thingamy

Meetings - a silent sigh

Meeting of minds are core to our existence, and almost always a pleasure (except for that chance brush with a surly parking meter overlord of course).

But there is another kind of meeting, mostly an intracompany phenomena: The project workflow node par excellence, the book-ends of any process snippet in our daily Barely Repeatable work day.

Check out the way your own office is organising a project, do a workflow diagram including milestones on a piece of paper. What are the milestones called? I bet you that they're meetings, or sign-offs. The very framework used to organise any BRP flow are centred around meetings - gather all hands on deck, discuss results so far, distribute tasks and set next node, eh, meeting. Rinse and repeat. Check, control and allocate.

If my cycling club were to organise the Sunday group rides accordingly we would regroup every four kilometres, wait until all are assembled, give individual progress report, dole out the route for the next four kilometres and mount our bikes again.
Luckily it's not like that; we all know where to go, having no problems in finding our most efficient pace for the long slog, constantly cheered forward by our cycling buddies interspersed by the occasional bout of friendly competitiveness when approaching a crest in the road. A damned more efficient and a whole lot more enjoyable process I would add.

So why don't business do the same? Old habits and no other useful work flow framework I'm afraid. (But of course there is, you just have not implemented it yet ;)

Typical project meeting.

(I challenge you to source a suitable "meeting" image from your favourite stock photo supplier - a few absent looking faces, somebody nodding off or hiding an urge to yawn. Yeah, as if, nothing but smiling faces and handshaking by fresh looking well dressed models. Somebody is trying to gloss over reality, fishy, very fishy.)

creativity, competition and strategy

Good quotes often come from unexpected sources. Yesterday one of my sons came home with a sheet setting out the teaching philosophy of his drum instructor, in which I found the following gem about the importance of passion:

"And with passion comes creativity. When we create, we have no competition. We need not worry about someone being better than us, only different."

From percussion to business; allow me to add how Michael Porter conveys a definition of strategy:

"What value are you to deliver to what customers and how are you going to be different."

For those concerned about this 'forget about competing' attitude allow me to suggest that:

"The best way to beat your competition is to make them irrelevant."

There is no way around 'being different' - the core of creativity, an unavoidable part of business strategy and the source of success in a competitive market.

Creativity has to start at the top, and not so much by focus on the usual 'how to create a creative organisation'. The leaders must be extremely creative themselves and dare to be different.

Go and be different.

framework for decision making - understand complexity

Harvard Business Review has an article by David J Snowden and Mary E Boone in their November issue titled "A leader's framework for decision making".

The theme (in short) is the need to shift management methods (they use the word science, but I'll leave that alone for now) from the usual simplification of an assumed structured reality to accept and assimilate a complex reality.

Good is that, have noticed that complexity exists, and am reminded about that frequently when discussing enterprise systems with some of the big enterprise software vendors. That said I mostly see such uttering as an alternative to arguing.

Allow me to quote a part from their article:

"Today, advances in complexity science, combined with knowledge from the cognitive sciences, are transforming the field (scientific management) once again. Complexity is poised to help current and future leaders make sense of advanced technology, globalization, intricate markets, cultural change, and much more. In short the science of complexity can help all of us address the challenges and opportunities we face in a new epoch of human history."

Promising much, lots of science involved I see.

Then they add some of the characteristics of complex systems (to which I agree fully, here the short version):

• Large number of parts.
• Large number of relationships.
• Non-linear relationships, ripple effects, dynamic.
• System has a history.

Good. Or?

Although I agree heartily that assimilating complexity is of utmost importance, there is a small bump in the road:

Today we represent reality's parts and relationships in any recording method (paper or IT) by a roster of event and/or transaction reports.
Want to "know" a widget in the warehouse? Prepare to flip through folders - order sheet, shipping papers, transaction reports, reports, more reports. Parts represented by a stack of event reports, relationships by transaction reports (aka accounting) - in other words increasing the parts in the model (or record) far beyond the parts and relationships that exists in the reality. Bad move.

