BOOK REVIEW
Book Title: Pursuing Enterprise Outcomes: Maximizing Business Value and Improving Strategy for Organizations and Teams
Author: Alex Yakyma
Publisher: Self-published on Amazon
List Price: $29.00
Format: Softcover, 290 pages & eBook
Publication Date: August 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9981629-2-8
Reviewer: Joseph Kuntz, PMP
Review Date: May 2022
Introduction
In his book, Pursuing Enterprise Outcomes, Alex Yakyma does an excellent job of navigating the complex subject of organizational performance. I found the book to be quite helpful in identifying and understanding work flows and dependencies, with pertinent examples to help bring life to the concepts he was professing. The first 3 chapters were quite illuminating to me and provided real concepts that I put to use with my team right away!
The book did, at times though, get bogged down in over analysis, as I found in chapter 5 on the Mystery of Business Value. In portraying numerous concepts around value paths, and the scoring of such paths, he seemed to be engaging in an exercise in over-analysis. In attempting to address ambiguity and uncertainty, he only added to the same for me as I lost focus in a chapter that seemed to drag on.
Overview of Book’s Structure
The first part of the book rightly identifies disconnects, aka bottlenecks, as the “killer” of organizational performance. It points out the challenge of identifying them and the wasted capacity caused by them. The author again accurately states that “Systemic disconnects in an organization prevent the organization from seeing systemic disconnects”. I’ve found this to be very true in my experience, especially in large organizations.
The author then introduces the pursuit of outcomes in the middle part of the book, along with the challenges around identifying outcomes in a business world that is obsessed with outputs. He spends a good deal of time pointing out the differences between the two and the challenges of overcoming output obsession. There is an excellent overview of outcome chains and the importance of outcome ownership. He also introduces different types including collateral and preventative outcomes. In support of outcome analysis, the author provides an in depth overview of the art and science of probing including common mistakes and how to avoid them.
The last part of the book addresses the mystery of business value with the introduction of value paths along with the inherent connection between business value and business outcomes. The author provides an extensive look into the dynamic nature of value paths, different ways of identifying value and a means of quantifying (scoring) business value. The book then seems to loop back to the discussion on business outcomes by taking a deep dive into bottlenecks, including simple versus complex and how solutions to bottlenecks emerge. It closes with a look at business strategy, leverage points and how to diffuse strategy in the existing business culture.
Highlights
The book does an excellent job of answering the question “what is a good outcome analysis?” The author accurately identifies that in complex tasks that involve multiple people, interaction is a key enabler of high performance. Our challenge is that we have different backgrounds, work experience, requirements, goals and skill-sets than our peers from different departments within the organization. We speak different languages! Within outcome chains, this leads to disconnects, fragmentation and bottlenecks, which leads to extended effort and recycling of work= wasted capacity.
More…
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About the Reviewer
Joseph Kuntz
San Antonio, Texas, USA
Joseph Kuntz, PMP is a proficient, versatile manager with proven success in building and developing technical project delivery teams. He is a creative thinker adept at leading cross-functional teams in a collaborative, results oriented environment and an effective communicator with a broad business perspective that consistently results in revenue and profit growth while enhancing the customer experience.
SKILLSET:
- Project budgeting and financial management.
- Customer relations and account development.
- Team leadership and career development.
- Program and Project management, staffing and deployment.
- MS Office, including Visio and MS Project.
- System Design and construction management.
- Vendor and subcontractor management.
PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATIONS:
- Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification
Joseph Kuntz can be contacted at jlkuntz@protonmail.com
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