1. Operational Excellence
and Its Connection to Organizational Values,
Strategy, Vision and Mission
Operational Excellence Series is an informative set of
documents prepared by Simple and Pragmatic Consultancy
Simple and Pragmatic
Consultancy

2. What is this document about?
Competition in business-life is
obviously increasing.
A simple research shows that, most of
the top-100 companies in the world 60
years ago are not in the list anymore.
Speed of change is increasing globally
and companies need to adapt better
than ever. Actually, adapting only helps
survival.
Companies need to lead change in
today’s world.
Regarding the above, two questions
should be considered:
• How can change and
improvement be led?
• What should be the roadmap for
sustaining competitive advantage
for companies?
Operational excellence -OpEx- is
considered as one of the tools for
increasing competitive advantage for
more than 50 years.
But what is OpEx and how can we
simply start using the tools offered by
OpEx for our company? How can we
make sure that employees in our
organisation understand the simple
pillars of OpEx and they start applying
the principles?
In this special series about operational
excellence, we are seeking simple and
pragmatic answers to above and more
questions for those who are new to this
literature and also for those who are
experts in the field and are willing to
have a fast refreshment about their
knowledge.
We have done our best to design the
slides in this presentation as simple as
possible for appealing to everyone
interested in this topic.
“Fortune 500
firms in 1955
vs. 2014; 88%
are gone”

3. Why do we (our company) simply exist?
And what do we want to do with our
company?
Before starting any effort for improving our
organisation, some very basic questions
need to be addressed.
The reason of existence of our company
together with its identity should be defined
(or re-defined) in order to align all work and
improvement efforts accordingly.
This very first presentation hence aims to
link the concepts such as company values,
mission, vision, strategy, jobs to be done to
the concept of operational excellence.
By the way; why does your company exist?
Finding the reason of
existence..
…the first step
towards
improvement…

4. Who are we?
The previous question was a
little hard to answer.
If you have a clear answer to
that, you may simply go on
and ask the next question:
W h o a r e w e a s a n
organisation?
If the reason of existence of
your company is still unclear,
you may still proceed with the
following questions to gather
some inspiration to answer
the first one.
Consider all these questions
as sources for inspiration or
as sparks for triggering a
“question-producing” process
for collecting ideas and/or for
reviewing your company’s
current and future reason of
existence .
Next slide introduces some
concepts to you. We ask you
to think on these concepts for
your organisation for a while
and elaborate on them as
much as possible.
The more you know about
about your company, a fitter
and better improvement plan
you can tailor accordingly.
That is, you can align your
efforts in improvement
according to who your
company really is.
This would be much more
efficient and effective for
getting sound results from
your efforts.
how can we
identify our
company?
some tools to use
are on the next
page

5. Who are we? - basic concepts
Values
What does your company (its
executives and employees) give
importance to? Can you list
these in a list and prioritise
them?
Mission
What is the role of your
company in the World? Can
you write a simple sentence
about what your company is
accomplishing? Try to write a
sentence as simple as possible.
Vision
What kind of a future can you
dream about your company?
When you dream 5 or 10 or 20
or even 50 years from now on,
what do you see? Or what do
you want to see?
Jobs to be done
What does your company really
produce or serve? We mean,
what is the solution your
company is producing? In other
words, what is the need or
problem of the customer your
c o m p a n y ’s e x i s t e n c e i s
satisfying? Again be as simple
as possible.
Strategy
In what way are you planning to
accomplish your goals? What
are minor and major steps?
Which sources are you going to
focus on? Which segment
group are you going to serve?
What are other parameters that
are going to influence your
strategy?
Finding the
reason of
existence..
…the first step to
improvement…

6. Who are we? - basic concepts
(continued)
SWOT Analysis
SWOT is a simple technique for
t a k i n g t h e p i c t u re o f y o u r
organisation. Each letter in the word
SWOT is an initial of a word shown
below:
S : Strengths
What are your company’s internal
strong points? Which of your
company’s attributes gives
advantage? Think of everything that
you should sustain and make use of
as an advantage.
W : Weaknesses
What can you count as internal
points to be improved for your
company?
What is refraining your company
from success?
Think of items that advantages from
your competitors point of view.
Consider only internal aspects.
O : Opportunities
Thinking about external factors;
what kind of positive factors might
a s s i s t y o u r c o m p a n y f o r
improvement and success? Think
of economic, political and
technological situations or trends to
find possible opportunities for your
company.
T : Threats
What are external factors that may
be obstacles in your way? Again
you may think economic, political
and technological trends that may
pose difficulties for your company.
…SWOT
analysis
might help
you to get the
picture
quickly…

7. Where are we?
Having worked on the “who”
version of the same question, next
we need to find out where we are.
Linking our company to a
mountaineer metaphorically,
having identified ourselves at the
most basic level, where are we on
the map currently?
Some details might include the
geography, altitude, coordinates,
details about environment such as
plants and animals living in the
region, expected weather
conditions as well as durations of
days and nights.
In business terms we need to
answer questions like;
• What are our current market
shares and sales figures?
• What is the level of customer
satisfaction?
• How have we positioned our
services or products?
• What is the qualification
motivation and loyalty level of
our employees?
• How efficient and effective are
our processes?
• How effective and efficient is
our company in financial terms?
The important thing in finding
where we are is that, we need to
run a comprehensive analysis of
the company and answer lots of
questions like above. Next, we
need to identify decide which
ones are more critical for success.
…find out critical
factors leading to
your vision, then
measure the
levels of these
factors to
determine what
should be
improved…

8. Where do we want to go/be?
Remember the analysis we have
done in the last part, the most
important factors affecting our
company’s success.
Comparing what is achieved with
our vision, it is now time to think
the future levels of the same (or
additional) measures of our
company.
If -for example- having happy and
loyal employees who are sensitive
to customer satisfaction and are
also sensitive to environment is a
part of your company’s vision (and
if these are problematic in the
current state); you need to
consider focusing on your HR
metrics as one of your critical
areas of improvement.
So in simple terms, we have
figured out the point A as the
current location in the previous
section. Now it is time to describe
point B as detailed as possible.
The more details we gather here,
the better the design of our
improvement pathway will be.
To get inspired, you may use the
questions we have asked in the
last section.
Also consider downloading our
“CEO’s pre-improvement
preliminary check-list” from
S l i d e s h a r e f o r f u r t h e r
inspiration. It will be available
soon.
…defining
the journey
from point
A to B…
..and
deciding
what is
needed to
be done..

9. Two ways to improve
There are two basic ways to improve
a company:
• Improving what it is already doing
• Doing something different than
competitors or changing the way
the company is doing things
Merging these two approaches is
also an option. The former is known
as operational excellence. The latter
is called innovation.
Innovation is not a major part of our
op ex series but a summary module
is included in the upcoming
presentations.
To sum up of what we have done
until now;
• We have worked on the reason of
existence of our company and
tried to clarify it
• We have identified critical aspects
of our company starting with the
values
• We have pictured where we are
and where we want to be
And what is next?
Next we need to find out “how” we
are going to go where we want to be
- the B point.
In general these are achieved by
opex and innovation programmes in
the company.
Let us summarise what they are in
the following slides…
… innovation
vs.
operational
excellence…

10. Operational Excellence
In simple terms, OpEx aims to
define and improve so called
“performance metrics” by using
specific management principles
and tools for a sustainable
success for the company.
OpEx has been widely influenced
by some of the improvement
methodologies such as six sigma
and lean management. One of the
most important aspects of OpEx
is that, it emphasises the
i m p o r t a n c e o f c h a n g e
management for a long-term
improvement. Hence, OpEx
approach not only includes
technical improvement but also
focuses on improvement of
human resources; that is
e m p l o y e e s , t e a m s a n d
organisational culture.
OpEx is widely remembered with
10 key principles also known as
Shingo Principles*:
1. Respect every individual
2. Lead with humility
3. Seek perfection
4. Assure quality at the source
5. Flow and pull value
6. Embrace scientific thinking
7. Focus on process
8. Think systemically
9. Create constancy of purpose
10.Create value for the customer
In upcoming presentations, we will
be giving much more details
about OpEx and how to apply it in
your company.
OpEx - Shingo
Principles
Making sure
that
improvement is
on its way
*http://www.shingoprize.org/model

11. Innovation and creative thinking
Being one of the most important
concepts for sustainability today,
i n n o v a t i o n i s u s u a l l y
m i s u n d e r s t o o d b y m a n y
organisations. It’s aim is simple:
finding something new either a
product or service or a way of
d e l i v e r i n g a s e r v i c e o r
manufacturing a product. (Of
course, the service or product
needs to have a commercial value
for being sold in the market.)
Although many agree with the
ultimate objective, there is a
confusion in “how” to achieve
innovative thought.
One misconception is that, people
think innovative thinking is
somewhat inspirational. That is
one needs to get inspired to
create a genuine idea or
something new. Inspiration is a
part of creative thinking. But what
is meant here is something
coming to mind not by chance but
through systematic working and
thinking. In other words creative
thinking is a proactive process
which requires planned and
systematic efforts to find new
ideas rather than waiting passively
for new ideas to come.
Other misconception about
innovation is, companies expect
big and revolutionary ideas from
innovative thinking. On the
contrary, what makes difference is
s m a l l e r b u t c o n t i n u o u s
improvements in processes,
services or products.
Through planned
and systematic
work and
techniques;
genuine and new
ideas can be
found..

12. ç
Innovation and creative thinking (Continued…)
Therefore, by following simple and
clearly defined steps, everyone
can find genuine and new ideas.
The critical points here for
executives are;
• T h e e f f o r t s s h o u l d b e
systematic and continuous,
• There should be a climate in the
company where everyone’s
opinions are welcomed and
respected. Furthermore, new
opinions should be encouraged,
• Regular workshops or meetings
should be planned to make
creative and innovative thinking
a part of company culture.
We are going to explain some
techniques about “innovation and
creative thinking” in the innovation
module of OpEx series soon.

13. Summary and next programme
We made a brief introduction to
operational excellence and explained
how it is related to company values,
mission, vision and strategy.
Without working on the DNA of the
company and on what the company
wants in the future, it makes no (or little)
sense to start operational excellence
efforts.
Therefore, before OpEx implementation,
it is better to understand who the
company is, where it is currently and
where it wants to be in the future.
Our OpEx series will continue with
presentations on corporate culture, lean
management, six sigma, change
management, and practical innovation
topics.
H o p e t o m e e t i n t h e n e x t
presentation…
S&P Team
Simple and Pragmatic
Consultancy
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14. Thank you for your interest
S & P