The story behind the logo

Millennia-Vision Consulting
Vision = Direction = leadership
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Introduction

When I started Millennia-Vision Consulting back in 1999,  I had in mind the ultimate goal of helping business owners, executives and decision makers to successfully adapt and adopt the global paradigm transformation phenomenon.

The logo I chose for my initiative looked like this; something most people won't comprehend or appreciate at a quick glance

...  I know that already !

 However, when someone got curious enough to know what is behind the logo,  and dared to ask the question,  I had to the the full story .... and  ...

Wow! This is really great!

We never thought about it like this !

Telling the story

Now, after all this time, and after shaping the initiative into a successful business model that has been put into practice for the last 13 years or so,  I feel obliged to tell the story behind the logo to all friends and colleagues

Paradigm Transformations

We may envision progress/evolution as a result of an ongoing change process, building on cumulative knowledge and experience, We can view paradigm shifts (transformations) as a series of successive waves, one following the other, and so on so forth.

The drawing below (derived from the Millennia-Vision Consulting logo) represents two such waves (paradigms); the blue one followed by the red one. A third (gray) wave "paradigm" is shown to indicate the continuity of the transformation process

Millennia-Vision is about paradigm transformations

 Let us summarize the story in 5 points (matching the 5 marks (matching the 5 marks along the time/effort axis on the diagram)

1. Start of the first (blue) paradigm
2. While the blue paradigm is enjoying linear growth, a new (red) paradigm emerges
3. The blue paradigm still grows and still represents the dominant paradigm. However, the new (red) paradigm is growing bigger and becomes increasingly significant.  
4. This is the critical point where successful transformation implies the ability of the organization to move from the old (blue) paradigm to the new (red) one.
5. Those who succeed in transformation will enjoy the new (higher) levels while those who fail will probably be out of the scene

eWizdum Premium Value Services

This is the essence f the whole story behind the Millennia-Vision Consulting logo and the "Vision =  Direction = Leadership" theme. We focus on providing premium value services specially designed for top management, executives, business owners and decision makers.

The fruit of these premium value services reveals itself in smooth and successful transition from the old paradigm (whatever it is) to the new paradigm (whatever it maybe) to move forward to new and heights and dimensions.

To reach this result, lots of work needs to be done prior to reaching this point, and we will extend a helping hand in all phases and steps involved in this transition, covering business aspects, technology aspects and cultural aspects as well !

The key message to our target client is twofold

1. Get prepared for the future with its knowns and unknowns, predictable developments and unpredictable ones as well !  
2. Be ready when it becomes necessary to make critical decisions at hard times.

eWizdum premium value services are positioned around the MV-PIOVI offerings framework which spans the complete change management (transformation) life-cycle; planning, implementation, operation, validation and improvement.  Under every term (phase), there are a variety of topics that we cover through our awareness/orientation sessions, special consultancy services and targeted solutions/services that help interested clients master these topics.

Furthermore, and due to confidentiality/privacy reasons that we understand and appreciate very well, we offer our services in very low profile on "one-to-one" basis, taking one customer case at a time, deal with one customer organization, work with one management team, one executive and so on so forth as required/mandated by the customer specifics.

This is in short the story behind the logo and what we try our best to do to help business owners, executives, management teams and decision makers to successfully tackle the challenges they face, pursue the goals and objectives they have, and fulfill their own personal ambitions/dreams while taking their organizations ahead and forward !

We are just an e-mail away, 

Have a great day !

Closing that deal

You are now in front of the decision maker in the client organization and you want to close that deal.   This is a 4-step journey that the decision maker has to go through in order to make that decision (in your favor)

1. Who are you ?  Who do you represent ?  ... is an introductory step to establish/demonstrate the credibility of you as a person who knows what he/she is selling and your firm as a trustworthy organization that deserves taking the deal 
2. What are you selling ?  ... is the step to explain the product/service that you are selling and show/demonstrate the "reason(s)" why the client should have it.  It is critical to overcome the "what" part of your product/service to the "why" part and make the "benefits" crystal clear to the decision maker - rather than the "features" of your product/service -. 
3. Establish your OWN unique business value (UBV) differentiator ... which comes back to you (as a professional), your firm as a trustworthy partner/supplier, and your own product/service,  making sure that your UBV differentiator is tangible, quantifiable and measurable to help the decision maker weigh the investment needed versus the benefits to be gained from this deal. 
4. Ensure everyone involved in making this decision is a winner. .. and in particular your client and the decision maker you are trying to sell.  This requires knowing the pain and gain issues that the client organization and the decision maker have. and show/demonstrate/prove how your product/service helps address these issues effectively and successfully making it a win-win deal for everyone.

