Articles: Operational Excellence
Here is a list of publications focusing on Operational Excellence by Schaffer Consulting consultants.
Best Foot Forward, Matthew McCreight and Ronald Ashkenas, Northeast Executive, Fall 2009.
This article is an excellent overview of our firm and how we help our clients realize their fullest potential.
Request a Copy Yes, You Can Simplify Your Organization, Ron Ashkenas, Forbes.com: August 17, 2009.
This article describes several ways you can improve results by confronting and reducing complexity and information overload in your organization.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/17/simplify-organization-complexity-leadership-managing-information.html
Request a Copy Simplicity-Minded Management, Ron Ashkenas, Harvard Business Review, December 2007.
Managers are frequently frustrated by their organization's complexity. Yet very few have developed a strategy for simplification. We have identified four ways that managers can streamline their organizations and improve business results: 1) combat organizational mitosis, 2) streamline products and services, 3) fix inefficient processes, and 4) improve managerial behaviors. Also available in Spanish.
Request a Copy The Nuts and Bolts of Execution: Putting Ideas to Work, Theresa Sullivan Barger, Executive Action, June 2006.
Robert Schaffer is quoted extensively in this article which describes the real work involved in achieving measurable results. It offers real-world examples of results achieved by Avery Dennison, United Aluminum and others.
Request a Copy Start With Results, Not Preparations: Chapter 3 of Rapid Results!, by Robert H. Schaffer, Ronald N. Ashkenas, and Associates, Jossey-Bass 2005.
Rapid Results projects are not an alternative to longer-term vision and strategic management. Rather they are a necessary, complementary element in major strategic change efforts. Rapid Results projects ensure that the large-scale strategic efforts are effectively absorbed into the organization. This chapter includes a case study from United Aluminum which, to this day, maintains an on-time shipment delivery of 99.4%.
Request a Copy Mobilize Large Numbers of People In Change: Chapter 5 of Rapid Results!, by Robert H. Schaffer, Ronald N. Ashkenas, and Associates, Jossey-Bass 2005.
This chapter shows how Rapid Results projects and WorkOut can serve as a vehicle for engaging large numbers of people into the change and improvement process and how a modified version of the well-known GE “WorkOut process” provides a structured methodology to support this rapid engagement. The experiences of Avery Dennison, Zurich U.K. and Armstrong cited in this chapter show that rapid-cycle projects, even if somewhat modest to begin with, can quickly be turned into powerful engines for accelerating change—change that can advance as fast as you want it to happen and can involve huge numbers of people as quickly as you want to involve them. As more and more people lead and participate in Rapid Results teams, more and more change management competence is developed at every level in the organization. And as this competence grows, so does the organization’s overall capacity to implement large-scale change.
Request a Copy Build Your Own Unique Transformation Process: Chapter 6 of Rapid Results!, by Robert H. Schaffer, Ronald N. Ashkenas, and Associates, Jossey-Bass 2005.
While organizations can certainly benefit from the accumulated experience of others, the most successful approach is for each organization to create a unique change process that works best for itself. In this chapter we will sketch a framework by which management teams can carry out the experimentation and learning necessary to accomplish that process. If you want a high-success approach to transforming your organization you need follow only one aspect of the Zurich UK case examined in this chapter: Create an orderly way to launch the various elements of your developmental process and work hard at learning from success.
Request a Copy Attention HR: Managers Need Help, Robert Neiman and Rudi Siddik, Canadian HR Reporter, September 13, 2004.
Human resource professionals could sit around, hoping to come up with that big idea that will get them to the boardroom table ... but this article details a less idealistic path, but one that is much more likeley to succeed.
Request a Copy Execution Plain and Simple: You Can Make Great Execution a Habit, Robert A. Neiman and Harvey A. Thomson, Canadian Manager, Fall 2004.
As a leader, you can improve execution success with the people you have now—without major investments in facilities, equipment, or cultural change programs.
Request a Copy Why Good Projects Fail Anyway, Nadim F. Matta and Ronald N. Ashkenas , Harvard Business Review, September 2003.
When a promising project does not deliver, chances are the problem wasn't the idea abut how it was carried out. Here is a way to design projects that guards against unnecessary failure.
Request a Copy Bridging the Capacity Gap, Nadim Matta, Ron Ashkenas and Jean-Francois Rischard, Leader to Leader, Number 23, Winter 2002.
The gap between aspirations and the ability to implement thwarts the most well-meaning, well-conceived developmental efforts. This article presents an approach used by World Bank to design and implement projects that help organizations bridge this "capacity gap."
Request a Copy High-Impact Consulting: Achieving Extraordinary Results, Robert H. Schaffer, C2M: Consulting to Management, Volume 13, Number 2, June 2002.
