Consultancy Approach

Consultancy for Beckford Consulting is not about toolkits, it’s about principle and philosophy; ‘why’ is really important – more so than ‘what’ or ‘how’. If we can understand meaning, the purpose, vision and intent, then the creation of a tool or method for solving the problem becomes relatively easy. But it is important to understand why things are being done.

Tools can be made or invented which are appropriate to the problem in context and context is really important. Early in his consulting career, John found that he’d go and look at a problem, develop a solution, get agreement to it, and, by the time all that was done, find that the situation had changed and the solution was no longer appropriate. This came to be known as the ‘perpetually failing problem solving engine’ (Beckford, 1993). In order to overcome this, problems are solved with the affected people involved, so that the current system evolves into its new incarnation with as little disruption as possible. Problems and solutions don’t often come without human dimensions, and the messy human dimension is something some consultancies sometimes prefer to ignore – it’s ‘outside the scope’. But John doesn’t mind a bit of mess.

There are two key thoughts that underpin this consulting approach. One is captured most effectively by Aime-Jules Dalou’s sculpture “Wisdom Supporting Liberty” and John believes there is much of value in that. Enabling people to make their own decisions – sharing your wisdom to enable their liberty – is perhaps the real measure of value in consultancy.

A believer in ‘light management’ John considers that if he makes decisions for you he’s going to be kept terribly busy, and he doesn’t want that. So he aims to make himself perpetually redundant by ensuring you have all the information and skills you need to effect change yourself. As Herbert Spencer said: “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools”.

Business Performance

Work in this area is concerned with the overall sustainability of an organisation: how well it is suited to deal with the future and deal with change – not just from an environmental perspective – but overall performance including people, systems and processes. Many organisations focus on improving current performance (increasing efficiency) but, in doing so, they may diminish their ability to cope with the future (sustaining effectiveness). Franchises for instance are very disciplined – they run to a particular pattern and are very good at managing the present, but in these same circumstances, enabling change is very difficult, time consuming and expensive because the capacity for innovation and flexibility in the operating business is often very low.

In developing organisational change with clients, we are seeking to create a structure that resolves the tension between improving today’s performance and investing in ensuring tomorrow’s. This is generated through an operating structure focused on doing best what today is all about, and a development structure focused on creating tomorrow – and running those two, often competing streams of activity in parallel. At board level the conversation revolves around the management of the tension and continuous improvement in both dimensions rather than focusing on what went wrong in the past and who is to blame. Reflection will be on what went well and how to repeat it and using error to enable improvement and avoid recurrence – enabling the organisation to learn.

A housing association, a registered social landlord, was seeking to improve its performance and to be able to demonstrate that performance at audit – the key to continued good funding support for their residents. We worked with them to develop ways of operating that were service user led, essentially putting control in the hands of the customers, instead of the traditional bureaucracy. This transformation was a big shift, and required the alignment of the board and management with the vision and ambitions of the CEO. The upshot was a sustainable reduction in annual operating costs of £1.5 – £2million. Because they are a non-profit organisation, all that surplus is now being reinvested in the housing stock, which is improving the lives of the 40,000 residents.

Business Modelling

Organisations, whether they realise it or not, run on and around processes of various sorts. Generally speaking they are pretty well designed and rely on the machines to make them run. However, as organisations evolve or as needs change, directors need to understand how their processes interact and to be less concerned with whether Process A works or not but, whether it works with Process B and C to give the right business and customer outcome.

One way to understand this is to model the key characteristics of the interactions and simulate changes; the value rests partly in the model itself, but principally in the understanding that emerges from its use. It demonstrates what the systems and processes look like, how they work together, allows the highlighting of tensions between processes that had previously been considered in isolation and shows what is possible when all dimensions are optimised – revealing the true potential.

Other models are outlined on the Brief Cases page and include the following:

• Optimising Performance
• Process & Supply Chain Optimisation
• Business Analysis – Shared Services Modelling
• Project Investment Financial & Carbon Footprint Modelling
• Business Change Staffing Optimisation
• Business Performance Optimisation

Information Strategy

Over the last few decades, companies have made huge investments in IT as demonstrated by the mass of computers, laptops, blackberries and back rooms filled with humming grey boxes. Many are disappointed with the value they seem to have obtained from those investments – and in current economic conditions there is a need to dramatically increase that value.

Historically, most of the investment has been in ’systems’ but that focus needs to shift to ‘information’ – because THAT is the source of value in this area. Often, information systems departments are still focused on hardware and infrastructure – perhaps because that is what they understand and, because that is what is easiest to explain to members of the executive. One conversation with a CEO highlighted this:

“So, what you are saying is that we pay £200k for the hardware and software licences and the other £1.8 million is for people to talk to us”

So, yes – the big investment is in the information – but that is also where the value is to be obtained. In a modern organisation, information really IS power! Power to improve, to change, to perform.