Hope this is a helpful tip.  
It requires lots of work though !
Good Luck !

Reviving your corporate strategy

Lots of factors come to play into this end result "failing/ineffective strategic planning" and the best thing would be to draw a cause-effect fish backbone diagram with the result (failing/ineffective strategic planning" at the head of this fish backbone diagram and thinking of all possible causes (internal and external) that lead to such result.

I am not trying to dictate preset reasons for such a thing, but I would suggest a good brainstorming session would be helpful to identify these reasons, provided

• All relevant functions (across the organization) participate in this session
• Within, each function, the representation should go down to the knowledge workers who got a clue with the reality of things, as well as enough authority level to turn findings into decisions and actions
• A damn good (external) facilitator who can 
• Provide the necessary guidance through this exercise
• Give an external view/assessment of what he sees in the organization
• Bridge higher levels of the organizations (where all what they see below is shit) with the lower levels (where all what they see above is assholes)  ... excuse my language.

I am sure such an exercise would be an "eye-opener" and and "emergency call for action" within the organization provided

• The effort is sponsored and supported by top-level management and backed up by influential/powerful key stakeholders
• A spirit of positive and healthy corporate culture dominates the atmosphere that surrounds this initiative/effort

The findings should not come as a surprise to most of us who are in this field, as they will touch on such things as

1. Internal Politics/Power Struggles/Personal Agendas
2. Management style
3. Lack of effective and inspiring leadership
4. Lack of unifying culture / teamwork spirit
5. Inherent weaknesses impacting the organization's ability to execute and delivered
6. Missing or weak communications across the organization
7. Lack of incentives to motivate the people at the lower levels of the hierarchy
8. Organization split (vertically) which creates "isolates islands" within the organization
9. Failure to understand/appreciate the complex "inter-dependency" patterns within the organization and their counter-part external dependencies
10. Lack of powerful and effective "all way through" performance measurement system in all relevant perspectives that are significant to the organization

I hope this is of help ! 

It actually comes from real-life case studies and practical experiences with clients facing such problems

Clarifying confusion on Strategy

This posting came out of a discussion thread I contributed to help clarify some confusing terms used in "strategy" planning/execution based on the balanced scorecard technique

1. "Strategy planning" vs "strategic planning"
2. "Goal" vs "Objective"
3. "Measure" vs "Measurement"
4. "KPI" vs "KRI"
   
5. "Initiatives" vs "Actions"

I need to draw your attention that differentiation is based on technical as well as lingual basis and is entirely a personal view of the topic. Others have the right to differ with me and stick to whatever they believe.

"Strategy planning" vs "strategic planning"

There is a subtle lingual difference  between the two terms and this reflects on the nature of each one.   

• Strategy planning is about "planning the strategy" regardless what "strategy" we are planning; business strategy, IT strategy, HR strategy, corporate strategy, departmental strategy, country (national) strategy, global strategy, .. etc. Strategy planning in this sense is focused on producing a "strategy plan" whose shape and form is that of a "plan" while its content and focus is on some kind of strategy.

• Strategic planning is an expression that describes some kind of planning that is "strategic" which implies couple things; (1) long-term horizon that could be 5 years or more, and (2) emphasis on the value and significance of this kind of planning towards the future, success and failure of the subject entity.

The difference might not be that vivid and clear when referring to planning. However, it may become clearer when we talk about "strategy consultants" and NOT "strategic consultants". It is somehow similar to the use of "electronic" versus "electronics" as referring to an "electronic" company vs "electronics" company.  

"Goal" vs "Objective"


Some people consider "goals" to be higher level than "objectives" while others take it otherwise.  I personally take the term "objective" to be more generic and higher level than the term "goal" as in football matches where we may say 


Our objective is win the match / contest. To do so, we need to score 3 more goals than the other team.    I cannot say how this statement can be said otherwise starting with "our goal is to win the match/contest ...  how can use the term "objective" in such a statement ???

In balanced scorecards approach, the term S.M.A.R.T objective is used to say that a "smart" objective needs to be

• Specific ..   Aha ... this admits objectives are originally not specific !
• Measurable  ... implying that "objectives" are generally not tangible and not measurable
• Achievable/Actionable/Agreed ... which means that these attributes are not usually found in generic objectives.
• Repeatable/Recurring  ...  implying this objective can be repeated 
• Timely / Time-bound   ...  which puts a target time (due date or limit)

Looking at all these attributes, I can comfortably state that a "SMART objective" is basically a "goal" which usually  talks about  some specific, tangible, quantifiable and measurable result within a time limit.

