Sourcing Shangri-La

I'm Moving On. Au Revoir!

At least, I hope I'll see you again.

The Spring equinox seems the perfect time to announce new beginnings.

At the start, back in late 2009, this blog was focussed on a single idea: that the essential underpinning for success in shared services, outsourcing and back-office transformation is the right business process management platform.

That's still true of course but in recent years I've widened the scope to address much broader issues. Too broad for one blog, possibly, and in danger of being taxing for you, the reader. So it's time to re-focus and start again.   

From today, I'm launching two new blogs:

Process Artisan - on the emerging craft of process excellence in global enterprises

If you are grappling with how to translate ideals of operational excellence and continuous improvement into the real world, including the challenges of shared services and outsourcing, then I hope you'll like Process Artisan (and want to contribute).  My first post there is on the alarming state of process excellence initiatives, as revealed in last month's PEX Europe survey of almost 1,000 process professionals.

The Purpose of Work - on meaning, justice and the search for a new work ethic

If you are interested in how we re-invent work - to make it meaningful; to ensure that it supports family life and the full involvement of women; to make it more collaborative and less competitive; to re-imagine work in the context of the prosperity of humankind - then I hope you'll like The Purpose of Work (and want to contribute). First off, I want to set out my reservations on Sheryl Sandberg's 'Lean In' as the way ahead.  

I've had a lot of fun here, and been encouraged by your generous feedback. But it's a new season and a time for change.  

I do hope that you'll want to continue to subscribe to one or both of the new blogs.  My apologies that I can't do this automatically on your behalf. You'll need to visit each blog and add your email address to subscribe there.

I hope to see you on the other side!

With kind regards,

Mike

PS Happy New Year to Bahá’í and Iranian readers! Great to see that Google is celebrating Naw Ruz with its own Sofreh Haft Sin.

 

The Risks In Social Without Governance

If I were a Chief Risk Officer, I'd definitely have social on my radar.

There's a huge enthusiasm for collaboration and a fascination with the tools and platforms that enable it.   

Which is great. Essential and exciting in fact. But midst the revolutionary fervour, it's easy to overlook governance.  Not completely, of course, but to allow roles, responsibilities and accountability to blur in the excitement; to relax rigour in the quest for agility; and to permit a cultural slide into 'governance-lite' as the new default. 

Unleash social without a complete and joined-up model of the enterprise - one that is owned and embraced by the business - and it's the stuff of CRO nightmares.  Without the right process management platform in place, it's not just easier to incubate a black swan, it's quicker. 

 

Related Posts

15 March 2013  Future BPM: The Enterprise Platform

29 June 2012    Process And The New World Of Risk Management

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

Social Business: It's Culture First

Spotted in a client meeting room. One of several similarly challenging messages randomly posted around the room, each one as refreshingly vibrant. 

A neat reminder that social business may be enabled by technology but it's attitudes and behaviours that matter most.  It's culture that distinguishes truly collaborative organizations.

PS This is the norm apparently across this global organization (and it's in what most would see as a rather conservative industry). I would love to give the credit that's due, if someone can give me permission...

Future BPM - The Enterprise Platform

I’ve argued previously that sustainable success in complex global enterprises depends upon effective collaboration, and that process is the language that best enables it.  I’ve also argued that BPMN is out of the running as a universal business language, and proposed three questions we should ask in assessing alternatives.

The right language is vitally necessary but it’s not sufficient.  Traditionally, we say it needs to be supported by a tool.  I want to make the case here that the real value comes when it is supported a process management platform.

Tool, platform - what's the difference?

