Victory, we all want it. In sports, we always envy the champions. In
business, we try to emulate the best practices of successful business leaders.
In war, we certainly want triumph. In our personal life, we want success. We are
continuous looking for ways to achieve victory.
Victory encompasses all the levels of our needs from survival, security,
self-esteem, belonging, to ultimately self-actualization. It touches all our
emotions from joy, happiness, exuberance, ecstasy, and so on. There is no
greater experience then being a victor.
This book is about achieving business victory. Business victory is just
as important as any other victory. Everyday we see the evidence of
loss—unemployment, layoffs, business closings, services eliminated, and
infrastructure crumpling. Fortunately, we also see signs of
victory—investment, improvement, innovation, reorganization, reform, and
revolution.
Victory for a business or organization offers many unique challenges.
First, victory varies for each specific organization. Each organization needs to
define victory. Second, victory is forever changing. The organization’s
definition of victory must be continuously focused on success. Third, the enemy
of victory is not always evident. The enemy can be any element that keeps the
organization from achieving victory. It can be competition, technology, economy,
technology—even themselves. Fourth, the challenges are never-ending. Today,
achieving victory is a never-ending process.
Managing for Victory provides a system for turning an organization into one capable of achieving success in today’s ever-changing environment while focusing on victory in the future. This Managing for Victory System (VICTORY) provides any organization with the means to meet the many challenges of today while ultimately moving the organization toward the future. VICTORY focuses the entire organization on the customer. This customer driven approach combines progressive leadership models, basic organizational excellence management practices, continuous improvement tools and techniques, and proven human resource initiatives. Managing for Victory is applicable to every organization striving to be the best, whether the organization is one function, a division, an operating agency, or a company. VICTORY is equally useful for large and small businesses, manufacturing and service industries, public and private organizations and e-businesses. Managing for Victory provides the means to achieve the ends or victory¾ the victory as defined by each specific organization.
Victory is the ultimate goal for every organization. Victory means
success, continuation, progress, prosperity, market share, profits, etc. The
basic considerations of VICTORY include total customer satisfaction plus
organizational excellence plus progressive leadership. This is shown in figure
1.1. Since customers are the essence of every organization, customers define
victory. The target is always total customer satisfaction (TCS). In addition,
while the organization seeks total customer satisfaction, the organization must
strive for organizational excellence. These activities target continuous
improvement of people, processes and product while managing costs. Also, VICTORY
requires progressive leadership. This is the element that guides the victory.
VICTORY is the means to achieve
an organization’s end results.
An organization cannot survive and prosper in today's world without
victory. Victory is success as defined by customers. Customers allow an
organization to exist. The fundamental purpose of every organization must be to
get and keep customers. Many modern organizations have lost sight of this
fundamental principle. In many industries, this has contributed to America's
lack of competitiveness in the global economy. In many cases, American industry
is providing the wrong product and/or service for domestic and global markets
because the customer does not drive these organizations. They focus on pushing
the product or service on the customer, rather than the customer pulling a
product or service out of the organization. In recent years in the Internet
world, the primary focus on technology and marketing rather than creating
customer value has resulted in many failed dot-com businesses.
A Managing for Victory System meets the challenges of the global economic
environment. VICTORY provides a management approach adaptable to the new world
of rapid change, rising complexity, and rabid competition. Today, political,
technological, social, and economic changes are swift. The world has been turned
around. For instance, the U.S.S.R.'s empire has crumbled. The Berlin Wall has
been torn down. There is a new war on terrorist. The United States is just one
of many players in the global marketplace. With technological advances,
especially in computers, telecommunication and the Internet, the information age
has launched a time of increasing intricacy in the entire world. This has
brought about rising complexities in the processes used to perform work.
Competition on a global scale is a fact of life. Everyone is competing for the
new global markets. With competition fierce in all aspects -- technology, cost,
product quality, and service quality -- everyone must seek new approaches to be
competitive and share in global economic growth. VICTORY provides a rapid,
flexible responsive approach that confronts these challenges today and in the
future.