"Measure" vs "Measurement" 
 
Strategy implementation using Balanced Scorecard techniques uses the term "Measure" in OMTI which stands for "Objective, Measure, Target and Initiative"

Personally, I think "measurement" is a much better term than "measure" in the above context.  Specifying a "goal" / "smart objective"  like "increase revenues" requires a "unit of measurement" which can absolute number (US $) or percentage. Then, there is the "target" value for this "goal/objective" like 10 Million US$, 30% increase, ... 


Lastly comes the "initiative" which needs to be differentiated from the term "measure" as we did above.  Initiatives are needed as the "means/vehicles" to enable reaching the "desired target" of the named "goal/objective".

I will elaborate further on this topic in a future posting showing my own approach in dealing with this topic

"KPI" vs "KRI"

I guess the biggest and worst confusion in these terms is KPI vs KRI and the overlap with goals/objectives.

If I take one of the "smart goals" / "objectives" in the OMTI model, I may say .... " One of our (smart) goal is to increase revenues by 30% every year for the next 5 years"

This says that Revenue measured in $$$ would be a Key Results Indicator (KRI) although many people tend to take it as a KPI !!!

What we need to do in order to increase the revenues would be the "actions" or "initiatives" that would lead (through proper "cause-effect" diagrams) into increasing the revenues which would be the net result matching the smart goal in this regard, and it would also be the KRI that stakeholders would like to see happening without much regard to how this is going to happen

Regarding the KPI thing, we need to go inside the "revenue generation" process probably using Business Process Management (BPM) techniques, we may be able to assess the "performance" of this process, its sub-processes down to the individual task level. We may also inspect and determine the "performance metrics" identifying where these measurements can be taken, how they can be taken, what units will be used in the measurement, what processing (if any) would be needed to produce the "Revenue" metric, where the results should go, and how frequent this measurement process needs to be done.

This is in principle how I see this thing happening !
and this explains and differentiates the KRI thing from the KPI thing

"Initiatives" vs "Actions"


"Initiatives" are more general and higher level than "actions" which are specific and very well defined. 


Generally speaking, I would say that "initiatives" may translate into "projects", "programs", "action plans", "task assignments", .... etc.  

The subject is very big as you may imagine, and it is better to take it separately in a future posing .  


All the best ! 

Organizing project portfolios for optimal results

The way I have done this in real life is through "horizontal/vertical" grouping of projects based on multiple factors including

1. Project Portfolios per ownership; which in most cases follows the "vertical" organization chart path, but can also follow the "horizontal" service or functionality path.
2. Project Portfolios per level: which basically differentiates between "corporate level" and "department level" projects
3. Project portfolios per Business value: where strategic (long term/deep impact) projects are grouped separately from shorter-term/less-impact tactical projects
4. Projects Portfolios per business initiative: where projects (possibly coming from different places within the organization) are grouped together per business initiative, whether coming from corporate level or business line level
5. Project Portfolios per resource requirements: where projects using  the same resources can be grouped together to avoid resource contention and maximize resource utilization
6. Project Portfolios by client : where service providers/implementers/integrators can handle groups of projects for the same client as one group utilizing common interfaces, common team members and common logistics in dealing with the client
7. Project Portfolios by vendor: where large customers may group projects coming from the same vendor (service provider) as one group
8. Project Portfolios by $$$ revenues/profits: where projects are grouped according to the revenues/profits thus leading to "key/strategic" project portfolios and the others following the 80/20 rule
9. Project Portfolios by criticality: subject to "specific" and "agreed"definitions of criticality,  those so called "critical" projects may be grouped together and managed in a special way due to the criticality level.
10. Project Portfolios by inter-dependency:  where projects and/or groups of projects which have high-degree of interdependency may be grouped together and managed separately

What is worth noting from practical view point here,

• Take the above classifications with high degree of flexibility. Nothing is cast in concrete, and it is after all up to the decision maker(s) to accept/approve what is most suitable in their specifics.
• The potential for high-level of dynamics in the relations between the different groups and group projects, where you may find one project in 1, 2  or more project portfolios at the same time, and you see groups moving from one project portfolio to another from time to time.

This implies the need for "high competency levels" both technically and politically when dealing with such topic.