Cloud-based software tools to support the transformation to liberated work teams by relying on evidence-based, high performance practices.
As management mavericks, we know where we want to be able to get to; employing evidence-based, high performance practices that free our people and organization from the outdated and ineffective management practices so widely used.
How do you get from the current state to enterprise liberation? You need the vision, a plan, and the sheer guts to see it through when many (mostly in management) will do their best to thwart your efforts. You need to be able to foment change from the grassroots while simultaneously building a new flexible backbone for discipline (you can tell management it’s about ensuring that control is still strong); all while enabling autonomy for your people.
To do this effectively, you’ll need tools that will work for you, rather than against you, in your fight to transform your organization and reinvent your approach to management.
“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
- Buckminster Fuller.
We have been experimenting with the right mix of functionality and data, throughout our 3-year journey to build exactly those tools. Tools that embed and reinforce the evidence-based practices that unleash potential while battling the organizational waste that has built-up around commonly used management practices. By reducing waste, time and resources can be reallocated to transforming operations. And once the transformation is underway the same tools can be used to sustain and embed the new practices from edge-to-edge.
The Transformation Process that beacon (our tool) supports:
- Management
- Silos
- Vagueness
- Control
- Knowing
- Leadership
- Collaboration
- Clarity
- Support
- Doing
While Maximizing (Organizational Health):
- Direction
- Leadership
- Culture & Climate
- Accountability
- Coordination & Control
- Capabilities
- Motivation
- External Orientation
- Innovation & Learning
And Minimizing (Organizational Waste):
- Unproductive & Unnecessary Meetings
- Ambiguous Priorities
- Distractions & Information Overload
- Disorganization
- Managerial Sludge & Roadblocks
- Duplication
- Conflicting Actions
- Bungled Hand-offs
- Missed Deadlines, Targets, etc.
beacon was designed from the ground up to deliver on the mandate set out in the Problem section of this document; to help enterprises to Transform from using outdated, management-centric practices to leadership-centric practices, and then support their continued use and spread post-transformation.
beacon provides a lightweight, easy to use, purpose-built environment for high performance leadership to:
- Widely communicate, share and report on the creation and evolution of company-wide objectives and key results (or insert your own terminology here...Strategies, KPIs, Goals, Measures, etc.).
- Enable your teams and individuals the freedom to build their own plans and measures to within the context, and in support, of the company-wide objectives.
- Easily update, communicate, collaborate, execute, learn and adapt to required changes without losing data, learning, people and history as a result of necessary adaptation.
The success of Transformations are typically hampered by using low performance practices in an effort to migrate to high performance practices; the very thing you’re trying to get away from! Our tools provide a platform to help you transform using high performance practices, and then embed and spread those practices for daily use throughout the organization when the transformation is complete.
Throughout this process, Organizational Health is developed (those nine items we help to maximize referenced in the Problem section), and Organizational Waste (in the second list of nine) is reduced which creates an environment where potential can flourish; both individually and organizationally.
Change and the fear of the unknown are the biggest hurdles to liberating your employees with the help of technology. Transparency, accountability, precision, borderless collaboration, open communication, bottom-up input...they all scare managers who are wedded to the status quo and they will be the biggest impediment to Transformation.
There are two approaches we propose as first steps; leadership team deployment, or business unit deployment.
Leadership teams can commit to changing the way they intend to lead, and apply the tools and practices to their own interactions before being rolled out (downward/outward) through the organization. This can work if there is consensus (or edict) that these are actions that are required for the survival and prosperity of the enterprise.
Selected business units and their people (from leadership to front line) can alternately be used as the test bed if they show signs of willingness to evolve the current unit management practices and show what can be done by taking a new approach. The experiment can be contained by the boundaries of the unit’s activities and then rolled outward to other units at a pace that can be tolerated by the organization.
Mike Tobias, mercanix corp.
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