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Australian business consult- ants Partners in Performance International’s (Pip’s) South African office is growing to serve clients in all parts of the world.

Pip has just completed another large assignment for BHP Billiton and has broadened its Southern African client list to include a twelve- month assignment for an Anglo American subsidiary, Skorpion Zinc, in Namibia.

The company came to South Africa in 2004, carrying out an initial nine-month contract for Bayside Aluminium, a BHP Billiton subsidiary. Following the success of the Bayside engagement, Pip made a strategic decision to remain active in South Africa, a step that has seen its local presence develop from strength to strength.

Sustainable results are a hallmark of Pip’s projects. The company’s approach is to actively focus on the behavioural and management aspects of performance as well as the more traditional consulting approach. It calls this concept wiring.

Wiring refers to the systems, processes, linkages and disciplines that govern how an organisation behaves and, therefore, how it is likely to perform in the future. Pip believes that if an organisation is not thinking about wiring, it is unlikely any business improvement from traditional consulting approaches will be sustainable over time.

An example of this is a recent client in the industrial sector, wanting to ensure the best possible productivity in the face of the load-shedding crisis.

Pip is currently using the principles of wiring to help the client build a value-driver model. This is a visually logical model of the business.

Pip worked with the client to understand what the value-drivers of the project are. At the beginning of the engagement, the client was focused on how many times the furnaces were tapped. The client was assisted and saw that this was in fact an output and not an input. Now, the client focuses on managing the feed and processing time of each furnace, anything that causes the furnace power to be switched off or turned down. The furnace is tapped when enough molten material is present.

Thus, it is not how often the furnace was being tapped, but the reasons why the power on the furnace had to be turned down, and how these reasons can be decreased, to achieve the best furnace productivity within power-utility Eskom’s call for a 10% decrease in power consumption.

The client’s focus has now changed to removing reasons for turning down or switching the furnace off. So the focus is on planned shutdown periods, the major reasons why unplanned shutdowns have to take place, and how to decrease the shutdowns.

Wiring also means working with clients to help them understand what the right inputs are, and, with the key performance indicators (KPIs) identified, the next step was the identification of an individual within the organisation to be accountable for each KPI.

Accountability is a big part of wiring. To determine accountabilites in the organisation, individuals must know what they are personally accountable for and what other individuals are accountable for, so that there are no gaps or overlaps in the project. This ensures that the KPI for each input and accountability is clearly indicated.

Pip then aided the company push for accountability at personnel levels in the company. The right level for each KPI was worked out, and the level at which behavioural changes in the organisation would make a difference to operations was identified. In many cases this meant making personnel at operator levels responsible as well. This also meant involvement of workplace teams, which Pip calls mini business teams.

Finally, with the installation of the KPIs, and the mini-business teams operating from the lowest levels up, a review process was set up.

This entails a 45-minute meeting each week involving a personal look at the KPIs each person was accountable for the previous week, and the actions required in the next week to redress any adverse variations in KPIs. This is a way of agreeing on priorities and where scarce resources should be placed. The outcomes of the previous week’s actions are then checked.

The client is coached to be very disciplined about what can only be one of three potential outcomes. Either, it was completed, it was not completed, or it was not due to be completed on the day of meeting.Instances of KPI-related actions still being “in progress” are unacceptable.

The company sees a strong match between its results focus and performance improvement methodology and the needs of the Southern African industry. The company’s ‘Frontline Coach-ing’ approach resonates well with many South African clients seeking to upskill their ranks of lower-level management.

Since arriving in South Africa, Pip has employed a number of highly qualified South Africans as consultants. This is a hiring methodology that Pip has successfully implemented in other parts of the world. The company hires local consultants and then augments the team with experienced expatriate Pip consultants. The company aims to ensure sustainability by always finding the most talented individuals available locally, and many South Africans now work for Pip in other parts of the world.

The company understands that good execution is the key to successful business improvement. Its ethos is that even the most brilliant strategy is worthless if it is not implemented well. As a result, the company is often called in to assist throughout a client’s implementation period, even when another consulting firm has developed the original strategy.

“The company invests in hiring the very best people and charges clients accordingly,” says Pip principal for South Africa Simon Davies. “However, if you want to put another R100-million on your bottom line this year, or if you’d like to achieve 20% more sustainable productivity without resorting to big capital expenditure, we are the people to call.”

Pip believes emphatically in its ability to deliver what it promises for its clients and is not afraid to put its money where its mouth is. “We don’t send any invoices until we’ve delivered more than enough bottom-line cash to cover our fees. Each Pip assignment is at least cash neutral to the client,” adds Davies.
Looking at the immediate future, Davies comments that Pip is proud of its involvement in South African industry and that it will continue to develop high-quality relationships with a blue-chip client base across Southern Africa.