The 6 Box Model – An Eco System for sustainable performance

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”

Henry Ford, industrialist, inventor (1863-1947)

There are so many new management techniques and tools published every year that it is often hard to select one that will actually work within an organisation. I recently came across the 6 box model (Created by Vlatka Hlupic, University of Westminister) and thought that it was a model that could easily be used by organisations that wanted to improve and sustain performance. Today’s business eco system is very different to the one that was prevalent, even quite recently as the early 80’s and 90’s. Professor Vlatka highlights that quite well, in the following slide:

Hlupic Slide

The 6 Box model identifies the main six key performance drivers required by organisations and how they are interlinked and rely on each other to deliver sustainable performance. Usually, when I come across business tools and techniques, the accompanying websites fail to deliver content that supports them. I was therefore quite pleasantly surprised by the 6 box model website that is a mine of information and contains a rich resource of content ranging from an article by professor Vlatka featured in Harvard Business Review that includes marked productivity improvement at both CSC and ANADIGICS. Please also view video on by Marcus Buckingham on ‘strengths’.

6BoxModel

Increasingly, Social Media has been used quite successfully by organisations to tap this resource already found within organisations and I covered this in my blog post, revised recently, ‘Organisations “Don’t get” social media’  . ‘Hlupic points to the example of HCL Technology, a software consultancy in India which developed its own Facebook-style application and used it to create a new business strategy. “Originally, 300 managers would put their strategy ideas to the CEO but with the social media application, they could put their ideas for new strategies to everyone in the global business, so 8,000 people could potentially comment. Everyone could contribute to the planning and everyone could really align themselves with the strategy and live and breath it,” she says. This all happened mid-recession and in the four years since, 70 per cent of all major deals closed by HCL were won against the big four global IT players, the number of customers has grown five-fold and employee attrition is down to 50 per cent. Revenues have also tripled over a four-year period and operating income has also tripled.’

6BoxModelCategories

I would like to conclude this article by requesting readers to read the article that I wrote in 2009 titled, ‘Can IT Management failure be caused by a deadly disease? Part II’  that discussed ‘Dr. Deming – The 5 Deadly Diseases 1984’ as that also discussed and emphasised the importance of employees and as the great man said,

“Unemployment is not inevitable but of bad management”- Dr Edward W Deming.