Structural Solutions for Businesses
The Unicist Methods are based on the unicist approach and were developed to provide structural solutions for businesses. The Unicist Approach to business is based on the emulation of the organization of nature. Nature is essentially organized by processes, roles and objects and the unicist approach emulates this organization in businesses. This requires managing the structures that underlie the business functions, building the diagram of their unified field in order to organize the roles and installing the business objects that accelerate and assure the quality of the processes.
The unicist methods for business are necessary to:
- Diagnose businesses
- Develop and implement strategies
- Design business architectures
- Design IT architectures
- Design business processes
- Develop marketing campaigns
- Implement continuous improvement processes
- Manage changes and innovations
The management of concepts requires knowing the unicist ontological structures of the business functions in order to develop their conceptual design, defining the Unified Field Diagram and the Layout of Processes and Roles in order to define business processes.
Introduction
The unicist methods were developed to provide a conceptual framework, an action guide and procedures to manage business problems. The goal of the methods is to build a simple way to manage problems in a collaborative way in order to take advantage of the collective knowledge and avoid generating resistance to solutions.
The unicist methods allow defining business processes considering both the maximal strategies to expand the boundaries of an activity and the minimum strategies to ensure the survival of the business. As a synthesis, it can be said that there are five different levels of methods where the superior level contains the preceding level. These levels are:
Level 1) Operational Methods
Level 2) Analytical Methods
Level 3) Systemic Methods
Level 4) Conceptual Methods
Level 5) Unicist Methods
The Concept of Unicist Methods
The purpose of the unicist methods is to provide a procedure to ensure the results of work processes using the efficacy of people and the efficiency of the systems. Efficacy is defined as the capacity of individuals to generate results responsibly and efficiency is defined as the potential capacity of a system to generate results.
The unicist design method is a conceptual approach that integrates the necessary technical-analytical aspects of the business process in order to define business architectures and IT architectures. It includes the integration of the design of efficacy and efficiency.
This implies that the unicist methods define the procedures that guide the efficacy that is necessary in order to expand the boundaries of a business activity and the efficiency to ensure its functionality.
The Unicist Methods
Introduction
In order to introduce the ontogenetic map of the unicist methods, we need to clarify that these methods are driven by three different but integrated “knowledge objects”:
- The conceptual design of a solution that is based on the unicist ontological structure of the function that is being designed.
- The unified field diagram of the solution that integrates the processes, roles and objects with the restricted and wide contexts.
- The layout of processes and roles of the solution that defines the timing and roles necessary to achieve the goals.
The use of unicist methods requires avoiding shortcuts because these three objects establish the structure of any system.
The Different Levels of Methods
As it has been mentioned before, there are five different levels of methods considering that each of them has a core functionality.
The level of the methods to be used is defined by the objectives that need to be achieved. The objective of defining different levels of methods makes the unicist methods become functional and accessible for all the members of an organization.
Level 1) Operational Methods: They are functional to provide a guide for operation.
Level 2) Analytical Methods: They are functional for simple problem solving.
Level 3) Systemic Methods: They are functional for operational organization design and systemic problem solving.
Level 4) Conceptual Methods: They are functional for solution building.
Level 5) The Unicist Methods: They are functional for organizational design and complex solution building.
These methods are hierarchical, which implies that the method of inferior level is considered as a subcategory of the superior level.
Operational Methods
They are functional to provide a guide for operation. They are based on a transparent, clear and straight-forward guidance that allows individuals to identify the patterns and actions that are needed to operate.
They include a quality assurance system to avoid mistakes. Operational methods cannot include ambiguity in order to ensure their efficiency. They are based on a dualistic approach that defines what needs to be done and what cannot be done and establishes the measurable goals to be achieved and the categories of actions that are functional.
Analytical Methods
They include the operational methods and their goal is to solve the problems that might appear at an operational level. It requires managing the layout of processes and roles of a specific action field.
They are based on analytical and empirical tools that allow identifying and solving the problems that cannot be managed at an operational level. They are based on categorizing the possible patterns that are dysfunctional.
They provide functional empirical solutions. They are based on using a technical-analytical approach to problems to define their causes, without seeking their root causes, using a propositional logic to find the solutions.
The objective of the unicist methods is to manage businesses as unified fields. This objective requires integrating conceptual design with the unified field diagram and the layout of processes and roles in order to define effective and reliable processes.
Systemic Methods
They are based on the analytical methods and their goal is to organize operational processes and solve the systemic problems of a process.
This requires finding the “root causes” of a problem, which is based on discovering the necessary causes that define the roots of the problem. It also requires discovering the “limit causes”, which define what is and what is not possible to be achieved and the triggering causes, which are those that triggered the problem.
The systemic methods require managing the unified field diagram of a process, which includes both the restricted and wide contexts of a process. These methods require managing the fuzzy aspects of a problem.
