Hack:
BREP & KNOS: The Acronyms to End all Acronyms

By Ovidiu Slavoiu - Business Manager at ING Bank (Romania)

June 25, 2010 at 10:07pm

Moonshots

Summary

BREP would stand for: Back to basics; Rational expectations; customer Experience management; and Patterns management. BREP may help, in my understanding, in leadership and vision tailoring. BREP is the strategic perspective.

KNOS stands for: Knowledge; Networking; Ownership; and Support. KNOS should be the tactical planning framework in managing change and transformation processes.

Both frameworks should help at three levels: individual; organizations; society.

Problem

Business world has become too complicated, both in terms of addressing needs and language. Management operates with too many complexities, which had at least three effects over the last decade: professional demotivation; bureaucratization; lack of creativity.

My acknowledgement on the new normal is that it should be designed around pure, natural, and basic principles. Thus, they be less speculative and more sustainable. In the last decade less real values (human, spiritual, even material) have prevailed.

As the recovery/ return to growth will last some time, we need a tempo of reflection that has to do with simple and understandable things/ ideas.

Solution

BREP is meant to induce a leadership state of affairs that deals with:

- addressing straight-forward needs, of customers or society, in a back to basics and sustainable manner (focusing on quality of life and not on welfare maximization);

- back to basics is closed to the rational expectations formulation. Business world and global society should come to a mental status that would allow them to pursue a welfare status matches with the inner strengths and capabilities, and less on excessive leverage;

- customer experience management is not a new concept, however it has not been approached in a sound manner. Customer focus and customer centricity have been just nice fancy labels on the frontage page;

- pattern-based approach is an idea proliferated by Gartner and I would fully embraced it as it has to do with a sustainable development attitude, that would bring advantage for both the consumer and the business models.

Any new business idea developed via a pattern-based approach and following a genuine customer experience would be fore sure: innovative (even if at a frugal level); relevant; tailored to real needs; and sustainable in terms of future developments.

KNOS is also a framework inspired from natural models:

- a human being incrementally add knowledge, at different ages;

- is continuously expanding his/ her network;

- he/ she receive or assume more and more responsibilities, thus learning to assume ownership;

- and for all the initiatives and challenges he/ she needs support.

This is a continuos loop, from the moment we come to this world, till the moment we pass away. The same could apply, rationally, to organizations and society: being an organism able, willing, and open to accumulate knowledge, to expand its network and relationship mechanism, to assume new projects and be accountable for them, and, to properly leverage all these doings on suitable support.

I see this model/ frame as a scale with four trays. So, balancing K, N, O, S is paramount.

Practical Impact

BREP may bring a natural balance in how hierarchies are set and the equilibrium of power is realized. For instance, it may be used as a high level set of principles in negotiations of fiscal programs, between the government and the business landscape. Similarly, it may be used in organizing a strategic business plan, while customer experience is valued, expectations on growth are rationally formulated, and the plan itself starts from well-articulated hypothesis, rooted in behavioral patterns.

KROS may be applicable in transformation initiatives or change management programs, as it is meant to enhance the learning behavior of an organization: which is the knowledge I may count for; which is the network I may involve; which are the challenges I may embrace; which is the leverage/ support I need to pursue that transformation/ change. I find it applicable in any reshaping initiative, organic or inorganic (mergers or acquisitions).

First Steps

First step: be honest with yourself! The test: imagine how would it be the organization without you, or with you making a step back or lateral.

If you are honest enough, check others' honesty. If there are enough honest people around you, hire a soft-skill company to assess your level of maturity in terms of rational expectations, level of knowledge sharing propensity, the real willingness to assume renewal, as it is an effort that most of them have not done it so far.

After screening these, implement a customer experience program, look inside you data warehouse and see how well is organized and what you can extract from it, extract the patterns out of it and model your business in a relevant, rational manner.

Credits

McKinsey, Gartner, Interbrand, IBM, Ogilvy

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July 26, 2010 at 8:29am

Ovidiu Slavoiu

Dear Evan,

One may approach BREP as a set of principles when (re)designing a business. So, yes, one may consider it a mind-set framework. However, with a more detailed definition of each "letter", one may use it as a guideline for setting business values.

KNOS is more practical and may be more straight-forward as instrument. Is more like a checklist. As I have mentioned, I used it in designing the business flows in a organizational transformation program.

Thank you for your feedback! Helped me to see what's the next step for refining the concepts.

July 26, 2010 at 8:52am

Evan Leonard

So BREP is really a mindset? And KNOS is a set of questions for inquiry into problems? Is this a correct characterization?

June 29, 2010 at 2:16am

Matt Shlosberg

Ovidiu -

Can you show an example of how your framework can help?

June 29, 2010 at 8:47am

Ovidiu Slavoiu

Dear Matt, thank you for the question!

BREP is mostly a strategic marketing tool, as it should focus on a genuine customer experience management improvement.

My understanding on the current state of affairs, globally and on average, is that few companies/ organizations really know who their clients are (discreet segmentation based on changing behavior) and which is the pattern of behavior of the entire market "wallet" (here comes the pattern-based strategy paradigm). I also understand that in doing that, organizations need to reshuffle so that it may be able to switch, as a whole (as Gartner say, the op-tempo), in order to respond to new patterns, in a rational manner (both needs matching and cost effectiveness).

Let me give you a straight-forward example of how this should work: I had a discussion with a colleague coordinating the customer service area in electronic channels, B2B. He acknowledged that in the last two-three years there is a change in who is calling for support, from older, lack computer-skilled clients users, to younger, more technology-driven ones. He understood that there is a changing pattern and, as a consequence, he and his team need reshuffle: in how they design the script for support, in how they may communicate with the clients' users (moving from phone to chat solution, etc).

That's a simple, but inspiring philosophy of getting back, looking the problem in a rational manner (chat is less expensive), centered on who the customer are, how they behave, in order to improve the overall experience; and only because he was smart enough to understand the pattern and to ADAPT to it.

Now, just imagine that you are a company with thousands of clients that may be clustered smarter from their expectation perspective. You should pursue, as I have mentioned, an internal assessment to see the degree of preparation, because implementing a customer experience program, having in mind to leverage on customer advocacy (word-of-mouth equity), and pursuing a pattern-driven organization is not an easy task. A lot of soft and hard capabilities (data-warehouse mining tools and pattern modeling ones) are needed and associated investments required. But, it would be a natural, organic development. Another particular impact is that that company should accept, at least initially, very low margins.

As for KNOS, I have applied it, with certain success for redesigning the functional and business flows for a company moving from a natural monopoly stance, to a more commercial oriented one. The logic was like that: which are the knowledge and capabilities the company should acquire and develop so that it can expend the network/ relationship base? Equally, which processes should be re-drawn so that people to assume ownership of genuine customer centricity? So, in short, a knowledge-based plan, articulated on the network-based ecosystem of stakeholders, new challenges in ownership, and certain capabilities for supporting that program. As I said, is more tactical and focus on balancing resources.

Hope I have responded to your question! Many thanks!