Organizational Alignment Quotes

there cannot be alignment deeper in the organization, even when employees want to cooperate, if the leaders at the top aren’t in lockstep with one another

Authentic leaders inspire us to engage with each other in powerful dreams that make the impossible possible. We are called on to persevere despite failure and pursue a purpose beyond the paycheck. This is at the core of innovation. It requires aligning the dreams of each individual to the broader dream of the organization.

To align message with market is simply to communicate a message that resonates with your market.

term Lean was coined by John Krafcik in a 1988 article based on his master’s thesis at MIT Sloan School of Management1 and then popularized in The Machine that Changed the World and Lean Thinking. Lean Thinking summarized Womack and Jones’s findings from studying how Toyota operates, an approach that was spearheaded by Taiichi Ohno, codified by Shigeo Shingo, and strongly influenced by the work of W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Henry Ford, and U.S. grocery stores. Lean Thinking framed Toyota’s

People are typically more comfortable talking with others in their own environment; being asked to come to a conference room to help a leadership-heavy team evaluate work flow can evoke understandable anxiety and make them feel like they are on a witness stand. It is much more effective to go to them.

As the idea of culture has migrated from anthropology to organizational theory, so it has become highly instrumentalized and reified. It is another example of the hubris of managerialism, which claims to be able to analyse, predict and control the intangible, and with the result that it can bring about the opposite of what it intends. In other words, with the intention of ensuring that employees are more committed to their work and are more productive, repeated culture change programmes can have the effect of inducing cynicism or resistance in staff (McKinlay and Taylor, 1996). With an insistence that staff align their values with those of the organization, what may result is gaming strategies on the part of staff to cover over what they really think and feel (Jackall, 2009).

As Deming is commonly reported to have said, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.

LEADERSHIP ABILITIES Some competencies are relevant (though not sufficient) when evaluating senior manager candidates. While each job and organization is different, the best leaders have, in some measure, eight abilities. 1 STRATEGIC ORIENTATION The capacity to engage in broad, complex analytical and conceptual thinking 2 MARKET INSIGHT A strong understanding of the market and how it affects the business 3 RESULTS ORIENTATION A commitment to demonstrably improving key business metrics 4 CUSTOMER IMPACT A passion for serving the customer 5 COLLABORATION AND INFLUENCE An ability to work effectively with peers or partners, including those not in the line of command 6 ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT A drive to improve the company by attracting and developing top talent 7 TEAM LEADERSHIP Success in focusing, aligning, and building effective groups 8 CHANGE LEADERSHIP The capacity to transform and align an organization around a new goal You should assess these abilities through interviews and reference checks, in the same way you would evaluate potential, aiming to confirm that the candidate has displayed them in the past, under similar circumstances.

Goethe asserted, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Research confirms what we intuitively know: aligned, innovative, and integrated HR practices make a dramatic difference in individual and organizational performance.

Principle-centered leadership is practiced from the inside out on four levels: 1) personal (my relationship with myself); 2) interpersonal (my relationships and interactions with others); 3) managerial (my responsibility to get a job done with others); and 4) organizational (my need to organize people—to recruit them, train them, compensate them, build teams, solve problems, and create aligned structure, strategy, and systems). Each level is “necessary but insufficient,” meaning

The Bible reminds us that a little leaven leavens the whole loaf of bread. If one insists on maintaining a competitive spirit in the face of the above behaviors, it may be a strong indicator of a lack of value alignment. Such individuals may need to find an organization that is more in tune with their approach to organizational life.

Jack Welch of GE introduced many to his description of four types of employees based on their contribution to organizational goals and their alignment to corporate values:12 Delivers on commitments/shares our values—upward and onward Misses commitments/shares our values—second chance Does not meet commitments/does not share our values—out Delivers on commitments/does not share our values—this call demands managerial courage and for Welch, that answer is out!

Principle-centered leadership is practiced from the inside out on four levels: 1) personal (my relationship with myself); 2) interpersonal (my relationships and interactions with others); 3) managerial (my responsibility to get a job done with others); and 4) organizational (my need to organize people—to recruit them, train them, compensate them, build teams, solve problems, and create aligned structure, strategy, and systems).

