Update on Book Launch

Good Day Everyone,

On Thursday I launched An Executive Overview of An Excellence Agenda, Building a Unique Strategic Advantage on Kindle Books. The response and feedback has been wonderful. A number of people have asked about hard copies, so I will be announcing a solution to that request shortly.

Downloads of the free ebook have gone very well – my target is 500 downloads and I am several hundred downloads short of that. If you have downloaded a copy many thanks, I not, click on the link below to get your free copy. The promotion ends at midnight PST tonight. Please pass on the link to your colleagues and contacts. I'll let you know what happens!

Thank you so much for the positive feedback and support!

Francis

The download is available here: http://amzn.to/13XbyVa

Book launch in progress - free Kindle download

Two years ago I sat down and examined everything I had learned from over 700 consulting assignments with kind of organization from mom and pop start ups, to multinational corporations and federal government departments. The result was a management framework I called An Excellence Agenda.

The framework links together the strategic pillars of Vision, Mission, Strategic Planing and Performance Measurement into one management approach. The result is an integrated and aligned management process that an entire organization and team can work with, that leverages excellence as a strategic advantage. In a world steeped in mediocrity, the results can be amazing. This framework will work in private and public; profit and non-profit companies and organizations. An Excellence Agenda is a way of using what already exists in organizations to become extraordinary.

Over the past two years, I have tested the framework with a variety of clients and projects and the results have been impressive. A number of people have asked me for a written overview and I am pleased to announce that An Executive Overview of An Excellence Agenda, Building a Unique Strategic Advantage is now available in Kindle Books.

If you believe in your team members, if you want to take your organization from good to great, or from great to extraordinary; you may find this overview of interest. For the next five days, until June 17^th, the Overview is available from Kindle Books as a free download.

The download is available here: http://amzn.to/13XbyVa

Once you read through the Overview, if you get even just one “aha” moment, I would ask you to do several things; 1) please let me know, 2) put a comment on the Amazon listing and 3) pass on the link to one other person you think might enjoy this overview.

Please feel free to share and cross post this link. http://amzn.to/13XbyVa

Excellence and commnication

I was talking to an old friend on the weekend.  This friend has been very successful in an international career and is now leading a major regional cultural centre.  The centre receives funding from a local regional government and as part of the renewed funding arrangement, a review was conducted.  One of the problems is that the tool being used to conduct the review is designed for social and community programs, not cultural programs.  The criteria and the scoring of the criteria is skewed towards social outcomes.  The results of the review did not reflect the mandate or the actual impact the centre has had on it's audience.

The real problem is that the tool is mandatory, and contributes to funding and resource decisions.  The centre is faced with a dilemma.  How does it tell it's story to a funder who is using a skewed assessment tool.  The real dilemma is that the cultural centre measures it's impact on cultural excellence criteria and the local government is measuring excellence based on social impact and there is no translation available.

If we are going to promote excellence in our organization, we need to understand what "excellence" means and it may have different meanings.  The goal of management is to be able to communicate what excellence is - there needs to be a performance measurement system in place that reinforces excellence and promotes aligned responses.  That does not mean that every program or department has to have the same definition, but it does mean that there has to be communication between managers and executives to ensure that everyone is on the same page.  Whatever framework you use to communicate - it must be one that everyone understands.

Update

I looked at the blog a few weeks ago and realized I have not done a posting in months.  So an update is in order.  An Excellence Agenda has not been abandoned!  The good news is that I have been working extensively with the Excellence Agenda tools with clients and the response has been extraordinary.  In four projects over the last nine months, the Excellence Agenda framework has been the key to moving the client to a new level of maturity in organizational transformation. The framework worked for a national NGO, two regional governments and Missionary organization.

Given this positive experience and field testing, I have written an Executive Overview of An Excellence Agenda that is being published by The IdeaWorks Publishing as a Kindle e-book.  The official launch will be announced over the next few week.  So stay tuned for more information and announcements.

The Principles of An Excellence Agenda

Earlier this week I was working with a client on their Excellence Agenda.  As we talked about the concepts and clarified what it was and how it worked, the motivation and excitement took off.  Coming out of the meeting I realized I needed to find a better way to tell the Excellence Agenda story.  Yesterday, while walking the dogs (walking has a great impact on creativity) I had an "aha" moment and was able to simplify An Excellence Agenda to a series of basic principles.  So here they are:

1. Excellence isn't everything, it's the only thing.
2. Job 1 of every executive and manager is "to create environments in which excellence can happen"
3. Excellence is a journey, not a destination
4. Excellence = meeting requirements
5. Excellence does not equal perfect: Excellence is an outcome, Perfect is a target (generally unachievable)
6. There is a proven process for building an Excellence Agenda, that has definable steps and that engages the participants to build buy-in and execution commitment. 

I am looking forward to elaborating on these topics over the next week or so...

