How does your organization handle change? In a calm, disciplined, and data–driven manner, or in a chaotic panic? In this dynamic keynote address, we’ll explore this and more. Is your organization often surprised by unexpected internal or external event? If so, that’s a problem because in today’s turbulent competitive environment, surprises are almost always bad. How do you handle change? Are you comfortable with new ideas, new technologies, and new ways of working or do you wish the world would just slow down? Much of organizational and personal success is based on answers to questions like these. In the past, one could be certain that tomorrow would look like today, but today the only certainty is that the future will be very different from the present. This means that success requires change mastery at both the organizational and personal levels. Winning means rapidly adjusting to new customer demands and exploiting new technologies. It means embracing rather than fearing change. Steve Stanton will explore the emotional and intellectual aspects of resistance to change and differentiate between how to motivate employees to accept change and how to improve their capabilities to excel in fast-evolving environments.

In this keynote address Steve Stanton will ask: what’s your process project success rate? Most organizations don’t actually know, they’re too busy launching the next wave of projects. Those who do measure their improvement outcomes report a 25% success rate (at best). Success in these projects is defined as achieving the promise that was made at the project’s initiation. This means three out of four of your current projects are doomed to failure or an ongoing existence as a “project zombie”, an effort that’s dead but doesn’t know it, still meeting but never changing a thing. It doesn’t have to be this way. The causes of failure are predictable, and successful organizations know to launch their process improvement projects with as many of the success drivers as possible. This tactical and pragmatic session will focus on the tools and techniques that support the seven factors for success. Using real cases, this interactive presentation will enhance the odds for success for its attendees.

Most organizations suffer from an acute case of Project-itis. This dysfunction is characterized by the launching of hundreds of disconnected change projects. Symptoms include staffing difficulties, project management shortfalls, sponsor apathy, and high failure rates. The only cure is to design and implement a Project Optimization Process to provide oversight over this chaos. In this dynamic keynote you will gain an understanding of the full symptoms of Project-it is, the approach to creating a project inventory and how to prioritize projects.

Today’s marketplace demands speed and precision. Most traditional processes provide neither. Far too many business processes were designed in an era of information poverty and cannot take advantage of today’s data bonanza. The only solution is to transform old ways of working using today’s amazing new technologies. In this keynote address, you’ll hear how this requires a fresh way of looking at processes including new redesign models, new improvement methodologies and dramatically new outcomes. Gain a deeper insight on the digitization imperative, an understanding of the basic digital redesign patterns, and a high-level roadmap on how to digitize a process.

Sadly, most transformation projects fail. While most organizations have developed strong incremental change programs, few have the unique capabilities needed for these big projects. This presentation will show how transformational projects always change organizational boundaries and power structures and therefore face a much more difficult challenge. Success requires a disciplined approach to two parallel tracks of work – the hard- edged and analytical aspects of process redesign and the personal and political issues of change mastery. The common requirement across these phases is speed. This interactive session will use multiple cases examples to illuminate common pitfalls and the key requirements for success.

Measurement is tough. Far too often organizations measure what’s easy, what’s easily measured, or measure what makes them look good. Or they have too few or too many process metrics. None of these really help improve value creation or customer satisfaction. Steve Stanton will explore how the difficulty of measurement is a symptom of a deeper problem. Organizations have difficulty with measurement because they often lack the insight on how their processes create value. Without this deep insight, measurement is just guesswork. To achieve measurement excellence the first step is to redefine the true purpose of measurement. Smart Metrics is much more than a vehicle for historical reporting, or plain CYA efforts. Effective measurement must: start by linking process measures directly to enterprise strategies and then down to performer goals, and identify opportunities for improvement, and communicate what’s important to process performers. The result should be a balanced process scorecard, containing a small number of measures that mixes leading and lagging indicators with metrics that serve all critical stakeholders. But it’s not enough to select the right measures; care must be taken to develop the right performance targets and crafting a disciplined measurement process. Learn how to select the right few metrics for their process, how to calibrate performance targets, and how to design an effective measurement process.