I am a first time responder and am responding to Jeff Blumberg's post
regarding cost management. I am a proponent of ABCM. I believe it can
play an useful role in the organization from a costing and management
perspective. Understanding the relationshi p between processes,
performance measures, and organizational strategies can provide a
foundation for learning about an organization's cost structure and team
learning.
However, digging too deep, costing transactions down to .0001, and
focusing solely on cost reductions can be deteremental to learning. There
needs to be balance. I think that the power in the ABCM model is that it
provides another layer of information t o make sound decisions. For
instance, if an organization has adopted learning as one of its strategic
priorities, then to evaluate the amount of resources consumed to
accomplish this strategy provides a useful metric to evaluate results.
For instance, i f 4% of total activity cost has been consumed by training
what benefit has staff and the organization received. Were they able to
accomplish team goals, personal goals, organizational goals? From a team
or organizational perspective did the traing of s taff result in cycle
time reduction, improvements to cost, or enhanced customer satisfaction?
If the answer is yes, then there is the beginning of a sound relationship
between the ABCM system and organizational learning.
Tad McKeon
McKeon & Associates
Training and Consulting to Healthcare Organizations
http://www.mckeon-assoc.com
--Tad Mckeon <tad@mckeon-assoc.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>