Customer Reviews

Get It Done!: A Blueprint for Business Execution

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When reading business books you are often faced with three choices: 300 pages to describe one diagram ; 300 pages to describe one ego (why I fixed the world/corporation) ; or 300 pages on clever theory with no idea how to make it happen.

Thankfully this book is different. It has a range of practical ideas to turn strategy into reality. It has some novel insights into making BPO work, and uses theory about blueprints to help make decisions.

The style of the text is quite wordy for me (bullet points are about all I can handle) - but there's good sections at the end of each chapter about what does the thinking mean for me - and that's really helpful. It answers the 'so what' question.

As a process improvement consultant and a reader of many, many business improvement books, this is hands-down the absolute best book I have ever read on the subject. I have recommended this book to others and have bought additional copies to give to my clients. They all agree that this is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding business improvement.

Most business and process-type books tell you what is wrong with business, but this one will tell you what is wrong and how to correct the problem. I've worked in and around corporate America for almost 20 years - the recommendations by Welborn & Kasten are spot-on.

I mark pages of interest with colored tabs, the red tabs representing "key concepts." If a book receives 5 red tabs, I would rate it a very good book. I have used over 20 red tabs on this book on the first reading and am certain will add a few more on the second. This book is that good ...

Of special interest to me, this book included:

* Effective execution - businesses know what they want to do but don't know how to do it.

* Semantic disconnect - every process analyst seems to miss this most important fact. People in different organizations have different languages. If you don't recognize this key before starting a process improvement initiative, you will not achieve the results you are expecting. Great recommendations on how to get everyone in the improvement effort "on the same page."

* The enterprise model examples were great - understandable and well-documented - and clearly ProVison models!

* The business blueprint - the example of different levels of map details really drive the point of the need for process modeling home.

* Customer value - many of us in process improvement get caught up in optimizing processes for the company with little regard for the customer - we assume that improving the company will be "ripple" to the customer. But as the book points out "Customers just want the value delivered by the process; they don't care how that value is created."

I could go on and on with this review, but it might be longer than the book!

And don't plan on reading this book quickly - it is a slow read. Not because it is boring, but quite the opposite - it is interesting, very well written and so full of useful information that it requires a lot of attention and re-reading.

Being able to execute is essential to business success, so "business transformation" consultants Ralph Welborn and Vince Kasten want to teach you how to get things done. Their book reviews the requirements of execution, and recommends worthwhile tools to help you move from "strategic direction" to "operational reality." Besides its numerous assets, such as a strong discussion about creating clear communications, the book has a few flaws in grammar, jargon, doublespeak ("pretipping point tipping points") and consistency, in that it seems to define key concepts differently in various chapters. As the authors acknowledge, their tactics - while important to execution - are technical, time-consuming and costly. While most senior executives will grasp the obvious merit of these well-reasoned ideas, many leaders will wonder exactly how to put them into pragmatic operational use. Despite wishing for more practical hands-on guidance, we find this book's ideas versatile and valuable.

I work in the same company as the authors and am intrigued by what they write and how to apply their thinking, both internally and with our clients.

Get it Done! is written in a relaxed style, much like having a chat about business strategy over a beer. Welborn and Kasten present a consistent case for the importance of understanding how an organisation works and taking focused and consistent steps to realise change. In their words how to "make sense" and "take action".

Welborn and Kasten present case studies that demonstrate the value of modelling or blueprinting - rather than concentrating on the quality or method of producing such models. This addresses a significant gap in business literature where the focus has been on the quality and attributes of a specific model, rather that the insight it can provide into an organisation. Here lies the "making sense" part of their argument. In building models with enough detail to provide insight, an organisation can build a common language, understanding and visible connections between the "t-shirts, turtlenecks and suits" - or technology, corporate functions and management.

And so to taking action, once we have a shared understanding of what happens, we can then navigate the models to understand the impact of specific decisions. In this way, management of change can be completed more successfully and with less risk and less disruption to customer services. The importance of these executional frameworks is essential for being able to deliver not once, but again and again.

Chapter 6 is both a primer and a crystal ball gaze into Business Process Outsourcing. Welborn and Kasten outline the imperative to change the nature of BPO agreements from one where success is measured through aggressive SLAs and achieving cost efficiencies to one where client and outsourcing service provider focus on what value is to be achieved through BPO. This new relationship requires visibility of process (making sense) and a common language between client and outsourcing service provider to ensure that specific practices will deliver value and be robust in the face of increasing customer demand (for privacy and security) or compliance.

Don't be fooled by the conversational tone and references to popular culture, the simplicity and clarity of the authors' argument belies the extensive thought and rigour that has been put into making sense and taking action with their own strategic and operational experience.

Who should read Get it Done!?:

* Analysts struggling to make modelling techniques and insights relevant and valuable

* Anyone contemplating or holding a BPO contract

* Those wishing to bring some operational nous and reality to business strategy

* Managers trying to make sense of complex and swift change

I am looking forward to the next beer with Welborn and Kasten...

Good business books are rare in my opinion because they must combine three characteristics, each of which is unusual by itself. A good business book must be new, not merely a repeat of what others have said before. A good business book must be deep, not merely another superficial treatment of some topic. And a good business book must be well-written; life is too short to read poorly written books. Welborn and Kasten succeed on all three counts.

This book is new. There are a few books on business modeling (too few!) but none focus on the practical implications of business modeling for execution, on how building models and having models make businesses able to execute their plans. You will not find the contents of this book anywhere else on Amazon, at least not today, in January 2006.

This book is deep. About half of the pages in this book describe case studies, in which the ideas and claims are illustrated in some detail. The case studies come from different industries, including healthcare providers, financial services, and homeland security.

And this book is well-written, even fun in places. For example, the authors illustrate the value of knowledge codification with the example of a master chef in a restaurant. As long as the master chef's signature disk is something only she knows, her scope is limited to a small number of diners in Manhatten. When she codifies it into a recipe, the dish can be created in many places, in Manhatten Beach, California and Manhattan, Kansas.

Initially I had a style issue with this book. What issue? The authors often intersperse short questions in the middle of their paragraphs, to connect their sentences together. It is as if a reader was asking questions of them and they were answering, like this paragraph. Does it work? I found the technique annoying at first, but after a chapter, I became used to it, and I think it does work. I am going to try it in my own writing.

The bad news ... paid full price at the airport. The good news is that this is a book all can use as it easily displays an approach and the tools to aid execution. The fact that it focuses on the "semantic disconnect" goes a long way in addressing the execution gap we all struggle with. We are on the doorstep of the next phase, as compliance and system tools come together to push automation to the next level and we look to cover the knowledge drain as the Boomer generation starts retiring.

Ralph and Vince have taken a very complex topic and distilled it into very simple and manageable topics. Including real life experiences to back the theories makes it more compelling and pragmatic. The authors have blended a multitude of dimensions succinctly; such as: tooling with frameworks, strategy with operation, services with outsourcing to highlight the variations. A real read is what does justice to the book.

The topics and related progression is quite realistic - starting with the basics around the need for a common vocabulary, moving onto the core competencies that enable it (such as tools, methods and frameworks), eventually moving into flawless execution by connecting the dots with strategy.

If you are looking for ideas, real life experiences and key take-aways in managing complex transformational initiatives in todays competitive business environment, this is the book.