As enterprises struggle with inconsistent service, inability to maintain basic service levels, and poor service availability, the results are revenue losses, negative customer experience, and reputational damage.

Prior to understanding the true root cause of the problems, enterprises typically look to:

• replace the underlying technology,
• replace the service providers of the failing service,
• outsource the failing service, or
• secure the services of high priced consulting firms to rewrite processes and start a costly enterprise transformation.

What enterprise fail to realize is that before any corrective actions take place, not only do the true root cause of the problems need to be understood, but, long term plans to sustain the improvements need to be also implemented.

The urgency to fix something, touch something, or change something is so great that no thought is given to long term sustainability. After some immediate improvement, usually things revert to their earlier state.

The following graphic provides some insight into not only how delivery operations need to be built, but how they can be sustained. Regardless of the area, whether its a process, department, or the enterprise itself, the focus should be on: 1 - Employee Engagement, Enablement, and Empowerment Initiatives, 2 - First Line Management Systems, 3 - Operational Management Systems, 4 - Up-line Management Systems and finally 5 - Cadence Systems.

Do you agree? What do you do in your organization to sustain your improvement initiatives?

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