This requires dealing with ambiguity and the necessary empathy to assume the responsibility for solving a problem in a unified field.
Conceptual Methods
They are based on the systemic methods and their goal is to build solutions. Conceptual design is a technology that has been developed to build solutions in adaptive environments.
It requires managing an integrative logic, which implies accepting that all the entities of a complex adaptive environment are integrated by the conjunction “and” without the possibility of the existence of disjunctions “or”.
The conceptual methods are action oriented, because mental concepts are the drivers of human actions. Therefore, these methods require using an implicit or explicit predicate logic. It allows using concepts in terms of the actions that are implicit.
These methods integrate the specifics of a solution within the restricted and wide contexts to provide a conceptual design that enables designing and organizing a solution.
Unicist Methods
The unicist methods integrate the conceptual, systemic, analytic and operational methods based on their complementation and supplementation.
The unicist methods include both conceptual knowledge and technical knowledge in order to provide solutions. This approach integrates the adaptive procedures with the non-adaptive procedures to drive action.
It allows integrating the triad of the conceptual design, the unified field diagram and the layout of processes and roles in a unified field to establish the necessary methods using plain language that can be used having empirical knowledge.
Technologies based on Unicist Methods
Management & Business Architecture
- Client Centered Management
This is a model and a technology that allows structuring the value generation for the market and the value generation for the company driven by the client/customer orientation.
- Object Driven Organization
It is the organization model that emulates the organization of nature by installing objects in the business processes to catalyze their functionality and save energy.
- Object Driven Continuous Improvement
Unicist continuous improvement is based on organizing by business objects and improving the objects that are installed in the processes in order to maximize results and minimize change resistance.
- Unicist Business Objects Building
This technology allows building business objects as adaptive systems like operational, functional, systemic or cognitive objects to drive, catalyze or inhibit business processes.
- Unicist Business Process Design
This technology uses an action-reflection-action process to define the concepts of the process, and the destructive and non-destructive tests to confirm their functionality. It includes the use of the unicist extreme design methodology.
- Adaptive Business Architecture
This technology provides the tools and methods to transform business strategies into object driven architectures and business processes.
- Family Business Organization
This technology provides the framework to develop expansive family business organizations increasing the value generation and reducing costs.
- Functional Role Design
Human roles work as objects inserted in the businesses processes. This technology provides the fundamentals that allow building functional roles in businesses.
- Patient Centered Management
It is an object driven organization model that simplifies and empowers the patient centricity of healthcare organizations to improve their quality of services.
- Personalized Organization
This technology has been developed to organize the efficacy and efficiency of roles, workstations and business processes. It includes the technology for workstation and role design.
- Unicist Adaptive Project Management
This technology allows managing complex projects which require having plans A, B, C and D in order to ensure the results to be produced.
- Unicist Scorecard
This is a performance management technology that allows measuring the fundamentals included in the concepts of each function in order to improve the results produced.
Marketing & Market Segmentation
- Unicist Market Segmentation and Profiling
It includes the functional, psychological, conceptual and life-style segmentation of individuals and the archetypical information of companies to define customer profiles for B2C and B2B markets.
- Object Driven Marketing
This technology emulates the nature of buying processes by using the necessary objects to influence buyers according to the stage of the process they are in.
- Commercial Objects Building
These objects are built to foster the buying of an idea, a service or a product. They are integrated in adaptive automation processes or in handcrafted processes.
- Pilot Testing Technology
It uses “Japanese Parks” to establish the starting point of processes, destructive tests to confirm the limits of a hypothetical knowledge and non-destructive tests to validate the functionality of actions after the limits were defined.
- Unicist Market Lab
The Unicist Market Lab is a technology that integrates conceptual analysis, market segmentation and profile building, with pilot markets to confirm the validity of commercial processes or to build new commercial solutions.
- Adaptive CRM for B2B Markets
It includes adaptive interfaces to manage the relationship building process for new customers and the existing client base in order to empower the value adding process based on the use of business profiles.
- Adaptive CRM for B2C Markets
It is based on the use of unicist segmentation and customer profiles, establishing adaptive automated processes to drive and catalyze buying processes.
- Global/Local Virtual Marketplaces
This unicist technology provides the fundamentals, processes and objects to develop virtual marketplaces both for B2B and B2C businesses according to the fundamental structures of the specific markets.
- Institutional Distribution
This technology was designed to develop institutional distribution channels where the members of the distribution channel are part of the organization like business confederations and institutional franchises.
- Semantic Objects Building
These semantic objects have been developed to deal with innovation marketing where the market needs to acquire a new knowledge before a value proposition can be made.
- Semiotic Objects Building
These semiotic objects were designed to guide processes. They are used both in organizational and commercial processes.
- Social/Business Critical Mass Building
This technology allows the development of maximal strategies in businesses. In all these cases, in which it is necessary to go beyond the present boundaries of the business, there is a need to have a critical mass to influence the environment.
