What do 3M, Motorola and the MACPA have in common?
All are “stops” on the Scanlon Leadership Network’s 2007 Innovation Tour (Tours, Tools and Practical Application). Yes, the MACPA is honored to host this world-class event on Nov. 12, 2007 at our offices in Towson. The title of the program is Measuring What Matters For Innovation and Growth and is open to our members, in addition to members of the Scanlon Leadership Network.
The reason I am excited about this program is that it features ground-breaking topics and practical tools to help CPAs in business and non-profits use the discipline of measurement to achieve breakthrough growth and innovation. This program has been designed to provide hands-on, expert-driven experience with the tools you can use immediately to manage growth, innovation and performance better in your organization.
What will you receive at the event? You will learn how to measure and explain the most important financial and operational measurements of your business. You will receive tools that provide big-picture financial reality checks that non-financial folks can understand and think about in relation to their responsibilities. You will receive software to do these things and you will use this software on your own numbers.
You will also see software that has been developed based on Gupta’s extensive study and application of innovation, Six Sigma, and related scorecards. This software, i-nexus, will provide the infrastructure that enables strategy mapping, cascaded scorecards, corporate objective alignment and strategy execution. Steve DuBrow, president and managing director of the Americas Region of i-nexus, will be conducting the hands-on session of the workshop on this software. As Gupta states, “Many businesses focus on either profitability or growth, but few focus on both.” Sustained profitability requires a focus on both aspects, but we are often blind to some major elements. These tools will help remove those blind spots.
The agenda includes two leading experts in the field of performance measurement and a special guest appearance by Dean Spitzer, author of the leading book on performance management, Transforming Performance Measurement. Spitzer is a researcher and major thought leader for IBM on measurement.
In addition, the list of experts who will be present is growing. It includes Robert “Doc” Hall, the founder of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence and Paul Davis, president of the Scanlon Leadership Network, considered “one of the best kept secrets in American business.” Most of these experts led sessions at the Lean Accounting Summit I mentioned in earlier posts, and this is a great opportunity to network with these thought leaders one-on-one.
Praveen Gupta, a longstanding practitioner and pioneer of the Six Sigma methodology, will guide you through the use of his Six Sigma Balanced Scorecard and demonstrate software to help integrate performance measures into your existing legacy systems (i-nexus Enterprise Software for Enabling Strategy Execution). All participants will receive a copy of Praveen’s book, The Six Sigma Balanced Scorecard.
Jahn Ballard of the Performance Management Institute, a strategic partner of our own Business Learning Institute, will lead a session on using three bottom lines (net income, sales revenue and cash flow) and 12 fundamental drivers in a way that even non-financial people can understand. The result is a faster way to increased profitability and growth, alignment of operating units within the organization, and a tool to help understand and communicate the linkage between financial measures with business strategy.
- Download a copy of the brochure.
- Register for the program by clicking here.
Tools and books that will be featured:
- Three Bottom Line Software (Financial Dashboard, Financial Scoreboard, and Projector)
- Six Sigma Business Scorecard Software (demonstration)
Books all participants will receive:
- Managing By the Numbers, by Chuck Kremer and Ron Rizzuto
- Six Sigma Balanced Scorecard, by Praveen Gupta
- Transforming Performance Measurement, by Dean Spitzer
Other posts on growth and innovation: