Natural Business Excellence™ Series Book Pre-release: "The Nine steps towards Integrated Personal and Team Excellence".

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The abstract of the pre-release book's introduction has been placed here for you to enjoy. We hope it excites you!

 

Introduction

Everything we do in life is a process. A process consists of a range of activities that are done in a particular order, timing and manner. Above the process of cooking is discussed during which ingredients are turned into a meal. Thus cooking is a process. So are drinking, reading, writing and everything else we do. The ultimate process we do is to live, and hopefully we do this for a long time in good health.

Everything we process in life is content. Ingredients, coffee, a newspaper, a book and life are all examples of content. They are used during the process to create a certain outcome. The reading of the newspaper results in being up-to-date on the news. The reading of the book results in new knowledge. The ultimate content we process is life, which we do while living our lives.

Process and content belong together in the human world, like 0 and 1 do in the digital world. The collaboration of 0 and 1 allows a computer to do everything it does, from simple calculations to complex human-alike decision-making. In the human world it is the collaboration of process and content that allows human beings to do what they do. Yet even though the comparison between process-content and 0-1 seems fit, there happens to be a remarkable difference between computers and human beings. Whereas in the digital world the natural balance between 0 and 1 is a given, in the human world the natural balance between process and content is not just there.

Due to the genetic build-up of mankind, people typically have either a process or content dominance. Just think of a marketer and an engineer. While they are trying to work together the marketer will keep on mentioning “Don’t worry. Everything will be alright”. At the same time the engineer is thinking of all the details and wondering “How can that guy tell me not to worry?! Does he really know what needs to be done and that it’s impossible to that within the available time?” The marketer has a process dominance, whereas the engineer has a content dominance. The way they experience life in all its facets is completely different. Ultimately the cooperation of the two will be needed to get the job done. Since the nature of process and content people is opposite, this poses a major challenge.

Mankind’s ultimate challenge is to obtain a process-content balance within oneself. Just imagine being a qualified marketer and engineer at the same time. Or a skilled sales person and a finance manager. One could think it is impossible to be both. Yet even though achieving a process-content balance within oneself is challenging, among us there are people who have achieved such balance in an extraordinary manner. Chief cooks, chess Grandmasters, Formula-1 drivers and fighter jet pilots are among those people. Their remarkable process-content balance has allowed them to realize things in their lives that many people can only dream of. It makes people like Chef Gordon Ramsay, Grandmaster Susan Polgar and Formula-1 driver Michael Schumacher truly special.

Ultimately there are two ways to create a process-content balance. The first is to create it among different people; the second is to achieve it within oneself. Alike the combination of 0 and 1 in the digital world, by definition a process-content balance results in excellence. Obviously human beings are much more complex than computers. Ultimately a range of elements are needed to create a process-content balance among people. Together these elements form the path towards excellence.

This book sets out the entire path towards excellence, built through a process-content balance among people, and ultimately within oneself. The heart of the path lies in process science. This science places processes central in everything it researches, with content optimally aligned. Its first two principles are “Everything we do in life is a process” and “Everything we process in life is content”. It ultimately takes the combination of process and content to get something done. People are the means to enable the combination. By nature people either have a process or content dominance, so ultimately both types of people are needed to get a job done. That is, as long as they work together in harmony.

Process, content, people, who they are, what they do, what they produce and how they do that together, or not, are all natural elements in life. They are the topics of this book and form the natural path towards excellence. Even though the elements are generic and can be applied in any situation in life, the main application is expected to be in the corporate world. It is for this reason that the name Natural Business Excellence™ has been given to the subject matter and to this book.

The entire path towards excellence combines theories of biology, chemistry, psychology, sociology, philosophy, quality management, business science and computer science, which have all been integrated and enhanced through process science. The latter provides the glue that brings all disparate theories together. Moreover, it creates theories that are generally applicable, thus independent of sex, race, religion, culture, belief and orientation, and which will survive the test of time.

There are numerous authors within the mentioned sciences. Since the author has made no conscious effort to transform any existing theories into new theories, in the book no reference is made to any of these existing theories, except where specifically applicable. The author does insist to pay respect to all authors though. Without their wisdom the author would never have had the knowledge he has had. In the light of this book the author would like to give recognition, in alphabetical order, to Aristotle, Stephen R. Covey, Thomas H. Davenport, William Edwards Deming, Abraham H. Maslow, Dmitri Mendelejev, the International Organization for Standardization, Ivan Pavlov, Andrew Pettigrew and Richard Whipp, Hasso Plattner, Michael E. Porter, Matt Ridley, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema and the United States Air Force, the latter for the development of IDEF. The author sincerely apologizes to any author who wasn’t listed here, yet who should have been mentioned.

The author would like to give special recognition to numerous people in Asia, Europe and Middle East, and at Henkel, Pratt & Whitney, Tricotop, Fokker Aircraft, BSO/Origin, Shell, Magnus Asia, Ayala Corporation, Unocal, Align, Friesland Foods and Campina who have provided him with the inspiration and opportunities to develop the subject matter and to extensively apply it. One of its applications is in the world of Enterprise Resource Planning, commonly referred to as ERP. Known for being very difficult to realize, through the application of the A1 Methodology Framework, which is powered by Natural Business Excellence™, ERP has been highly successfully introduced in companies in over 10 countries in Asia and Europe.

