PEOPLE PROCESS TECHNOLOGY AND…SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
\nYour organization is made up of tiny little decisions made every day by thousands of individuals. That’s it! Seriously, that’s what makes up your company. Unless you\u2019re some kind of futuristic company with no human employees or customers, that\u2019s how your company realizes its accomplishments. Those small decisions add up to your organization posting a profit, loss, or any number at all.<\/p>\n
In management consulting, we obsess with the categories of People, Process, and Technology for making organizational improvements. But those pillars of organizational improvement seem to leave employees in a robotic malaise.<\/p>\n
HERE\u2019S A SMALL CASE STUDY\u2026
\nA few years back, we vetted a process at an investment bank that was resulting in massively negative customer feedback. Customers were going onto social media to complain that their investment bank wasn\u2019t letting them get their money out. Obviously not a good message.<\/p>\n
As we traversed the long-standing processes we found it took 15 distinct steps, internally, to get a retirement account closed. As you may already know, to determine the downstream effects of a process, we multiply their probabilities of success. So let\u2019s imagine that every step in the process had a 90% success rate. That sounds pretty good, right? Well, where would that lead the end customer?
\n20%! That means that 20% of the time, the customer would actually get their money without a hitch. Otherwise, it would get hung up in a nasty and frankly unnecessary process.
\nWhy was the organization so inept? Was the process broken and dumb headed\u2026 yes! But why is it that the people couldn\u2019t come up with an effective way of fixing the obvious?
\nWhen we interviewed the people in charge of the process their answer was \u201cthis was a process that was given to me by my predecessor\u201d, or \u201cthis step satisfies a legal requirement.\u201d (which nobody could identify) Everybody knew the process was broken. The source of the problem started staring us in the face\u2026CULTURE. The culture of the organization was not one that required the organization to be customer centric. They were the biggest, the best, and management knew it. So they didn\u2019t have to focus on improvement. This smug management culture trickled down into the organization, and perpetuated a feeling of indifference about customers. After all, \u201cwho else would they go to?\u201d
\nThose tiny decisions that your organization makes are framed by the culture in your company. If I were to select between excellence in People, Process, Technology, or Culture I would pick Culture. Culture will be at the foundation of\u2026 what people you hire, what technologies you adopt, and whether your processes improve.
\nThe more influential your culture, the less you\u2019ll have to create process controls and other expensive gatekeeping measures to achieve success.<\/p>\n
SO WHY DOES TELLIGENS, A COMPANY THAT LIVES AND BREATHES I.T. TECHNOLOGY, CARE SO MUCH ABOUT CULTURE?
\nFor many companies, they feel they can check off the culture box by hanging some inspirational slogan in an HR person\u2019s cubicle. Culture isn\u2019t some kind of \u201cfeel good\u201d way of doing business, rather it\u2019s a strategy to affect how decisions get made by individuals.
\nSo, it\u2019s about helping people align their decisions with the culture of the organization they work with. Intricity lives in the world of enabling decisions. We are a guide at the crossroad of making better decisions. This is because we build the systems that enable decisions to be made on a regular basis. You could say we\u2019re specialists in automating the manufacturing of data into actionable information.
\nBecause we live at this crossroad, we\u2019re smack dab in the middle of organizational culture. And when companies come to us with problems related to their I.T. Environment, the cultural issues come in tow.<\/p>\n
ENGINEERED CULTURE
\nCulture should not be something that derives from the organics of your company, like the tail wagging the dog. Rather culture needs to be carefully engineered to suit the outcome you want. To do that, your organization is going to need to master a new industry. Because believe it or not, your organization is not just in the industry analysts say you\u2019re in. I\u2019ve said this to various companies and I get an odd look from them. Just recently I said it to a manufacturing company, and explained, \u201cyou manufacture computer chips, AND you manufacture data into information.\u201d Every company over 100 Million dollars is in that boat. You simply can\u2019t run your company from gut feel after a certain point. So, if you never become proficient at manufacturing data into information, you will not succeed in your primary purpose. Thus data-to-information manufacturing needs to have a place in your company\u2019s culture. Because it is the very mechanics for effecting the behaviors you want to see.<\/p>\n
LET ME GIVE YOU AN EXAMPLE:
\nSeveral years ago, we were consulting at a multi-billion-dollar fashion retailer. They had invested millions of dollars in a new training program for their floor sales staff. This new innovative training program had upper management very excited, and they were looking forward to a big spike in their sales. Month 1 went by with little change in sales, which was written off as a fluke. After the second Quarter went by with crickets chirping, management members had their tails between their legs. All sorts of blame started swirling around.
