2. Incertidumbre en la calibración
2.4. Ejemplo General del cálculo de incertidumbre
Y
ou will typically be more successful presenting strategies if you can show that your proposals are a good fit for your current operations and personnel. For example, a good fit for a company that designs and prints direct mail flyers for financial institutions would be a strategy that changes how it bills customers from charging for the work completed to charging based on the responses generated by a direct mail campaign. The company wouldn’t need to change how it prints or designs pieces and it is a strategy the company could easily implement. The company would probably produce more income if it created effective campaigns.An example of a strategy with a questionable fit would be for a company that manufactures cryogenic tanks for storing oxygen at hospitals to decide to produce hydrogen cryogenic storage tanks for fuel cell vehicles. The company might under-stand how to make cryogenic tanks, but it wouldn’t underunder-stand the requirements for installing them on vehicles, would not have the proper installation and service people on staff, and would not have the right marketing and salespeople in place.
If your strategy is not a good fit, then you need to do your best to show that the organization can easily adopt the changes required to pursue your recommended strategy.
External Strategies
For external strategies, the good fit can relate to your target market, perceived strengths, sales and marketing departments, distribution network, service and installation capabilities, or key customer relationships.
Solving a Problem
Higher management wants to hear: Staffing and procedures can handle the strategy.
This strategy fits into the existing procedural framework for technical support. We will need to add just one person to the technical service department.
Action-oriented wants to hear: Strategy can be implemented easily.
We can implement our strategy with our current staff by reassigning people from distributors support to key customer support.
Analytical wants to hear: The impact on the organization has been considered.
I’ve looked at the impact of the strategy on all three affected departments. In all cases their current procedures with minor modifications can handle all the work required.
Conservative or hostile needs to hear: The strategy will cause, at the most, minor disruptions.
The strategy fits right into our current operations and we can implement the program without disrupting any of our operations.
Improving Performance
Higher management wants to hear: Strategy fits into long-term goals; minor disruption to operations.
This strategy is aligned with the company’s goal of being premium supplier for our target market. The plant has space to incorporate this new production and technical service will be ready with a week’s worth of training.
Action-oriented wants to hear: Everyone is on board for a quick implementation.
The four effected departments are all excited about improving our performance and they all are developing a plan to complete their part of the project.
Analytical wants to hear: The strategy has been evaluated to be sure it has the best possible fit to the company.
We were able to change our original version of the strategy so it reinforced our branding strategy and our customers’ positive perception of our services. It is a good fit for the company’s capabilities.
Conservative or hostile needs to hear: No one is complaining;
it will be a seamless introduction.
Some changes in our sales department are required, but that shouldn’t present a problem as the strategy helps sales meet its one- and three-year goals.
Creating a Strategic Advantage
Strategic advantage strategies typically require a major effort that is almost always somewhat to very disruptive. What you want to concentrate on is that the strategy fits the company’s goals or is an important step to keeping your customer base.
Higher management wants to hear: The company will grow within the framework of its stated goals and objectives.
A real benefit of this program is that it fits exactly with the company’s stated vision of where the market will develop and leaves us with the opportunity to become one of the market’s top three suppliers.
Action-oriented wants to hear: The company will be able to quickly reorganize; the market will recognize the benefits.
A key to this strategy is that the customers will
immediately see its importance to them, and we won’t need an expensive marketing program as it is a natural extension of all our current efforts.
Analytical wants to hear: A balance has been struck between the market advantage the company could gain versus the effort required from reorganizing to generate that benefit.
In preparing this strategy I looked at the benefit, the advantage we could gain, versus the risk, and how much effort the organization would require for implementation.
The balance I’ve chosen provides for substantial gain with only moderate changes in our current operations.
Conservative or hostile needs to hear: Every effort has been made to ensure the strategy is as close a fit as possible.
I spent considerable time contemplating how to gain the advantage while ensuring the strategy causes a minimum number of organizational changes. After changing the action plan a few times I believe I’ve structured the strategy so it fits our marketing message and reinforces our relationship with our key customers.
Addressing New Opportunities
Higher management wants to hear: Opportunity is in line with the company’s overall strategy; fits in with company capabilities.
This opportunity adds to our branding strategy of the industry’s leading innovator. It is targeted at our second-largest market and can be implemented with just two new hires.
Action-oriented wants to hear: The strategy is easy to implement; has a synergistic effect on other services or products.
We can implement this strategy with our current staff, but what makes this opportunity particularly appealing is it will allow us to expand our distribution network, an addition that will increase sales of our entire product line.
Analytical wants to hear: A preliminary action plan has been prepared which defines the organizational requirements.
We have completed a study of the changes and
workerpower needed to pursue this opportunity. We only require a few changes as our organizational structure is an almost ideal fit for this opportunity.