In the meantime check out the link about my Granddaughter: lifewithlol

Speaking Engagement

Next week I am speaking at the Social Media in Government Conference.  I am tag teaming with David Paul, Director of Economic Development, City of Brockville.  Here's the link:  Social Media in Government.  I will do a post on the conference next week.  Hope to see you there.

Update

It has been a while since I posted some significant content.  So an update is in order.  I have been so busy with new initiatives that I have neglected the blog.  But that is about to change, I have a number of posts waiting to be finalized and posted.  So some updates.

In December of 2011, I was invited to join Delta Partners Management Consultants in Ottawa, Canada. It has been a huge move.  Delta Partners brings a trusted adviser approach to their work and they have an amazing content repository focused on organizational design, leadership and change management.  You can see their material at www.deltapartners.ca.  One of my first assignments with Delta Partners was to attend the Food Manufacturing and Safety Forum in Dallas Texas at the end of January.  Preparing for that and the follow up from that conference has been quite exciting.  Lots of very interesting things happening in that area.  I have also had a number of proposals and other projects to work on.

Friday of last week I, along with a number of colleagues from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, was given a Certificate of Merit for contributions to the development of the Agency program area performance measurement system.  The project was initiated by Bart Bilmer five years ago to provide the food programs with a consistent approach to performance measurement and integrated program reporting.  The goal was to move programs from a compliance mindset to a performance measurement culture. My role was to work with all of the programs to define their performance measurement logic models, key performance indicators and develop the integrated reporting system. The system was ultimately connected and linked into the Agency corporate performance measurement system that reports to the Parliament of Canada.  Over that time the Treasury Board Secretariat moved the rating on the Agency performance measurement system from "Needs Attention" to "Strong", the highest level of achievement.  The Certificate of Merit was a nice way to express appreciation for the contribution of everyone on the team.

Check out http://www.aliconferences.com/conf/social_media_govt_canada0312/index.htm.  I will be supporting the presentation from the City of Brockville on using social media in a municipal context.

Stay tuned.  There is more to come over the coming weeks.

Caring

An Excellence Agenda starts with caring.  In this blog post, Seth Godin hits it on the head on the impact of caring.  This is the line that really struck me:

Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.


An Excellence Advantage is about an investment in comittment and effort, not about capital expenditure.  Check the link here:

  Seth Godin: Caring

Busy Month

It has been a busy couple of weeks and I have not put up a post in a while.  In early December the hard drive on my laptop completely died.  I could not get it going in any way.  My laptop is a Compaq Presario made by HP.  I called the HP help line and the experience was definitely an Excellence Agenda moment. Their response was incredible. They had a new hard drive to me within a week and provided full installation and reformatting support.  I will have more on that in another post.  The upshot is that I have been reloading all my software and other technical support programs that make life in today's society work.  

One of the biggest losses was an Executive Guide to An Excellence Agenda and a Workbook that I had drafted.  I am in the process of reconstructing and hope to have as a New Year's gift within the next week.

At the same time was Christmas, a busy time for everyone.  Our holidays were very busy and enjoyable.  It has been a warm winter so far and we were able to complete a whole host of family get togethers. 

I will also be making an announcement about a new consulting affiliation early in the New Year.  All in all 2011 has been a year of transition.  I am looking forward to a major push on An Excellence Agenda in 2012.

Merry Christmas (belated) and have a wonderful and prosperous New Year.

Tom Peters on Excellence

No discussion of Excellence can ignore the profound influence of Tom Peters.  In Search of Excellence, A Passion for Excellence and Thriving on Chaos are fascinating, detailed examinations of what works.  In chapter 1 of A Passion for Excellence, Tom Peters describes the four principles he believes are at the core of Excellence. They are:

• Care of Customers
• Constant Innovation
• People 
• Leadership through Managing by Wandering Around.

His key theme is that Excellence is simple, not easy, but simple. The paradox is that you have to do all of these things with a single minded dedication to doing well.  This quote struck home with me again as I reread it:

"I turns out that neither superior customer service nor constant innovation - the two sustaining edges of excellence - is built upon genius in the executive suite, sleight-of-hand techniques or mystical strategic moves on a game board that allow one to gain a five or ten year advantage over one's competitors.  Both are built, instead, on a bedrock of listening, trust and respect for the dignity and creative potential of each person in the organization."  (Page 579, Tom Peters Two Complete Books, Wings Books, (c) 1995)

As Tom Peters so eloquently points out, Excellence is about people, creating communities of excellence through listening, respect and giving people the space to be innovative and creative.  I don't think the world has changed all that much.  I think we have forgotten the basics of Excellence. We have to get back to the fact that business is about people; looking after our customers, our suppliers, our team.  Leadership is about listening, trusting and building respect.  Imagine that. Leading by listening - really listening, not just to the words, but to the meaning, and the intention of the conversation.  The problem I see in organizations every day is that everyone is so busy talking, (through emails, text messages, and meetings) that no one has the time to listen.