The world is not the same today
as yesterday.
Today's world is radically different from the recent past. It's a new
environment where old solutions no longer work. The "same old way"
simply does not bring about the necessary results. Technology is not the
prospective cure all. Throwing resources at the problem for short-term progress
or reducing resources for cost reduction does not foster long-term customer
satisfaction. Our paradigm (mind-set) must change to reflect the reality of
today's world to achieve success.
Some of the major considerations in today's world compared with
yesterday's issues are discussed below. These conditions require -- no, demand
-- change.
p Customers are more selective with an increasing demand for value
p
Competitive environment
p
Uncertainty in the organizational environment
p
Need to work smarter
p
Changes in management and leadership philosophy, principles, methods,
tools, and techniques
p
Conservation of limited resources
p
External factors affecting the organization are progressively out of
control
p
Organizational systems require constant updating to optimize
productivity, quality, and costs
p
New or changed products and services are perpetually being introduced
p
Continuous vigilance of all factors affecting the organization,
product/service, competition, and the
customer is a necessity
p
Economic pressures have caused the requirement for cost management
p
Shrinking budgets
p
Stressing "more for the buck"
p
Rapidly changing technology--making stability difficult
p
Accelerated production time is essential to a competitive advantage
p
Customer-driven quality is critical to long-term growth
p
Application of telecommunication and information systems
p
Survival of fittest e-businesses
There are many players in the competitive global economy. In addition,
there are many formidable players. This fresh economic playing field requires
everyone to transform their management philosophy, principles, methods, tools,
and techniques into a management system that allows everyone to work smarter to
rapidly respond to the needs of the customer.
Rabid competition is the way of the new world economy. Just because a
product or service is available does not mean it will sell. The customer is more
selective in buying goods and services. In fact, as the customer has more and
more options, the customer becomes increasingly discriminating with their demand
for added value. This makes keeping and getting new customers more important
than ever. Customer satisfaction is the focus of all competing organizations.
The organizations that can answer constantly changing customers' demands will
succeed in this new environment of rabid competition.
Uncertainty is now a continuous concern. With a rapidly changing world
order, certainty can no longer be taken for granted. No organization is safe
from some sort of distress. External factors affecting the organization are
progressively out of control. The organization's systems constantly require
updating to optimize productivity, quality and costs. New or changed products
and services are perpetually being introduced. Stronger competition is
increasingly the norm. In addition, customer needs are continuously changing.
Continuous vigilance of all factors affecting the organization, product/service,
competition, and the customers is a necessity.
Economic pressures are a fact. This makes cost and budget a factor today
and tomorrow. Lowest possible cost is the aim of all internal processes. It is
no longer good enough to strive for reasonable cost. Everyone has the same
technological advantages to make use of economies of scale, automation, and
other production and service techniques to reduce cost. Customer satisfaction
and profit in today's world depends on providing a product and/or service at the
optimum, lowest possible cost.
In addition, economic pressure makes optimizing budgets an everyday
reality. Currently, budgets are shrinking in most organizations. This causes a
reexamination of priorities to stress "more for the buck." Economic
pressures will continue to dominate choices and decisions in public and private
organizations. The demand for increasing value at less cost will continue into
the foreseeable future.
Rapidly changing technology makes stability impossible. Failing to keep
pace with the latest technologies can bring obsolescence within a short period
of time. Many products today have a very short life cycle. The impact of new
technology, especially in information processing and communications, may
determine supremacy.
Conservation of limited resources is a necessity. Global competition for
scarce resources will only increase in the new global marketplace. Regardless of
competition, however, the primary concern is the need to protect and preserve
the environment. With many nations competing for few resources, coupled with the
concern for the environment, waste and loss are everyone's enemies.
Organizations must learn new techniques of quality, productivity, and project
delivery focusing on elimination of variation to optimize all resources.