Conservative or hostile needs to hear: Similar opportunities in the past were overlooked because the guidelines for a good organizational fit were too tight.
In the past the company has passed on several
opportunities. (It is a good idea to list one or two of those opportunities.) The reason given was they were not a good fit for our company. Other companies took advantage of the opportunities and have done well. We can’t afford to pass on opportunities because we are looking for a 100 percent perfect fit.
Internal Strategies
Unless companies perceive they have severe problems in their internal organization, they prefer incremental change. You can help sell the internal strategy by demonstrating the change will only affect a narrow range of employees or operations—for example, the change will only impact the order entry depart-ment’s process for taking orders from key customers—or by giving examples of how the company has adopted similar strategies in other areas.
Solving a Problem
Higher management wants to hear: The approach is similar to how we have successfully approached problems in the past.
The strategy we are following is the same one that was used in our San Francisco and Salt Lake offices for very similar problems.
Action-oriented wants to hear: Managers involved in the change have successfully tackled other similar projects.
There are two managers involved in this corrective action and both have used similar methodology to solve other problems in the past.
Analytical wants to hear: Options have been reviewed that consider both the solution and its fit with the
organization.
We’ve considered several approaches to the problem and feel the one we proposed is an effective solution that can be implemented without any organizational changes.
Conservative or hostile needs to hear: The solution will require either minor or no organizational changes; others support the strategy.
I’ve discussed this strategy with others (name them) and they also feel this solution will be effective and anticipate that the strategy can be implemented with a simple engineering change in the quality control inspection process.
Improving Performance
Higher management wants to hear: The strategy fits into the overall organization continual improvement goals.
Improving the work order format for incoming service jobs was one of the company’s top three priorities for the year in our Lean Manufacturing continuous improvement program.
Action-oriented wants to hear: The strategy can be implemented with only minor disruptions.
This strategy closely fits our current operations, we only need to add three paperwork changes and have a two-day training program for four people.
Analytical wants to hear: An effort has been made to ensure that the transition will be smooth.
I researched our other offices and found five other instances of offices implementing similar improvement strategies with only minor implementation problems.
Conservative or hostile needs to hear: The improvement is in a key area; the solution requires only minor changes.
Our department needs to show leadership incorporating the newest changes to proposed industry quality
standards. This strategy starts by adding technology that our testing facility is familiar with and which over 50 percent of the staff has already used in other jobs.
Creating a Strategic Advantage
A strategic advantage usually requires change, sometimes major change, in how an internal organization is run.When pro-moting an internal change that may be major, your focus should be on how the strategy takes advantage of the organi-zation’s core strengths.
Higher management wants to hear: The changes involved will be made by the company’s top performers.
Our company has always had an innovative and strong design engineering group. Putting that group in charge of this strategy is key, as our production equipment will need a level of modification that is beyond our production engineering department capabilities.
Action-oriented wants to hear: The path to introduce this new strategy is clear and the people to do the job have been identified.
Our Web team has always kept the company’s site two or three steps ahead of our competition. The new strategy delivers a whole new benefit package to consumers. We are able to implement the strategy, well before
competitors can respond, because of the well-known strength of our Web development team.
Analytical wants to hear: We have carefully thought out who should be implementing the strategy.
This strategy was chosen because it is a strategy that will be delivered by the marketing group, our strongest department. We had other strategy choices, some that were equally as strong, but felt our best chance for profitable growth was to put a program on the back of our most effective department.
Conservative or hostile needs to hear: The implementation group is strong enough to overcome obstacles and deliver.
Obviously gaining the type of strategic advantage we need to position ourselves for the future requires a major program with some risks. But the program will be
implemented by our strongest department, one that has faced obstacles and overcome them time after time. We will succeed by relying on their very high level of expertise.
Addressing New Opportunities
Higher management wants to hear: We are pursuing an opportunity that improves our operation in (name the department) where improvement is needed; the right staff is in place to help.
This new technology will improve a department that has repeatedly rated below similar departments at other locations. We can borrow a department head from the other location to implement this technology which will provide a major performance increase.
Action-oriented wants to hear: We have the people and plan in place to move ahead.
The trade show and event department has already done four shows as big, or bigger, than this one, and they already have an interactive display that can be converted for the new market application being promoted by the conference. The trade show department can add one or two staff members and be prepared to expand our trade show presence.
Analytical wants to hear: The good fit really exists.
Our department will be implementing the strategy. Two people in the group were the leaders of the last major opportunity to improve our process quality control
checks. Two people in the department have already developed a preliminary plan so that this new effort will match their previous success.
Conservative or hostile needs to hear: The company has successfully pursued opportunities of a similar nature in the past.
Our two international offices already implemented similar strategies without any problems, and the new server system has had 40 percent less downtime at those locations.