Author Bio

Alan is Managing Partner of CORE Business Management Solutions, a Michigan-based business advisory firm that focuses on assisting companies to achieve and sustain profitability. Alan has devoted the past 20+ years to providing operational management and process/profitability improvement assistance to a wide variety of industries and organizational entities. Clients have ranged from as small as a 4 employee entrepreneurial start-up to a 16,000 employee, multi-site logistics organization

Alan assists companies to effectively achieve and sustain profitability by working with clients to establish and implement business process management and improvement strategies. Alan incorporates methodologies based on optimization of processes, cost analysis through the use of activity-based cost principles, and the integration of continual improvements by incorporating the key elements of industry standard business management system principles.

Alan has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Iowa State University and an MBA from the International University of Entreprenology.

Foreword
by Hank Moore, Futurist - Corporate Strategist™.

Hank has been described as "the Peter Drucker of the 21st Century” and advises companies about growth strategies, visioning, planning, leadership development, futurism, and Big Picture issues which profoundly affect the business climate. Hank’s client list has included more than 5,000 companies, including 100 of the Fortune 500 companies such as Disney, Southwest Airlines, Texaco, and Conoco.

Business is at a crossroads. The rules have changed...always have and always will. A great many mosaics make up The Big Picture. Yet the wider perspective in business is rarely seen.

This book is about widening the scope much further. Whenever we review what made relationships and business successful, we see that Big Picture thinking occurred. The potentiality of people and organizations is a progressive journey from information to insight to knowledge.

I endorse this book and its author, Alan K. Lund. Accelerating Profitability is thorough with integrative case studies and conversations with clients who have been impacted by the processes.

This book offers strategies for managing expectations and represents a road map for a profitable journey, with the tools necessary for making the journey. Managers who heed Mr. Lund’s advice will exemplify forward thinking and become strategically active. Readers learn how to move up the learning curve by managing expectations. He reviews core business assessment tools. He finds the weakest areas are financial strength and capability, cost management, and the utilization of resources. Addressing each, he provides solid strategies for financial benchmarking, process benchmarking, product or competitive benchmarking, and strategic benchmarking. Charts of survey results offer documentation of profitability improvements.

Key questions that Mr. Lund asks and answers include: Where are we headed, and what are the objectives? What is the readiness to transition?

There is a discussion of cost management concepts and gradations, including activity-based and strategic. He asks what your “profit number” is, and how you will arrive at that desired goal. Investments in equipment, technology, and people are reviewed. He asks us to rate and evaluate who does what and their competencies to accomplish substantive success.

Research tells us that 92 percent of problems in organizations stem from poor management decisions. Organizational development is a method for facilitating change and development in structures, processes, people, and technology.

Getting organizations and their people “All Aboard” is the challenge. Lund shows team leaders how to make the good calls. This book shows readers what red flags look like and how they may be diffused with strategic data and analysis safeguards.

The Breakdown chapter shows readers what red flags look like in real life and how they can be diffused with data and analysis safeguards. Matrixes on labor give better understandings of employee costs, equipment costs, manufacturing overhead, financials, and cost drivers. There are excellent examples of input sheets with lessons learned. I like his “Check Book” approach.

The Cruise Control chapter discusses why so many organizations do just that. He then describes the strategies to improve profitability: operational excellence, strategic message, competitive essence, predictive analytics, business continuity and risk mitigation, workplace organization, predictors and early warning indicators, lessons learned, disruptive technologies, and disruptive innovation. I like his “Magnificent Three” drivers: profitability, market diversification, and winning the battles.

I agree with Mr. Lund’s key advice priorities:

  • Open yourself to the outsider – Look beyond your own industry and backyard.
  • Be prepared to experiment and fail. Research tells us that we learn three times more from failure than success.
  • Make decisions. Being indecisive is far worse than making the wrong decision.
  • Define real value beyond the product.
  • Stop crying. There is a world of possibility out there; you only have to look.

For more than 30 years, Alan Lund has been a management consultant working with both large and small companies. His book pulls together the varied experiences and knowledge acquired in his project work into a practical and comprehensive checklist for executives. He moves to specifics with sub-checklists that are focused and actionable.