The content of this book is generally applicable and will add value to anyone who studies it. The author would like to place a few notes though. Experience has learned that among us there are people who believe they already know everything about themselves, about other people, about business and about life, or who like to think so. If you are such a person, then please kindly open your mind before you start reading this book. Being open to external feedback and being willing to adopt new knowledge are prerequisites to learn and to develop. The day you think you know everything is the day you stop adding value to yourself and to the world around you.

A more critical note goes to people who are not just willing to learn from others, and more than that, who are not really interested in other people at all. Typically such people are merely focussed on achieving their own goals, without having a sincere concern whether other people are mistreated. If you are such a person, then please be aware that there are specific paragraphs in this book you might perceive as offensive. Moreover, you might even use the content of this book against its philosophy, which is that it should only be used in a sincerely positive and constructive manner towards anyone anywhere in the world. The author is aware that requesting you to please not do so will not work. Instead, the theories in this book are meant to help other readers to recognize people like you, so they can pro-actively protect themselves. And who knows, maybe the content of the book triggers you to try to become a better person after all, which is the author’s sincere hope.

If you are a person who is sincerely interested in people and is searching for answers how to make other people feel positive, how to get the best out of everybody, including yourself, and how to achieve lasting results, in which ultimately everybody wins, this book will be definitely of interest to you.

The ultimate reader of this book has a sincere interest in people, how they build relationships, how they interact and how they work together to the success of the individual, the team and the company, so to a truly shared success. Especially for you this book provides a comprehensive integrated set of philosophies, theories and models that you can apply on a day-to-day basis, both at work and in life. Furthermore, it will provide you with a language that will allow you to further enhance the usage.

Ultimately the book will take you through the entire journey of being a human, engaging with other human beings, building relationships, building constructive work environments, and working together to the optimal success of all involved. And as you apply the subject matter you will see the deeper meaning of the elements and will continuously find ways to improve yourself and the people around you. Ultimately it will allow you to become a learning individual and to create a learning organization around you.

The author of the book is Robert van Geijn who has dedicated his private, educational and professional lives studying animals (especially lovebirds) and people as they naturally are and processes as they naturally occur. After discovering a core fundament that applies to both people and processes, the author was able to complete the path towards natural excellence, i.e. excellence in line with who people naturally are and what they naturally do *1. Ultimately the research has resulted in LTR™, Natural Business Excellence™ and the A1 Methodology Framework. Nowadays further applications of Natural Business Excellence™ are developed.

The extensive research came with the need of knowledge integration among different sciences, a phenomenon the author sees as a sheer necessity in the 21st century. Knowledge integration is comparable with technological integration. Whereas in the old days a mobile was used to merely make phone calls, nowadays it integrates functions and features of telephony, photography, electronic communication, sound and music and more. In the author’s view knowledge integration shall follow the same principles as applied in Dmitri Mendelejev’s periodic chart of the elements and in ecosystem thinking. In line with these principles the total of knowledge elements should make a complete framework in which each knowledge element has its distinct place and reason of existence, while adding value to the entire knowledge framework, as if it is an ecosystem. The combination of knowledge integration and process science sees to it that each knowledge element is placed at the right place where it naturally belongs.

Robert van Geijn is Founding Partner of Align and of the Institute of Natural Business Excellence. He was born in 1964 in the Netherlands where he grew up in a family business. His corporate career was initiated in 1988 with a series of internships and jobs at Henkel, Pratt & Whitney and Tricotop. In these years he discovered his natural talent for process management. In 1992 he joined Fokker Aircraft as a Business Process Consultant, where he learned and applied fundamental process management theories. After a series of reorganizations at Fokker he entered the world of Business Consulting in 1994 where he would soon start his international career. To date he has held positions of Senior Consultant, Trainer, Project Manager, Service Line Manager, Project Director, Human Resource Management Director, Regional Sales & Marketing Director, Managing Director, Founding Partner, Coach and Advisor during assignments in over 20 countries across Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

The author has consciously opted to publish the first edition of the book in-house. Although due care was applied with the writing and publishing of the book, errors and omissions are to be expected. The author kindly requests the reader to provide any feedback, including corrections, improvements, ideas and opinions via www.i-nbe.org, so they can be incorporated in the next edition, where suitable by mentioning the name of the provider of the feedback.

The book has been illustrated with etchings of Jan Montyn, an acclaimed international artist whose art works portrait life as it is, with a message of ‘Heaven and Hell’. A moment of utter disaster and destruction translated in a moment of beauty. A time of misery translated in a future of hope. The author is highly grateful to Jan Montyn for providing the etchings and especially for making an exclusive series of etchings for LTR™ and P10™.

The final illustrations in this book were done by Jeroen Mylhoff, a multi-talented international design and graphics artist who has also created Pete and Chris™ and other characters that are used to enhance the theories of LTR™, Natural Business Excellence™ and A1™. The author is highly grateful to Jeroen Mylhoff for introducing Natural Business Excellence™ and the related theories to the world would simply not have been possible without the created materials.

Natural Business Excellence™, Pete & Chris™, LTR™, P10™, IPOC™, Elign™, IPEC™, LTR Relationship Model™ and Natural Human Classification Model™ are trademarks of the Institute of Natural Business Excellence and/or of their respective owners. Reproduction, adaptation, translation or commercial usage of the book or any parts of it without permission of the author is prohibited in line with International Copyright Laws.

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