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Business Sustainability is very simple. Do those little things that build the foundation for others to learn and grow. One of the problems is:

• Do you know what those little things are and how they need to be applied by someone else using them for the first time so they can perform to your expectations to ensure the business perpetuates itself?

It's OK if you don't know. It may be something you were never exposed to but you built yourself a nice business anyway.

Just about every business has rearranged their financial structure as a result of 2007. Businesses cannot continue to do this every year. Well it's time to do something different.

Let's take defining the root cause of a problem. People usually start out with a brainstorming session,  surveys or other discovery techniques. I start out with all the stakeholders helping me develop a Fishbone diagram.



What's a Fishbone? It is a tool to break down the problem into small elements to better determine the root cause of a problem. The Fishbone is also called a Cause & Effect or Ishikawa Diagram.

Wow! Simple. Easy. Yes! But it takes more than just a picture and words to ensure you obtain the correct results for your business. That's what differentiates Business Sustainability from a simple tool - making the use of the tool sustainable value to the business.

Try it out the next time you have a problem. One tip, don't let anyone, including yourself initially jump to conclusions or frame a gut feel resolution. Why? 85 percent of the people you engage will follow your lead and you will not find the real root cause. See a larger graphic of the tools on our website. 

Best of Luck in your Business End Game

Over the last 10 years the program management office or PMO has been designed and developed in numerous organizations to be anything and
everything to organizations except add value.

Many PMOs have become kingdoms within organizations building intensive infrastructures only to eventually see that what they have built is so enormous and complex it caused the organization to slow down, did not improved project performance and added unnecessary bureaucracy eventually leading to their failure.

Most PMOs of this type never started up again in the organization; a large loss to those corporations and personnel. In other corporations with PMOs there were several attempts to start new ones under a different name - same pig different color. These changed by watering down their governance and value from the fear of possibly failing again adding no value to the corporation.

Years ago Kaizen was developed by the Japanese after years of learning from Dr. Deming and others. Elements of Kaizen were extracted into what is now called Lean in the American manufacturing environment. Lean is now well recognized in the manufacturing environment and surfaced a few years ago to take on the bureaucratic business process back-end office environment.

PMOs need to take a lesson and start leaning out there organizational structure, processes, procedures and understand the true value they need to assist the corporation with innovation and improved profit.

There is no one single blueprint for the Kaizen Program Office that will fit every type and size of organization. However, there is a basic structure that all PMOs need to follow to design, develop, implement and continuously assess their value. The structure is focused on three major foundational elements: the basic structure of the PMO to fit the organization; administration; and infrastructure and governance. 

The Kaizen Program Office of the future must adhere to the entire Kaizen approach [and not just lean] for an optimized and ever improving structure to fit the environment, enhance innovation and to easily adapt in the future.