The cornerstone of the Vanguard approach. When you can see your organisation as a system, you can see what is possible and you can see how to go about achieving it. Many approaches to the organisation as a system are complex and difficult to action. This is not. The Vanguard approach is simple without being simplistic; it is practical – you will have no doubt about ‘what to do on Monday’ – it is robust – we have employed this model in public service and private sector organisations and have yet to find its boundaries. Understanding your organisation as a system is the essential prerequisite to the management of effective change.

The Vanguard Guide to Business Excellence

The essential Guide for anybody using or considering using the Business Excellence Model (EFQM Excellence Model). The Vanguard Guide to Business Excellence provides distinctively different advice on method (conducting a self-assessment) and content (interpreting the model). Don’t follow the herd, get value from the Business Excellence Model; make sure it works for you in improving performance.

The Vanguard Guide to Transforming Call Centre Operations

Why are call centres called ‘sweat shops’? Do they have to be that way? This Guide explains the reasons for call centres becoming sweat shops and shows – with detailed examples – how to change them to improve service, efficiency, revenue and morale. Call centres are simple organisation forms and hence simple to change – but only if you are prepared to change the way you think.

The Vanguard Guide to Process Mapping and Analysis

Practical methods for defining, analysing and improving processes. Avoid the pitfall of thinking procedures are processes; ensure your processes are defined from the outside-in, from your customers’ perspective; measure before you map; map to identify value work and waste; establish the conditions you need to ensure that your processes are improved continuously.
Revised April 2007

The Vanguard Guide to Using Measures for Performance Improvement

What is wrong with traditional measures? How can measures of budget, standards, activity, productivity and the like actually make performance worse? More importantly, what are more useful measures – and how can they help ensure that performance improves? Discover the power of deriving measures that relate to purpose, establishing capability and learning from variation.

The Vanguard Guide to Managing by walking around

Leadership is the engine of change. The leader who spends time with people who do the work, asking questions, exploring the ‘what and why’ of current performance, is leading learning – and if the leader is learning, so does everybody else. Get the tools, skills and tactics for managing by walking around. Be confident about how to prepare, where to go and what to find out about.

The Vanguard Guide To Creating And Using Capability Charts

What is a control chart? How do control charts help managers make better decisions? How do you make a control chart? What measures do you need? Learn from practical examples how control charts improve decision-making. Create your own charts and discover for yourself just how much you can improve your thinking and action. Move from ‘rear-view-mirror’ management to managing on the basis of prediction.

The Vanguard Guide to Finding Out What Matters to Customers

To drive change and improve performance it is critical to know what matters to your customers. This manual has been developed to support Vanguard’s briefing of internal teams, whose purpose is to find out what matters to customers and translate the findings into operational activity. The fastest way to make change is to take what matters to your customers and use it to drive the design and management of work. Allow your customers to pull you away from the competition.