MODEL 2: Multiple Stakeholder Sustainability, Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams (2010) PROBLEM STATEMENT How can I assess the most significant organizational dilemmas resulting from conflicting stakeholder demands and also assess organizational priorities to create sustainable performance? ESSENCE Organizational sustainability is not limited to the fashionable environmental factors such as emissions, green energy, saving scarce resources, corporate social responsibility, and so on. The future strength of an organization depends on the way leadership and management deal with the tensions between the five major entities facing any organization: efficiency of business processes, people, clients, shareholders and society. The manner in which these tensions are addressed and resolved determines the future strength and opportunities of an organization. This model proposes that sustainability can be defined as the degree to which an organization is capable of creating long-term wealth by reconciling its most important (‘golden’) dilemmas, created between these five components. From this, professors and consultants Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams have identified ten dimensions consisting of dilemmas formed from these five components, because each one competes with the other four. HOW TO USE THE MODEL: The authors have developed a sustainability scan to use when making a diagnosis. This scan reveals: The major dilemmas and how people perceive the organization’s position in relation to these dilemmas; The corporate culture of an organization and their openness to the reconciliation of the major dilemmas; The competence of its leadership to reconcile these dilemmas. After the diagnosis, the organization can move on to reconciling the major dilemmas that lead to sustainable performance. To this end, the authors developed a dilemma reconciliation process. RESULTS To achieve sustainable success, organizations need to integrate the competing demands of their key stakeholders: operational processes, employees, clients, shareholders and society. By diagnosing and connecting different viewpoints and values, their research and consulting practice results in a better understanding of: The key challenges the organization faces with its various stakeholders and how to prioritize them; The extent to which leadership and management are capable of addressing the organizational dilemmas; The personal values of employees and their alignment with organizational values. These results help an organization define a corporate strategy in which crucial dilemmas are reconciled, and ensure that the company’s leadership is capable of executing the strategy sustainably. It does so while specifically addressing the company’s wealth-creating processes before the results show up in financial reports. It attempts to anticipate what the corporate financial performance will be some six months to three years in the future, as the financial effects of dilemma reconciliation are budgeted.

Once a leadership team has become cohesive and worked to establish clarity and alignment around the answers to the six critical questions, then, and only then, can they effectively move on to the next step: communicating those answers. Or better yet, overcommunicating those answers—over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

High-performing teams use deliberate intention to align personal and organizational values.

Over the course of time, we settled on the following seven keys:    Demonstrate competence. You possess the necessary and critical skills required to lead in your organizational context.    Exhibit conviction. You display assurance that the chosen course of action will lead to positive results.    Set high standards. You aim high, both for yourself and your team.    Listen to your team. You listen to feedback and you incorporate that feedback appropriately.    Work hard. You put in the time and effort necessary to get the job done.    Do the difficult. You do the hard things, like holding people accountable, confronting bad behavior, and staying true to your values even when it hurts.    Be consistent. Your words, actions, decisions, and investments are in alignment.

HOW DOES THIS RADICAL conceptual divide over whether Judaism is a religion or an ethnicity play out in relations between the two communities? One manifestation is the lack of political cooperation between Israeli and American Jewish progressives. Though right-of-center American Jews are often active in supporting Israel’s right-leaning parties and offer financial support through American Friends of Likud and other organizations, there has been surprisingly little alignment between liberal American Jews and the Israeli political left.* There is, of course, some American organizational support for Israel’s left-leaning parties, but the relationship on the left is not nearly as vigorous as it is on the right. Why is that? Once again, the answer lies largely in the Judaism-as-religion issue, which makes it difficult for the two communities to understand each other. Einat Wilf—a secular and unabashedly nationalist former Knesset member and outspoken voice for liberal causes—is a compelling example of how Judaism-as-religion versus Judaism-as-nation creates a disconnect between the two communities. In 2018, she published a book titled The War over the Right of Return, in which she argues that the fundamental reason the Israeli-Arab conflict has never been settled has been Israel’s refusal to reject outright the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” of 1948 refugees and their descendants.* The fact that millions of Palestinians still harbor a hope of returning to “Palestine,” argues Wilf, leaves open in their minds the possibility that Israel as a Jewish nation-state can still be ended. End that charade, she argues, and one major obstacle on the road to settling the conflict will have been removed. What matters for us is not whether Wilf’s analysis is right or wrong. What we need to note is that there is scarcely an American Jewish liberal who would dare speak aloud about denying the Palestinian right of return once and for all. How does Wilf straddle the fence, some might ask? How can she be both a liberal and such a committed nationalist? To Wilf, as to many Israelis, there is simply no fence to straddle. For many Israeli progressives like her, there is no tension at all between liberal values and Judaism-as-nation. But for American Jews who see themselves primarily as a religion and not a nation, Wilf’s value set is a much more difficult position to adopt. The disconnect is between Judaism-as-justice and Judaism-as-survival. Those are obviously not always incompatible, but they are profoundly different instincts.