- Subliminal Communication Building
This technology gives access to the building of functional, non-manipulative, subliminal communication to sustain the commercial aspects that tend to be denied. It is a basic condition for installing commercial catalysts.
- Unicist Brand Building
This technology allows building the influential and dissuasion power, the conceptual and operational attributes and the differentiation of brands. This applies both to product and institutional brands.
Information Technology
- Automation & Adaptive Business Robots
These robots allow managing adaptive automation processes in order to transform operational or administrative systems into adaptive systems or build adaptive automated processes.
- Object Driven Virtual Collaboration
This technology was developed to take advantage of the power of virtual communication in work processes. It has been developed to save time and improve the productivity and quality of managerial work processes. It includes the technology for virtual relationship management and virtual negotiations.
- Adaptive IT Architecture
It is based on the use of a methodology that allows integrating peopleware with software and hardware in order to define the IT architecture of adaptive business processes.
- Unicist Peopleware
This technology allows designing the work processes that are needed to maximize the efficacy and efficiency of a process to build the necessary software and hardware solutions.
Innovation & Change Management
- Unicist Change Management
This technology manages the size of small, medium and big changes in order to have different technologies to approach each of them to minimize resistance and maximize results. Its objective is to achieve goals minimizing the changes.
- Conceptual Design System
The Unicist Conceptual Design System is based on the Unicist Conceptual Design Method that allows modeling the concepts of business functions and defines their processes and relationships. The system provides the concepts of the business functions and their fundamentals to develop the conceptual design of business processes.
- Unicist Fishbone Technology
This technology is part of the fundamental analysis of businesses. It looks for the root causes of the fundamentals of the operational concepts of business functions. It is based on the original fishbone method developed by Kaoru Ishikawa using unicist ontologies.
- Unicist Innovation Lab
This technology was developed to install innovations in companies. It is based on the use of think tanks to develop the concepts of innovations and transform them into operational business solutions.
- Unicist Process Improvement
This technology is based on redesigning processes by managing the concepts of each function implicit in a process and redefining the objects and roles that are needed to maximize results and minimize costs.
People Management – Human Resources
- Teaching Hospitals in Business
This is a technology that was developed to use learning processes to solve real complex business problems while the participants learn to manage them by using a conceptual management approach.
- In-company Corporate Universities
This technology provides the platforms, objects and tools to build teaching hospitals in the field of businesses that use a conceptual management approach to solve real business problems.
- Object Driven Knowledge Management
This technology allows building a knowledge objects base that structures the existing knowledge of a company and allows acquiring new knowledge while avoiding its loss.
- Object Driven Leadership
This technology structures leadership processes by using role objects to sustain leadership, avoiding conflicts and maximizing the results obtained by the groups that are lead.
- Object Driven Reliability
Reliability is the beginning of any teamwork or social activity. This technology is installed as a performance management system that promotes the upgrade of the reliability of the participants of a group.
- Object Driven Superior Education
This technology uses learning objects, which are adaptive entities that drive and catalyze learning processes by stimulating actions of the participants, allowing them to access the complex aspects of the environment.
- Object Driven Talent Development
The unicist technology for talent development is based on diagnosing how individuals manage the concepts that are needed to deal with a business and fostering actions that empower their management capacity.
- Unicist Reflection
This is a technology to approach complex problems and build business strategies. It is based on an action-reflection-action process that uses pilot tests as a feedback until the problems are solved or the strategies have been built.
Business Strategy
- Object Driven Negotiation
It is based on using unicist objects to drive and catalyze negotiation processes, minimizing the conflicts and optimizing the results. This negotiation technology has been developed for value adding negotiations.
- Pilot Testing Technology
It uses “Japanese Parks” to establish the starting point of processes, destructive tests to confirm the limits of a hypothetical knowledge and non-destructive tests to validate the functionality of actions after the limits were defined.
- Country Future Scenario Building
This technology provides the fundamentals to build future scenarios in order to better adapt the businesses to the environment.
- Fundamental Analysis for Banks
This technology provides a logical approach to the fundamentals of businesses that allow diagnosing and forecasting their evolution and managing risks.
- Object Driven Business Strategy
The unicist technology for business strategy is based on the development of future scenarios, maximal strategies and minimum strategies that allow growing within the limits of what is possible to be achieved.
- Object Driven Diagnostics
Unicist business diagnostics analyzes the functionality of the fundamentals of business processes to define what is possible to be achieved and build reliable diagnoses by integrating fundamental analysis with technical analysis.
- Object Driven Negotiation
It is based on using unicist objects to drive and catalyze negotiation processes, minimizing the conflicts and optimizing the results. This negotiation technology has been developed for value adding negotiations.
- Pilot Testing Technology
It uses “Japanese Parks” to establish the starting point of processes, destructive tests to confirm the limits of a hypothetical knowledge and non-destructive tests to validate the functionality of actions after the limits were defined.