The processing power available to organisations is simply immense, the challenge is to use that power to carry out new, value-adding activities – and in so doing to reduce the amount of manual work that is needed. Unfortunately, the understanding of information – what it’s for, how it can be analysed, aggregated, compiled and used is often very weak.

In each of the case studies (see Brief Cases) where we have compiled a model or simulation, all of the data already existed in the organisation – none of it had to be created. It simply needed to be brought together in a meaningful way to enable the directors to make decisions.

Information is an enabling device for the organisation – it is there to enable people to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. Far greater value is obtained from employees who are using information than from those who, by dint of poor systems design are compelled to spend their days compiling it.

Organisational Effectiveness

Sustainable Organisational Effectiveness is the issue that most organisations really need to address but very few are tackling well. Traditionally, performance has been considered in terms of purely financial outcomes – increasing profitability or turnover. More recently wider aspects of performance have been measured in discrete vertically oriented parcels (or silos), e.g. corporate social responsibility, quality, people, environmental management, finance. The person responsible for each silo is looking to optimise performance in their box or silo – often without the information to consider the implications across the whole organisation. Thus we get businesses that have a great performance in one dimension whilst failing in another.

An organisation seeking to be sustainably effective needs to bring disparate data together into compound measures of overall performance, even where, as often happens, silos can be in conflict or a state of tension – a higher order measure of effectiveness brings those things together and resolves the tension. Optimal performance exists at the confluence of a number of different dimensions; success means ‘flying’ the business within the parameters of the envelope, optimising each dimension without necessarily maximising any. Measures in these circumstances must be thought about in terms of both the absolute measures of performance and the ratios and relationships between them. In understanding the relationships we can more completely understand decisions and their impacts.

The CEO of a major transport business wanted to have a simple picture of the performance of the organisation based on key indicators of past performance and predictors of the future. A system was built which, drawing data from across the business, compared current achievements with both targets and trend indicators, turning good numbers green and bad numbers red! A ‘bad’ number indicated a process which was failing or trending towards a failure point. A ‘good’ number indicated ‘on-target’ performance. This simple system enabled the CEO to focus attention on those things needing expertise whilst being aware of every facet of performance.

The general manager of a large logistics business needed better information to manage the performance of a major distribution hub. The traditional, very functional approach to performance reporting had proved unsuccessful, taking too long to produce and not enabling resolution of the apparent problems. A process-based modelling of the whole system showed that there were only five possible process route ‘types’ overlaid on an organisational structure dictated by the parcel handling machines. The only variables under the control of the GM were the total number of staff and how they were deployed around the hub. The solution lay in creating a reporting tool which reported volume along the various process routes, calculated the number of staff required and compared this with the number of staff actually used – by line, by section, by shift and by manager – and all before the commencement of the next working day. The use of this tool enabled a reduction in operating costs of £4m (about 25%) in 6 months with the same volume of activity.

Brief Cases

(Re)Designing the Organisation

A major transport operator wished to realign its structure to become fully focused on effective delivery of services to customers. A review reflected on the purpose and vision of the organisation and recognised that any redesign needed to encompass the established primacy of service quality.

Far from simply reducing numbers to make the existing structure more ‘efficient’, the project considered the long-term effectiveness of the organisation. This led to a radical redesign of the roles of directors, managers and front line staff each having greater freedom and discretion. For the organisation to be both more effective AND efficient AND to respond more appropriately to its customers, front-line staff needed greater discretion in their interactions with clients. Whilst to ensure a successful future, the organisation was divided into operational and developmental functions – the first focused on delivering current products to current customers, the second on delivering a range of major change projects to create the future.

Information Strategy

The newly appointed finance director of a major public service provider rapidly became aware that the ICT department he had inherited was not fit for purpose. Its reputation in the business was very poor and it appeared focused on its own issues and problems rather than those of the business it purported to serve.

Working with the finance director and the board, an initial review highlighted a number of problems. The departmental head (a hardware specialist) believed that the business was there to support ICT, was disengaged from the objectives of the organisation and had a negative attitude which cascaded through the department – the whole was dysfunctional. Customer service (internal) was non-existent and its performance was holding the business back. From an information systems perspective, there were numerous systems but these were poorly understood, managed and documented – and other parts of the business were pursuing independent initiatives – unable to get service from the ICT team.