So Goldman’s research alignment program was consistent with the firm’s teamwork approach, because it required different divisions to work together. But the SEC concluded that it violated securities laws requiring the firm to protect clients, even if there was an alignment that followed the principles of Goldman. To executives and board members, because Goldman had leading market share in IPOs and equity offerings, the collaboration seemed to be working effectively—it was an example of teamwork.

Alignment within and between the systems is lost. We find ourselves working harder than ever, yet we benefit less and less from our efforts. As tension mounts, we look for someone to blame. The real problem, however, is embedded in the underlying organizational systems that have shifted out of alignment-with each other and sometimes with the external environment. When an organization discovers that its systems need realignment, I am often asked to make a diagnosis. Senior executives seldom argue with my diagnosis, but they almost always argue with my recommendations. I am told, "What you don't understand is that we don't have the time to make the deep change you are recommending." This statement is accurate.

General Questions What are the business issues (service quality, product quality, speed, capacity, cost, morale, competitive landscape, impending regulations, etc.) we wish to address? What does the customer want? What measurable target condition(s) are we aiming for? Which process blocks add value or are necessary non-value-adding? How can we reduce delays between processes? How can we improve the quality of incoming work at each process? How can we reduce work effort and other expenses across the value stream? How can we create a more effective value stream (greater value to customers, better supplier relationships, higher sales conversion rates, better estimates-to-actuals, lower legal and compliance risk, etc.)? How will we monitor value stream performance?

Touch Points Are there redundant or unnecessary processes that can be eliminated (e.g., excessive approvals)? Are there redundant or unnecessary handoffs that can be eliminated or combined (e.g., work that can be done by a single department)? Are there processes or handoffs that need to be added?

Delays Is work being processed frequently enough? Can we reduce batch sizes or eliminate batching completely? Do we have adequate coverage and available resources to accommodate existing and expected future workloads? How can we create more capacity or reduce the load at the bottleneck?

Sequencing and Pacing Is the work sequenced and synchronized properly? Are processes being performed too early or too late in the value stream? Are key stakeholders being engaged at the proper time? Can processes be performed concurrently (in parallel)? Would staggered starts improve flow? How can we balance the workload to achieve greater flow (via combining or dividing processes)? Do we need to consider segmenting the work by work type to achieve greater flow (with rotating but designated resources for defined periods of time)?

Variation Management Is there internally produced variation (e.g., end-of-quarter sales incentives)? How can we level incoming workload along the value stream to reduce variation and achieve greater flow? Can we reduce variation in customer or internal requirements? How can necessary variation be addressed most effectively? Are there common prioritization rules in place throughout the value stream?

Technology Is redundant or unnecessary technology involved? Is the available technology fully utilized? Are the systems interconnected to optimize data movement?

Quality How can higher-quality input be received by each process in the value stream (to improve the %C&A metric)? Is there an opportunity to standardize and error proof work?

Labor Effort How can we eliminate unnecessary non-value-adding work? How can we reduce the labor effort in necessary non-value-adding work? How can we optimize value-adding work?

Value Stream Management Do policies need to be changed to enable improved performance? Are there organization departmental reporting structures that can be changed to reduce conflicting goals or align resources? Do existing performance metrics (if any) encourage desired behaviors and discourage dysfunctional behavior? What key performance indicators (KPIs) will we use to monitor value stream performance? Who will monitor the KPIs? How frequently? Who else will results be communicated to? What visual systems can be created to aid in managing and monitoring the value stream? Are the key processes within the value stream clearly defined with their own KPIs, standardized appropriately, and measured and improved regularly?

The rate of adaptation to change in response to the evolutionary forces increases incredibly when everyone in the organization gets aligned.