Reasonable production times no longer meets customer's needs. Accelerated
production time is essential in many industries. The organization first to the
marketplace is usually the winner. In today's world, speed is a competitive
advantage.
Customer driven quality is critical to long-term growth. Since the
customer defines quality by their satisfaction, the supplier forcing a
deliverable on a customer does not foster customer satisfaction. Today, the
customer or customer's voice must direct every aspect of the deliverable. This
is the only way to ensure quality.
Telecommunication and information processing enable today’s world. Gone
are the days when hardcopies, space, and distance are dominating factors of
competition. The organization that can speed the right information to the right
place at the right time is ahead of its rivals.
Many organizations are struggling to make their e-business work. Although
today electronic commerce is struggling, ebusiness is the way of the future.
Organizations must develop an e-business or complimentary e-business driven by
the needs of customers. Also, it is important in today’s world to use the
ebusiness for operation excellence.
Change
or be left behind.
To adapt to today's economic world with an eye to the future requires the
organization to be totally responsive to the customer. Specifically, the
successful organization will be the one that can change to apply the new
paradigm for prosperity in today's global environment. Table 1-1 lists some of
the required changes.
Table
1-1
The World Demands Change
|
From |
To |
|
If
it is not broken, don’t fix it |
Continuous
improvement |
|
Functional
orientation |
Systems
view |
|
Sequential
design and production |
Concurrent
design and production |
|
Inspection |
Prevention |
|
Quality
not important |
Quality
critical |
|
Accept
current processes |
Improve,
reengineer, invent processes |
|
Development |
Innovation |
|
Rigid
organizational structure |
Flexible
organizational structure |
|
Many
organizational layers |
Few
organizational layers |
|
Compete |
Cooperate
to compete |
|
Individual
performance |
Team
performance |
|
People
specialized, controlled, eliminated |
People
add-value, flexible, adaptable, empowered |
|
Strong
management |
Strong
management and leadership |
|
Leadership
only at top |
Leadership
everywhere in the organization |
|
Short-term
outlook |
Long-term
vision |
|
Individual
merit reward system |
Team
performance reward system |
|
Education
for management |
Education
and training for everyone |
|
Driven
by profit |
Focus
on total customer satisfaction |
Continuous improvement of the process, people, and products aimed at
customer satisfaction is essential. The "if its not broken, don't fix
it" attitude does not promote critical thinking necessary for growth.
Continuous improvement is the only way to survive. This is the proactive
approach to change. This new view of
everything-can-be-made-better-through-process-improvement stimulates the
creativity and innovation needed to constantly grow. In addition to continuous
improvement of processes, people must constantly upgrade their knowledge and
skill through a lifelong learning system. Further, products and/or services
require progressive enhancement to meet or exceed changing customer needs and
expectations.
Systems thinking must replace functional orientation. In today's world,
everyone's horizon must be expanded beyond narrow-minded occupational
disciplines like engineering, manufacturing, accounting, education, training,
logistics, etc. Organizations struggling for success in a world economic
environment cannot afford to subsidize functional "fiefdoms" which sub
optimizes resources. Progressive organizations must view the combination of all
their processes as a system focused on customer satisfaction. This requires
everyone in the organization to have a systems outlook geared to achieving
organization-wide excellence. This means combining quality and performance.
Concurrent design is a necessity, especially in most industries where
time-to-market is a competitive advantage. Time-to-market is increasingly a
differentiator in the marketplace for both products and services. Concurrent
design of products and services significantly reduces the time to market over
traditional sequential design methods.
Inspection-based quality assurance needs to be supplanted with prevention
techniques. Again, the industrial mindset expects defects. This inspection-based
viewpoint adds excessive cost to the product or service. This is a cost that
most organizations can no longer afford and the customer does not need to
support. By shifting the emphasis to prevention techniques, the right thing is
done right the first time. This reduces cost while increasing product and/or
service quality. Prevention techniques focus on the improvement of all the
processes in an organization to maximize the capabilities of processes.
