Why my 6 year old would not work for your company!

My son is only 6. This is what he already expects from the various computing devices he uses (ipad, macbook, Apple TV, PC, and Iphone)

1. Space is not a concern – you just stick something in drop box.

2. Devices are seamless – he can play Mine Craft on one device and then switch to another one and keep playing.

3. He can get access to any photos, documents, texts from any device anywhere and search then from anywhere.

Compare this to the modern corporation implementation of IT.

1. You have limited storage.

2. You can only connect via one device given to you by the company.

3. You can only connect via a VPN when you are outside the office.

4. You have limited access to the apps you want.

Would my 6 year old want to work in your company?

Will he in 15 years time?

The 3 Accelerators

1. Create a sense of urgency around the opportunity. People need to wake up every day and think – what action can I take today that gets me closer to the goal? It needs to be a goal that matters to people and not just a number. The opposite of urgency is complacency and it is far too easy for complacency to grow like a weed. The good gardener is ever vigilant against weeds.

2. Build and maintain a guiding coalition. Find people who are respected at each level of the organisation and empower them.

3. Formulate a strategic vision and develop change initiatives designed to capitalize on the big opportunity. Can your vision be communicated in one sentence. Can it allow people to make decisions by themselves.

Superstars ?

Economists Frank and Cook argue how the digitisation of information has allowed “winner take all” markets to evolve in every market that trades in bits. Think music, software, media, sport, etc. But, this does not occur for bits only – but for processes as well. With the click of a mouse I can change the whole distribution process, for instance. An example of this is the company CVS which propogates every process change in the ordering process to every one of its companies nationwide wide. Think Mcdonalds ordering systems. The implementation of cloud based applications will further increase this acceleration process.

Its not about the technology Stupid!

Authors from MIT show that the most productive companies doen’t just change their technology. They change their organisational design also to optimise the use of the technology. This was not just an HR things, but required changing the very structure of the production process. In fact, for these companies, for each dollar spent on hardware, ten dollars would be spent on organisational capital. They argue that these intangible assets are much harder to change – but much more critical to optimise the success of the technology and the change.

How to deal with radical transformation – Kotter

Kotter advocates and organisational sub-system which demonstrates the characterisitics of the collaborative enterprise – within the traditional hierarchy. He advocates 5 principles of this system

1. Many change agents – Get enough people within the org to promote the change.

2. You need volunteers – not survivors.

3. People are motivated by emotion, not numbers.

4. Leadership, not management – vision, opportunity, agility, inspired action, and celebration not numbers. People are not numbers.

5. Two systems one organisation – network/hierarchy integration. This is like Shirky’s notion of crowdsourcing. 

 

Loved this sentence – “The network if like a solar system, with a guiding coalition as the sun, strategic initiatives as the planets, and subinitiatives as the solar system. This structure is dynamic: Initiatives and subinitiatives coalesce and disband as needed.”

Hierarchy does not change – but the network is essentially flexible. In the absence of hierarchy, six sigma processes, command and control prohibitions. Populated with employees from all parts of the organisation – the networks liberates information from the silo and hierarchical layers. 

Technology as Sensory Extension

Yesterday I had an interesting discussion with Al Sheehan who discussed the nature of modern technology in terms of a virtual extension of our senses. Why do you need to be somewhere in body, if you can place a device there that can see and hear for you. What the technology actually achieves is supplementation of our natural abilities. If the technology is sufficient, then why does a doctor need to be there?

Change Management Limits

Typical small scale change projects are well suited to traditional change management methodologies. EG Rolling out a new financial software platform. Such an approach is well suited to clear moves from A to B. The distance is short, the duration also. They easily fit into a traditional  project office organisation. They can be made faster by adding resources, smarter people etc. I would consider this type of change as adjustment rather than adaption. It is simply facilitating something that makes the firms survival more comfortable rather than adapting it to the changing environment. Using this methodology to achieve large scale change will result in delay, fatigue, confusion and higher costs.

Arrow Worm

Animalia
Acanthocephala +
Annelida +
Arthropoda +
Brachiopoda +
Bryozoa +
Cephalorhyncha +
Chaetognatha +
Chordata +
Cnidaria +
Ctenophora +
Cycliophora +
Echinodermata +
Echiura +
Entoprocta +
Gastrotricha +
Gnathostomulida +
Hemichordata +
Mesozoa +
Mollusca +
Myxozoa +
Nematoda +
Nemertea +
Phoronida +
Placozoa +
Platyhelminthes +
Porifera +
Rotifera +
Sipuncula +
Tardigrada +
Xenacoelomorpha +

COASE

There is a natural limit to what a firms can produce internally, however. Coase notices “decreasing returns to the entrepreneur function”, including increasing overhead costs and increasing propensity for an overwhelmed manager to make mistakes in resource allocation. These factors become countervailing costs to the use of the firm.

Coase argues that the size of a firm (as measured by how many contractual relations are “internal” to the firm and how many “external”) is a result of finding an optimal balance between the competing tendencies of the costs outlined above. In general, making the firm larger will initially be advantageous, but the decreasing returns indicated above will eventually kick in, preventing the firm from growing indefinitely.

Other things being equal, therefore, a firm will tend to be larger:

• the lower the costs of organizing and the slower these costs rise with an increase in the number of transactions organized
• the less likely the entrepreneur is to make mistakes and the smaller the increase in mistakes with an increase in the transactions organized
• the greater the lowering (or the smaller the rise) in the supply price of factors of production to firms of larger size

The first two costs will increase with the spatial distribution of the transactions organized and the dissimilarity of the transactions. This explains why firms tend to either be in different geographic locations or to perform different functions. Additionally, technology changes that mitigate the cost of organizing transactions across space may allow firms to become larger — the advent of the telephone and of cheap air travel, for example, would be expected to increase the size of firms.

Hierarchies and Traditional Change Models

We are used to hierarchies. We get them – they make management easier. You can divide people into groups for planning, defining job etc. We have learned how to improve the hierarchies. Traditional project and change management is also suited for the hierarchy. We have someone in charge and accountable. They report on progress. This method has worked well given out traditional organisational structure.

BUT, the traditional organisation structure no longer works in the current state of acceleration. Hierarchies require bureaucracy. Traditional hierarchies are inherently risk averse and resistant to change change. Managers will not take decisions without “buy-in” from the hierarchical superiors – hence why the decision making process is slowed down. People fear status slippage through failure or perceived failure – thus take a risk averse position. All hierarchies seek stability, stability and contiuence and replication. But this is the opposite of adaptability.