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.