Fundamental Operations Business Practices - What are you making?

So you finally received the promotion, got the new job,  or in your current capacities, are asked to help and support an "operation". What is the first thing you need to do?

You need to: "Precisely determine the Output of your operation, articulated from the consumers' point of view of this product or service".

Why is this important?   

For Clarity and focus. So you can move forward confident of where to invest your time and effort to ensure your operation creates value and to help you ensure that you are optimizing the right things, and are implementing the appropriate business practices.

So how to determine the Output of your operation?

There are many ways; here are four methods, from the most basic to the most involved, that could help you determine the Output of your operation: 

1.  What is this operation paid to do? What is the product?
2.  Another way could be to do a simple process mapping  (list the Inputs, describe the Process, and list the Output ). 
3.  A third way to refine your answer is to validate with stakeholders, shareholders, customers, and clients what product or service they expect.
4.  Finally, if you are looking for a more formal analysis, you can use tools like Michael Porter's Value chain analysis.

Below are a few examples of determining Operational Output for different industries and functions using the first two methods. 

Diapers Manufacturing

• What is the team paid to do? What is the product?  

Safely produce "X" amount of diapers at the desired quality standard. 

• What are your operation's inputs, processes, and outputs?

Software and Hardware R&D

• What is the team paid to do? What is the product?

Generate X amount of new ideas/applications / solving technical challenges, run experiments/projects to test the validity of these ideas,   develop proofs of concept,  generate Intellectual Property. 

• What are your operation's inputs, processes, and outputs?

 

Software Go to Market 

• What is the team paid to do? What is the product?

Grow sales by creating content and providing consultative advice and expertise to validate Product Market Fit and effective execution of Sales and Go to Market strategies

•  What are your operation's inputs, processes, and outputs?

Now that you know what your operation makes, what's next?

The next step is to understand the gap between the desire and the current state and find a straightforward way to measure progress and Output; once you have done that, you are ready to prioritize and manage tasks designed to close the gap and determine which are the most pertinent business practices to implement

 We will explore how to do that in my next post.