• Lack of time by management
• Too busy doing managerial things
• Four Parts to managing work as a process
• Clearly articulating goals of the process
• Designing work so that achieving goals is not left to chance; but dependable
• Measuring process performance continually

Assigning end-to-end responsibility for process to a key senior manager Six Tasks in the reflection process:

• Understand them better than they understand themselves
• Know their businesses in ways that extend beyond their use of your current product or service
• Get involved with them. Be where the action is
• Meet with your customer's customers looking for ways to add value

• Major shifts rarely happen overnight
• New technologies, demographic trends, geopolitical shifts, regulatory changes are examples of things to watch

• It's not enough to know what they're doing today; surmise about their future intentions
• Analyze competitive bids
• New and potential competitors must be given the same attention as existing competitors
• Definition of competitor: "anyone who might be able to solve the same customer problems you do"

• Internal decay watch
• Companies on auto-pilot lose their edge
• Listen to the sounds of operating performance
• Cultural assignment - cynicism, indifference, and defensiveness ultimately destroy strong organizations

• Information does not carry its own interpretation
• Interpretation must be supplied by those evaluating the information
• View information from a fresh perspective
• Get out of the box thinking
• Stretch thinking

• Turn information into ideas for action
• Surface real insights to prevent future disaster
• Identify and question the underlying business assumptions
• This is the most arduous task in the reflection process.

Harvy Simkovits, CMC, President of Business Wisdom, works with owner managed companies to help them grow, prosper and continue on by offering innovative approaches to business development, company management, organization leadership and learning, and management education. He can be reached at 781-862-3983 or .