Failure Demand – it’s hidden in plain sight

Prefer to watch on video than read?  Click here – 5 mins with captions.

Less cost, happier customers, happier staff, happier you. 

There’s something hidden in plain sight which is inhibiting these from happening – John Seddon’s Failure Demand.

It’s not a new concept, but John’s naming of, and describing of the concept is brilliant, which leads to understanding and action.  His book Freedom from Command and Control is a must-read for anyone involved in service centres, along with the more recent Beyond Command and Control.

The Coordination System – the unfashionable necessity that will make your organisation work

Prefer to watch on video rather than read? Click here – 5 mins, with captions.

Unhappy people, putting out fires and feeling like we’re not getting anywhere.  We often look for so-called ‘bigger’ solutions – to talk about purpose, strategy, systems.  And sometimes that’s spot on.

But more often than not, there’s a more powerful, yet very unfashionable component of every organisation at every level that needs to be working for anything to…well…work!

And that’s Coordination.  I’ll explain…

The Resource Bargain – The Root Cause of Organisational Pain

Prefer to watch on video rather than read?  Click here – video is 6 mins, with captions.

The world of work is chaotic and filled with anxiety.  We can track most of that back to one source – to the one thing that is rarely done well in most organisations – the Resource Bargain.

The term the ‘Resource Bargain’ comes from Stafford Beer (1926-2002), legend in systems thinking and the creator of the Viable System Model (VSM), one of the best ways to diagnose and change organisations (or any system) so they work better.

51 – The magic number for ownership, accountability and engagement

Prefer to watch on video than read?  Just click here – 5 mins with captions.

Engagement, ownership, accountability…whatever you want to call it, we all want to see (and feel) more of it.

Like all things, half of the game is internal, and there’s a magic number that can help get us there.

Pretty Pictures

Let’s start with our standard managerial hierarchy…

…even the way it looks give us a certain sort of vibe.

Here’s a more modern way to draw it:

Looks a bit kumbaya with being in a circle and all, but taking out the cynicism, it looks a bit more like everyone’s involved. 

The Specialist Problem – one of the biggest causes of cross-functional pain

Prefer to watch this on video than read?  Just click here…5 mins with captions.

The Specialist Problem.  You might not call it that…but you know about it.  Let’s go through it.

The first mention of this problem I came across was in a book from 50 years ago by Wilfred Brown with the wonderful title of ‘Organization’.  I love it because it couldn’t be less fashionable…check out the cover…

Don’t be fooled into thinking something from this era isn’t relevant – the genius of the Beatles finished in 1970, Led Zeppelin was getting going, and besides, Newtown copped the apple way back in the 1680s and his gravity idea still seems useful… so old does not mean irrelevant.

Stepping Up to Senior Management – Your New Kettle Of Fish

If you’d like to watch me go through this on video, just click here.  6 mins with captions.

Senior Management is not just more management.  It’s a new kettle of fish.  I’ll go through:

• The change in the nature of the work
• What the job actually is
• Action To Take

Senior Management

First – what are we talking about here?  The key thing is manager of managers.  Or, managers of multiple teams, who each have their own leadership.  These roles can be called various things, some of the ones from my clients are:

Innovation – What It Really Is and What Makes It Work

You can watch this on video if you’d prefer to see me go through it rather than read.

Innovation.  We all know it.  There’s a fair chance it’s even one of your ‘values’. 

What makes a huge difference to success in this area is understanding what we really are doing, and what we need to look at for it to work.

Luc Hoebeke’s Work Domains

My go-to person in this field is Luc Hoebeke – brilliant thinker and consultant from Belgium who wrote a wonderful book Making Work Systems Better, which he kindly made available on the internet (click the link).

Luc gives us a way to look at work using what he calls domains.  It’s kind of hierarchical in that each later domain provides the conditions for the earlier domain to exist…but not hierarchical as you know it, because each domain is also it’s own complete system.   They don’t ‘manage’ each other.

Utilisation Obsession – why your organisation is in permanently clogged chaos

If you’d prefer to watch on video than read, click here!

A state of overload and chaos has become sadly normal in organisations.  Here’s the thing – it comes from a very natural condition – an obsession with utilisation.   I’ll explain…

These ideas originated from one of the all-time gurus – Eli Goldratt.

Way Basic Work System

To demonstrate, I’ll draw my favourite diagram that my long-time clients will recognise (with one change):

The Middle System – Why Cross-Functional Collaboration Doesn’t Happen And What To Do

This article also exists as a 5-minute video.  Click here to watch if you’d prefer that to reading.

We all want more cross-functional collaboration, whether you’re an executive wanting the areas to sort it amongst themselves, in the middle yourself trying to get work done with other areas, or on the frontline just wanting some consistent messages.

There’s a reason this is often so hard, and one I can give you right upfront – it’s because we can’t see it!  Let me explain….

The social system relationships in most workplaces

As I did in my article and video on the Disgruntled Masses, this piece relies on the Organic Systems Framework of Barry Oshry.  It’s simply great stuff…look into it.  You can watch him talk on YouTube too.

Work Models You Need To Know Ep.2 – ZONE TO WIN by Geoffrey Moore

Video embedded below if you prefer to watch rather than read. 5 mins, has captions.

(If you don’t see the video embedded above, go to it here)

Today’s article is Work Models You Need to Know, Episode 2.  The model is Zone to Win and it’s by Geoffrey Moore.

Why do you need to know this?  It’s a way to organise your entire enterprise, your division or your team to both deliver for your customers today, while ensuring that the strategic innovations needed for success and viability in the future are discovered and brought into the mainstream.

It’s how to do strategy right.

The Basics

The full title of Moore’s book is Zone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption.  This title is spot on. 

The starting point is the classic consultant’s four-box model, where we divide the world into: