One Page for Change (OPC): The Chopsticks of the Business World

8 min read

Businesses are customizing classic global tools to address local issues with One Page 4 Change (OPC - a single page that creates change).

Source: The Leader Magazine

"The business landscape in Vietnam is undergoing a dynamic transformation. With rapid growth, cultural complexity, and a myriad of diverse challenges, Vietnamese enterprises face a dual mandate. They not only need to keep up with international standards but also must develop innovative solutions to address their internal issues.

In this context, One Page 4 Change (OPC - a single page that creates change) has proven its role as a powerful customizable tool, helping Vietnamese businesses overcome current limitations.

OK Before Covid-19, OPC was piloted in many outsourcing businesses exporting to foreign markets. It streamlined the entire process of complying with international sustainability standards, including environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria, enabling businesses to secure orders from major brands committed to corporate social responsibility (CSR).

In this process, OPC acted as a mind map, helping ESG/CSR-related departments successfully persuade leadership to prioritize the most critical standards, eliminate waste and redundant activities, and focus all efforts on the largest customer requirements.

This approach has continuously improved basic operational processes without wasting too much time and effort on debates and conflicts arising from different perspectives on the same issue.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, OPC helped many hotels and resorts avoid closure and maintain impressive business operations. This was achieved through the application and deep understanding of OPC's simple and streamlined principles.

In a short period, the leaders, along with hundreds of employees, reached a consensus: reopening the resorts, welcoming long-term guests, maintaining employment, and even generating enough income to cover operational costs throughout the pandemic.

With just a single OPC page, a hotel manager was able to create three different scenarios for the Covid situation: worst, average, and best case, along with specific goals and outcomes. These were agreed upon within 12 service and management units in a record time, ten times faster than usual.

Investors were able to make confident decisions, while employees unanimously agreed to accept reduced salaries and benefits, ensuring job security post-pandemic.

Customers, whether long-term or short-term, felt reassured when the resort reopened, especially during times when over 2,000 guests had breakfast simultaneously without any Covid cases.

After the Covid-19 pandemic, OPC became a familiar sight at senior leadership's strategic meetings, particularly in reports on the operational status of subordinates in various fields such as education and healthcare.

With simple diagrams and unified components labeled finance, customer, process, and personnel, OPC not only increased the number and quality of decisions tenfold, thanks to the consistency among management levels regarding the company's core priorities, but also clarified the relationships between these factors.

Many businesses applying OPC for the first time were surprised by its ability to reconnect and achieve quick consensus, even though they had worked together for years without fully understanding each other and often clashed over thinking and methods.

Many leaders affirmed that adopting OKRs, KPIs, or performance, productivity, and goal management metrics for their company did not require spending billions on foreign corporations for restructuring. Instead, they just needed to use OPC a few times to implement it across their entire supply chain or corporation system.

Solving major issues with simple tools.

Vietnamese chopsticks vs Western kitchen tools - Respectvn.com — Vietnamese chopsticks vs. Western kitchen utensils

If we liken adapting and innovating in the face of both external and internal challenges to using both "chopsticks" and "forks" in meals that combine "Western and Eastern" cultures, it's easy to see the comparison in the functionality of these two tools.

Chopsticks, with just two slender bamboo sticks, can handle all tasks from picking up, stirring, cutting, to dividing food. A Vietnamese meal only needs enough chopsticks for the number of family members, without any additional tools. This results in low cost, diverse functionality, streamlined management, and a distinctive Vietnamese traditional identity that cannot be mixed.

Compared to chopsticks, forks in Western meals cannot function without knives. These tools require the coordination of multiple utensils, creating a complex and sometimes difficult-to-handle system.

In contrast, a single pair of chopsticks can do so many things. As many chefs observe, chopsticks have diverse functions, even potentially replacing or simplifying the complexity of many Western kitchen tools.

Thus, chopsticks became a very "Vietnamese" inspiration for Respect Vietnam to create OPC, aiming to solve complex problems with a simple, accessible, and effective mindset.

In the high-pressure modern business world in the West, there is a phenomenon of "over-engineering" management systems, referred to as the "Swiss Army Knife syndrome." This occurs when too many tools, ideas, and solutions are integrated into their operations. Although intended to create a comprehensive solution, it often leads to complexity without clear value.

The Swiss Army Knife, originally designed to solve all problems, became cumbersome and difficult to use. When "imported" to "following" countries like Vietnam, this knife was often applied mechanically, with little customization, leading to difficulties in effective implementation as it did in the exporting country.

Specifically, the simultaneous application of various tools, systems, and solutions to address a single problem has led to a lack of coherence among departments, resulting in a diminished focus on overall goals. The diversity in thinking, approaches, and operations has hindered effective communication between departments, reducing strategic consistency. Instead of simplifying processes, these tools have been proven to increase management burdens and decrease work efficiency.

Common global strategic tools such as OKR (Objectives and Key Results), KPI (Key Performance Indicators), BSC (Balanced Scorecard), and BMC (Business Model Canvas) are often cited.

These tools have succeeded in developed economies due to highly advanced legal systems that regulate relationships within enterprises and organizations, as well as a high starting point for learning capacity and mindset.

New solutions like OKR are particularly advantageous as they enhance human capabilities compared to the generally stable workforce, by focusing on specific measurable goals and inspiring all personnel within an organization.

In Vietnam, based on pilot results and research in nearly 100 different enterprises and organizations, Respect Vietnam has shown that mechanical application and a lack of deep understanding hinder the customization of OKR. Given the early development stage of legal frameworks, corporate culture, and business practices, this can make it difficult for businesses to identify basic priority goals and align their focus.

When goals are diverse, multidimensional, and potentially conflicting (e.g., revenue growth goals versus brand image enhancement goals), the gap between ambitious strategic plans and practical execution will grow, leading to increasing operational, training, and management costs. These costs, often related to the difficult-to-measure "human" factor, will expand in the eyes of investors and management executives, acting more as "costs" rather than long-term investments. As a result, these activities tend to be prioritized only in the short term

OPC: The Chopsticks of the Business World

Unlike the complexity of a Swiss Army Knife, OPC is designed with the simplicity of chopsticks—easy to understand, easy to use, yet extremely effective. OPC is a 'one-page tool that creates change,' integrating the most modern management methods.

First, OKR on the BMC model: OPC helps businesses manage, align, and communicate goals from top to bottom and bottom to top, all on a single page.

This method is suitable for companies that want flexibility but also clear definitions and principles to set goals and measure results from the beginning to the end of a specific project or activity.

BMC (Business Model Canvas) becomes a framework that connects and simplifies the communication of information between different levels of personnel. By using the famous 9 building blocks, OPC helps employees understand the most important priorities of leadership, while enabling the executive board to grasp the actual capabilities and potential of employees. This leads to precise and feasible planning and motivates employees beyond just salary.

Second, KPI on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) model: Unlike OKR, KPI ensures stability through the "most important" performance indicators. OPC synchronizes strategic elements into a single system consisting of four main pillars (financial, customer, process, learning, and growth) according to the BSC model, allowing members to quickly understand and agree.

The difference between the two implementations of OPC on BMC and BSC lies in the manner of expression, but the common principle remains simplifying the process from bottom to top and top to bottom. This fosters high consensus among teams and departments and connects strategy with execution capabilities. These are significant cultural challenges that modern technology and methods have yet to fully address.

From Research to Application

In 2015, Mrs. Dang Thi Hai Ha, the founder of Respect Vietnam, began developing OPC based on research conducted at over 100 medium and large enterprises across 13 provinces nationwide. This was part of an expanded project on sustainable management efficiency along the global supply chain, funded by the U.S. government. During her research, she recognized that while Vietnamese businesses possess great potential, they face several significant weaknesses.

First, there is a lack of consistency in management. Strategic tools such as OKR, KPI, BMC, and BSC are often applied in a fragmented manner, leading to a loss of direction. Many large projects only require OKR or KPI certification to attract investment, but fail to achieve effectiveness when self-operating.

Second, there is an information overload. Many enterprises apply 8-10 complex models and tools simultaneously without fully understanding their essence. As a result, the journey from model application to outcome is long and exhausting, reducing organizational motivation.

Third, there is limited access to global knowledge. Businesses focus on operations, prioritizing only a few key personnel for training on OKR and BMC, making it difficult to deeply research and customize international tools.

Ms. Ha stated that these are the primary reasons driving the creation of One Page 4 Change, as well as the distinct streamlined characteristics of this model compared to many existing models in Vietnam and worldwide. Current research indicates that Respect Vietnam is the first organization to develop and integrate OKR with BMC.

Even KPI/BSC has not been customized, leaving many unanswered practical questions such as centralized vs. decentralized decision-making, top-down vs. bottom-up approaches, individual vs. team roles, linking responsibilities with compensation, and the necessity to connect the most critical pillars in the business model. This challenge arises due to a lack of systemic thinking—one of the most crucial mindsets of the 4.0 era, especially with the rise of AI.

Ms. Ha mentioned that over the past decade, Respect Vietnam has turned the "latecomer's advantage" into an opportunity for innovation. First, they leveraged global knowledge. OPC is not merely a copy of models like OKR or BMC but is creatively customized to fit the realities of Vietnam.

Second, they promoted innovation in management. OPC encourages Vietnamese businesses to continuously learn and experiment with new methods, harnessing internal organizational strength before pursuing and following external trends and expectations.

In various consulting and training projects with businesses in manufacturing, hospitality, education, and technology, Respect Vietnam found that by fostering internal organizational learning, leaders truly understand employee capabilities, are willing to invest correctly, and give them opportunities to grasp core priorities.

Such businesses can genuinely move faster than competitors, creating a distinctive and hard-to-replicate competitive advantage in reality, rather than merely engaging in superficial learning that yields no results or is overly theoretical.

Recently, the "lean learning organization" model and OPC of Respect Vietnam have convinced one of the Big4 global corporations to apply them in public-private partnership projects in developing countries. Additionally, international businesses are beginning to acknowledge the unique and breakthrough nature of the one-page for change.

In the context of Vietnam's increasingly deep economic integration, tools like OPC play a crucial role in helping businesses keep up with international standards while leveraging local strengths.

The story of OPC should inspire the power of simplicity and creativity, even leveraging the "latecomer's advantage" compared to the world to potentially "pioneer" in the region in finding effective practical solutions that are not unique to Vietnam.

One Page 4 Change is the modern "chopsticks," helping Vietnamese businesses not only overcome internal challenges but also succeed domestically and beyond borders.

Source: The Leader

Respect Vietnam is a local consulting firm known for its unique human-centric approach to organizational excellence in Vietnam & the region.

In the past ten years, RespectVN successfully developed award-winning workplace solutions that are ground-breaking, myth-busting & conventional wisdom-challenging, helping hundreds of teams & thousands of individuals unleash their potential & strengths from within to create their unique competitive advantages.

The solutions take manpower quality, labor productivity, workforce transformation, organizational excellence,

business model alignment, & (inter)national standard advocacy, in Vietnam and other countries, to the next level.