investiledysfunction

I’d previously co-authored an article (along with Sandeep Arora) that appeared in Business Finance Magazine titled “The House of Rolling Heads” in which we decried mindless cost cutting in favor of a more thoughtful approach which segmented expenses into strategic and non-strategic.

It seems Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, agrees with us.  In the December 2008 issue of Inc Magazine, he comments,

“Instant, mindless cutting of R&D or training or salesforce travel in the face of a downturn is often counterproductive - or, rather, downright stupid.  Tough times are in fact golden opportunities to get the dro, and the longterm drop at that, on those who respond to bad news by panicky across-the-board slash and burn tactics and moves that de-motivate and alienate the workforce at exactly the wrong moment.”

In this recent interview from Business Finance Magazine’s Sept 2009 issue entitled, “The Serial Transformer“, Gary Crittenden, CFO of Citigroup, talks about his efforts to transform the finance organization at Citi.

He touches on many critical points about Finance Transformation which we help organizations with including corporate portfolio management (Investment Optimization), reengineering and driver-based planning.  Some relevant excerpts are below, but I recommend reading the entire article for those interested in creating a strategic finance organization and who are looking for ideas and a high-level gameplan from somebody who has successfully done this before in other organizations.

Gary led such a transformation for American Express Finance which transformed the organization into one of the most respected and strategic finance groups in a large organization.  American Express Finance has been discussed and chronicled by the Harvard Business Review, CFO Magazine, and the CFO Executive Board to name a few.

(shameless plug: Gary also wrote the foreword to my book - more info here)

Here are a couple of noteworthy excerpts:

On Selecting the Best Projects and Investments Using Investment Optimization

“…We think very carefully about every dollar that gets added back that offsets the reengineering.

This process is called investment optimization. We go through and look at the expense dollar optimization and ensure that we have a common definition for expenses across the company. I’m talking about the end-state now — not where we are, but where we’re headed.

In a company that is this large and this complex, even getting the definitions common is important so that somebody who is making an investment in a fixed income trader in, say, Brazil has the same financial metrics, terminal value, and present value calculations.

This is a big part of what has to happen as part of this process. But once you have this, you can then align those opportunities and say which one you prefer. You also know what’s on the margin — what the 20 last things were that I approved that would have the least impact if I had to cut them. You also know what the 20 next things are that you would approve if you had some dollars. And if you’re constantly updating and reforecasting, then you’re always able to ask yourself the question, “Do I need to cut or can I have the opportunity to add?”

On Driver-Based and Rolling Forecasting

“It ties back into this primary thing, which is that we’re trying to drive the performance of the business. There are several different elements to it.

One is to have a rolling forecasting process so that you’re always looking further ahead than you normally would. The way this starts for us is with a strategic plan that looks at a couple of years. This then turns into an annual plan, and then the annual plan gets refreshed each quarter, out for that quarter plus then the additional six months on the end of that, and then we update this twice a month as part of our normal process.

We’re always looking forward and doing a normal update to this. Now, if you’re going to be updating this frequently, you can’t do it from a bottom-up basis. You quickly conclude that you have to use the primary drivers of the business as opposed to the detailed, kind of bottom-up forecasting. It turns out, paradoxically, that doing this is just as accurate as the bottom-up forecasting. In fact, you probably get more accurate data because you’re doing it a lot more frequently.”

The rhetoric around outsourcing will, at some point, pick up in this election year so despite the heat which the argument generates, it’s good to understand why outsourcing happens.

1. Sometimes, it can be done cheaper somewhere else
2. Sometimes, it can be done better somewhere else
3. And sometimes, it’s both #1 and #2

The main point is that people think #1 is the only driver of outsourcing, but it is not.  You can often attract a level of talent to a job overseas that you cannot get here.  Take a function like accounts payable.  Oftentimes, you can find smart MBAs to do this overseas at a fraction of the cost you get here.  So you’re getting better prices and better talent.

And even if the price differential goes away or becomes less compelling (as is happening over time as many outsourcing markets suffer from serious wage inflation), the skills differential is still vast enough that the quality of the work output created justifies it being outsourced.

If we were in the carrying stuff business as this gentleman in India is, we’d certainly find a way to hire this guy.  He puts these 200 kilo (400+ lbs) motorcycles on top of this bus so they can be transported to another city.  For this effort, he charges 20 Indian Rupees.  That’s $.50.  There aren’t many people who can or will lift a 200 kg motorcycle at all (skill differential) much less for 50 cents (cost differential).

Outsourcing is our friend…

An article I just co-authored with Sandeep Arora, the CFO of Global Staff Groups and the head of the Planning Centre of Excellence at American Express, appears in the July issue of Business Finance Magazine.  The article entitled “The House of Rolling Heads” covers a Process and Cost Optimization (PaCO) model for organizations which allows ongoing cost savings through improved processes.  The article argues against one-time knee jerk cost cutting measures which are ultimately terribly ineffective and demotivating to employees.

If you’d like a pdf version of the article, please email me.

If your organization would like to go through a PaCO Assessment, please be in touch.  As part of a PaCO Assessment, we guarantee that we will identify at least $1 million of ongoing cost savings for your organization or you pay nothing.  To learn more about this risk-free offering to your organization, you can click here.

Given the vast amounts of unproductive complexity (UC) that resides within organizations, it is amazing how prone we are to believing silver-bullet strategies will transform the company and miraculously grow revenues, shareholder returns, profits, customer and employee satisfaction. 

When I talk about unproductive complexity, I’m talking about the absurd matrixed organization structures, transfer pricing issues, overly-detailed budget processes, steering committees, infighting due to silos, bizarre short-term oriented incentive structures and other ridiculous processes and practices organizations adopt.  Managers would have you believe that this complexity is an unfortunate consequence of being big and global or multinational, and to some extent, that is true.  But unproductive complexity is often a result of territorial and suboptimal behavior.  It’s end result is slow and often poor decision-making.  Unproductive complexity is the enemy of innovation.  It is good, however, at creating job security for a host of mediocre and incompetent people who can sneak by while they shuffle papers from left to right and churn out PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets.  And given their accomplices in the leadership ranks, this activity over accomplishment method becomes acceptable.  If you want to change organizational performance, focus on stamping out unproductive complexity.  This should be the focus on reengineering efforts - not knee jerk cost cutting and layoffs.

So with that rant about unproductive complexity out of the way, let me get back to the subject I wanted cover.  Given this UC, it perhaps makes sense that leaders are drawn to consultant, software, academic elixirs that are simple.  With all the day to day b.s. they have to put up with, it’s probably comforting to think that if they just do “this one great thing”, they’ll have changed company performance and arrived.  There is probably some psychological basis so I’ll just assume that there is some school of psychology that says “when people are overwhelmed, they take comfort in something that doesn’t overwhelm them.”

And as a result, consultants, academics and many software vendors who’ve realized this bring elixirs and other alchemy-in-a-box solutions to management and with great success, they sell them and make lots of money.  In fact, entire industries emerge around some of these practices.  This enables the leaders to not think too hard for a bit because the solution is just right in front of them.  It also often serves the dual purpose of making the leader seem bold, visionary, strategic, etc.  These are all nice appelations that we like.

Here are some of my favorite elixirs that appear to be hot these days.  Some actually have value but given everyone is hanging out their shingle and professing expertise in many of these areas, I worry that organizations will end up with a whole lot of nothing after investing in these efforts with these dubious experts.  

Here is my list which I hope to revisit over time and get input on.  The top elixirs, hot topics, etc are: business intelligence, IT portfolio management, innovation (always hot), corporate social responsibility, anything green, web2.0, social networking.