Geoffrey M. • Thanks Steve, that's a great resource.

Charles Handy asked the question "What's a business for?" in his famous Harvard Business Review article and concluded:

"According to corporate law, a company's financiers are its owners, and employees are treated as property and recorded as costs. But whereas that might have been true in the early days of industry, it does not reflect today's reality. Now a company's assets are increasingly found in the employees who contribute their time and talents rather than in the stockholders who temporarily contribute their money. The language and measures of business must be reversed. In a knowledge economy, a good business is a community with a purpose, not a piece of property."

How does this fit with BP Group's Outside/In Sustainable Customer Outcomes philosophy?

Steve T. • Hi Geoffrey,
As you may have gathered Handy was my original inspiration and every opportunity I get to hear/see him is relished :-)

In terms of philosophy there is complete agreement. You cannot deliver SCO's if your employess are disenchanted and it was Handy's 'Empty Raincoat' (printed as "The Age of Paradox" in the US) that evolved my thinking beyond BPM into the early version of the CEMMethod - the means to move OutsideIn.
Back then (1994) the BPGroup was just two years old and we hosted our third annual conference in 1995, using Handy's theme of 'community with purpose'.

These days the practice has developed fully into Enterprise BPM aka OutsideIn and we deliver a particular slice of Handy's guidance in the Certified Process Professional Masters Level 6 :-) "The Customer Experience is the Process"

Thanks for the opportunity to elaborate.

Nic H. • Pretty well from where i stand Geoffrey.

This thread happened becasue of a thrad where i asked "has anyone actually *read* Ohmae?"
(We're always going on about Deming/Juran/Cosby et al and their cognitive descendants, but Ohmae is, more than Porter or Hammer or anyone else as far as i am concerned, an early OI thinker)

From my point of view (which is not *exactly* the same as Steves) OI takes the customer focus and makes it imperative.
One could use the way it thinks to map out a SCO for investors, or for staff, or for assets.

But others have beaten the investor and organisational optimisation drums to death, with only gradual percentage gains.

Then comes along someone like Starbucks, does everything OI, and the world cannot understand what their "secret sauce" is...

Ray B. • Festive best wishes to you all and thanks for the valuable insights delivered via this group in 2010. This morning I finished reading Employees First, Customers Second written by Vineet Nayar who is CEO of HCL the Indian software company. It's effectively the story of a transformation from inside-out to outside-in and top down to bottom-up. The improvement numbers are staggering, a five fold increase in customer numbers, a 50% reduction in employee attrition (particularly amongst the "outstanding"performers) and a tripling of revenues in four years (which included the GFC).
Let's hope we are moving into the implementation phase where outside-in is seen as "normal' business. We know it works. Have a healthy and prosperous 2011.

Nic H. • I'll have to look that one up Ray.

Although, one set of companies which could really do with coming up to par on how they deal with employees, are the eastern outsourcing bunch.

As far as i am concerned, treating your employees as really valuable IP is simple common sense. Possibly somewhat uncommon then...

Kannan S. • That's a good collection. I will have to spend some time listening these audiocasts. One other resource that I use the most on Leadership is Meet The Boss TV - http://meettheboss.tv/ Free membership allows you to watch the HD videos of popular leaders around the world.

Richard C. • Hi guys,

First of all, happy new Year.

Thanks for these resources.

Khaled A. • Am very excited to meet Steve Towers next week in Dubai BPM,i'll put my outcome on daily basis