Here’s ten ways we can know an enterprise process management platform when we see one:

1. It is the single source of truth. It goes beyond defining what we do and how we do it. It defines as well roles, responsibilities and accountability.
2. It integrates processes with documents, systems, metrics and training to deliver content that is personalised, intuitive and valuable to every desktop and mobile device.
3. It makes it easy for users to feed back improvement ideas to process owners and stakeholders, to get engaged in continuous improvement.
4. It recognizes the need for variants and seamlessly manages them behind the scenes.  It allows global processes to be designed and managed in English (for instance) but displayed to the user in their chosen language.  It manages the ongoing optimization of the variants to a global process necessary to meet local requirements.
5. It is the framework for performance management. It integrates processes with metrics and analytics. It overlays processes with metadata, hidden to most users, with analytical features and reporting that allow process stakeholders and Op Ex and Lean Sigma teams to collaborate on change. It underpins every CxO dashboard.
6. It is the framework for change management. Recognizing that almost every proposed change has ripples, with implications for other groups across and outside of the enterprise, all business change is managed through it.
7. It bridges the IT:Business divide.  It engages business and IT in a rich ongoing dialogue. 
8. It is the enterprise QMS. It enables risks, controls and compliance to be embedded and managed within the end-to-end operational processes.
9. It provides all this within one unified governance framework that is robust enough to meet every compliance requirement yet also automated and intuitive enough to be easy to use. 
10. It is a chameleon. It can be stand-alone, or it can invisibly and intelligently integrate with other collaboration and social platforms, and any other systems, as required.

An enterprise BPM platform of this kind provides direct line of sight between strategy and reality. It links the operating model directly with the operational processes. It reduces the risk in every business transformation, from acquisition integration to major IT programmes. It embeds a culture of continuous innovation and sustainable improvement.  And the Chief Risk Officer sleeps easier at night.

The stakes are high. This is an enormously valuable prize.  There’s a race on to deliver it. Exciting times.

 

Related Posts

01 Mar 2013    Why Are So Many IT Projects Successful?

11 Dec 2012    Process Management And Google Maps

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

 

 

BPM and The Language of Process

There’s a ferment of ideas about the meaning and future – even the very existence - of Business Process Management (BPM). 

Side-stepping those impassioned debates, I want to offer what seem to me to be some simple truths. 

Every successful organization – every sustainable success – is built upon effective collaboration.  That may sound fluffy. But we can see all around us the failed projects, the waste and the missed opportunities whose root cause is ineffective collaboration.  And its consequences will escalate in a future that is faster-paced, more loosely structured and multisourced, more intricately automated - and more regulated.

Effective collaboration requires many things – vision, teamwork, leadership and so on. But it’s also true that any rich and productive dialogue – any effective collaboration – depends upon a common language. Process is that common language.

It’s the language of process that best enables effective collaboration between all the stakeholders, across functional silos, cultures and organizational boundaries. 

But which process language? 

The vision of the BPM pioneers was that BPMN could be the universal process language. “Don’t bridge the business-IT divide. Obliterate it!” was the rallying cry. In the long run, it’s the right direction. Re-reading ‘The Third Wave’ ten years on, it’s visionary but still essentially sound.

But BPMN hasn’t worked out in practice. It’s a stretch too far for most business people. For the foreseeable future, there’s no single process language that can fully reconcile the vital need of the business for a common collaborative language with the equally vital IT need for the rigour required to build applications.

BPMN looks set to progress – it’s a valuable standard from the IT perspective - but it has to be a generation at least before it could hope to realize its vision and become the universal process language.

If not BPMN, then what?  It seems to me that are three sets of questions to ask in defining the process language that best enables effective collaboration:

Is it visual and intuitive? Does it fully harness the power of visualization? In a hundredth of a second, we can scan an image and understand what it would have taken a hundred words to communicate.

Does it support real work? Languages die out if they are not useful.  It has to be rich, engaging and valuable. It must enrich understanding at every level, from the operating model down to the factory line or call centre, from Finance to IT and Logistics.

Does it enable sustainable innovation? Is it easy for users to feed back improvement ideas to process owners? Is it easy for process owners and stakeholders to collaborate on the design and implementation of change?

Note that IT is not left out in the cold here. IT may use BPMN for systems development but a universal process language that delivers in these three ways has huge benefits to IT as well.  It’s the business engagement that every CIO craves and the perfect framework for requirements capture.

Effective collaboration matters, and it requires a rich common language. Process is that language. Its force multiplier is something I’ll have to pick up next time.

Related Posts

25 Feb 2013    The Hidden Costs Of 'Normal' Process Management

28 Aug 2012    The ROI On Process Visualization

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

The Point Of International Women's Day

 

It’s easy to scan the data to hand and convince ourselves of a truth.

