The SCALEXEL® raison d’être and research product portfolio
In the previous edition of SCALEXEL SWEEP, we discussed the multifarious factors that enable and impede operational performance. We also reflected on the clichés and caricatures of operations concepts that abound in the business world, the foremost of which were “execution”, “operations management” and “operations excellence”. Thereafter, we decried the steady loss of the human element in prevalent approaches that adopt a “systems-based” approach to operations management, thereby impairing the ability and propensity of employees to “align”, “collaborate” and “build” (https://nirsanconnect.com/09/05/2019/scalexel-sweep/excel-in-operations-aspects-of-organisations/ ). In this edition, we bring operational research to the forefront through SCALEXEL® – our research category focused on transforming operations performance of business organisations. We discuss the six research products within the category, and review the synergy benefits provided by the SCALEXEL® platform that accrue over and beyond the benefits from individual products.
The SCALEXEL® platform hosts research products that help businesses drive for insights into operations aspects of their organisations that manifest at the coalface or frontline. Such topics include the management of operations and operating performance, the quality of execution skills, functional skills and capabilities, operating infrastructure, and entrenched mindsets related to how superlative operations performance comes about. ARDOREN® inquires into approaches of managing operations; EXEMPLEM® assesses the quality of execution; PRODASET® explores improvement opportunities in R&D operations; TESQUIR® comprehends the enablers and impediments of manufacturing operations; SUPTOR® examines the strengths and gaps of prevailing supply chain operations; WORVAL® unearths opportunities to enhance sales operations.
Operating performance holds up financial performance, particularly of enterprises engaged in manufacturing and service operations. While dialogues around ‘efficiency’ abound, traditional approaches fail to address important issues such as the sustenance of high efficiency levels, the role of ‘effectiveness’, and the partnership between human and infrastructural actors. ARDOREN® provides an insightful and in-depth evaluation of your operations performance management process, highlighting strong practices and improvement areas. ARDOREN® research provides disaggregated views that compare and contrast between operations management within sub-units and operating teams.
‘Execution’ is most credited for success and most blamed for failure. It is among the most discussed constructs in the world of enterprise – built into countless methodologies, logos and slogans. And yet, its conception remains clichéd and hopelessly far from describing the conditions under which it gets instantiated. Thinkers are content to pair ‘execution’ with ‘leadership’, or to define ‘execution’ as the quintessential follower and conceptual converse of ‘strategy’. EXEMPLEM® frees the organisation from clichés and caricatures of execution, and provides an assessment of the ‘quality of execution’ against three characteristics that are instantiated by smooth execution. EXEMPLEM® holds that smooth execution is silent, relentless and self-adjusting.
Industrial R&D functions run the risk of turning into inexorable machines that are no more able to either groom creativity or harness serendipity. Processes cutting through the R&D function purports to enhance certainty by engendering discipline within a construct that is fundamentally fraught with uncertainty and randomness. PRODASET® believes that “creativity” is neither wholly random, nor achievable through structure alone. The creative process needs to balance between harnessing serendipity and enforcing process discipline. PRODASET® helps instil excellence in your R&D function by assessing “creativity” along five dimensions and identifying entrenched mindsets related to the balance between serendipity and process discipline.
Supply chain is the vascular system of the business enterprise. Despite the centrality of service, extreme “technology orientation” has robbed the function of its “human element”. Supply chain is now constituted as a composite of numbers, parameters, graphics, software and ERPs. SUPTOR® firmly believes in the primacy of the human element in service. It provides a comprehensive assessment of service quality, measuring it along five dimensions representing the recipients of service. In addition, SUPTOR® unearths deep-seated mindsets related to the role of “human element” and “supply chain organisation”, and builds back the lost qualities of human endeavour and overreach.
Manufacturing is at once the primary influencer of cost, quality and throughput. Inspired by systems-driven approaches, manufacturing organisations run the risk of evolving into thoughtless and automated giants, sans the elevating influence of personal enterprise and leadership. TESQUIR® believes in the middle ground, and aspires to create an environment of “thoughtful discipline” by integrating “systemic discipline” with “purposeful personal leadership”. TESQUIR® provides the measure of excellence in your manufacturing function along its five component dimensions, and identifies entrenched mindsets related to the perceived importance of the two extreme approaches.
Sales functions have been polarised by experiential learnings and academic literature between “push-driven” and “pull-based” models. WORVAL® considers the “pull versus push” debate irrelevant. While “pull-based approaches” fail in the face of time-bound performance pressure, “push-based approaches” rarely sustain. To find common ground, WORVAL® conceptualises the skill of “influencing through leadership” by combining the constructs of “mental states”, influencing techniques and the “selling process”. WORVAL® helps you instil excellence by assessing the organisation’s ability to “influence through leadership” along five dimensions, and by unearthing deep-seated mindsets related to selling approaches.
Clearly, each of the six products within SCALEXEL® researches for insights while embracing a unique belief or affirmation that serves as its pedagogic backbone. ARDOREN® emphasises the partnership between human and infrastructural actors in operations management, while EXEMPLEM® rejects clichéd views and emphasises the instantiation of “smooth execution” . While PRODASET® embraces the notion of the “creative process” in R&D, TESQUIR® infuses “systems discipline” in manufacturing with “personal leadership”. And as SUPTOR® rediscovers the human element in supply chain, WORVAL® seeks the balance between “pull” and “push” strategies in the selling function.
The synergies from the SCALEXEL® platform emanate from its “first principles based” and “direct” approach to facing and resolving operations problems. The tenets of SCLAEXEL® lay waste to jargon and cliché ridden approaches that currently infest the world of operations. Such convictions shine in research approaches embedded in all products of the platform, irrespective of the functional domains these pertain to. The colour of SCALEXEL® is not to be found in the research content of the products, but in their convictions and methodologies.
In the next edition of SCALEXEL SWEEP, we begin our journey to understand individual research products on the platform. We start by studying the domain of “execution”, getting rid of attendant clichés and exploring EXEMPLEM® to understand the constituents of “smooth execution”.