First, if firms are to be capable of exploiting existing business models and reconfiguring existing assets in ways that allow them to explore into the future, leadership is critical. As we will see in subsequent chapters, this ability needs to be nurtured; if it is not protected, it can easily be lost. A second important theme deserving of our attention is that of organizational alignment and how the capabilities needed to explore and exploit are fundamentally different. What it takes for a firm to win in mature markets is almost the opposite of what is required for new markets and technologies. Worse, success at exploitation almost always makes it harder for firms to succeed at exploration. We quickly summarize these lessons before offering a more formal framework in Chapter 8.

The reason that Omega was reluctant to embrace the electronic watch is as understandable as it was wrong. Mechanical engineering was the core capability of the Swiss watchmaking industry. Swiss watchmakers successfully sold high-end timepieces to a largely upmarket customer, usually through jewelry stores. Margins were high and volumes comparatively low. Brand was important. In contrast, electronic watches were a high-volume, low-margin product sold through a variety of retail outlets, including drugstores, often under little-known brand names. The core capabilities for the new product were about electronics and manufacturing, not precision engineering. Faced with a low-end product, senior managers balked and missed the opportunity that ultimately destroyed them. Could they have embraced both exploring and exploiting? Of course! This is what ultimately happened. But to do this would have required them to be ambidextrous and to run an organization with different alignments. In terms of the congruence model, it would have meant a different strategy, different key success factors, different people and skills, and a different organizational structure and culture—a radical shift that was seen as too much effort for what was expected to be a low-margin product. To

Steve and Karen extend our view beyond the interrelationships of team, management, and leadership practices, beyond the skillful adoption of DevOps, and beyond the breaking down of silos—all necessary, but not sufficient. Here we see the evolution of holistic, end-to-end organizational transformation, fully engaged and fully aligned to enterprise purpose.

Principles are like guidelines that help you test whether your actions are aligned with your beliefs and values, or not. If not, you have to search for another way to solve

If we can’t handle uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure in a way that aligns with our values and furthers our organizational goals, we can’t lead.

The following are some of the most common mistakes made by project managers: Not clearly understanding how or ensuring that the project is aligned with organizational objectives. Not properly managing stakeholder expectations throughout the project. Not gaining agreement and buy-in on project goals and success criteria from key stakeholders. Not developing a realistic schedule that includes all work efforts, task dependencies, bottom-up estimates, and assigned leveled resources. Not getting buy-in and acceptance on the project schedule. Not clearly deciding and communicating who is responsible for what. Not utilizing change control procedures to manage the scope of the project. Not communicating consistently and effectively with all key stakeholders. Not executing the project plan. Not tackling key risks early in the project. Not proactively identifying risks and developing contingency plans (responses) for those risks. Not obtaining the right resources with the right skills at the right time. Not aggressively pursuing issue resolution. Inadequately defining and managing requirements. Insufficiently managing and leading the project team.

Learning Plan Template Before Entry Find out whatever you can about the organization’s strategy, structure, performance, and people. Look for external assessments of the performance of the organization. You will learn how knowledgeable, fairly unbiased people view it. If you are a manager at a lower level, talk to people who deal with your new group as suppliers or customers. Find external observers who know the organization well, including former employees, recent retirees, and people who have transacted business with the organization. Ask these people open-ended questions about history, politics, and culture. Talk with your predecessor if possible. Talk to your new boss. As you begin to learn about the organization, write down your first impressions and eventually some hypotheses. Compile an initial set of questions to guide your structured inquiry after you arrive. Soon After Entry Review detailed operating plans, performance data, and personnel data. Meet one-on-one with your direct reports and ask them the questions you compiled. You will learn about convergent and divergent views and about your reports as people. Assess how things are going at key interfaces. You will hear how salespeople, purchasing agents, customer service representatives, and others perceive your organization’s dealings with external constituencies. You will also learn about problems they see that others do not. Test strategic alignment from the top down. Ask people at the top what the company’s vision and strategy are. Then see how far down into the organizational hierarchy those beliefs penetrate. You will learn how well the previous leader drove vision and strategy down through the organization. Test awareness of challenges and opportunities from the bottom up. Start by asking frontline people how they view the company’s challenges and opportunities. Then work your way up. You will learn how well the people at the top check the pulse of the organization. Update your questions and hypotheses. Meet with your boss to discuss your hypotheses and findings. By the End of the First Month Gather your team to feed back to them your preliminary findings. You will elicit confirmation and challenges of your assessments and will learn more about the group and its dynamics. Now analyze key interfaces from the outside in. You will learn how people on the outside (suppliers, customers, distributors, and others) perceive your organization and its strengths and weaknesses. Analyze a couple of key processes. Convene representatives of the responsible groups to map out and evaluate the processes you selected. You will learn about productivity, quality, and reliability. Meet with key integrators. You will learn how things work at interfaces among functional areas. What problems do they perceive that others do not? Seek out the natural historians. They can fill you in on the history, culture, and politics of the organization, and they are also potential allies and influencers. Update your questions and hypotheses. Meet with your boss again to discuss your observations.

