John’s two longest posts in a thread on the Group Partners discussion forum, 1 and 2 February 2003. Other members’ posts are left out.
Posted 1 February 2003
I think this is absolutely fascinating John and many thanks for starting the thread. I really want to understand the approach much more fully of course but let me just add my own take here...
The right conversations often don't take place as the Context within the enterprise has removed the need..."you are in this division so do this divisional task...!"
Context has been created which is counter to or disabling of the breadth required to have the correct conversations let me give a small example...
"Why don't suppliers get to solve the real cause of the the problem they are bought in to resolve...?"
Let's take a subject we are dealing with elsewhere..."Why dont organisations embed the brand into the enterprise system, why is it always so isolated from many parts of the business?....in my experience it's often two things...1...because agencies and brand advisors are often so self serving they forget the responsibility they have to properly integrate their work into the enterprise...and 2...the counter problem is so bad as a result that the buyer has the perception of what an agency or supplier should be doing and places barriers to an agency to get involved in a wider sense...Catch2003?...
This is what I've been developing a solution to for 20 years...we need a way to have the right conversation!!!
In my solution Progressive Frameworks get created to ensure that you cannot have a brand conversation without an enterprise or systemic one and vice versa...as I've always said brand is far too important to be left to branding people, business is far too important to be left to business people etc etc...
Let the conversations begin?...
Posted 2 February 2003
Yes, the main thrust of my specific work is the intervention...identifying the actual need...extract below from a fortchcoming paper of mine which may help here...
"The primary objective of the approach of Contextual Mapping and the Progressive Framework Methodology is to get the client and system owners into the most important conversation possible. In establishing an intervention we can get the senior group into a discussion through a highly proven process that results in dramatic improvement on the following terms.
· Complete understanding and belief in the shared capability to deliver the objectives
· A common and committed set of tasks throughout the teams understood by the teams who have to help to deliver them
· Increased richness in the quality of the solution
· Consistent planning and program management across and supported by the whole enterprise or social system
· A common language that increases efficiency of operation and can be sustained and developed fast over long periods of time
· Disclose fully the differences between divisions or individuals in a respectful and valuable way
· Spot early weaknesses in the current infrastructure thereby avoiding and preventing problems rather than waiting for the disconnections to cause larger problems
· Assess all of the opportunities and properly understand the stress points across the whole enterprise and system
· Begin to identify the real values and strengths and drive for coherence amongst the team to create a shared focus around strategy, tactics, implementation and direction.
· Build powerful relationships at senior level to overcome political and systemic imbalance
· Show how properly thought through integrated thinking is achievable through engineering a common frame for agreement and purpose...
"Fixed business system structures which demand a strict adherence to highly ordered and dogmatic process, business plans and fixed objectives ensures the enterprise is both difficult to transform as market needs dictate and does not allow for creativity, experimentation, innovation nor are they adaptive enough to the customers constant need for the next new thing".
Does this help the context, from my point of view its the clients understanding and buy in to what is required that is the key dynamic here...?
First posted on the Group Partners discussion forum, 1 February 2003. See the copy in the Wayback Machine. Kept as John wrote it.
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