“System in all things is the soul of business. To deliberate maturely, & execute promptly is the way to conduct it to advantage. With me, it has always been a maxim, rather to let my designs appear from my works, than by my expressions.”
– George Washington
Innovation – Searching for the “Best Way”
Innovation is often thought of as creativity. Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt points out that “Creativity thinks up new things, Innovation does new things”. By recognizing that it is not just the consulting work that we do which demands innovation, but also the process by which it is sold, we aim our innovative energies at the way in which business does business. How our business interacts with the consumer is more important than what it sells.
Innovation is the heart of every exceptional business.
What is standing in the way of our clients getting what they want from our business? For the evolution of innovation to be meaningful, it must take the client’s point of view. At the same time, innovation simplifies our business to its critical essentials. It should make things easier for clients- otherwise, it’s not an innovation but rather complication.
Innovation then is the mechanism through which our business identifies itself in the mind of our customers and establishes its individuality. It is the result of a scientifically generated and quantifiably verified profile of your clients’ perceived needs and unconscious expectations.
It is the skills developed within your interactions with each other and our clients that should be asking, “What is the best way to do this?” knowing, that we will probably never discover the best way, but by asking we will assuredly discover a way that’s better than the one we know now.
Innovation is the “Best Way” skill. It produces a high level of energy in every company within which it’s nurtured, fed, and stimulated- energy that in turn feeds everyone the company touches; its employees, customers, suppliers, and lenders. In an innovative company, everyone grows. Innovation is the signature of a bold, imaginative brand.
Quantitative – “The truth is in the numbers”
To be at all effective, all innovations “the best way” needs to be measured.
By becoming quantitative, I’m talking about the numbers related to the impact that innovation creates, I am also talking about how we measure and understand our business and our performance. In the past, at Tahzoo we have reflexively leaped to qualitative analysis instead of examining the numbers.
Few companies thoroughly quantify innovation, even those who believe in measurement. Transforming Tahzoo into quantifying everything related to how we do business will profoundly change our success and culture. Questions and measurements about topics such as:
- How many positive client interactions do we have each day?
- What was the measurable business impact of our work?
- How efficient in terms of utilization is our client solutions team?
- How large is our pipeline and what is our close ratio?
- Does our pipeline match our staffing expertise?
- Are our rates commensurate with our cost structure?
Eventually, we will think of our entire business in terms of numbers, we will measure everything. We will be able to read our business’ health chart by the flow of numbers. Because without numbers we can’t possibly know where we are, let alone where we’re going. With the numbers, our business will take on a totally new meaning…it will come alive with possibilities.
Orchestration – Consistency in execution
Once you innovate a process and quantify its impact on your business, orchestration is the elimination of discretion, or choice, at the operating level of the business. It is about ensuring a consistent result for our clients.
Without orchestration, nothing could be planned, and nothing anticipated- by us or our client. If we’re doing everything differently each time you do it, if everyone in the company is doing it by their own discretion, their own choice, rather than creating order, we’re creating chaos.
For Tahzoo to grow and scale, discretion is the enemy of progress, standardization, and quality. We must be consistent in how we manage ourselves and deliver results for our clients.
If you haven’t orchestrated it, it won’t be consistent and we won’t be able to depend on it. If we can’t depend on it, we don’t have a business model. No matter how *smart and happy* our people are, we won’t consistently satisfy our clients.
In short, the definition of a business model is simply our unique way of doing business. It is the Tahzoo way. The Tahzoo way must provide the vehicle to facilitate predictability. To give our customers and employees what they want every single time. Unless our clients get everything they want, every single time, they will go someplace else to get it!
Orchestration (The Tahzoo way), is the glue that holds us to our customer’s perceptions. Orchestration is the certainty that is absent from every other human experience. It is the order and the logic behind the human craving for a reason.
Orchestration is as simple as doing what you say you’re going to do, saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and following the Tahzoo way consistently for as long as it works and produces the results we want.
Once we’ve innovated, quantified, and orchestrated something in our business, we must continue to innovate, quantify, and orchestrate it. The world will collide with whatever we’ve previously created and sooner or later destroy it. We will need to continue to evolve Tahzoo in a structured and methodical way.
In short, Innovation, Measurement, and Orchestration are the backbone of every extraordinary business… and I want Tahzoo to be extraordinary!
So, when you think of Orchestration absent Innovation and Quantification, you’re describing an action stripped of its purpose, its meaning, its vitality.
Smart and Happy People – Knowing how you contribute to this mission
Within this process, with the continuous Innovation and Measurement that precedes the Orchestration and the consistency that follows it, with this endless investigation into the way of work, the work itself becomes key to our own personal transformation.
The work itself becomes something other than a habit; it becomes an exploration into who we are and how we express ourselves in our relationships to something much larger. First your role on the account. Then the function you fulfill. Then within Tahzoo understanding how your role and function fulfills both you and the business, without which Tahzoo wouldn’t exist. Then the world in which Tahzoo exists and the purpose it fulfills and the impact on people with whom, and for whom, it comes into contact.
Our mission is to make millions of people a little happier every day.
Let’s go be great!
Brad