Look around you. Everything that is made has been designed, with one exception: we don't design the very organizations that make the things you see, hear, feel, touch and taste. This is a very curious omission.

Now all this is changing. Visionary organizations have started to do just that—they are designing their companies, with amazing results. One of the tools used to do this is made by the company that I work for, and is called Open Text ProVision?. It's a complete platform for designing and modeling any business. Just as a new design of a building or jet is modeled inside a wind tunnel and simulated on a computer, so you too can now re-design a business and understand and foresee many of the impacts those designs have before the changes ever see the light of day. We are very proud of what we have achieved.

This book's purpose is to enable you to explain the benefits and give you a road map of how you might implement a well designed business. The author draws on the experience of existing users around the world to help you get the very best from the tool, understand some of the challenges you might face, and how to overcome them.

I recommend this book to all current and intending users of the toolset.

Ken Goerg

Open Text Inc.

Director, EA Product Management

Every organization is designed. However, most are designed unconsciously. It is beliefs which shape the way the business appears to the world.

"This is the right way to do things", perhaps?

"We have always done it like this", probably not.

Beliefs are necessary. They serve an important purpose and they add tremendous value. When an organization knows its beliefs, it can get on with the job confidently. However, the world is changing rapidly. From time to time we need to examine our beliefs and see if they need replacing or updating.

I am an enterprise designer based in the US. Enterprise design gives me a framework and methodology for classifying important business information. Then I use ProVision? to model organizations. The challenge I find is, not so much how to use the tool, but how to get everyone on the same page. This is what this book is all about. It's the first book ever published on ProVision? that focuses on how to design a strategy and get it implemented.

Using this book you will be able to design a "conscious" organization and get everyone involved. You will be able to hold company beliefs up to the light of day and see if they continue to serve the purpose for which they were intended.

Tom Foster

Owner, Business Views LLC

Good managers have four core capabilities. They consult, train, mentor and facilitate. Great managers have five: they coach their team. Once you add coaching to your kit bag of skills, you cross an invisible line and become a leader. Leaders coach and manage the team's energy, and hold the corporate vision.

ProVision? lets you visualize your business and ensure that everything you do aligns to that vision. It's an enabler. This book will fast track your ability to get the most from it, and I highly recommend it.

Andrew Mackenzie

CEO, Shirlaws Australia

www.shirlaws.com.au

My passion is designing businesses from the customer's point of view. I call this "outside-in". Inside the gates everyone has their own introspective view of the world. It is hard to see the organization the way the client does. We forget that processes start way before we know anything about them.

This book is a great contribution to changing that blinkered thinking. The author provides the Chief Information Architect with a blueprint for designing an organization that is truly customer centric.

Ray Brown

Founder, www.ClienteerHub.com

Business is emotional and rational, both an organism and mechanical. We cannot design an organization the same way that we design a car. Forget about the metaphors of engineering and architecture; a business is a community of people with dreams and hopes. Every one of us wants to live, to love, to learn and leave a legacy. We will only engage in our workplace if we care, and this engagement is a conversation around creating new meaning, not solving old problems.

When we care, we see new possibilities and opportunities, and we co -create a shared future together. The most successful organizations on the planet are those that are designed with this in mind and they are constructed to engage the critical emotional connections in organizations to continuously create a better world.

This book breaks new ground. It shows you how to design a business that will find and engage the critical connections in your organization to move beyond the "red ocean" of survival and into the "blue ocean" space of abundance and meaning.

Jeremy Scrivens

Founder, TheEmotionalEconomy.com