When clients ask me why the level of waste in their business is so significant, I can usually reply it is because they have failed to both define the work of management and provide the tools for it's effective execution within their organisation.

Responsibility for the definition of that work and the design of those tools is often left to incumbent managers and their collective experience and preferences. There are two problems with this. Many managers who say they have over 20 years experience may have had only one year of bad experience repeated twenty times and in many organisations executive turnover is high.

There is a revolving door in many organisations and each time a senior manager walks in or out of it, the most recent attempt at defining the work of management in an area of business often walks in or out of it with them.

This loss of corporate memory or consciousness can lead many organisations to continually reinvent the management process wheel over periods of three to five years. It can mean that organisations with decades of operational experience fail to learn or improve. There is no simple panacea for this problem.

Many MCSs (Managment Control Systems) die the moment their conceivers move on or their users cease to understand the reason they were originally installed. This is not a technical challenge. It is a cultural challenge.

Our Systems expertise resides in our understanding of the technical precepts of successful MCSs, but more inportantly, the underpinnings, construction and maintenance of successful Control Cultures.

Bill James. Managing Director.