At one point in my career I became champion for one of the most critical projects for an organization - one whose previous lack of focus on completion had already caused harm (including physical damage) to the organization twice in two years. As such, this critical project had been labeled "top priority" for this organization.
As champion, I had been dissatisfied with the lack of management focus on this top priority project, and brought this to the organization's attention. I was given a stern reminder by management that this goal was one of five or six top priority projects, and that the resources and focus necessary to complete this goal would be utilized across all five or six projects as they were available. And in the months that followed, this project did not experience the appropriate increase in focus as it continued to compete with the other projects for attention.
In your organization, is there an actual "top" to the list of priorities, or is it more of a raised plateau of several priorities all seeking to be fed? Can any of the following priorities for an organization be considered absolutely Priority One:
- Generating new leads
- Delivering increased product
- Bringing the next technological innovation to the marketplace
- Replacing aging infrastructure with current or next-generation systems
- Reorganizing to maintain competitive advantage
- Generating enough revenue to keep the lights on
Certainly every organization needs to do all of the above, and needs to do them well in order to thrive in the marketplace. It seems impossible for many organizations to focus on one of these priorities over some of the others, but some careful examination may yield more clarity in addressing priority:
- Do these priorities compete with each other?
- Do they complement each other?
- Does the completion of objectives of one priority facilitate the completion of objectives in another priority?
- Will our resources be able to address one or more of our priorities while covering business-as-usual responsibilities?
These may be simple questions that require intensive analysis to answer, but it is worth re-reading the questions often when we start to lose ourselves in tools, charts, and numbers. It is also worth reminding ourselves that allocating and juggling six top priorities really amounts to seven in number - one priority is the actual juggling effort that takes place while trying to manage the other six priorities.
Another consideration is where in the organization these priorities need to be addressed. There are areas in an organization where priorities and responsibilities must be partitioned in parallel, and there are areas that must be focused on a top priority objective. The management of the organization above had not quite figured out the optimal locations of partition and focus.
As many of my readers know, this is not as simple as a top-down partitioning and arrangement of responsibilities. An organization's current structure and its culture can greatly help or greatly hamper this analysis. You see evidence of this when organizations announce numerous reorganizations and restructures within the span of two or three years. They are still seeking the proper structure of partition and focus to complete top priority objectives. Or worse, they are seeking the proper structure that will help them define their top priority objectives.
If your organization is experiencing uncertainty with juggling or establishing an order for top priorities, try taking on at most TWO top priority objectives at once, one primary and one secondary. This way your organization will have TWO objectives completed rather than five or six that remain suspended in a perpetual juggle-state. In today's marketplace, juggling priorities is not an excuse for lack of completion of any one or two top priority objectives.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
When Numbers Don't Tie
One of the great sages I worked with for many years was fond of saying, "If you're not in control, you're out of control." I still have yet to find an acceptable shade of gray in this space. The space under consideration here is one of the most necessary, most costly, and most ill-executed processes in all of human finance - reconciliation.
As a definition, reconciliation is the process of verifying the equality of two values of data - each owned by a separate party - and performing the necessary actions to bring those values to equality.
More informally, in our work and our lives we are responsible for performing reconciliation in many disciplines:
- Verifying the same numbers produced on two reports with different purposes, but sourced from the same data
- Aligning debits and credits on a general ledger
- Confirming the current values of our investment portfolios
- Balancing the checkbook
- Ensuring that if one child has 10 pieces of candy, the other children get 10 pieces of candy
We willingly perform reconciliation because our organizations depend on it for their effective operation, and because as humans we have a constant craving for order and control over our lives.
Despite this, we constantly hear about organizations underestimating their own customer bases, misstating profits and losses, missing earnings reports, and going under due to incorrectly tracked assets and liabilities. If we are so naturally inclined towards reconciliation and order, then why are we so bad at it?
The three stages of reconciliation below may shed some light on an answer to this question:
- Avoidance of diligent and periodic reconciliation
- Reconciliation with the appearance of order - number and value matching without investigating underlying causes
- Reconciliation with the explanation of order - values and their differences are explained
Why would we avoid such a process that we naturally incline towards? We avoid it because it tells a truth of equality - one made of order - but not one that always puts ourselves or our organizations in the best light. And we avoid it because it requires a daily disciplined diligence that we feel we don't always have room for in our lives.
