Armin Cruz Shares his
Expertise on
Creating an Avenue of
Approach to your Objective
The Third Step in Solving Business Problems
Armin Cruz is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt that specializes
in LEAN methodologies in the financial transactional industry. Armin Cruz received his MBB while serving as
a Vice President at Bank of America’s Process Excellence division. Armin currently serves as Director and Head
of Continuous Improvement for a public firm in the financial real estate and
property management industry. Armin Cruz earned his MBA from the University of
Phoenix, and his BA from the University of Texas at Dallas. Armin Cruz lives in north Texas with his
wife, three dogs and is anxiously awaiting his first baby boy in December.
This is the third in a series of releases to share thoughts
in an open concept, open letter format. If you have not had a chance to see the
first two, please search Slide Share for “4 Steps to Solving Business
Problems.” As a brief recap, the
four-step process to solve business problems is to:
1 1)
Define the Environment
2 2)
Define the Objective
3 3)
Create Avenues of Approach
4 4)
Review your After Action Report
To date, the line of business executive has been able to
describe the internal and external factors affecting the situation, and
distilled the problem into a sentence or two.
Additionally, within a concise and precise format the business executive
has defined the objective and the expected business results. Therefore, the next phase is to execute.
As one considers creating an avenue to approach, the
expression “One is none, and two is one” should ring true. Some executives express that having a backup
plan means that you have not dedicated your full energy into the plan in
action. Therefore, you are expecting
failure. I contend that you should
expect failure; in fact, you should plan for the worst to happen and possess a
re-action plan for each of those items to remediate. Invariably during an initiative rollout as
you are solving a business problem there will be unforeseen consequences as
well as failures. I simply cannot over-express the importance to having risk
assessment and back up plans. The extra
time spent crafting these solutions up front will pay dividends if the event
occurs and you have to switch to a back-up plan.
As you define your solution / avenue of approach, please
remember the concepts of controlled change management such as:
1 1)
Linearity
2 2)
Predictability
a.
Repeatability
b.
Reproducibility
3 3)
Sustainability
4)
Adoption
5 5)
Communication
The avenue of approach needs to have a linear relationship
from critical-to-quality components, to the primary metric, to the management
metrics, to operational metrics, and finally to a Key Performance Indicator
(KPI). If there is not a linear
relationship, one may find it difficult to perform LEAN enhancements in the
future due to a poor signal to noise ratio.
More on this in a future installment, however, if you have questions on
this please feel free to contact us through our website.
At the end of this stage you should have a crisp definition
of the environment, a concise business case, and now at least two plans that
would prove capable (date-centric) to solve the business problem. The next phase is to execute the plan
according to your change management methodology.
For more information about this topic, please review and
follow me on About.ME. Also, please search Slide Share for a
presentation titled “How to Solve Business Problems, part 2. How to Scan / Define the Environment” You may
also reach out to me on my personal website and request more
detailed information.
Point of Contact:
Name: Armin Cruz
Phone: (972) 333 – 9502
Email: armin.j.cruz@hotmail.com
Website: http://www.arminjohncruz.com