It was considered that the position of the departmental head was unsustainable and, whilst the search went on for a replacement, an interim manager was appointed. An information strategy was developed to address the issues, this encompassed:

• Staffing – structure, numbers, skills, training
• Infrastructure – the hardware platform, resilience and business continuity
• Software – industry and organisational systems, core business systems
• Presentation – MI, intranet, communication devices

Over three years the department (now called Information Services) has been transformed. It has a new head, is totally customer focused, has delivered several major systems projects – on time, to standard, on budget, to specification and has a solid and growing reputation – not just within the business but also in the parent company and the industry.

Strategic Challenge

A major transport business needed to substantially review business operations in order to retain a principal contract and secure the future. The review, driven internally, was generating sound but predictable results – perhaps best characterised as ‘more of same but slightly better’ – an improvement but more incremental than radical.

Sensing that this would not be enough, we were invited by the board to challenge the management team. A process of testing and reviewing the assumptions underpinning each aspect of the proposed contract drove the creation of a substantially more challenging change agenda – with dramatic improvements promised in both customer service and bottom line. The challenge encompassed asset management, customer services, information systems, human resources, catering and planning. Taking on the best in their industry with a substantially revised proposition, and against the run of play in the industry, the business retained the contract.

Optimising Performance

A plant was continually failing to achieve desired budget targets. The managers did not properly understand their production capacity nor the impact of interactions in the processes. Taking high level measures across the organisation from the first process through each stage to the final product it became clear that built into the business were tensions that meant a manager at a late stage in the process could only succeed by ensuring the manager in front of him failed.

Modelling capacity and then simulating performance throughout the process allowed us to see the capacities of each of the stages, the limits that cannot be exceeded with current conformations. In operational terms we were able consider performance against current capacity, and in strategic terms, we could consider how to improve capacity. In the case of this plant, over time they ended up wondering what to do with the extra production!

Process & Supply Chain Optimisation

A company delivering sterile supply services to the National Health Service needed to understand how to optimise performance in new facilities. Modelling of existing facilities across several locations led to a realisation that some ‘improvements’ led to deterioration in performance. The whole process was modelled in order to understand this and to resolve it, leading to a revised model with the realisation of potential savings in existing facilities – realisable savings in one case of £300k per annum found in 30 minutes. The model provided to the client the ability to:

• recognise and manage the counter-intuitive impacts of changes;
• optimise design of new facilities ‘on the fly;
• simultaneously manage multiple dimensions of the facility in ‘real-time’ – throughput, queueing & delays, staffing, processes;
• immediately understand the impact on viability of customer driven changes.

Business Analysis – Shared Services Modelling

A transport provider was considering the development of a shared-service centre for its existing businesses and the subsequent integration of further operations – subject to successful acquisition. A consulting enquiry rooted in process analysis, interviews and discussions was supported by development of an integrated model of the existing organisations. Capability was included in the model to simulate changes at the individual process level, at the level of the company and at the level of any combination of companies within each process.

Whilst the analysis showed that the NPV on that particular investment was inadequate, the model can be used to analyse the cost and investment issues of performance and integration problems and develop the business case.

Project Investment Financial & Carbon Footprint Modelling

A corporate driver training business was seeking to work with its clients to understand and realise the economic, environmental and safety benefits of advance training for business drivers.

A simple model was generated that takes existing data about the organisation and its drivers, sets improvement targets based on broad experience and generates the case for investment based on financial, environmental and risk.

Business Change Staffing Optimisation

A major media organisation was faced with the need to re-examine its structures and performance in the light of long term change in its revenue expectations with a particular need to focus on the issue of optimising migration from a current number and mix of roles to the future number and mix.

An optimisation model was developed to pursue the balance between minimising costs and maximising organisational performance. The model takes account of current costs and future cost constraints, present and future role requirements, skills mix, service duration, redundancy, reskilling, redeployment and relocation costs to assess the impact of any change decision. The managers responsible for the process are enabled to understand the implications of their proposals.

Business Performance Optimisation

A service-care organisation was considering investment in the building of new premises. When support was provided to the development of the business case for presentation to the board, the assumptions that had already been made about the future capacity of the business came into question. Current performance showed that at least some of the assumptions did not stand up to examination.

A performance model of the organisation was created to reflect regulated staffing ratios and costs and this was compared to actual performance. This highlighted that the managers were either fooling themselves about client attendance levels – or failing to recover appropriate fees from the attendees – or a mixture of both.

This model, incorporating simple simulation or scenario analysis, also enabled the recognition of break points at which the business could be profitable and those at which a profit could never be made. The model enabled a ‘right-sized’ proposal to be put forward – with profitability possible under a wide range of possible scenarios.