\nWhat was missing from the equation was information to the sales staff. Plenty of information was coming back to management. But the sales staff had no personal daily engagement into the desired outcome. One of our architects came up with a carefully crafted dashboard called the \u201cRed Line\u201d, which was a personal performance tracker for the sales staff. The data points were painstakingly assembled to marry up with the sales tactics from the training program. Each sales rep on the floor could see how they were performing compared to their peers, and they could see that the sales tactics used in the training were contributing to performance increases.
\nThat dashboard established a cultural change which completely turned the retailers sales training program into a gigantic success. They booked several record quarters for the company, and the CEO became a regular on the business news channels.<\/p>\n
DATA-TO-INFORMATION MANUFACTURING
\nThe cultural change in data-to-information manufacturing is on multiple levels:
\nFrom the level of raw data, it\u2019s a recognition from Business Stakeholders that it\u2019s just like a raw material. Raw materials by their nature are not ready to consume. To get raw data ready to consume we have to put work into it. That cultural change of mind is huge.
\nThe behavior of most Business Managers is to get their \u201cdata guy\u201d to start banging out Excel workbooks until they have the information they need. But what that Business Manager might not know is that there are 20 other Business Managers doing the exact same thing. Now try to make a strategic decision\u2026 Bring those 20 versions of the truth to a CFO or CEO and ask them to make a decision on whether to lay off 30% of the company.
\nBy valuing the manufacturing of raw data into actionable information, we start getting out of the hamster wheel of creating data silos. The management starts to see that funding such an effort is simply part of the function of being a large business and not some kind of \u201cproject\u201d.
\nFrom the level of Actionable Information, IT begins to see that the data-to-information manufacturing end game, is a cultural one. Information should drive a culture that the Business Stakeholders want to perpetuate. (Like our retail case study) The entire effort of manufacturing information is to enable the Business to define their culture and ensure its sustainability. This realization is also a big \u201cah ha\u201d moment for IT. Business requirements become a lot less about gathering data and more about the behaviors the organization wants to perpetuate.<\/p>\n
CREATING A NEW CULTURE
\nFirst and foremost, there\u2019s no \u201capp for that.\u201d Culture is slow and requires serious patience. Sometimes it requires grand gestures to kick them off. For example, when Ford made its iconic tipping point in a single gesture by the CEO, Alan Mulally:
\n\u201cMulally introduced a \u201ctraffic light\u201d system to weekly BPRs in which executives indicated progress on key initiatives as green, yellow, or red. After four meetings in which all programs were labelled green, Mulally confronted his team, \u201cWe are going to lose $18 billion this year, so is there anything that\u2019s not going well?\u201d His question was met with stony silence.
\nThe following week, North American President Mark Fields showed a red indicator that a new vehicle launch would be delayed. Other executives assumed Fields would be fired over the bad news. Instead, Mulally began clapping and said, \u201cMark, that is great visibility.\u201d He asked the group, \u201cWhat can we do to help Mark out?\u201d As he frequently told his leaders, \u201cYou have a problem; you are not the problem.\u201d
\nhttp:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/bill-george\/bringing-out-our-worst-or_b_9527626.html<\/p>\n
Building a new culture usually requires an outsider like Mulally. The organization needs the vision of somebody that has tread in the shoes of success, and understands what it looks like. This is because things are going to happen to challenge the new norm which will require the new agent of culture to show the \u201chow\u201d. This is where having consultants starts making sense, and is the realm that Intricity plays in. It\u2019s in the coupling of the Intricity team members together with the Business & IT Stakeholders to guide the \u201cart of the possible\u201d. Intricity joins your organization at the hip by providing resources at multiple levels to instill new behaviors and belief systems.
\nUsually we start these engagements with a Current State Assessment, and a visual map of where we think the future state should be. This acts as a good place to help the organization determine the budgets which the new culture will be built on, and the right people to attach at hip with the Intricity team members.
\nTo engage with Intricity on a Current State Assessment I recommend you reach out to us and talk with our specialists. We can help you engineer the culture your organization is seeking to drive, and support that new culture with the data-to-information manufacturing process, which will make it sustainable over the long run.<\/p>\n
WHO IS TELLIGENS?
\nTelligens is a technology company. We are also a people company, a Culture company.
\nContact us at: letstalk@itravelwithskyland.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PEOPLE PROCESS TECHNOLOGY AND…SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL Your organization is made up of tiny little decisions made every day by thousands of individuals. That’s it! Seriously, that’s what makes up your company. Unless you\u2019re some kind of futuristic company with no human employees or customers, that\u2019s how your company realizes its accomplishments. Those small decisions add…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4808,"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions\/4808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itravelwithskyland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}