The appearance of order is our most common product of reconciliation, as the psychological payoff is immediate. Numbers and values that look the same on paper must be for the same purpose, we tell ourselves. Children feel they are equals when all have the same number of candies. An organization's performance numbers look better when certain values are stripped, weighted, or ignored. As we become psychologically satisfied, we stop searching deeper for the truth of equality as we have reached a truth of satisfaction which is "good enough".
With the explanation of order there is an explanation for the difference in mismatching values, the expected actions needed to resolve the mismatches, and an expected date of resolution. From personal experience, I know just how much hard work this can entail to assemble this explanation, and follow up and make sure the mismatches are resolved. And although we humans do crave order, our brains are more satisfied making numbers match together in our minds, versus seeking out the true purposes of the values and the reasons for the mismatches.
The explanation of order is the hard work that puts us in control, lets us make the most effective decisions for our organizations, and prevents damaging assumptions from taking hold. But when numbers don't tie, we fall out of control. Organizations falter, humans miss their goals and satisfaction targets, and economies collapse.
So - are you in control?
As a definition, reconciliation is the process of verifying the equality of two values of data - each owned by a separate party - and performing the necessary actions to bring those values to equality.
More informally, in our work and our lives we are responsible for performing reconciliation in many disciplines:
- Verifying the same numbers produced on two reports with different purposes, but sourced from the same data
- Aligning debits and credits on a general ledger
- Confirming the current values of our investment portfolios
- Balancing the checkbook
- Ensuring that if one child has 10 pieces of candy, the other children get 10 pieces of candy
We willingly perform reconciliation because our organizations depend on it for their effective operation, and because as humans we have a constant craving for order and control over our lives.
Despite this, we constantly hear about organizations underestimating their own customer bases, misstating profits and losses, missing earnings reports, and going under due to incorrectly tracked assets and liabilities. If we are so naturally inclined towards reconciliation and order, then why are we so bad at it?
The three stages of reconciliation below may shed some light on an answer to this question:
- Avoidance of diligent and periodic reconciliation
- Reconciliation with the appearance of order - number and value matching without investigating underlying causes
- Reconciliation with the explanation of order - values and their differences are explained
Why would we avoid such a process that we naturally incline towards? We avoid it because it tells a truth of equality - one made of order - but not one that always puts ourselves or our organizations in the best light. And we avoid it because it requires a daily disciplined diligence that we feel we don't always have room for in our lives.
The appearance of order is our most common product of reconciliation, as the psychological payoff is immediate. Numbers and values that look the same on paper must be for the same purpose, we tell ourselves. Children feel they are equals when all have the same number of candies. An organization's performance numbers look better when certain values are stripped, weighted, or ignored. As we become psychologically satisfied, we stop searching deeper for the truth of equality as we have reached a truth of satisfaction which is "good enough".
With the explanation of order there is an explanation for the difference in mismatching values, the expected actions needed to resolve the mismatches, and an expected date of resolution. From personal experience, I know just how much hard work this can entail to assemble this explanation, and follow up and make sure the mismatches are resolved. And although we humans do crave order, our brains are more satisfied making numbers match together in our minds, versus seeking out the true purposes of the values and the reasons for the mismatches.
The explanation of order is the hard work that puts us in control, lets us make the most effective decisions for our organizations, and prevents damaging assumptions from taking hold. But when numbers don't tie, we fall out of control. Organizations falter, humans miss their goals and satisfaction targets, and economies collapse.
So - are you in control?
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Lasting Improvements in Technology
One of the most exciting benefits of uniting Business and IT is bringing true and lasting improvement to an organization's technology and and business processes. The promise of a streamlined and state-of-the-art business, quickly delivered and scalable beyond today's needs, is what we leaders strive to fulfill for our organizations.
Especially when beginning any new technology venture for an organization - whether it be a brand new organization-wide system, a major system-wide infrastructure upgrade, or simply a reclamation of broken and decayed business processes via a series of system sunsets - there is a certain electric buzz, a great sense of optimism, and a desire to improve quickly. Our organizations want to see immediate improvements and positive ROI within 6 to 18 months. And to be sure, it is easy to make marked improvements in systems and processes that are bloated or just plain awful.
But for leaders who are uniting business and IT - especially CIOs, CTOs, and COOs - we always have in our mind that the real challenge and achievement is sustaining these improvements over a three to five year span. This often requires us to shepherd change and improvement through perhaps one or more paradigm shifts in technology thinking and implementation. We acknowledge the fact of life that technology will come and go, and that keeping pace with the advances in technology can provide a competitive edge. We do not just introduce a new technology, expect it to take hold immediately with zero consequences, and wait for the right "gotcha" moment to blame the technology for not sustaining improvement.
