Services / Strategy & Organization

Organization and Change Management

• Root Cause Analysis
  The aim of the Arthur D. Little's root cause analysis method is threefold. (1) To understand the underlying reasons that a problem exist, (2) To ensure that the cure treats the true source of problems instead of merely treating the symptoms, (3) To extend thinking beyond barriers of tradition and organization. This "why" analysis has proved very successful in a large number of cases with its focus on finding true reasons for underperformance instead of finding cures to symptoms. Once root causes are known, their contribution to the performance gap can be quantified and the root causes can be addressed in the right order.
  
  
• Unwritten Rules of the Game™
  The objective of the Unwritten Rules of the Game (URoG) appraisal is to uncover the logic driving individual behaviors in an organization. The Unwritten Rules of an organization links together three key questions; What is important, Who is important and Which conditions influence behavior. The centre of the URoG assignments lie in interviews with management on different levels in order to determine which unwritten rules in the organization influence organizational behavior in a significant way. By determining the URoG of an organization, undiscussables are made discussable and management is helped to define moves to correct misalignments and eliminate organizational problems that hamper real change and development of an organization.
  
  
• Core Competence Analysis
  Knowledge and the ability to draw on a company's core competencies become more and more important in today's competitive landscape. Companies are often in the process of streamlining their business, with outsourcing of non-core activities as a frequently used measure. Identifying the Core Competences is not only identifying what people are best at, but also what is commercially most attractive. Our Core Competence Analysis helps define what is truly unique about a company and puts emphasis on leverage of core competencies through strategic architecture and organizational learning. The importance of knowing one's core competencies is hard to overestimate as they provide access to significant markets, increase perceived benefit of end product and are difficult to imitate for competitors.
  
  
• Organizational Design
  The future success of any company depends on how effectively the organization adjusts to challenges, such as decreases in performance, aftermath of mergers and acquisitions, strategic shifts, competitive pressure, and customer demand changes. A company's ability to adjust to new challenges is defined by the flexibility of its organizational capabilities, the actual organizational structures, the processes, the quality and motivation of its people and the openness of its culture.
  
  Arthur D. Little's overall aim is to help your company to gain competitive advantage by designing and implementing the organization that fits best your purpose. We have for example, developed the High Performance Organization (HPO) model, which has proved itself in many cases in a wide range of industries. The HPO model enables a holistic view of your organization's structure, processes, and resources in close connection to your strategic opportunities.
  
  
• Organizational Learning
  Arthur D. Little has been heavily involved in creating and shaping organizational learning in a vast number of client situations. As the importance of information has increased, at the same time information over-load has become a real problem therefore making sure that the right information is transmitted at the right time has become an important task for many organizations. The concept of the learning organization is that successful organizations must continually adapt and learn in order to respond to changes in environment. The idea of a learning organization suggests that there is some learning in an organization that occurs over and above learning undertaken by individuals. Making sure that key information and learning are institutionalized and making sure that the learning process of a company is understandable, coherent and vital are tasks that Arthur D. Little can assist with.
  
  
• Change Management
  Our side-by-side (TM) approach for managing organizational change has proven to be highly successful on a global scale. It provides companies in a wide range of industries with a systematic architecture for managing change, and creating the structures, processes, and capabilities needed to achieve the business results they desire.
  
  To implement true and lasting change, we focus on the cultural issues that support the way people work. Sustainable improvements are possible only when you embrace the human face of change. Our aim is to work with clients both to build their change management capabilities in the short term and to improve performance over the long term.
  
  
• Knowledge Management
  The significance of an organization's knowledge and intellectual capital becomes apparent by the fact that intangible assets have come to dominate the value of companies. Investors and analysts increasingly relate a company's value to its ability to generate, use and grow its tangible assets: fast and transparent knowledge generation coupled with powerful management of intellectual property help your organization to increase this value.
  
  
• Integrated Management System
  In many organizations, internal management practices are seen as separate components and are only loosely tied together. The purpose and parts of such a management structure are often blurred and difficult to define. By aligning goals, processes, KPIs, and document structure, to name some parts of what is generally referred to as the management system, improved steering can be achieved as well as increased clarity and transparency. In addition, a well designed management system becomes a powerful tool for all employees in the day-to-day work resulting in increased efficiency.
  
  Arthur D. Little has considerable experience from designing and implementing integrated management systems. In a number of projects, we have worked side-by-side with the client to develop the intellectual structure of the integrated management system, as well as assisting the client with in the hands-on change process.
  
  
• Balanced Scorecard
  Translating strategy into success. Balanced Scorecards (BSC) bridge the typical gap between well-defined strategies, perspectives, key ratios, actions and budgets. In a knowledge-based environment, the ability of organizations to develop, nurture and mobilize their tangible as well as intangible assets is critical for success. Financial measures do not fully capture the value creating activities of an organization's intangible assets: the skills and competencies of employees, efficient and responsive processes, innovation on products and services, and customer loyalty and relationships. BSCs are created to stimulate these activities. In this manner BSCs help align business units, shared service units, teams and individuals to achieve the overall organizational goals. Arthur D. Little is brought in by clients not only to develop BSCs but also to re-design and challenge proven sets of BSCs in the continuous process of strengthening management, target setting, benchmarking and the use of leading and lagging indicators.
  
  
• Lean
  Lean provides a range of flow, productivity and waste minimization techniques, but is also a management philosophy that makes people feel involved and motivated. It can also dramatically reduce the cost to serve your customers and improve quality. The goal of lean production is described as "to get the right things to the right place at the right time, the first time, while minimizing waste and being open to change". We acknowledge the Toyota Production System as the key source of inspiration for Lean. Arthur D. Little is frequently asked to launch Lean in various sectors, both in manufacturing and service organizations. To do so, we bring together teams with capabilities in operations, strategy and organization qualified for the pursuit of perfection.