When you look at any organization of any size that's not performing as desired, you see the following:

• Action missteps or no worthwhile action steps
• Decision ineffectiveness
• The inability to accurately predict the results of actions or decisions

We see a lot of approaches used to deal with these problems. 

 We see people surveying and interviewing "management"  about their view of the problem and then assembling a so-called solution based on that feedback. We see this approach as having some value but due to it's myopic focus and self-serving end game, it rarely demonstrates long term benefit.

We see people looking at an organization as a system that produces a rate of  profits (or in the case of a non-profit that produces one or more "goal units") and then successively looking for the barriers that impede this rate of profits or "goal units".   These folks have a Theory of Constraints background or training typically and we do see a lot of value in this.

We see people with a Six Sigma background focusing on data and reducing variation and we see a lot of value in this if done in a sensible non-boilerplate way - unfortunately, this is rarely the case.

We see people with a Lean or TPS background focused relentlessly on reducing waste and we see a lot of value in this if and only if the organization is addressed as a whole rather than locally or departmentally (as very often, these turn into exercises for shifting waste into different "compartments" both internal  and external).

We see people, often with a Human Resources background focused on team building and on understanding the tendencies and capabilities of individuals as a foundation for developing them into high performers but here we also see this philosophy often turn into a series of games or "trainings" which while seemingly valuable and fun, for whatever reason, usually don't create any lasting benefit.  Of course, we do believe we know the reason.

The reality is if you want to address the root causes and the leverage points that will lead to higher performance consistently, you do need to…

• Understand the perceived problems and get valuable input from throughout the organization,
•  View the organization as  whole,
• Use an accurate understanding to identify and remove barriers to growth successively
• Assess outcomes and predictability/stability because if you have not addressed assignable variation, you will find yourself addressing non-existent problems (and btw, creating new problems as a result) and you will get muddled in an fruitless expedition to find leverage points.
• Relentlessly focus on eliminating true waste that truly shows up on the bottom line
• Use an accurate understanding of your people's tendencies, motivations, competencies and individual goals to  create purposeful focused effort to ensure you get the right things done right.

Our Action and Decision Effectiveness focus and paradigm helps us help you achieve greater results by focusing on the flow of actions that achieve best results and by improving the decisions on people, process and goals/planning that underlie success.