There's a big difference between needing to change a plan because new data or new conditions warrant it and deviating from a plan because an avoidable distraction has taken away the focus of an improvement team

experiencing fewer problems and frustrations in their day-to-day work, the work force will become even more engaged in the improvement process

By comparing the defined target with actual results, the team can determine if its hypothesis was proven and make appropriate adjustments if it wasn't

we use the term countermeasure instead of solution, to aid in creating a continuous improvement culture, which begins with how people think and speak. The word solution smacks of an over-the-wall, permanent-fix mindset, which discounts the ever-changing world we work and live in.

In practice, all ideas need to be viewed as merely hypotheses; testing and evaluation of the test results must precede across-the-board adoption.

Improvements are temporary countermeasures, not permanent solutions.

Beware leaders that want to negotiate for shorter time frames than the team feels is prudent. Most leaders have been away from the front lines for a long time and have grown out of touch with how long it takes to plan and execute well-thought-out improvements.

In terms of overall transformation plan ownership, we recommend a sole accountable party.

It bears repeating: in our experience, the plan review meetings are a key success factor in value stream transformation.

We find a direct link between results and the degree to which the executive sponsor remains visibly engaged.

Executing and sustaining change requires a different set of organizational behaviors than those required for planning.

Whereas clarity and ingenuity are required for creating current and future state maps, focus and discipline are essential for successfully executing and sustaining improvement.

You need to talk about it. Explain it. Let people ask questions.

In the spirit of respect for people, and as a means to facilitate plan execution, workers who are part of the process or those who will be affected by the improvements must also be aware of the mapping activity and the plan for transformation.

Following this scientific process assures that everyone involved in making improvements is thinking critically and breaking old habits of prematurely leaping to solutions or rushing through execution for the sake of meeting a deadline.

When we ask leaders and improvement professionals what the most difficult aspect to making change is, they nearly always say, "Sustaining.

We cannot empathize this enough: sustaining improvements begins with proper planning, followed by proper execution and management.

Once you've successfully realized the iterated future state, you must have two things firmly in place to sustain it: (1) someone formally designated to monitor value stream performance to assess how it's performing, facilitate problem solving when issues arise, and lead ongoing improvement to raise the performance bar, and (2) key performance indicators to tell whether performance is on track or not (value stream management)

In mature continuous improvement organizations, value stream managers are sometimes given responsibility for profit and loss across the value stream

We're often asked how frequently a value stream should be improved. The answer is continuously. We understand that's a tall order for many organizations, but continuous improvement is your only way out of a culture of reactive firefighting, which prevents your organization from excelling on all levels.

Learning to see and manage work from a value stream perspective is a powerful way to instill new ways of thinking into the DNA of your organization and achieve higher levels of performance.

During the three-day mapping activity, the team had numerous discussions about the role of software testing, customer involvement and responsibility, striking the right balance of iterations, and how "minimal" a minimally viable product should be.

a value stream is a series of processes that connect together and transform a customer request into a good or service that's delivered to the customer, which completes the request-to-delivery cycle

the value stream map looks at the high level activities that transform a request into some sort of deliverable . . . the purpose of value stream mapping is to design a strategic improvement plan that will be executed over a period of time; it's not designed to address problems at a detailed level

To aid in targeting the right level of information, we aim for 5 to 15 serial process blocks

The purpose of the second value stream walk is for the team to gain a deeper understanding about how the value stream currently performs and identify significant barriers to flow.

We use three metrics to evaluate the current state of 98 percent of the office and service value streams we've encountered: process time, lead time, and percent complete and accurate.

stay balanced and beware: don't let the team succumb to analysis paralysis

Remember that the lead time for a process block begins when the work is available to be worked on, not when an employee begins working on it, so identifying the trigger will help the team obtain a more accurate lead time.

Next, the team will summarize the metrics across the full value stream. We recommend, at a minimum, ... four ... summary metrics: Total Lead Time...Total Process Time ... Activity Ratio ... Rolled Percent Complete and Accurate

Freed capacity is the result of process time reduction through the elimination of wasteful activities and/or optimizing work.

While the current state briefing is often sobering, it's a helpful psychological space from which to accept the need for change and generate innovative future state thinking

designing the ability to operate with fewer customer complaints, less firefighting, and reduced interdepartmental tension brings tremendous hope to leaders and their staffs who may be feeling the pressure from an underperforming value stream.

the facilitator's role shifts from a coach who helps a team uncover and analyze "What is"-a left-brain activity-to a coach who inspires a team to innovate and design "what could be"-a right-brain activity.

Embracing value stream thinking is a mark of an organization that has successfully shifted from siloed thinking (what's best for me and my team?) to holistic thinking (what's best for the customer and the company?)

Value stream improvement requires strong team-player mindsets and mapping team members who are comfortable designing for the greater good.

Removing work effort may require the team to eliminate not merely the work activities, but also the need for that effort.

A common behavior is to feel compelled to start improving the value stream at the micro level and focus on reducing process time. .. redirect the team to help them stay focused on the macro and eliminate the easy-to-see waste within the value stream

It's difficult to experience high levels of success if people fear losing a paycheck due to continuous improvement.

Until holistic thinking begins to replace siloed thinking, improving the value stream will prove more challenging.

The team should be bold in its thinking and keep only those processes that are truly value-adding or absolutely necessary for the business to function.

before an improvement team can eliminate batching or reduce batch sizes, it needs to understand and eliminate the reason (root cause) for the batching

Ideally, the team designs a future state the results in lower lead time, lower process time, and higher percent complete and accurate for every process block.

ways to achieve flow . . . include shifting previously consecutive processes to parallel activities, combining tasks to reduce handoffs (which may require cross-training, resequencing, or repatterning work so that downstream recipients can so more effective work), resequencing work, and creating service-level agreements between internal suppliers and customers, to name a few.

You need to choose wisely: what are the two to five metrics that provide the best reflection of overall value stream performance?

The problem is that most organizations have established neither value streams KPIs more process-level KPIs. This is the primary reason why organizations continue to fight fires, don't capture greater market share, don't generate as much profit as they could, have burned-out workforces, and create self-inflicted chaos that they could otherwise avoid.

Process mapping teams often get stalled by excessive focus on variation and differences within processes, whereas value stream maps reveal macro-level similarities.

it's unrealistic to expect work systems that have existed for years or even decades to be completely transformed in a matter of months. Any consultant who tells you that it's likely, or even possible, should be shown the door

one advantage of working backward is that the reverse perspective can sometimes reveal opportunities and problem-solving strategies that taking the usual course may not uncover.

When the team members have achieved a deep understanding of the current state and they are mapping on consecutive days, designing the future state often occurs organically- as long as people are open to challenging their existing silo-centric paradigms about how and where work should be performed

You want those closet to the work designing tactical-level improvements rather than leaders who are too far from the work to determine exactly what should be done to reach a target condition.

Depending on the organization, designing an improved state can also require thick skin, intestinal fortitude, and a hefty dose of courage.

Top down mandates from an executive sponsor or leader over a specific functional area are the antithesis of the type of consensus building that accelerates improvement.

How can you improve workflow if you don't understand how the work is being performed today?

the most powerful metric we've seen for analyzing processes in office, service, and knowledge work environments: percent complete and accurate (%C&A)

Failure to involve leadership, employ cross-functional teams, and include relevant metrics, for example, often results in subpar future state designs that collect dust.

significant time and money is wasted when organizations attempt to make improvements without a clearly defined, externally focused improvement strategy that places the customer in the center.

Value stream mapping provides a clear line of sight to the customer and the holistic means to clearly see how traditionally disparate parts of the organization are interconnected, which can serve as the catalyst for reorganizing according to value streams.

Very few things are unmanageable once they are distilled to their basic components.

It's the process of value stream mapping rather than the maps themselves that carries the greatest power by installing transformational mindsets and behaviors into the DNA of an organization.

a typical value stream map has three key components: information flow, work flow, and a timeline.

Companies that reorganize without understanding their value streams may experience short-term improvement, but longer-term gains are far more likely by using value stream thinking to shape the reorganization.