Marissa Mayer leads Yahoo! Ginni Rometty is Chairman, President and CEO of IBM. Many of us have women co-workers and line managers. Girls often outperform boys at school. More young women now enter medical schools than men.  So women’s emancipation is a non-issue, a twentieth century struggle.  Why on earth, we might then ask, does the United Nations persist with International Women’s Day?

It seems a reasonable question. But, adopting Daniel Kahneman’s superb Thinking, Fast and Slow, it's 'System 1' thinking. A plausible and easy explanation that is in fact seriously misleading. For a moment’s reflection reminds us that we have a long way to go.

The focus for International Women's Day 2013 is on stopping violence against women. But of course that's just one - vital - start point. 

In advanced economies, for instance, women still face barriers in the workplace. A McKinsey study concluded that: 'In corporate America, far too many highly skilled women simply don't progress up the ladder... despite significant correlation between gender diversity in top management and higher rates of return on capital employed.'  It's another indicator of perhaps our greatest challenge: How to re-invent work to make it fully compatible with family life and women’s unique role as mothers.

In poorer countries, and that’s most of humanity of course, women’s emancipation is a broader issue, and multi-dimensional. 

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food noted this week that “sharing power with women is a shortcut to reducing hunger and malnutrition”.

Drawing on extensive research evidence, he called for a renewed focus on education:

“As much as 55% of the reduction in hunger could be put down to improvements in women’s situation in society. Progress in women’s education alone (43%) was almost as important as increased food availability (26%) and health advances (19%) put together.

“If women are allowed to have equal access to education, various pieces of the food security jigsaw will fall into place. Household spending on nutrition will increase, child health outcomes will improve, and social systems will be redesigned – for women, by women – to deliver support with the greatest multiplier effects.”

Think slowly for a moment – spark that lazy System 2 thinking into life - and it’s clear why International Women’s Day matters more than ever. For all of us.

Related Posts

28 Oct 2011    Re-Inventing Work: The Feminine Balance

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

Why Are So Many IT Projects Successful?

It's bizarre how many major IT projects are 'successful'.

Imagine buying dinner for your loved ones at a restaurant where the service was always slow, the bill was usually well beyond the prices shown on the menu, and the dishes were less than half as delicious as you had expected.  And, 17% of the time, the evening would be so disastrous that it would threaten your marriage. Not sure that many of us would call that successful? But when it comes to ERP implementations, that's what people most often do.   

A new survey on ERP implementations, published on Michael Krigsman's Beyond IT Failure blog, records:

• Over 50% of projects experienced cost overruns
• Over 60% experienced schedule overruns
• 60%  of respondents received under half of the expected benefits.

It's another piece of evidence to add to the bulging portfolio marked 'IT Project Failure' (the root causes for which I've rehearsed elsewhere). 

It leaves the intriguing question: How can it be that 60% of respondents in this survey thought their ERP implementation was successful?  It's not an aberration. The hard data and the shot-through business case may point conclusively in the opposite direction, but most often organizations define their major IT projects as 'successful'.

Maybe it's a mix of Stockholm Syndrome and exhaustion.  It may feel initially like a comforting embrace, but the SI relationship frequently turns sour (only 25% of respondents in this survey were satisfied with their implementation partner). As the project challenges mount, the client's expectations plummet.  In the end, there's relief that it simply finished. And at that point, the client is happy to draw a veil over its own shortcomings and declare success. 

Which is understandable but a pity. There's a colossal waste of resources going on here, and, as McKinsey has warned, maybe 17% of major IT projects are black swans that can threaten the very existence of the organization.

 

Related Posts

07 Jan 2013    Cloud Without Risk: Pie In The Sky

08 Nov 2012    IT Success: Don't Let The SI Take The Wheel

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

Shared Services: In Search Of The Missing Benefits

There's an intriguing backdrop to Deloitte's 2013 Global Shared Services Survey report, just published. Why are so many business cases being missed in shared services? 

The survey confirms that things are progressing as expected. There's growth - in the breadth of services offered, and in the spread of locations - and more complexity and sophistication, with more multifunction SSCs, more hybrid delivery models and more stand-alone GBS organizations.  

