I really enjoyed this article by Bruce Hodes. His experience of a lack of strategic planning within business managers and leaders is one that resonates with most of us engaged in organisational design and improvement.
His article includes a great many good lessons to think about on how to start planning for 2013. It's well worth a read if you have 5-minutes!
Talking to customers and getting an honest perspective on the 'true reality' of your business value is I think one of the most important starting points. It's not true that customers 'always know best' but they certainly provide a smarter sounding board than internalized opinions that come from people that never speak with the people that buy your products and services.
Thoughts?
I.
Seven rules of strategic guessing
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Monday, 29 October 2012
More opportunities to write about agility!
I seem to spend much of my business life these days sharing ideas, tools and methods with businesses on the subject of business agility - having the means to adapt to change and be first-to-market AT LEAST better than competitors. I was therefore delighted to be invited by USTech Solutions Inc. to setup two new blogs on the subjects of TalentAgility (talentagility.blogspot.com) and ITAgility (ITagility.blogspot.com) to act as a knowledge pool for subject-matter.
The new sites are up and running and I'll be posting specific news feeds and content to them (as will others) over the coming weeks.
I.
The new sites are up and running and I'll be posting specific news feeds and content to them (as will others) over the coming weeks.
I.
Monday, 15 October 2012
Poor Knowledge Worker Productivity Should Come As No Surprise To Bosses
How productive are knowledge workers?
It's a topic that's been on and off the agenda of management teams since the late 1950's when people started to realize that a large percentage of employees would one day be part of this group.
Walk into most offices these days and you'll see people working on spreadsheets, Word docs and Powerpoint presentations - home-made applications that 'fill in gaps' to support information analysis and data management needs where the larger process centric business apps don't offer any support. Over the past few years this 'long-tail' of applications demand has grown ever longer. The number of requirements for new apps driven by mobile computing, social networking and the expectations of users for self-service computing has multiplied beyond recognition.
When you have knowledge workers mashing and sharing data on these desktop home-made systems, how can you measure their productivity? Are you PRODUCTIVE if you produce a spreadsheet? I would argue no. Productivity suggests that you contribute towards or produce an outcome, not just do stuff.
Could you imagine manufacturing plants ever being so lax in the way they use their labour force?
If we're going to start making the office environment as productive as the factory floor, managers are going to have to start measuring knowledge worker productivity - and I believe the only way they're going to achieve this is by drawing a line between workforce effort and those defined actions that lead to desired outcomes.
It's a topic that's been on and off the agenda of management teams since the late 1950's when people started to realize that a large percentage of employees would one day be part of this group.
Walk into most offices these days and you'll see people working on spreadsheets, Word docs and Powerpoint presentations - home-made applications that 'fill in gaps' to support information analysis and data management needs where the larger process centric business apps don't offer any support. Over the past few years this 'long-tail' of applications demand has grown ever longer. The number of requirements for new apps driven by mobile computing, social networking and the expectations of users for self-service computing has multiplied beyond recognition.
When you have knowledge workers mashing and sharing data on these desktop home-made systems, how can you measure their productivity? Are you PRODUCTIVE if you produce a spreadsheet? I would argue no. Productivity suggests that you contribute towards or produce an outcome, not just do stuff.
Could you imagine manufacturing plants ever being so lax in the way they use their labour force?
If we're going to start making the office environment as productive as the factory floor, managers are going to have to start measuring knowledge worker productivity - and I believe the only way they're going to achieve this is by drawing a line between workforce effort and those defined actions that lead to desired outcomes.
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