In less experienced hands, a book of methodologies could easily turn into a litany of platitudes with little implementable substance behind them. Lund’s concepts reflect the grounded, real-world perspective of a management consultant paid to get results, not talk.

Some key take-backs that I get from Accelerating Profitability include: Be flexible when things change; grow from within; pay attention to detail; identify problems early; be completely accountable.

Much of the wisdom to succeed lies within. People under-perform because they are not given sufficient direction, nurturing, standards of accountability, recognition, and encouragement to out-distance themselves. Organizations start to crumble when their people quit on each other.

Healthy organizations absorb all the knowledge and insight they can, embracing change, continuous quality improvement, and planned growth. The level of achievement by a company is commensurate to the level and quality of its vision, goals, and tactics. The higher its integrity and character, the higher its people must aspire.

This sets the stage for this excellent book. Accelerating Profitability and its author, Alan Lund, embrace the essence of business. Chapters are written in such a way as to be interpreted on several levels. They are factual and experience-tested. They are intended to widen your focus and inspire the visionary that exists within you, the reader. He presents steps and processes that companies of all sizes can utilize and benefit from. This book is comprehensive, systematic, practical, and exciting for the possibilities that it opens for growth oriented companies seeking to remain competitive and be successful.

Profitable strategies can and should become your ideas, mindset, and ethical business practice.

Hank Moore, Futurist--Corporate Strategist™ author of:

  • The Business Tree, with seven international editions.
  • Houston Legends
  • The High Cost of Doing Nothing. Why good businesses go bad
  • The Classic Television Reference
  • Power Stars to Light the Flame...The Business Visionaries and You
  • American Business Legends
  • The Future Has Moved...and Left No Forwarding Address
  • The $50,000 Business Makeover
  • Two editions of the Chicken Soup books
  • Harvard Business Review Monograph Series
  • Library of Congress Archive Series
  • Strategy Driven Business Monograph Series

Published by Waldorf Publishing
2140 Hall Johnson Road
#102-345
Grapevine, Texas 76051
www.WaldorfPublishing.com

Accelerating Profitability Part of the PROFIT CORE™ Series

ISBN: 9781634432634

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014921836


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Praise for Accelerating Profitability

“Unlike others in this category, this book provides more than just airy abstract concepts. It provides the reader concrete methods for uniquely analyzing your operation to help achieve and sustain profitability in a clear, concise and fresh perspective.” Michael McBride, JD, President, Mason-McBride, Inc.

“If you only read one book this year on achieving business profitability, make it Lund’s Accelerating Profitability. Spot on.” James Malloy, Vice President – Chief Technology Officer, Kolene Corporation, Detroit, MI

“Accelerating Profitability is the roadmap that will get you there. I have known Alan for several years and seen him use the same principles every day to improve his clients' profitability. He provides all the fuel, tools and roadside assistance you’ll need to reach your profitability goals” Ehab Sahawneh, former Director, Huron Consulting Group, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

“A business book that our management team can follow, adapt and use to achieve real results. The objective is profitability. The roadmap is Accelerating Profitability.” Nate Gildersleeve, Director of Technology & David Britt, Quality Assurance Manager, N.G.K Metals Corporation, Sweetwater, TN

“Here’s my take - Accelerating Profitability provides useful and realistic tactics that can be implemented in key areas to build the foundation for profitability. How do I know? We have worked with Alan for several years. The book is like having him here.” Darrin Soukup, Manufacturing Engineer, Accurate Gauge & Mfg Inc.

“Lund’s book will provide you with logical methods that simply work to revive, accelerate and sustain profitability.” Thomas Schliep, former Operations Manager, El Matador Tortilla Chips, Grand Rapids, MI

“We told Alan several times – you ought to write a book. He did. Accelerating Profitability is 30 years of business savvy solutions packed into a practical resource.” Bob Loy, Director of Quality, National Machinery, Tiffin, OH

“This book’s recommendations are right on. Accelerating Profitability does more than offer a skeleton. It’s the meat and muscle of profitability.” Dennis Hughey, President, Alliance International, Carmel, IN