This year, Deloitte is not publishing the main survey findings, listing only the questions asked of the 270+ respondents.  But one line in the executive summary hints at what is perhaps the most interesting story of all:

"A multifaceted approach to addressing the retained organization is required to realize the intended benefits." 

The word on the street is that few shared services programmes deliver their business case. They may do great things, they may employ very talented people, but often there seems to be a question mark over benefits realization. And although the 2013 Survey report doesn't comment on this directly, a (separate) Deloitte webinar last week seemed to confirm that there's no smoke without fire.

In Global HR Shared Services: Emerging Trends, Brett Walsh and colleagues from Deloitte shed light on Shared Services ‘optimisation’ challenges:

“Much has been said about the role of shared services in the transformation of the Human Resources function. Yet for many companies, the benefits expected from transformation are proving elusive.”

“Long after project go-live, when systems and delivery models are in place, organisations still struggle to release the full potential of their investment in HR Shared Services. In fact, many organisations report either failure or significant underperformance compared to their original business case.”

[It's true that their focus in this webinar was HR Shared Services. But most SSCs are now multi-functional, and Deloitte claims to have worked on 900 shared services projects. So it's a credible source.]

There’s no single solution. Every organization is different.  But I’m going to stake a claim that one of the root causes for the 'missing' benefits – maybe the root cause - is a laid-back approach to process management.  

It’s the attitude that defining process is simply an overhead and a non-value-add activity; that it's a temporary project requirement, to be consigned afterwards to a dusty folder on the intranet; that it doesn’t matter if process is in duplicated and overlapping fragments, in different tools and formats, unconnected with real work, and ‘governed’ only by email.

Without the rigour and support of a process management platform, effective collaboration among the stakeholders on the design and implementation of change is, at the very least, in jeopardy.  We see it mostly obviously, and dramatically, in the chasm that can appear between IT and the business, but it undermines effective collaboration between all the other stakeholders too.

As it happens, my colleague Angela Chamberlain and I are presenting a WTG webinar on this theme next week.  To hear more on how Nimbus provides a platform for process excellence that can underpin sustainable success in HR Transformation, please register here and join us. 

 

Related Posts

21 Feb 2013    When Process Standardization Backfires

15 Nov 2012    Outsourcing's Secret Sauce

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

Burning Platforms

Organizations with low levels of process maturity seem to fall into two camps. In the binge culture, process gets attention only sporadically, driven most often by upcoming audits. More commonly, process is acknowledged as somehow important - but it's managed in a way that's both inefficient and ineffective.

A prospective client shared the hidden costs embedded in ‘normal’ process management in their organization.  Roughly speaking, it's upwards of 150 people full-time.

The context is a back-office function of 4k people within a global organization of 100k+ people. It's changing fast, like most back offices.  Its transformation team set up almost 40 major change projects last year – covering offshoring, outsourcing, systems consolidation, shared services, organizational restructuring and Lean initiatives.

Every project started with a process capture phase.  Typically 2 FTE take 4 weeks to define the current processes in detail, as the start point for managing change.

That’s roughly 6 FTE full-time employed on capturing As-Is processes. Scale it up across the organization, which is also undergoing substantial change, and that’s around 150 FTE employed full-time in capturing the current processes as the start point for managing change.

Downstream, after the As-Is processes have been defined, there's significantly more waste - and risk - in how the To-Be processes are designed, analysed and implemented.

But - it’s ‘the way things have always been’. For busy execs, there's no burning platform. It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that adopting Nimbus as an enterprise process platform looks like ‘additional time and effort, that we don’t have, to achieve a nice-to-have’. 

Bring out the hidden costs though and it’s easy to re-frame it, correctly, as an investment of the existing time and effort into building a joined-up, comprehensive and real-time view of the business, and a flame-proof platform for sustainable improvement.

 

Related Posts

29 Jan 2013    Process Resistance

11 Dec 2012    Process Management And Google Maps

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

When Process Standardization Backfires

Current orthodoxy is that process standardization is a Good Thing.

People are committing enormous resources to programmes to deliver global processes supported by a common toolset. It's driving business transformation across every industry and region.

Process standardization is a fine idea.  But the heretical truth is that, as in everything, it's the ability to execute that counts.

A standardization program can unlock game-changing efficiency savings and service improvements. But pitfalls abound:

IT-led. IT systems are at the heart of most major programmes. Too often IT takes the wheel, leaving the business stakeholders in the back seat. And so a business transformation morphs into an IT project. 

Out-of-scope impacts are missed.  Costs ‘saved’ in one standardization project re-surface as incremental ‘work-around’ costs in other parts of the organization.

The voice of the customer is muted.  Standardization delivers efficiency savings but at the cost of the customer experience.

Process variants are concreted in. There is a one-time negotiation instead of a framework that enables variants to be continually re-optimized, reflecting developments in global best practices and changes in business units' requirements. 

The benefits aren't sustained. The change doesn't stick. Gartner termed it 'organizational snap-back'. McKinsey published an estimate that only 10% of cost reduction programmes showed sustained results three years later. 

It's time for a reality check.  I can't be the only one who's seeing projects with hidden costs and flaky benefits pedestalized because they are delivering 'standard global processes'? 

Without a platform for effective collaboration among the stakeholders, and a complete understanding of the big picture, there are very significant risks that the benefits of any standardization initiative will be illusory. And without a means to deploy process content in a way that ensures real adoption, the opportunity for ongoing collaborative innovation is missed.

 

Related Posts

13 Dec 2012    The Universal Business Language: Process

19 Nov 2012    No Other Corporate Asset Is Wasted So Spectacularly

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

 

Dealing With Process Commitment Phobia

The Monday Clinic

- a confidential pro bono service for CxOs with process problems and nowhere else to turn. We're here to help!

Dear Mike,

I thought I was a good CEO and ran a tight ship. Sure, my organization kept making the same mistakes.  We re-implemented SAP so many times that we made the careers of three generations of Deloitte partners.  Our efficiency programs were like Whack-a-Mole, increased costs popping up in one unit due to costs savings projects in another one. And we managed our outsourced relationships in a way that mostly just enriched the lawyers. But that’s normal, right? That’s what I thought at least. Until this weekend, when my best friend and golf caddy took me to one side - and told me about Process Commitment Phobia.  Now my confidence is shattered - I’m writing to you from my iPad under the duvet at the Ritz Carlton - because, the way Alex told it, my organization definitely has PCP. Is there any cure?

Name and room number withheld

Dear Friend,

Don’t despair. These symptoms are certainly classic PCP.  But first you need to discreetly check some more to make sure of the diagnosis.  Here’s three easy tests. Ask your business transformation leaders if the start of every project feels like Groundhog Day – deploying teams to define yet again the business processes and their relationships with systems, documents, metrics and so on.  Then ask your Chief Risk Officer if her people feel one step removed, trying to track processes that are described and ‘managed’ in a mash up of formats and tools.  Finally, ask your Lean Sigma leader if his people are challenged to ensure that performance improvements are real and sustained.  If the answer’s ‘Yes’ to all three, then you can be sure it’s Process Commitment Phobia.  

The good news is that PCP can be cured.  It’s hard work and you can’t do it overnight.  You’ll need to swap silo perspectives for joined-up thinking; extend the classic project focus to include long-term and sustainability; and to learn to embrace clarity in roles, responsibilities and accountability.

Your startpoint is to agree on a process platform for the enterprise.  A collaborative framework that uses the universal language of end-to-end process, and in the language of the business, not just IT. It will need to bring together all the stakeholders within a single governance environment - making it easy to get involved in the design and implementation of change. And, critically, it has to connect with operational reality. It has to help people across the organisation to get real work done. It has to be so intuitive, personalised and easy to use that it becomes ‘the way we work here’.  And it has to make it easy to feed back improvement ideas. 

It’s tough medicine, I know. We’re just so used to seeing process as an overhead – as worthless hieroglyph fragments, ungoverned and in a variety of tools and formats. And it's always comfortable to have vagueness and gray areas in accountability.  The sweetener I recommend is a spreadsheet.  Get your people to calculate how much time and cost would be saved, and black swans avoided, by having a complete understanding of the business.

