Opportunities Defined
In our work “opportunity” is something of a euphemism for “problem.” We actually debated calling this series 52 Common Problems, but “problems” has a negative connotation, whereas “opportunities” is inherently more optimistic. Before engaging in a partnership with any of our clients, we perform what we refer to as an “opportunity analysis.” While the intent of the analysis is to look for underlying problems in the organization’s processes, systems and behaviors, what we really want to uncover are problems that might be opportunities for improvement. Problems that we can’t do anything about aren’t very helpful. So finding opportunities, not problems, is the real key to performance improvement.
This series, Carpedia’s 52 Opportunities, is intended to provide some insight into many common problem areas that can constrain an organization’s performance. The insights are derived from 20-plus years of analyzing and working with leading organizations across a wide spectrum of industries, markets and locations.
As competition intensifies everywhere, managers are often asked to improve the productivity or effectiveness of their area of responsibility. Not knowing where to start can be a significant hurdle. This series is designed to give managers a few starting points when looking for opportunity. It’s actually something of a laundry list of things that commonly go wrong, for one reason or another, in many organizations. We hope that you can use some of these ideas to help identify problems and drive performance improvement.