Allow me to put it more succinctly:

"How in Earth's name do anybody really think they can get a grip on complexity when the add complexity to complexity, usually called complicating things in the worst and most elaborate way??"

Sorry to say, quite the normal way to approach an issue - do not check the fundament just add "science" on top of any wobbliness. Start with the fundament first please.

(If you wonder, thingamy represents one-to-one for parts of any complex system and have precise multidimensional dynamic relationships. It's all about singular things as we say...)

p.s. Next time meeting my friends at the big enterprise systems developers and hear the "remember that business operations are very complex, leave that to us big chaps" I'll smugly retort with "selber schuld!" (your own fault!).
Will behave though when here at SAP's influencer summit in Boston, they again graciously cover my travel costs and they are really nice people.
But after all, what is not friends for if not to tell the truth? ;)

kids, leading and managing

Or why spending a month working in a kindergarten should be obligatory for MBAs.

Nice Cotê d'Azur airport, departure hall, eight thirty in the morning:

A small chap, about two years old, discovered that one of the flower beds was full of small and round stone pellets. Breaking into a huge grin he grabbed what his little hands could hold and plodded over to the middle of the hall where he happily spread his spoils.

His mother leapt to her feet, rushed over and started to pick up pellets while shouting "no Robin, no, no!" to Robin who was over at the flower bed again. He turned to his mother and smiled broadly as you could see his thoughts "ah, mother wants to play too, great!".

When Robin arrived carrying a second load for his mother to pick up her orders were stern; "absolutely not, no, no!" grabbing his hand to give it a quick slap.

Robin's face changed immediately, "hey, what's this, mother wanted to play and now she slaps me??". Robin was confused and quite disturbed by this surprising turn of events.

Sitting a few feet away I was itching to send the mother away as I had a different plan:

Go over to the loose pellets, happily turn to Robin and show him how much fun it is to chase loose pellets and gather them one by one then walking them back together for some noisy pellet distribution in the flower bed.
Wrapping up with some "ah" and "oohs" over the return of order in the departure hall.

Or something along that line while fully embracing his game, then developing it towards a direction that would gain us both. Giving leadership a chance.

It is truly amazing how easily adults revert to command and control mode, aka managing, when surprised. In particular when they know they're scrutinised in departure halls and supermarkets, "Oh gawd, everybody sees how bad a parent I am, how little control I have, must get in control immediately!"

But toddlers do not understand being managed, such efforts are met with tears and tantrums, and later when they're teenagers they tell you to your face while at last becoming adults they swallow hard and feel miserable.

Toddlers understand leadership, somebody they respect showing the way, teenagers expect leadership while adults work better under real leadership and no managing.

Every MBA course should have a section where the students are responsible for little people, in a kindergarten, for at least a month.

[Bonus: Alfred did a post here (comments limited to Windows Live ID, so comment is here).
He suggests kindergarten is too easy, let CEOs try last year high school students! Have to agree to that having spent all my student vacations being a substitute:

If the first subject with a new class was one of my favourites (maths, physics etc.) I earned respect immediately, a respect that lasted. If the first subject was one of my weak areas (geography say) I got no respect and could never turn the back to the class without risking flying apple-cores and other missiles ;)

Perfect bio-feedback on leadership abilities I'll say!]

mindless stuff and leadership vs. management

I've got kids. Three teenagers.

Have you tried managing teenagers? Ordering them around? Believe me, a complete waste of time, and counter-productive at best.

Hard as it is, there is only one way, aka leadership:

1. Explain the reasons and purposes and values we live by, down to why dirty dishes needs to find it's way into the dishwasher. Each time.
2. Be the perfect example, all the time, never let down your guard as teenagers have an uncanny ability of spotting discrepancies between what you say and what you do. And trust me, it takes milliseconds before you have to face it. Did I mention that this part is the hardest and where I fail all the time?

Mindless stuff you might need to manage - sheep for example.

