Manager Memo podcast · Len Samborowski, MBA Associate Professor, Nichols College

Rewriting the Playbook for Business Performance

·30 min·2 clips

“Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it gets,” Joe says.

1. Manager Memo with Joe Bocorstede focuses on business performance, workflow mapping, and measurement. 2. Joe Bocorstede is a former PricewaterhouseCoopers partner, a Business Enterprise Mapping partner, and a former CEO in private equity. 3. The episode asks how organizations can understand why they get the results they get and what to change first. 4. Joe says he grew up in Cincinnati, studied engineering at the University of Cincinnati, and earned an MBA from Xavier. 5. He describes early consulting work at Cooper's and PwC, where he applied Japanese management methods first used in automotive to Procter & Gamble supply chain work. 6. He says that experience led to the book Time-Based Manufacturing. 7. Joe recalls learning standard work and work measurement at UPS as a co-op student in engineering school. 8. He says he was sent to Radio Shack to learn programming for the TRS-80 and could predict a route within about 30 minutes. 9. He says PwC's consulting years were both “enormously exciting” and “enormously stressful,” especially as projects grew from $100,000 to $14 million. 10. Joe explains angel investing by describing a private group of 25 to 50 members pooling money for early-stage businesses. 11. He gives two examples: a small manufacturing company the group bought and a Purdue University breast-cancer blood test that rose from about $1 million to $20 million before failing final testing because results varied with subject weight. 12. Joe says Business Enterprise Mapping uses the Paragon method, which he describes as a 360-degree view of an object. 13. He says the firm can document a workflow, identify “red clouds,” and redesign for a better outcome inside 90 days. 14. He says “red clouds” are the problems and opportunities preventing a company from reaching its intention, and about 50% qualify as quick wins. 15. Joe says many leaders think they understand process, but business process is really a set of tasks that produce a deliverable that matters. 16. He says the team builds maps in Visio, uses Excel for analysis, produces digital playbooks, and creates GMOST plans for goals, metrics, opportunities, strategies, and tactics. 17. Joe says the system alignment workshop, or SAW, creates “aha moments” when leaders see why “nothing works properly.” 18. He says the firm now does most mapping remotely after COVID, while still using on-site workshops for alignment and the final GMOST plan. 19. Listeners interested in process improvement, supply chain work, and management measurement will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting celebrity stories or technical workflow talk may skip it.

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