Quality focused on customer satisfaction is required. Disregard for
quality or merely conforming to requirements is no longer good enough to keep
and maintain customers. Today's knowledgeable customer demands satisfaction.
This is how they define quality. This means the organization must determine what
will satisfy the customer and then focus the whole organization on striving to
meet the customers’ needs and expectations. This means the organization must
identify the elements of quality that are of vital importance to their
particular customers. The key elements of quality for a customer might include,
among other things, the following items: perceived product and/or service
quality, performance, reliability, supportability, durability, features,
availability, aesthetics, serviceability, maintainability, usability,
environmental impact, conformance to requirements, customer service, logistics,
training, warranty, and life cycle cost. For instance, some customers demand
reliability as a key element of customer satisfaction. In other cases, the
customers might value performance as the critical element. For other customers,
the key element of quality is availability. For this customer, it is of primary
importance the product or service is available in the right quantity, at the
right time, at the right place.
Innovation through constant incremental improvement must be pursued.
Innovation rather than major development is the key for many organizations and
industries. Building on the old and creating new uses is critical for future
survival. Improvement of old systems rather than development of new systems may
be the norm. Economics dictate making do with what already is available. This
targets innovative enhancements of existing systems as a major method to satisfy
requirements.
Flexible organizational structures with as few layers as possible are
best able to rapidly respond to the customer's changing demands. Rigid
structures cannot react fast enough to keep pace with a formidable competitor,
whereas few organizational layers provide the "lean and mean"
structure needed to contend in tomorrow's world. Customers will no longer
subsidize the cost of the vast amounts of waste created by large bureaucratic
organizations. Organizations must be trimmed to the absolute core with
decentralization of empowerment to the people closest to the customer and the
processes. The organizational structure of an achieving organization has fewer
managers with increased self- management.
Cooperation among governments, industries, companies, organizations,
teams, and individuals is essential for survival. Cooperation among government,
industry, labor, and education is critical to a high growth, high wage economy.
In addition, management and labor must learn to cooperate for a prosperous
economy. Further, departments and functional organizations must break down
barriers to optimize productivity of an organization. Also, individual people
need to work together in teams to rapidly respond to customers. In addition,
organizations must develop supplier partnerships and customer relationships. All
cooperative efforts aim at win/win solutions instead of a win/lose situation as
fostered by competition. Only through cooperative relationships can global
success be realized.
Groups, especially teams, are the organizational structure of choice.
Although individuality is important, teams multiply the capabilities of each of
the individual team members. In today's complex workplace, teams are the only
structure capable of providing the high level of performance, flexibility, and
adaptability necessary to rapidly respond to customers and provide deliverables
that delight them.
People are the most important, flexible, and versatile resource capable
of adding value to a product or service. Empowered people are the only resource
with the ability to respond quickly to a customer by optimizing the output of a
process based on a thorough analysis of customer requirements and the process.
Therefore, specializing or eliminating people greatly reduces an organization's
ability to keep or gain customers, which significantly decreases its chances for
survival. People are the most important resource to gain an advantage over
competition. To optimize this essential resource, forward-thinking organizations
must strive to provide a high quality work environment where both the peoples’
and organization's needs are satisfied while striving to delight customers.
Strong leadership, not only, at the top but at all levels is needed
instead of strong management. Guiding people to achieve a common goal is the
focus of improved performance in any organization. Strong management is still
required to ensure the project is completed as required; but leadership is
essential to maximize the human potential to care about and satisfy the
customers. Managers simply ordering accomplishment will not make an excellent
organization. Leadership involves the sustained, active, hands-on participation
of all leaders continuously setting the example, coaching, training, and
facilitating empowered people.
A long-term view needs to replace the emphasis on short-term results.
Frequently, the emphasis on a short-term outcome has a long-term consequence.