So come out from under the duvet. Get dressed and go meet the Board as usual. And be open with them. Many of them will recognise PCP in their own behaviors.  Unless you can convince them to think differently, the organization will resist and snap back.  Treating PCP starts at the top.

Related Posts

10 Jan 2013    Nimbus V9 And The ROI On Process Engagement

07 Oct 2010    The CIO Clinic: Dealing With ERP Hangover 

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

Social Business: Finding Meaning At Work

Thinking Aloud...

There’s a report published last week by McKinsey that deserves to be widely noticed.  It challenges some common preconceptions about how we see work - and highlights our deepest motivations in our work.

When the EBBF set out, years ago, to inspire a discourse on ‘Making Work Meaningful', I thought it was being wildly optimistic. I was completely wrong, thankfully.  The EBBF’s initiative went from strength to strength, bringing together people of many faiths and none in a global consultative process that continues to reverberate. 

In parallel, many similar projects have been launched – including much bigger ones like the MiXFiX - in what amounts to a global collaborative search for a new work ethic, for new paradigms for management, and new forms of social enterprise to meet the needs of humanity in the 21st century. 

The McKinsey findings are interesting because they confirm just how universal - and important to the bottom line - is this search for meaning at work.

Intellectual Quotient (IQ) matters, says McKinsey: everyone needs role clarity, clear objectives and access to the resources to get the job done.  Emotional Quotient (EQ) is similarly vital: we need trust, respect and a sense of collegiate collaboration.  But while IQ and EQ are absolutely necessary, they are far from sufficient for peak performance, says McKinsey.  Being ‘in the zone’ demands that work has meaning.  High performance organizations operate in a high-IQ, high-EQ, and high-MQ (Meaning Quotient) environment.

The productivity differential when working at peak performance is astounding. Yet most executives report that they and their employees are ‘in the zone’ at work less than 10 percent of the time.  The McKinsey authors conclude:“The opportunity cost of the missing meaning is enormous”.

What's really fascinating in the McKinsey results is how much, across a wide range of cultures and income levels, meaning at work is universally linked to the idea of service to humanity: to society, to customers, to co-workers.  It’s the first data I’ve ever seen that confirms that our most profound happiness, our deepest sense of wellbeing, comes from being connected to others, and being able to serve them in some way. 

It has to be sincere of course. It's difficult to reconcile 'We want to make the world a better place' with 'and crush the competition'. ;-) 

The Patchwork Enterprise

The enterprise of the future looks something like patchwork.  In a good sense.  Patchwork quilts can be beautiful, blending diversity into a coherent whole - and uniquely distinctive. Often it’s collaboration by a group of quilters that creates them. And they’re not just great art. They keep you warm. They deliver.

Outsourcing is becoming ever more pervasive as globalization drives further specialization. In the villages of our forebears, people came to specialize in baking bread, or working with leather, or shodding plowhorses. In our global village too, it doesn't make sense to do in-house what someone else can do better or cheaper.

Outsourcing was once focussed on ‘non-core’ activities. Now everything – from R&D through manufacturing and supply chain to customer experience analytics – can be outsourced, and increasingly is.

In this patchwork future, successful enterprises will mirror the best quilting groups: a clear vision, creative collaboration and the means to make decisions. In other words, a well-defined operating model and a framework for effective collaboration that brings everyone's creativity into its execution. 

Patchwork has another, negative, connotation of course: ‘a hodge podge’. 

I worked with a multinational client once, leveraging Nimbus to bring multiple HR outsourcing contracts into one coherent whole. That end-to-end perspective exposed the multiple gaps between the expectations of the service providers and the retained organization. Non trivial gaps too.  One was an immediate threat to the entire expatriate payroll. 

That's the hodge podge kind of patchwork enterprise, and it has a very limited future. No-one’s going to want to work with, or buy from, a patchwork enterprise where the patterns and colors don’t match, and you can see the stitching - even worse, the gaps.

Some organizations are trying to stitch their multisourced reality together, buying in 'managed governance services' and the like from the Big 4.  But ultimately it demands holistic thinking, discipline and a platform to support it. Much like quilting.