Mindful persons who know what to do, why they do it and the value of it all can organise themselves. In other words, leadership first then get out of the way.

There are only two instances where "management" and "people" are in the same sentence:

1. When you need to organise disorganised bits and pieces like flight, rental car and hotel for your next trip so it all coincides.
2. When the people do not know the whys and the values nor do they see the good examples that transfers such information.

Then why is "managing" still on the agenda in enterprises? Why did I go to "management school"?

Are the enterprises disorganised?

Do many not really know the whys and the values, having only been trained in the hows?

Or is it the fact that leadership is damned hard while herding sheep seems so much easier?

Methinks that all three are to blame.

Leading is hard, very hard, and requires a full time state of mind - business at it's best. Managing is often a matter of dishing out orders, burstyness at it's worst.

(Hat tip to James for "business" vs "burstyness", very useful indeed.)

leading or managing - chairpersons versus CEOs

Had the pleasure of browsing through the latest World Business magazine over my morning coffee wherein I found a wee article about the tasks of a chairman - The top chairs.

Actually it was more of a book review for an upcoming book by Andrew and Nada Kakabadse, "Leading the Board: The Six Disciplines of World Class Chairmen".

What piqued my interest was the obvious: While the CEO is mired in the command & control structure and thus focused on managing, the chairman has to rely on pure leadership without managing (except getting the board members to be on time and get somebody to write the minutes of course).

And as you might have gleaned from a few earlier posts I'm not fond of managing and it's mother; the command & control hierarchy. Leadership on the other hand, well, that we need. More of that and less of the former please - but that's not easy, leading is harder than ordering.

The book's six disciplines are three too many for my short attention span, but three I could easily see as result of the others.

That left three important ones, here slightly skewed by my attitude:

Sensemaking.

Clarify the whys, communicate and champion the strategy and values. The values being the framework and the strategy the map - without absolute clarity and thorough understanding throughout an organisation the rest is moot. That does make sense does it not?

Live the values.

Without trust and integrity no leadership will happen, and with no leadership nothing happens. And as I often say, trust equals transparency - and in this case transparency would be rather counterproductive without integrity. One could easily say that this requires a matching personality - strong sense of values, integrity and transparency. That's a tough set of requirements, requires some self confidence that.

Influence outcomes.

Convince, communicate and focus. No "orders" allowed, the meaning of the ideas must be clear, the important questions shall be identified and the value of the actions must be plain. One is working with free will here.

Note the argument that the chairperson historically had a more important role than generally perceived today given the widespread visibility of CEOs. But now it seems that the chairperson's importance is increasing again, if the roles are split at all that is. And split they should be in my humble opinion.

Methinks that the increase of a chairperson's importance is a result of the slow erosion of the rigid organisational hierarchies thanks to the ubiquitous networking, like blogs and wikis and the rest of it. A shift from managing to leadership again, makes me happy that.

a wee interview

I had the pleasure of being interviewed on radio by my friend Elisabeth Tarbell on Monday - at the local radio station in Greenwich, Connecticut of all places!

Greenwich is a bit strange me being in South of France one might say, but that's the new networked world for you!
But believe it or not, I have actually been to Greenwich once upon the time in my M&A days, much funds and whatnot residing there.

Elisabeth is a fellow entrepreneur who's behind Vivapop a newly launched community calender - and what's better than to have a chat with another entrepreneur I say!

[Update: Elisabeth blogged it at Vivapop's site and uploaded an edited interview without intro and ending]

Here's the interview... it gets better at the end :)

Human Intellectual Capital, shared knowledge and the wealth of organisations

An successful organisation is dependent on many factors, innovation, the right product at the right time, it's connection to customers and lots more.

But under it all lies general knowledge and the efficiency in which such accumulated knowledge is shared and used. Human Intellectual Capital for "short".

Let's simplify (a lot), doing a bit of math for the fun of it (Note: No duplication of experience):

Lets say you have ten support people, one has ten years of experience and the other nine have one year of experience each.

