unknown capital worth, unknown result value and quality, IT overheads, misleading management information, change management, corporate governance, business collaboration, and on and on.

R-pM allows you to gain control of your business and abolish structures laid over your business

R-pM organizes and manages business activity in the utilization of capital that is organized as specific capital solutions. R-pM organizes and manages goods and services as specific economic output results that are produced by the business. R-pM organizes the business as one integrated structure for all management needs by utilizing specific capital solutions in performance to produce specific results. R-pM captures actual business data on result volumes, value, and quality produced by the capacity, cost, and effectiveness of solutions utilized in performance. R-pM provides one set of clearly-defined management information on the current business and progress to the strategic business defined by a strategic business structure. R-pM manages cost-effective performance to produce high-value and high-quality goods and services as input results to the customer business. [more...]

Past and current financial crises have been caused by failure to manage the actual business

All financial crises, corporate governance problems, and other problems due to inadequate corporate or financial institution management have roots in one fundamental problem, the failure to organize and manage the actual business. 20^th century management lays many structures for organization, strategies, account charts, processes, scorecards, etc over the business to manage the enterprise. The actual business in the cash expenditures for specific capital investments, performance costs from capital utilization, value created in results, and value added providing profits, capital returns, and capital worth is hidden under overlaid structures and never reported to management.

Enormous sums of money are used to cover up actual problems and restore confidence

No attention is being paid to eliminating the pervasive financial institution and corporate management problems that led to the crisis. The funds are used to pay a higher worth for the currently worthless and unsellable assets of those who mismanaged corporate and personal funds, and transfer the potential further losses and gains to taxpayers. In effect, we keep covering up the unsolvable problems of 20^th century management that have never been solved and can never be solved by more 20^th century management.

Governments should help enterprises manage their actual businesses to eliminate 20^th century management problems

The big change is the change in thinking required to put aside the lifetimes of misleading teachings and experience and visualize and understand the business as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. Managing the business is common sense used by all to manage their personal businesses. The investment in managing the actual business is very small and recovered quickly in the added value-added of a managed business.

The cost of a government investment program to assist local enterprises to organize their businesses for 21^st Century Management is insignificant compared with the cost of bailing out companies and covering up the failures of 20^th century management. The program will provide transparent reporting of the business for management, shareholders, and regulatory authorities. The program will provide real economic boost in the new value created by organized and managed businesses. [more...]

Capital investments must be organized as solutions to be implemented and utilized as part of the business

Recently we discussed how business results and capital solutions must be organized together in a business structure, to organize the business as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. Capital solutions are organized into a capital structure by category in the human capability needed to develop and support specific solutions and by class in the business utilization of solutions to be ready to produce results, to produce actual results, and to have the information to produce and document results.

Capital management manages capital solution acquisition, development, and support

Capital management is fundamental to acquire, develop, and support capital utilized to produce results, and performance management is fundamental to implementing and maintaining cost-effective solutions to produce value-quality results. Organized and managed capital is required to eliminate intangible assets, unknown costs, underutilized capital, business complexity, unknown capital worth, and other unsolvable problems. Organized and managed capital is required to establish value chains, develop capital for precise business needs, respond quickly to add or delete business results, optimize operations, have skills and responsibilities for capital development, measure the precise return on capital investments, and gain other benefits prevented by the unorganized and unmanaged capital used today. [more...]

Many methods and books have addressed the alignment problem, but the problem remains unsolvable

The 20^th century enterprise has contrived many methods and spent enormous sums to solve the alignment problem inherent in aligning performance with performance. Even after all this, the unsolvable alignment problem remains. In an early Article, we identified alignment as one of The Top Ten Problems with 20^th Century Management.

The alignment problem can be solved only by organizing the business to align capital utilized in performance with the result produced

The solution to the alignment problem is very simple. Follow the first rule of 21^st Century Management; organize and manage the business. Result-performance Management (R-pM) organizes the business in economic output results produced, investments in capital solutions to produce results, and the deployment, alignment, integration, and utilization of specific solutions to produce specific results. Capital solutions utilized to produce the same result are aligned. [more...]

Government executives must manage a business the same as corporate executives

R-pM defines the business as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. This includes governments at all levels and all agencies, departments, commissions, enterprises, and other forms of business. The president or vice president are executives not legislators. Most recent presidents have had governor experience before becoming president. When evaluating a candidates experience the criterion should not be years of government experience, but particular executive experience or credentials that indicate actual capability to carry out presidential responsibilities and accomplish campaign promises.

Both political parties promise change and state that they have the experience to carry out change

Experience in initiating and managing beneficial change in a business is rare. For the vast majority, experience is an obstacle to change, since they base future methods and decisions on past experience. A manager advocating change should have experience in initiating and managing change.

Governor Sarah Palin is the first candidate in memory to run on the capability to initiate and manage change

It is easy to talk change, but very difficult to effect change. Governor Palin’s nomination is being criticized for a lack of experience. But, among the candidates, she has the most experience in actually managing business change. Governor Palin is not running on years of “experience”, but on specific accomplishments as an executive in effecting change. [more...]

Value has no value in 20^th century management used today

Value is an impressive word. People talk of value propositions, strategic value, value chains, value creation, and value management as if they were actually measuring and utilizing value as a day-to-day business metric. But looking further, we find that value is calculated from a contrived business overlay or formula.

20^th century enterprise organization and management prevents the utilization of value as a day-to-day business metric.

R-pM organizes the business to make value a manageable and valuable result metric

We must organize the business through Result-performance Management (R-pM) for day-to-day 21^st Century Management. Value is an attribute of output results produced by the utilization of capital in performance across the business. The value of input results from suppliers, plus each result in the business result chain, equals the value imparted to customer results in customer willingness to pay. [more...]

Capital solutions are not implemented today to produce specific benefits

Your enterprise likely has implemented information systems or major capital solutions. Were the benefits or return based on a quantified list of specific benefits and not just estimates of increased sales or revenues? Did users have goals to achieve the return on the investment? Were change management problems or resistance prevented by professionally-managed implementation of human and other solutions? Was professional support for all new or changed solutions established as the routine? Was the investment planning and capital development professionally managed? Were consultants utilized to achieve the return on the investment? Was the return on investment managed and measured?

20^th century management does not enable capital management and measured return on capital investments

If you can answer yes, your enterprise is a rare exception. 20^th century management has many inherent obstacles to overcome to implement new solutions to produce managed value-added to provide an measured return. The enterprise must organize and manage the business first, in order to manage change and improvement to the business effectively. Otherwise the enterprise will continue to implement new solutions to produce old problems.

R-pM organizes the business to implement specific capital solutions to add value to business result produced

The prior article showed how to design packaged solutions that any enterprise can use. In order to produce planned business benefits and gain the return, the business must be organized and managed using Result-performance Management (R-pM). Results must be defined to plan and manage value-added by implemented solutions. Capital solutions must be organized for professional support. Specific solutions required must be integrated and utilized in performance to produce specific results. The return on investment comes from added result value-added over the payback period compared to result value-added with no improvement. [more...]