In the many years I’ve spent either consulting or in-house driving organisational transformation, I’ve noticed that again and again we see some recurring themes, ‘holding patterns’ if you will - that stop you from becoming the responsive organisation you’re dreaming of.
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Holding Pattern #1: Organisations are designed on functional specialisation which governs the approach to improvement
Our managerial lineage has taught us to build organisations from a selection of building blocks, each fulfilling a specific function in the organisation: Operations, Retail, Finance, IT. To respond to what our customers need, we must coordinate across multiple teams, each of whom contribute their piece to the puzzle.
For example, buying a plane ticket from Auckland to Wellington requires the cooperation across Marketing, Digital, Airport kiosks, and Aircraft Operations departments. Whilst we may have some visibility of this customer journey, our change and improvement programs are likely focused on the improvement of the individual parts (sell more tickets, improve the website, streamline checkin, make sure bags arrive on time).
Instead, we need to look end-to-end from a customer’s perspective and optimise across the entire flow - without assuming that the work being done today is the work that needs to be done. Imagine a real estate broker with a department focused solely on getting low income earners into homes - in this business unit we have finance, legal, marketing, web design and sales specialists all working together towards this common outcome.
Holding Pattern #2: Leadership definition of role and responsibility are inadequate
Leadership focus(es) and how roles are operationalised are often built on this same functional specialisation, managing budgets and people; rather than end-to-end delivery of value to customers, and the fulfilment of our purpose in their eyes.
Optimisation of the parts and a mechanical view of the system can only get us so far. As we start to see the organisation as a living ecosystem that responds to the value our customers desire, we must necessarily change our leadership approach:
- Leaders don’t give answers, they ask great questions
- Our role is not to manage the performance of individuals, but to act on those hurdles they identify in their work, to remove every obstacle for our collective success in the eyes of the customer
- We must have the humility to truly listen to our customers, and the courage to follow their calling, not our own
- Seek first to understand - achievement will necessarily follow
Holding Pattern #3: Change is not ‘in-built’ within normal operations – our assumption is that operations tomorrow will be largely the same as today
Almost without exception, large change and improvement programs are designed, agreed and then rolled out through decisions made by senior people in boardrooms, away from the front line. The inherent assumption in this approach is that operations are static until we implement a project to change (and that the people on the front line will be informed how their job is changing, trained in the new way, and then expected to carry it ongoing).
We must work towards embracing variation, both in the requests we receive and the way we respond. Learn which requests and what work are predictable. What type of requests to do we get frequently? Respond to those accurately, fully and without waste. This starts to create space (ie people aren’t always busy) so that we can simplify, and focus our time and energy on those things that fall outside the predictable pattern or expectations of our customers.
Doing the work and improving the work is the work - move change and improvement from back of house programs into the capability of the frontline to sense and respond to changes in predictable customer demand. Ask how we might enable autonomy, mastery and purpose in our teams in all that we do.
Holding Pattern #4: Using measures that don’t matter to customers
Current performance measures are often focused on benefits to the organisation, not value as defined by customers. As a result, we lose sight of what is really important - what gets measured gets done and if it’s not customer value then what is it?
KPIs, performance incentives and targets drive unexpected behaviour in our organisations. We must work towards coherence, commonality of outcomes and team-based rather than individual-specific measures.
We need to move from a philosophy of measurement to judge achievement (did you hit the number, if not why not?) to a paradigm where we measure to gain insight on where to go next for improvement.
Holding Pattern #5: The organisation sees change as a negative
When change is decided not by the people who are affected, this drives a lack of ownership, a perception that life will get more difficult - not to mention the incredible fear that if my work is no longer needed then my job will be under threat.
We must remove the link between ambiguity and job certainty. It must be ok to be less busy as a result of change, it must be ok to create space. And with this space we can continue to improve the work, or do more of the value work - both lend incredible benefit to the organisation but we don’t quantify the benefit through reducing the number of staff - if we’re clever we have measures that can show us the improvement in other ways.
The bottom line…
These patterns are clearly intertwined, a complex web of overlapping themes. It’s why you won’t find point-solutions being offered up. Instead the path forward is to articulate the common values and then attempt to move forward in a coherent manner. If we slip off track that’s ok too. All great leaders make mistakes - but it’s what they do next that really counts.
- Danelle
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