Businesses in the region are being urged to take their organisational health as seriously as their personal wellbeing, in a bid to boost their immunity to economic uncertainty.
That's the message from business growth guru Kamal Hassan, President and CEO of Innovation 360 Institute, who's calling on companies to culminate in their effort to survive the slowdown by embracing techniques in innovation and creative problem solving.
"Businesses that are struggling today can learn to change and adapt strategically by implementing healthy practices, such as Lean. This will enable them to become more resilient and agile in order to adapt to different challenges. The organisational immune system can be restored using Lean Six Sigma, which alerts management to attacks before they get out of control," he stated.
Kamal's thoughts come ahead of the highly anticipated 5th Annual Business Process Excellence Summit being held at Dubai's JW Marriott Hotel from 31 May to 4 June 2009. Acting as the event's silver sponsor, Kamal will also play a key role in the distinguished speaker line-up alongside the likes of global thought leader Terry Schurter.
The event aims to help drive the success of organisational processes to attain a benchmarkable level of excellence in order to boost competitive advantage and ultimately the bottom line. According to Kamal, it's essential to act now in order to safeguard for the future.
"Simply put, businesses will not survive the current economic upheaval unless they focus on long-term health, and put an effective immune system in place. In the GCC especially, many businesses, with some exceptions in the oil and gas industry, are young and inexperienced when it comes to dealing with a crisis of this magnitude," he said.
"Having never encountered depleted cash flows, tumbling energy prices, denied credit, a faltering real estate market and diminished tourism, GCC businesses have not yet built up an immune system that can respond quickly and effectively to such attacks," he added.
Learning to change strategically will be a key theme running through the event with experts like the Innovation 360 Institute charting solutions to today's financial fallout. This endorsed and CPD accredited summit will address ways of achieving excellence, whether mapping, modelling or aligning organisational strategy.
The Hoshin Planning methodology is just one school of thought that will come under the spotlight, as favoured by the Innovation 360 Institute. Kamal says it's essential to ensure long-term business goals are met, and not just "good intentions" that come about once every few years.
'We are so excited to have Kamal on board!' said Arben Jusufi, sponsorship manager, IIR Middle East, organisaers of the 5th Annual Business Process Excellence Summit. "Imagine a strategic planning approach that aligns the organisation's vision with actionable goals, and holds leadership at various levels of the organisation responsible for achieving those objectives. This approach is called Hoshin Planning and enables strategic objectives to be shared with every employee using a participative approach that enhances the workability of the plan and increases participation and buy-in"
In addition to discussion and debate on the leading trends and techniques to make operating processes more efficient, the event will also showcase three interactive workshops and award-winning presentations.
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For more information visit www.iirme.com/BPE
www.i360institute.com
© Press Release 2009