If all keep all knowledge to themselves the organisation would have 19 (experience-years * man-years ) as resource in total. (10*1 + 1*1 + 1*1...)

Worse, those 19 years of experience is not easy to use efficiently as nobody would know where to pipe a request or issue. "Who if anybody knows anything about this?"

Now, if the same team shared all, knew all, and used all, you would have 190 (experience-years * man-years) as total resource. (19*1 + 19*1...)

Better, no need to steer the issue and request flow, anybody who is free could start working on an issue.

Today the somewhat structured tasks (support functions, bug fixing etc.) are mostly covered, we're flush with bugtracking software and CRM systems (but one might add, where's the focused learning and efficient knowledge distribution and use in those?).

It's the ad-hoc small and big issues that fills most of the working day. So the effect of capturing what happens there, flipping that into organisation-wide learning and making it easily accessible and useful would have a huge effect. Enormous.

To attain that, the complete process must be captured. Not only the "issue - solution" pairs, the start- and end-points as they are.

Knowledge is about all that relates to an issue; the possible redefinition of the issue, every blind alley explored, every alternative tried and who was involved and did what. Learning involves understanding the process and not so much accumulating digested results. That would be a generally accepted pedagogic principle.

That's why it should be about process "management", not managing the results, aka "knowledge management".

And definitely not about "document management", don't even get me started there.

organisational chart

If the janitor tell us to use the blue door, not the red one, followed by a clear and compelling reason (no stairs, a four floor drop behind the red door), we'll follow the advice without a second thought.

That's how clear and compelling our company strategists shall be in their message.

If it's been snowing all night, a half eye out the window gets me going, shower will have to wait - out I go shovel in hand.

That's how my tasks should be received, as timely and clearly as a snowfall. No need to be told.

And I'm ready, the garage have tools for handling snowfalls, icy patches and the grass growing. Having some experience I've even got a leaf blower and battery charger.

That's how my working environment should be, easily accessible tools for all my needs.

To get anything done, to run my life, to participate in business I need three things:

- a reason
- a task
- tools and the right environment

Or in practice, in a business you need:

- People that will get the strategy right, just like any other task in the company, like the janitor keeping the driveway free from snowdrifts. An important task just like the clean driveway, otherwise the company will stop to a grinding halt.

- A well thought-out task distribution system that simply works. Tasks available to the right person at the right time. Just like water in the kitchen and electricity to the computers, not ad-hoc delivered by water-buckets, voltage-spikes or managers.
The task of "well thinking-out" is also called Business Modeling, a task in itself, a daily one so the business can get better at creating value and keep some for itself.

- People that will apply their experience for the benefit of others so that the right tools are available when needed and that the environment is the best possible at all times. A job we'll all pitch in at over time.

Note the lack of organisational hierarchies, charts and managers in the above set-up...

more on budgets

Hat tip to Thomas who pointed me to this article at accountingweb.

It's based on a talk at the 2006 CFO conference in London by Bjarte Bogens of Statoil, another Norwegian I might add.

As you need to register allow me to quote some of my favourite parts:

"I don't like budgeting and I don't like performance management either. I don't think you can manage performance. What you can do is create the environment and conditions for good performance to take place."

Statoil has dropped budgeting altogether as of 2006, and

"Svenska Handelsbanken abandoned traditional budgeting in the 1970s. The bank has consistently topped international tables for profitability. And it has done just as well at managing its costs without budgets. "That puts a hole in the budget myth," he told the audience."

Regarding performance goals he goes:

"Along with the total shareholder return, the ultimate measure of success for Statoil is how it compares with the competition. "Corporate performance is not absolute, but relative," he said. "It's about out-performing the opposition."

For example, he pointed out that Manchester United does not set out at the beginning of the season with a target to score 45 goals and achieve 39 points. It aims to top the league table. "We do that with return on capital employed. We have a league table of 11 oil companies and set targets of where we want to be on that table.""

So if you need some arguments for your next management meeting, go register and read the whole thing! Good stuff.