I’m the co-owner (with my wife) of a los angeles catering company, Bite Catering Couture. As I straddle the gap between strategy, understanding, and execution, I’m increasingly aware that “Design” is a fundamental skill any company requires to make its efforts efficient and effective. The gap between great design and new initiatives is often where I’ve seen customers lost and initiatives fail.
To build this foundational capability, I wrote the following memo that will be used (in some evolving form) to evaluate every initiative we launch from this point forward. Would be great to hear if others of you out there have come across better examples I can borrow/ steal to improve my team’s understanding of great design from a business / systems standpoint.
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- easy for our people to understand,
- execution will occur automatically (post-implementation)
- results-oriented and self-correcting
Objective: Lay out the key design principles that will be used to evaluate every process proposed at Bite.
Goal: To eliminate predictable delays and errors in implementing Bite processes. We will always start with:
- a clear vision of the desired future state
- a clear metric for how we will track and measure success
- a solid understanding of the likely challenges we will need to solve for
- an understanding of the interdependencies with other existing initiatives and operations at Bite
- an understanding of the resources required to execute on an ongoing basis and those required to plan and implement
Criteria utilized to evaluate design:
- Clear vision of the desired future state: What does the successful implementation and execution of this system enable Bite to do? What will it look like? How is this different from today? What choices or tradeoffs were made in selecting this vision for the future? What is the business case/ expected return on investment?
- Clear metrics for tracking and measuring success: How will we measure success? Do we currently track this metric today? If not, what needs to be done to track it and who needs to be involved? How will we ensure we’re accurately tracking results? What is an acceptable score?
- Understanding of the likely challenges to be addressed: Where is this initiative likely to fail? How will the planning and implementation steps reflect the difficulty of successfully reaching automatic execution? What elements can be utilized to mitigate likely failure points? What tracking/ piloting needs to take place to improve the likelihood of success/ key learnings. What checks and balances exist to ensure successful implementation?
- Interdependencies: What existing processes and initiatives does this system need to incorporate to work at Bite? Are we asking people to be in different places at the same time? Does the proposed process reflect the connections to other operational requirements or realities? Does this work for the Bite operating model and facilities? How will this be assigned to accountable individuals in a way that fits in with how they receive instructions today?
- Resourcing: Is there a clear and realistic (bottoms up) projection for the resource impact to execute on an ongoing basis? Is there a realistic timetable and resource requirement for planning and implementation/ piloting? What is the cost and is it worth the return?
Related articles
- Importance of Casting Vision (teamleadershipcoach.wordpress.com)
- Managing Project Architectural Challenges (darinpaton.wordpress.com)
- Management with Metrics: Understanding the Balanced Scorecard (dartonequation.com)
- Toastmasters Speech 10: Values of Interdependence (archian.wordpress.com)
- Why People Dislike Metrics (customerthink.com)
- The disconnect between strategy and execution (newmediaandmarketing.com)
