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A major part of the business strategy of Access to Excellence is to further the understanding of the principles of Business Excellence and their application. This enables us to create substantial improvement in organisational performance. The publication of The Explorer’s Guide to Business Excellence represents a significant contribution to this development of understanding. Here you will find an outline and background to this work, which will be published in the first quarter of 2004. In addition there is information on other publications in preparation. If you would like further details or to be informed of publication details as they become available, please go to the Contact Us page. The Explorer’s Guide to Business ExcellenceA major new work that will share insights into effective organisational transformation using the principles of Business Excellence. The work on this book extends over a period of around two years. During this time I have spoken at a number of conferences and events where I have mentioned the work and have promised to keep people informed of the progress. When I began the book I wouldn’t have believed that it could have taken so long, so I’ve often indicated that the book was nearer to completion than has proved the case, for which I apologise. Here I’ll take the opportunity to outline how work on the book has progressed and outline the aims and structure of the book. OverviewIf you’ve ever wondered why Business Excellence sometimes does or doesn’t work, or why if it’s such a good approach why is it so difficult to get support, or why colleagues appear blind to the obvious benefits of continuous improvement, this book could start to provide you with answers and help you become one of the Business Excellence success stories. In this book Steve draws on his experience of over ten years involvement with Business Excellence. This experience includes work with the EFQM on the development of the Business Excellence Model, serving as lead assessor and assessor trainer with the British Quality Foundation and managing the deployment of Business Excellence throughout Britain’s largest exporter, British Aerospace. His successes include leading BAe achievement of winning the UK Business Excellence Award. Intriguingly it is not a ‘what to do’ recipe book for excellence. Steve’s experience has taught him that such books are the province of the improvement ‘day-tripper’. The book instead captures how organisations can discover their own route to excellence through exploration. Using the day-tripper and explorer characters to contrast the different mindsets and approaches, the book
The book will cause you to think, question and challenge what you think you know about Business Excellence and improvement and is sure to start your exploration of how you can achieve excellence. If that’s not enough, there’s a third character who introduces the ability of leading organisations to ‘time travel’ - Intrigued? If you would like to be informed of progress and publication of this title, please visit the Contact Us page. The following provides further background to the work on the book. AimsWhen I began to write my aim was to capture my thoughts, experience and in particular the learning that I have gained from over ten years involvement in change and in particular the ideas of Business Excellence. Having seen Business Excellence from a wide range of perspectives I had enjoyed the fact that during those ten years I had never stopped learning. I guess one motivation for writing was to attempt to capture this learning. I have given many presentations on the subject of change and most often found the question and answer session the most enjoyable aspect. Attempting to capture the learning to share in a more structured way seemed a worthwhile challenge. I guess at the start of the work I didn’t realise just how much more I would learn through the discipline of sitting down and structuring the thoughts. There was however a second motivation and that was a frustration that I had seen many organisations fail to achieve anywhere near the level of benefit that I believed they could and should from Business Excellence. Too often what had begun as powerful ideas, techniques and good intentions, had their power drained from them in being turned into staid, mechanical
To me this became the primary motivation. How could an approach that is intended to create transformation; to strike fear into the heart of the routine, itself appear so often to be applied in an uninspired and mechanical way. Share UnderstandingThe key I believe is not to share tools but to share understanding. The key to successful change does not lie with the tools, but with the people who will use them, and the key to effective use is understanding. I’ve therefore set out to lift the lid on Business In essence I have asked the simple, obvious but often unasked questions of how Business Excellence really works, and structured the answers in order to share them. I have been surprised at just how much I have learned through this process. Just in case this might sound a little too visionary a purpose, I recall the reality at the outset was that I didn’t really consider that the work would progress at all. As many people have, I’d thought of creating ‘my book’ many times before and each time the few pages of hastily written text would be poured over for a day or two, cherished for a moment and then quickly forgotten. The difference this time was that, even in those early pages I quickly realised that the process of ordering the thoughts on to the page was revealing new learning and new insights. It was helping me make new sense of the topic I had worked on for over ten years. Fortunately one of these early thoughts introduced the idea of building on the well known image of change as a journey by adding the descriptions of travellers. Quickly the day-tripper and explorer were born, each to represent the contrasting characteristics of those people and organisations resistant to or committed to change. These two characters or their characteristics then provided a framework on which to hang the learning.
The explorer recognises that change is inevitable and recognises the lunacy of seeking guarantees of success tomorrow using initiatives developed to deal with the problems of yesterday. The explorer knows that these guarantees must be worthless, that the essence of successful change in the future can not rest with any confidence, simply on doing well what has worked in the past. The explorer recognises that successful change is the exploration of the future and seeks the skills and tools of the explorer.
Exploring Your JourneyThe books aims to take the reader a few steps forward on their journey of change; to help the reader explore the ideas of exploration and in doing so to begin their journey towards becoming explorers. It contains no check lists of things to do craved by the day-tripper, rather it is designed to get the reader to think as an explorer, to question what they currently believe and to start to discover their own understanding of how to progress. As an explorer the reader is guided to see Business Excellence through new eyes and to recognise its power as an explorers tool. If you are looking for a book to tell you what to do, then this isn’t the one for you, this is a book that aims to help you become what you need to become. On the Contact Us page you can request to be informed of publication details of The Explorer’s Guide to Business Excellence. ThanksI am indebted to Dave Yarrow of the Centre for Business Excellence at Northumbria University in Newcastle for the work he has done on reviewing the early draft version of the book. His very positive comments and encouragement have been invaluable in working towards completion of the final version.
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Excellence by setting out to look at it through fresh and inquisitive eyes, to question, understand and then share understanding of what it is, why it looks the way it does and how it works.
The day-tripper resists change and has to be persuaded of the necessity for change. The day-tripper wants to be assured of the costs and the route and wants an assurance that success is guaranteed. The day-tripper seeks the pre-packaged safety of the initiative, the solution ‘guaranteed’ to deliver. No number of failed initiatives dents the day-trippers enthusiasm for the next.
