CxO: Operational efficiency

If your organisation is more than a few years old the chances are that it is out of intensive care. The business model has proven itself and the game now is to refine the ‘sausage factory’ to maximise margin.

Part of this operational efficiency is to crisply define the processes and where they cannot be fully automated hire a highly compliant order following worker.

The problem is that the sausage machine model is based on the industrial era assumption that just because sausages are in demand today they most likely will be for another few years. And even if they are going out of fashion they will taper off at a manageable rate.

And just because your business model is industrial it doesn’t mean that the market is. Buyers in the digital economy are fickle, gossipy and value experience over cheap.

Thus CEOs today are encouraged to spend less time fine tuning the business model and more time on redeveloping the model to reflect the increased market clock speed and the reality that overnight your business might become a cautionary case study. That’s a Kodak moment you don’t want.