For example, the takeover of one organization by another may bring short-term
financial rewards. In the long-term, the takeover can result in many people
losing their jobs. In another case, the short-term focus on stocks causes the
organization to reduce investment in capital equipment and/or training of its
people. This could have an adverse effect on the long-term survival of the
business. The viewpoint of the organization must be targeted on the long-term
future to stay in business. The advanced organization has a vision for the
future with a strategic plan for achieving the vision.
The reward and recognition system must shift from individual merit to
team performance systems. A team performance reward and recognition system
provides the incentive for optimizing the results of teamwork to accomplish the
mission. The team performance system should credit the individual's
contributions to the success of the team while at the same time providing a
reward for effective teamwork. All reward and recognition systems should be
geared to each individual team member wanting to contribute to the best of their
abilities for the ultimate successful outcome of the team.
An education and training investment for everyone in the organization
must be the cornerstone of any learning organization to persevere in today's
environment. People must be developed through education and training with an eye
toward the future. High growth labor markets demand people with specific
higher-level education and skills. These conditions require organizations to
adopt a viewpoint that people truly make the difference in the competitive world
economic environment, and they must make an investment to create a lifelong
learning system.
Managing
for Victory means both top and bottom line results.
Managing for Victory includes a flexible and responsive management
approach able to act or react to all of the forces of tomorrow's economic world.
This customer-driven approach focuses an organization on determining and acting
on the internal and external forces that will influence the customer. Managing
for Victory gears an organization to getting and keeping customers by providing
appropriate products and services, improving quality, increasing productivity,
reducing costs and adding value. It focuses on total customer satisfaction
whether it is a product or service to compete in the global environment. VICTORY
targets success for today and tomorrow.
VICTORY
Results
Raised
revenues and market share
Enhanced
productivity and quality
Support
for the leadership
Useful
systems, processes, and operations
Less
cost and waste
Total
customer satisfaction
Success for the organization
Always SATISFY the customer.
VICTORY is a customer-driven, progressive leadership guided, organizational excellence management system. VICTORY is a management system that stresses total customer satisfaction driven by the customer or customer’s voice. It emphasizes progressively leading an organization to excellence. VICTORY includes: visioning establishes a customer focus, involving everyone creates a team-based organization, continuously improving achieves excellence, training, educating, coaching develops a learning culture, owning work processes fosters empowerment, recognizing and rewarding builds high performance, and yearning ensures success.
The VICTORY philosophy
encompasses progressive management thinking.
The Managing for Victory philosophy encompasses a winning philosophy for
any organization. The VICTORY philosophy stresses a systematic, integrated,
consistent, organization-wide perspective. It includes the overall, general
concepts for a customer caring, progressive, and excellent organization.
The philosophy focuses primary emphasis on the customer (both internal
and external customers). The key is to care for customers. Customer care gets
and keeps customers. The organization must listen to customers and/or the voice
of customers. They must then drive their business processes for organizational
excellence to satisfy their needs and expectations to get and keep customers.
The Managing for Victory philosophy requires a fundamental belief in the customer as the focus of all efforts in the organization. It requires a confidence in the working from the outside of the organization (customer) to develop excellence inside the organization. It advocates development of joint understanding of customer needs and expectations along with internal processes of the supplier's organization. The philosophy stresses a systematic, integrated, consistent, disciplined approach involving customers, process owners, and suppliers through all activities in the organization. Telecommunication and information systems make this integration required for victory management possible. Teams must be the organizational structure of choice with the customer as driver. The doctrine must empower teams to own their process enough to continuously perform and improve the process toward perfection. The philosophy must stress customer-centered metrics as the means to focus attention to meaningful outcomes for the customer. There must be basic belief in cooperation as the primary means to success. Also, rewards and recognition must be acknowledged as essential elements. In addition, there must be a faith that designing in quality and long-term prevention is critical. Relationships are vital. Involvement of everyone and everything in a focused effort is essential. Leadership is a predominate value. Further, people development must be encouraged. The intense desire of everyone in the organization to nurture customer relationships is a critical point of view. Everyone must adopt this philosophy. Everyone in the organization must desire customer-driven results. Finally, the philosophy is based on an intense desire to achieve victory.
