BPT Implementation Process

How do you break down the vision, mission and value propositions so you can measure them?

With BPT, you use what is called construct analysis to pull out words, phrases and/or themes that can be used to generate the Critical Performance Measures (CPMs). These CPMs are subsequently used to generate associated metrics or measures to be employed throughout the organization.

For instance, a Vision might read, "XYZ company will grow profitably by dominating the software market for the products we develop."  The constructs are "grow profitably," and "dominate."  These can be measured in many different ways, but perhaps the most obvious are Profit and Market Share, respectively.  Profit might have a metric of "dollars" or "revenue dollars / cost dollars" and market share might have a metric of "percent of software sold relative to overall software sales."

It should be noted that before an organization can perform construct analysis, it has to have a proper vision, mission and value proposition. Back

If BPT is data-driven management, from where do you get the data?

The data comes from within the organization from the Voice of the Business process and from the customer from the Voice of the Customer process.  After identifying all of the CPMs and their associated measures and metrics, the organization must determine what data it currently has and what data it needs to obtain.  Back

How is it that you can promise no head count reduction and reduce the number of projects at the same time?

Rather than having resources spread across multiple projects and not succeeding at many or any of them, BPT focuses resources on those few items that are critical to the success of the organization.  Employees will be working on and finishing those projects that will provide the most benefit to the organization as a whole.  Back

How does this methodology allow an organization to kill projects? 

After determining the Critical Performance Measurements (CPMs) from the vision, mission and value proposition, their associated measures and the data that goes with them, the organization performs a gap-analysis between the current state and the desired future state. Those items with small gaps become tactical, requiring only incremental improvements, not projects. Those items that have large gaps become strategic, requiring breakthrough improvements.  Strategic items transfer to the strategic plan that consequently is used to develop a business plan containing projects.

In short, projects that are not strategic get killed, and resources get reallocated to projects that are strategic.  Back

I'm convinced that I will have more strategic items than I have staff to achieve a breakthrough improvement.  What happens if we end up with too many Strategic Intents?

Another way of asking this question is, what happens if I don't have enough resources to cover all of my Strategic Intents?  Using the 80/20 rule, an organization should allocate roughly 20% of its resources to Strategics.  Allocate the resources you have to those strategic intents that require the greatest breakthroughs first.  Once those Strategics become tactical, reallocate resources to the remaining Strategics.  Back

How does the customer factor into all of this?

Without customers, it is difficult to make money.  But with the wrong customers, it can be even more difficult.  With BPT, and a process called Customer, Product/Process Rationalization (CPR), an organization identifies those customers which contribute to its profit, and which cost it money.  The idea here is that not all revenue is good revenue and not all customers are good customers.  The best customer isn't necessarily a customer that is happy with your products/services.  It's a customer that is making a profit for your organization.  Back

Is it possible to get all of BPT implemented and still go out of business?

Unfortunately, yes.  With all of its failsafe mechanisms, BPT, as with any methodology, relies on people to implement it.  BPT cannot save an organization from choosing the wrong model for strategic differentiation or the wrong business.  However, it can help organizations identify their mistakes sooner so they will have more time to make adjustments.  Back