Focusing directly on results is the critical difference between conventional consulting and high-impact consulting. This article tells why a solution for your client is not enough; it has to work.
Request a Copy To Make Consulting Impact: Use the Lessons of Crises, Robert A. Neiman, Online: InternalConsulting.net, 2001.
Crises reveal the enormous untapped potential for achievement in human organizations. Consultants can help managers become skillful in creating breakthroughs which develop this same zest without actually creating a crisis.
Request a Copy Rapid-Cycle Successes versus the Titanics -- Ensuring that Consulting Produces Benefits, Robert H. Schaffer, chapter 17 in M. Beer and N. Nohria, eds., Breaking the Code of Change, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000, p. 361-380.
Conventional consulting practitioners usually want to create the best, most complete and most encompassing solutions to client needs. Doing so, however, frequently leads to huge projects whose recommendations go way beyond the client’s capability to implement. The alternative is dividing titanic projects into rapid-cycle segments.
Request a Copy First Steps to Partnering with Customers and Suppliers, Ron Ashkenas, IMC Times, February 2002.
Most managers today understand the need to forge stronger links with customers and suppliers, the critical members of their product or service value chain. This article describes three steps that will create greater value from these relationships.
Request a Copy Breaking Down Boundaries: Breaking Through Resistance, Ron Ashkenas, The 2000 Annual: Volume 2, Consulting, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2000.
As organizations try to become more fluid, consultants must help them break away from rigid thinking and obsolete behaviors. In turn, consultants must challenge themselves to design innovative and responsive learning experiences.
Request a Copy Replacing Recommendations with Results: A New Paradigm for Consulting, Robert H. Schaffer, Consulting Psychology Journal, Fall 1999, Volume 51, Number 4.
This article contrasts High-Impact Consulting with traditional approaches, emphasizing the psychological dimension.
Request a Copy Overcoming the Fatal Flaws of Consulting: Close the Results Gap, Robert H. Schaffer, Business Horizons, Volume 41, Number 5, September-October 1998.
This article outlines five characteristics of typical consulting projects that prevent clients from achieving measurable performance improvements. It recommends a more effective, results-focused, collaborative approach.
Request a Copy Why Pay for Recommendations When You Need Results?, Robert H. Schaffer, Strategy and Leadership, Volume 26, Number 3, July-August 1998.
Based on the book High-Impact Consulting, this article describes how a strategic consultant can help to effect real change in organizations.
Request a Copy When Consultants and Clients Clash, Idalene F. Kesner and Sally Fowler (comments by Robert H. Schaffer appear on pages 34-36), Harvard Business Review, November-December 1997.
Case study of a problematic consulting project. Four experts, including Robert Schaffer, advise on how to proceed. Schaffer focuses on learning opportunities and business goals.
Request a Copy Time To Reengineer Management Consulting!, Robert H. Schaffer, Consultants News, Volume 27, Issue 1, January 1997.
Management consulting needs to reconsider its most fundamental assumptions: what constitutes value-added to clients; appropriate scale, scope and cycle time of projects; and the nature of the relationship with clients.
Request a Copy Beginning with results: the key to success, Robert H. Schaffer, Journal for Quality and Participation, Volume 20, Number 4, September 1997. Published as a two-part series with Looking at the 5 fatal flaws of management consulting, Robert H. Schaffer, Journal for Quality and Participation, Volume 20, Number 3, June 1997.
The earlier article explains why failures are a direct outcome of the way consulting is usually practiced, and why consultants and clients collude to perpetuate this wasteful pattern. It suggests a radically different approach. The later describes how both consultants and clients can avoid "fatal flaws" by shifting to the more effective, results-focused, High-Impact consulting paradigm.
Request a Copy Getting Your Money’s Worth, Ian White-Thomson and Robert H. Schaffer, Chief Executive, No. 129, November 1997.
Ian White-Thomson, Chairman and CEO of US Borax, and Robert Schaffer discuss how client-consultant collaboration and rapid-cycle projects dramatically improved product quality and strengthened relations with a key customer.
Request a Copy A New Paradigm for Customer and Supplier Relationships, Ronald N. Ashkenas, Human Resource Management, Winter 1990, Volume 29, Number 4, 1992.
This article describes why businesses need to develop new, collaborative partnerships with their customers and suppliers, and outlines four strategies by which HR managers can play a leadership role in making this happen.
Request a Copy Making Staff Consulting More Effective, John K. Baker and Robert H. Schaffer, Harvard Business Review, January-February 1969.
Union Carbide’s Management Services Department becomes more valuable to client managers.
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