As an example, take Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) - perhaps one of the largest paradigm shifts and technology buzzwords over the past 20 years. For the vast majority of organizations, today's tools make SOA exciting, approachable, and quite doable. It is true that you can implement quickly and within 18 months see measurable improvement in your business processes. But, as with most improvement initiatives and technology paradigms, there is much more to consider.
Bringing SOA into an organization can be exciting, but aside from the technology ramifications, the effect on organizational culture is tremendous. Has your organization considered and provided acceptable answers to these questions:
- Does your organization expect services to be publicly available "at their fingertips"?
- Is your organization acknowledging and accepting the contractual terms of each service, including the data formats and valid data values that need to be marshaled across divisions?
- Is your organization willing to monitor and measure the usage and performance of these services?
- Can your organization measure the capacity for adaptability and extension of these services?
- Does your organization expect to be able to construct on-the-fly "composite products" based on using your services as building blocks? And what constitutes acceptable performance and turnaround speed?
- Will the new technology and service-orientation match the goals and values of your company?
Considering these questions, ironing them out to create sufficient answers for your organization, and overhauling your organization's technology to represent your organization's values towards SOA, will certainly take longer than you may expect or plan for. You will need to let your technology breathe and work in your environment for a while as you streamline your answers to the above questions. But creating those "composite products" based on the service-oriented building blocks will come when your service-oriented technology can measure up to the terms of service you set forth.
Much like the old advice to live in a new house and get acclimated to it before fully furnishing every room, so must we get acclimated to the new technologies and paradigms that we bring to our organizations before improving on them. We must continually ask ourselves the above questions, and evaluate the technology improvements we make - both the quick ones, and the ones made over time. Sustain improvements over a three to five year period, and your organization will have hit the jackpot.
Especially when beginning any new technology venture for an organization - whether it be a brand new organization-wide system, a major system-wide infrastructure upgrade, or simply a reclamation of broken and decayed business processes via a series of system sunsets - there is a certain electric buzz, a great sense of optimism, and a desire to improve quickly. Our organizations want to see immediate improvements and positive ROI within 6 to 18 months. And to be sure, it is easy to make marked improvements in systems and processes that are bloated or just plain awful.
But for leaders who are uniting business and IT - especially CIOs, CTOs, and COOs - we always have in our mind that the real challenge and achievement is sustaining these improvements over a three to five year span. This often requires us to shepherd change and improvement through perhaps one or more paradigm shifts in technology thinking and implementation. We acknowledge the fact of life that technology will come and go, and that keeping pace with the advances in technology can provide a competitive edge. We do not just introduce a new technology, expect it to take hold immediately with zero consequences, and wait for the right "gotcha" moment to blame the technology for not sustaining improvement.
As an example, take Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) - perhaps one of the largest paradigm shifts and technology buzzwords over the past 20 years. For the vast majority of organizations, today's tools make SOA exciting, approachable, and quite doable. It is true that you can implement quickly and within 18 months see measurable improvement in your business processes. But, as with most improvement initiatives and technology paradigms, there is much more to consider.
Bringing SOA into an organization can be exciting, but aside from the technology ramifications, the effect on organizational culture is tremendous. Has your organization considered and provided acceptable answers to these questions:
- Does your organization expect services to be publicly available "at their fingertips"?
- Is your organization acknowledging and accepting the contractual terms of each service, including the data formats and valid data values that need to be marshaled across divisions?
- Is your organization willing to monitor and measure the usage and performance of these services?
- Can your organization measure the capacity for adaptability and extension of these services?
- Does your organization expect to be able to construct on-the-fly "composite products" based on using your services as building blocks? And what constitutes acceptable performance and turnaround speed?
- Will the new technology and service-orientation match the goals and values of your company?
Considering these questions, ironing them out to create sufficient answers for your organization, and overhauling your organization's technology to represent your organization's values towards SOA, will certainly take longer than you may expect or plan for. You will need to let your technology breathe and work in your environment for a while as you streamline your answers to the above questions. But creating those "composite products" based on the service-oriented building blocks will come when your service-oriented technology can measure up to the terms of service you set forth.
Much like the old advice to live in a new house and get acclimated to it before fully furnishing every room, so must we get acclimated to the new technologies and paradigms that we bring to our organizations before improving on them. We must continually ask ourselves the above questions, and evaluate the technology improvements we make - both the quick ones, and the ones made over time. Sustain improvements over a three to five year period, and your organization will have hit the jackpot.
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