Mumblr

The Management Innovation Exchange or MIX is truly a great place for learning about innovative management practices and ideas for reinventing management. I highly recommend it if you have a passion for re-defining the ‘way things work’. In fact, I too contributed a “hack” to make people managers more accountable for their employees by building attrition costs into the managers’ P&L.

I am putting together a small list of hacks and stories which I found most interesting on the forum:

• Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School writes a thought-provoking piece on “What is Your Management Model?” We have all talked about business models, but not much about the management model. How are we going to make choices about people, effort coordination, objectives etc.? How will we balance a traditional vs. a new-age management practice? Ultimately, what’s more important – the business model or the management model? Must Read.

• Jordan Cohen of Pfizer tells a great story about how to make people more efficient by taking out the routine work out of their work. Fascinating example of outsourcing low value-adding tasks.

• Matt Sholsberg asks us to reinvent the wheel. And for a reason – the wheel itself is over 5000 years old!

• So many organizations are still contemplating about social media. How to adopt? How to ingrain? How to measure success? Srinivas Koushik of Nationwide shares the story of how they built the social web into the very fabric of the organization.

• Chris Grams shares his experiences and ideas on how can organizations become “open” and engage their employees. Great ideas if you want to build an organization based on trust, transparency, openness and collaboration.

What are your ideas? Or if you like, “hacks” to re-invent management?

There are various areas in which organizations need to reinvent the way of doing things. But, to me, one of the most worrisome issues is the issue of rigid hierarchies, control mechanisms and collaboration. I believe these are critical barriers to maximizing enterprise performance.

Often I find that “information” is the key. It is one of the most powerful sources of individual competitive advantages in an organizational context. In most cases, we find that the higher  you are in the hierarchy, the more information you have. Authority is the mirror image of the information one has. In a way, how much should you know is dependent on where you sit across a range of job grades! And, we are not just talking about sensitive information like detailed financials or diversity reports (though I don’t feel these are sensitive!). We are talking the essentials – information about product / services, procedures, systems, repository of innovative ideas, best practices, customer insights or even people – as to who specializes in what or who is the “go-to” person for a particular issue. And, all this information is usually sitting pretty somewhere “up” there! Far away from people, who might need it the most!

If this issue is unchecked, often I see cases of “information hoarding”. As humans, we like to “own” things – put a seal on them – “mine”! It appears we sometimes do the same with information. Especially, when organization structures / practices / culture does not place enough emphasis (I am not talking about mere lip service) on sharing. Worst of all, the whole system sometimes ends up rewarding the ones who hoard information. After all, information is power and one can succeed with the right information. So, that becomes the norm. The message is out. “Hold on to the information. You are better off keeping it to yourself, rather than sharing it with everyone. You can get things done. Win that big bonus. Become a star. And you can outpace others in office.”

What does this lead to? Sooner, rather than later – poor enterprise performance. Let me give some examples, which you might be able to relate to:

• You call your bank’s phone-banking line because you have a wrong transaction in your account – nothing very major. The phone-banking rep puts you on hold to look into the manual on how to address the problem. Doesn’t find the right information and transfers your call to the “relevant” department. Again, no resolution. Looks like something is missing in the manual. Or maybe, some one sat there up in the corner office and designed it without knowing the ground realities. Finally, the call is transferred to the “manager”, who is able to reverse the transaction and closes out the issue. You look at your watch and realize that was 20 minutes of your time for a $10 transaction!

• You are attending an exhibition where companies are demonstrating some fancy manufacturing machinery. It’s a big event. You set your eyes on a piece of work, and you reckon it can improve your plant’s productivity by 10-15%. But, you are worried about energy consumption and ask the company’s reps “I know this machinery can be customized to a customer’s needs. Which specific components are most customizable from the point of reducing energy consumption, while maintaining productivity?” The rep looks at you, looks at his colleagues. Smiles. “I will have to get back to you.” Wonders to himself “Boss knows!”. And, you move on to talk to some of the other stalls at the exhibition.

• A customer calls you and asks you to come over to make a sales pitch on a specific subject, say business continuity services. Given the customer’s industry, you know that your colleague in another team had made a similar pitch a few years back. You go to her, ask for some materials that you can re-use. She says, “I am a bit busy. Getting on a plane soon. Will try to send something in the next 1 week”. Oh! The customer wanted the presentation tomorrow. And you get back to your desk and spend the rest of the day (and part of the night) in re-inventing something that already exists in a fine form. Talk about putting in productive hours at work!

The list is endless. And, the potential for productivity gains by addressing this area is endless too. I feel very passionately for this issue, since I have seen hundreds of people, including myself, being affected by this. And even more so, because now we really seem to have enabling technology to support information sharing like never before. And that is a very important development. But, technology in itself can never ever be the ultimate solution. It’s a tool, not an outcome. More importantly, it will have to be about imbibing the value of sharing, building a culture which supports and disproportionately rewards “information disseminators”.

We need to free up information. What has been your experience? How can we hack companies’ management practices and liberate the information to reach where it truly belongs – the people? How can we bust these islands of information? How can we build this component of “the ideal enterprise”. How can we do that? Tell me now!

Clay Shirky throws an astounding number in his TedTalk – Collectively, humans have over 1 Trillion hours of free time per year! 1 Trillion. And what are we going to do about that? How could this large “cognitive surplus” be used? Or as an organization or a leader or a manager, how would you get your employees to invest more of their discretionary time for the organization?

Enjoy the Talk.

Update: Here is a quick review of Clay Shirky’s latest book on the subject of Cognitive Surplus.

PWC has released a report titled “Managing Tomorrow’s People: The Future of Work to 2020″. It relies on review of macro factors, scenario planning and survey data to envision the Future of Work. The study identified “3 possible worlds for the future” and of course, they could co-exist at intersections.

Small is Beautiful: Companies begin to breakdown into collaborative network of smaller organizations; specialization dominates the world economy.

Corporate is King: Big company capitalism rules as organizations continue to grow bigger and individual preferences trump belief about social responsibility

Companies Care: Social responsibility dominates the corporate agenda with concerns about demographic changes, climate and sustainability becoming the key drivers of business

The report also gives you a glimpse on how these worlds would function and how business, and more specifically HR, would transform. Very very interesting. Read the full report here – it’s worth your time.

I recently ran a quick 2 minute survey on the issue of “Usage of Social Media Websites In The Workplace”. The survey focused on 1 open-ended question to elicit opinions on how do people feel about using social media websites in the workplace. Though we didn’t exactly have a blockbuster participation rate, the responses are nevertheless interesting.

I created a quick deck of slides which contains an overview of the survey and key verbatim responses. If you cannot see the slideshow below, please click here.

What do you think? What do you feel about the usage of social media sites in the workplace?