In
summary, the Managing for Victory philosophy includes:
Pursue an organization-wide
perspective (systems view)
Have a customer-driven focus
Institute continuous improvement
of processes, product/service, and people
Lead with a progressive style
Orient everyone to drive toward
perfection
Stress high performance
Observe customer-driven
measurements/metrics
Promote product/service quality
Have all stakeholders involved in
the victory process
Yearn for victory
VICTORY is built on a foundation of ethics, integrity, and trust with communication as the link.
To Manage for Victory requires a foundation of ethics, integrity, and
trust with open and honest communication. This is the key to unlocking the
ultimate potential for Victory. An organization’s potential for high
performance in both good and bad times improves with a solid foundation of
ethics, integrity, and trust. Figure 1.2 shows ethics, integrity and trust as
the foundation with trust binding ethics and integrity. Communications is the
link of the foundation into many other parts of the structure.
Each organization contemplating Managing for Victory should take the time
to lay the foundation. Since
everything builds on the foundation, ultimate success or failure depends on the
foundation. Many organizations have forgotten this simple fact.
Any discussion of any management approach that does not include a
presentation of integrity, ethics and trust would be greatly remiss; in fact, it
would be incomplete. VICTORY is built on a foundation of integrity, ethics and
trust. If VICTORY is to be achieved, these characteristics must be a vital part
of the organization. VICTORY requires the active participation of everyone in
the organization focusing on total customer satisfaction. Business is maintained
and won through total customer satisfaction; it is not achieved by bad business
practices or profit at any cost. This demands that everyone in the organization
must have the highest standards of integrity, ethics, and trust in dealing with
both internal and external customers.
Integrity, ethics and trust move together through the Managing for
Victory environment. However, each element offers something different to
achieving VICTORY.
Figure
1.2
The Foundation of VMS.
An organization is only as
strong as its foundation.
Foster
openness, fairness, and sincerity
Operate
with honesty
Use
common sense
Nurture
trust
Demonstrate
appropriate behavior
Allow
involvement by everyone
Teach
right from wrong
Instill
values into the organization
Only
do to others what you would want done to you
Never
compromise ethics, integrity, or trust
Do to others only what you would
want done to you.
Ethics is the discipline concerned with good and bad in any situation.
Ethics is a two-faceted subject represented by organizational and individual
ethics. In the case of organizational ethics, most organizations will establish
a business code of ethics that outlines ethical guidelines, which all employees
are required to adhere to in the performance of their work. Individual ethics
includes personal rights or wrongs. They are concerned with legal, moral,
contractual, business policies and individual dealings. A person should never do
anything that goes against command media or that the person would not like done
to him or herself.
A person’s true nature will
reveal itself despite disguise.
Integrity implies honesty, morals, values, fairness, adherence to the
facts, and sincerity. This characteristic is what anyone in the organization and
the customer (internal/external) expects and deserves to receive.
True nature cannot be disguised. People see the opposite of integrity as
duplicity. Managing for Victory will not work in an atmosphere of duplicity. In
a deceptive environment, the organization takes actions contrary to the
philosophy and guiding principles required for VICTORY. If anyone in the
organization perceives contrariness of thought or action, active involvement
will not be accomplished. In addition, if the customer perceives the
organization is guilty of duplicity, customer satisfaction will not be achieved
and quite likely the customer's business will be lost.
Trust others and they will trust
you.
Trust is a byproduct of integrity and ethical conduct. Trust is
absolutely essential for Managing for Victory. Without trust, the framework for
VICTORY cannot be built. Trust is important in all aspects of Managing for
Victory including teamwork, improvement efforts and customer satisfaction. Trust
starts with open and honest communication. This is necessary for involvement of
the right people in the Managing for Victory process. Trust fosters full
participation of all members. Trust allows empowerment that encourages pride of
ownership. Trust encourages commitment.