 

Related Posts

07 Jan 2013    Cloud Without Risk: Pie In The Sky

13 Dec 2012    The Universal Business Language: Process

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

Process Resistance

I often wonder why it should be in any way difficult to sell our software. It ought to fly off the shelves.  The business case is slam dunk rock solid. Who doesn’t want a common language and a framework for effective collaboration in designing and managing change across the enterprise?  Who wouldn’t be more agile with a clear line of sight between operating model and operational reality? Who doesn’t need to deploy processes in a way that is intuitive and engaging for people doing real work – and nurtures their feedback and ideas for continuous improvement? Who doesn't need a single source of the truth?

Most often, there’s two kinds of resistance. Sometimes it’s just a failure of imagination. People who can’t imagine that things could be significantly better. A mindset that’s the opposite of visionary.

More often though, there is understanding of the potential – but a wilful decision not to embrace it. Resistance may be justified in some circumstances. But far too often it’s just an aversion to rigor, accountability and a long-term perspective.

I was in a GBS leadership team discussion recently at a prospective client, a Fortune 500 company. The HR Head heard the pitch, and the mixed responses from around the table, then summed it up perfectly for her colleagues:

“We may not like it necessarily - but this discipline is exactly what we need.”

Moving an entire GBS organization to a new way of working requires significant and sustained effort, and continuing executive sponsorship.

But without this new way of working, this GBS organization cannot safely deliver its ambitious growth targets.  It reconciles the tension between its twin objectives: to expand at pace, delivering substantial savings and sustained service innovations over the next five years, and to ensure compliance in a highly regulated environment.

Related posts

10 Jan 2013    Nimbus V9 And The ROI On Engagement

11 Dec 2012    Process Management and Google Maps

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

Nimbus V9 And The ROI On Engagement

In case you were away from the planet yesterday and missed the trumpet fanfares: TIBCO just announced the long-awaited V9 release of Nimbus.

Personally, I’m squeamish about hype. I can LOL at the inflated claims of others. But I recoil from it myself (no moral high grounding, just a personal quirk). Anyway, I have to admit that my first instinct was to wince on reading that V9 is a “revolutionary milestone in business process improvement”.  But, actually, on reflection, my marketing colleagues are about right.

In good teams, people are engaged. Each person feels able and empowered to contribute their ideas. Each one feels involved and confident that their input can make a difference. And, just in case you think this is getting all too luvvy, there’s an ROI here as well. Engaged people are happier. And happy teams are far more productive and creative. 

So everything points to the crucial value of engagement. But nurturing it is more difficult, by an order of magnitude, in a world where so many of us are now knowledge workers, often collaborating remotely with people we’ve never met, and across complex global organizational landscapes. How do you get engagement in today’s world?

You can see the search for this modern philosopher’s stone going on all around us. It’s been a major theme in the MixFix debates on re-imagining the enterprise.

One of the keys to engagement is simplicity. People can’t or won’t engage if they don’t understand.

Neil Taylor quoted a great example recently. After six months trying to improve “operational excellence”, only one of his client's teams had actually improved. It turned out that the team leader was holding weekly meetings that she called “Doing everyday things better”. She had made it simple – she turned corporate-speak into down-to-earth language - so her team got engaged.

Against this backdrop and these challenges, Nimbus V9 is a revolutionary milestone.

Nimbus UPN was designed from the outset to create process that is easy on the eye. Content to engage and support process users, not just the geeks. Nimbus already delivered that content as a personalized ‘intelligent operations manual’ to every desktop and mobile device. Nimbus V9 now provides a completely new user interface that is significantly more intuitive.

V9 makes it even easier for people to find the right information, in the right context, at the time that they need it - and delivered in the format that works best for them. Feedback, actions and change requests are simpler too. [And all without sacrificing, in any way, the governance and other capabilities that underpin Nimbus as an enterprise platform for process management and continuous improvement.]

Engagement matters more than ever – and simplicity is its essential foundation. V9 pushes us much further up the curve. It’s going to be fascinating to see how clients leverage this. Must stop now, need to go. Marketing colleague at the door, with a baseball bat?

 

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

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