Operational Excellence

What does it mean?

Operational Excellence sounds very grand and aspirational, but it’s actually the philosophy of how we do things at Accuteque.  When we work with any client, our goal is to firstly plan our exit, and to identify what we need to do to leave the client in a better state than when we started with them.  And also how they can sustain any improvements that we set in motion.

The Business Dictionary defines operational excellence as
“A philosophy of the workplace where problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership results in the ongoing improvement in an organisation. The process involves focusing on the customers’ needs, keeping the employees positive and empowered, and continually improving the current activities in the workplace.”

This is close enough to our own definition; we would add a “systems thinking” mindset to consider broader relationships and impacts and strategic alignment to create consistency of purpose. Our principles also support the behaviours and results that help to achieve operational excellence.

Our overarching approach to any engagement generally follows that of lean change management:  we start with gaining Insight into your operation; we propose Options or hypotheses for how we can work collaboratively to improve, solve or develop changes to achieve your goals; and we then run small Experiments  with your teams where we will prepare them for change, introduce the change and assess and review progress.  All of this in an iterative, collaborative and transparent manner.

Practically speaking, we have a myriad of services, tools and practices that we can apply to help you and your teams to work towards operational excellence. Many of them we have tried on ourselves or used with other clients; but we are not afraid of trying something new if we think that it will lead to a quality outcome or will improve the flow of value or will help your organisational to grow.

Operational Excellence is not just a theoretical approach – it requires a considered and intentional review, followed by action.  At Accuteque, we will work with you to define actions that you and your team can understand, can implement and can sustain long after we leave.