Specifically for VICTORY, trust promotes teamwork and cooperation. Trust
allows decision-making at appropriate levels in the organization. Trust fosters
individual risk taking for total customer satisfaction. Trust helps ensure that
measurements focus on improvement of process, and they are not used to control
people. Trust is essential to ensuring total customer satisfaction.
Trust must be developed to remove the traditional conflicts in and
outside an organization. Trust is necessary to change the adversarial
relationships between company and union, management and labor, and different
functions in the organization. It is especially critical between the
organization and customers. Trust builds the cooperative environment essential
for VICTORY.
Actions speak louder than words¾Talk the talk and walk the talk.
Communication is the most important tool in any organization. The scope
and level of communication increases in a Managing for Victory organization.
Communication involves exchanging information and VICTORY demands a free flow of
information. The success of any organization demands communicating with and
among all organization members, suppliers and customers. It requires frequent
and effective communications with customers. It demands communication both
inside and outside the organization. The organization needs information to
understand the needs and expectations of the customer. They need information
from each other to achieve organizational excellence. They rely on information
from support teams. There must be constant communication between customers,
process owners, managers, suppliers, other support teams, and the functional
organization. Communication coupled with the sharing of the right information is
vital.
Change is a constant.
A foundation of ethics, integrity, and trust provides a safe environment
for change. The presence of a solid foundation is critical during change. The
foundation not only supports but it also protects. It supports successful
business systems. At the same time, the foundation protects the organization
from an adverse environment.
In some organizations change may be necessary to establish the Managing
for Victory foundation. In all organizations, change is required to implement a
victory driven organization. VICTORY requires both the individual in the
organization and the entire organization to change. As seen in this chapter,
today’s, and tomorrow’s world demands change.
The Managing
for Victory system framework requires a systematic, integrated, consistent,
organization-wide perspective. This is the VICTORY model as shown in figure 1.3.
All of the elements of VICTORY are absolutely essential for survival today and
also get victories in the future. This VICTORY framework has the customer as the
driver. The elements of VICTORY must be manifested in every aspect of the
organization for organizational excellence. First, a vision provides the common
purpose of the organization as viewed by top leadership and shared by everyone
in the organization. Equally essential are the involvement of everyone and
everything. This necessitates a systematic team-based organizational structure.
Continuous improvement builds an excellence mindset for all systems and
processes. Training, ownership, and recognition target the critical human
element. People development through training, education, coaching, facilitating,
and mentoring is a key. This discipline must be constantly provided for a
learning organization. Ownership must be established to build professionalism,
pride and commitment. Recognition and rewards must be systematized to reinforce
desired behaviors and outcomes. In addition, everyone in the organization,
especially leadership, must yearn for success. It includes the application of
progressive leadership to achieve VICTORY.
The Managing for Victory system framework includes:
Customer(s) driving victory
Visioning –
establishes a customer focus
Involving
everyone – creates a team-based organization
Continuously
improving – achieves excellence
Training,
coaching, etc. - develops a learning culture
Owning the
work - fosters empowerment
Recognizing
and rewarding - builds high performance
Yearning -
ensures success
Leading the organization to VICTORY
Figure
1.3 VICTORY
Model.
Customers are the focus of the organization. Without customers and the organization’s ability to fulfill
customers’ needs, there will be no organization. Customers can make or break
an organization. They drive the organization with unique needs and expectations.
They set requirements for their satisfaction. The customer dictates product
quality and service quality. The customer determines on-time delivery. The
customer is the driver of all the organization’s processes. The customer
defines organizational excellence. Therefore, the customer drives everything
within the organization. This element is detailed in Chapter 2.
A common
purpose guides the organization to desired business results. There must be a constancy of purpose throughout the
organization. The focus provides the common reason for joint action. When
aligned in the organization, the vision, mission, values, goals, and plans
provide a common purpose for all to follow. This element is detailed in Chapter
3.