Armin Cruz : Armin Cruz Shares his Expertise on Creating an Avenue of Approach to your Objective The Third Step in Solving Business Problems

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.

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