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Product category: Manufacturing industry news
News Release from: Cranfield School of Management | Subject: Nexus survey
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial Team on 29 October 2004

Business improvement is disjointed

A new survey by nexus at Cranfield shows that two thirds of public and private sector organisations manage their business improvement initiatives in a disjointed way, increasing chances of failure.

A new survey by nexus at Cranfield School of Management, shows that two thirds of public and private sector organisations manage their business improvement initiatives in a disjointed way, increasing their chances of failure Responses from senior executives and project managers at major UK financial institutions, IT/telecoms and public sector organisations showed that where it is vital for departments or organisations to work together there is little ability to pull together to deliver the desired outcome

As a result, rather than delivering solutions, the initiatives themselves become part of the problem.

In the private sector, delivering improvement initiatives is about getting different departments to work together, to collaborate rather than compete, and to integrate more closely with critical stakeholders such as customers and suppliers.

In the public sector, changes are meant to bring about cohesive policy implementation.

For instance in the Criminal Justice System this means closer integration between courts, probationary services, police and prisons.

In the Health Service, this means greater cooperation between, among others, GPs, hospitals and Health Authorities.

Yet, the survey shows that two thirds of these organisations work in a disjointed way, allowing each initiative to develop its own language, use different and conflicting methods, and employ different teams and consultants.

Ashley Braganza, director of nexus and Senior Lecturer at Cranfield School of Management said, "Our survey begins to explain why so few improvement initiatives actually succeed in delivering tangible results.

Different improvement teams end up competing with one another especially where they have to contend for resources to progress their initiative.

Each team is allowed to develop its own methods and values which may not always accord with those of other teams".

The results also show that the strategy of most organisations provides little direction or support for improvement initiatives.

More than two-thirds of the senior executives and project managers polled stated that their organisation's business strategy does not incorporate change implications necessary to fulfil the strategy.

This begs the question as to the rationale for the improvement initiatives in the first place.

Said Braganza: "The use of the phrase 'strategic' to describe large projects and initiatives should be banned unless improvement initiatives are integral to strategy implementation".

On November 2, 2004, Braganza will address the second nexus event on the theme of unlearning contemporary methods for improvement initiatives and providing nexus members with techniques to link such initiatives to their strategy.

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