What I Read – McKinsey Quarterly, October 2016 Issue

Tags

analytics, big data, McKinsey Quarterly, organization

Here is what I noted from the article “Making data analytics work for you – instead of the other way around” by Helen Mayhew, Tamim Saleh and Simon Williams:

[…] Advanced data analytics is a means to an end. It’s a discriminating tool to identify, and then implement, a value-driving answer. And you’re much likelier to land on a meaningful one if you’re clear on the purpose of your data […] and the uses you’ll be putting your data to […]

[…] the insights unleashed by analytics should be at the core of your organisation’s approach to define and improve performance continually as competitive dynamics evolve […]

[…] Ask the right questions. Clarity is essential and so is focus.

[…] Think really small … and very big. […] Identify small points of difference to amplify and exploit. The impact of “big data” analytics is often manifested by thousands – or more – of incrementally small improvements […]

[…] Embrace taboos […] useful data points come in different shapes and sizes […] Too frequently, however, quantitative teams disregard inputs because the quality is poor, inconsistent, or dated and dismiss imperfect information because it doesn’t feel like “data” […] Recording the quality of data – and methodologies used to determine it – is not only a matter of transparency but also a form of risk management […]

[…] Connect the dots […] Too often, organizations drill down on a single data set in isolation but fail to consider what different data sets convey in conjunction […]

[…] Run loops, not lines […] Best-in-class organizations continually test their assumptions, processing new information more accurately and reacting to situations more quickly […] OODA loop – Observe, Orient, Decide, Act […] OODA plus data amplify the effect and accelerate the cycle time.

[…] Make your output usable – and beautiful […] Analytics should be consumable […] organization will respond better to interfaces that make key findings clear and draw users in.

[…] Build a multiskilled team […] Key team members include data scientists […] engineers […] cloud and data architects […] user interface developers […] You also need “translators” – men and women who connect the disciplines of IT and data analytics with business decisions and management.

[…] Make adoption your deliverable […] the best day-one indicator for a successful data-analytics program is not the quality of data at hand, or even the skill-level of personnel in-house, but the commitment of company leadership.

Article provides a nice overview of how-to with regards to organizational and organized approach to big data analytics with some good examples. Italics mean direct quotes from the article. Reach for it.

 

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What I Read – McKinsey Quarterly, April 2015 Issue.

Tags

essentials of innovation, innovation, McKinsey Quarterly, organization, technology

Here is what I noted from the article “The eight essentials of innovation” by Marc de Jong, Nathan Marston, and Eric Roth:

The first four are strategic and creative in nature, help set and prioritize the terms and conditions under which innovation is more likely to thrive. The next four essentials deal with how to deliver and organize for innovation repeatedly over time and with enough value to contribute meaningfully to overall performance.

1. Aspire – a far-reaching vision can be a compelling catalyst, provided it’s realistic enough to stimulate action today.
2. Choose – many companies run into difficulty less from a scarcity of new ideas than from the struggle to determine which ideas to support and scale.
3. Discover – look for insights by methodically scrutinizing three areas: a valuable problem to solve, a technology that enables a solution, and a business model that generates money from it. You could argue that nearly every successful innovation occurs at the intersection of these three elements.
4. Evolve – most big companies are reluctant to risk tampering with their core business model until it’s visibly under threat. At that point, they can only hope it’s not too late.
5. Accelerate – cautious governance processes make it easy for stifling bureaucracies in marketing, legal, IT, and other functions to find reasons to halt or slow approvals. Too often, companies get in the way of their own attempts to innovate.
6. Scale – explicitly considering the appropriate magnitude and reach of a given idea is important to ensuring that the right resources and risks are involved in pursuing it.
7. Extend – companies in nearly every sector have conceded that innovation requires external collaborators. Flows of talent and knowledge increasingly transcend company and geographic boundaries.
8. Mobilize – the best companies find ways to embed innovation into the fibres of their culture, from the core to the periphery.

And how this is applicable? I personally have enough of all kinds of lists and consider them not helpful at all. Practice of innovation thrown at that model would mean (in my opinion) that you should be doing points 1, 3 and 4 at once – evolution of your existing business model is part of discovery, aspiration helps you evolve or jump somewhere, and if you are lucky you will have something to choose from. After you have chosen, you move to the other four essentials – cut the red tape, and see it work. All easier said that done.

What I Read – McKinsey Quarterly, January 2016 Issue.

Tags

Bazigos, Gagnon, health, leadership, McKinsey Quarterly, organization, Schaninger

I read somewhere, that I should make notes of what I read and review them from time to time. I decided to give it a try, since I read a lot and I think making such notes will be for me a way of remembering best ideas, quotes, or whatever from my books and magazines. I also decided to share those notes with you, in edited form as some have gotten pretty long. In many cases I copied whole passages without noting the page numbers, which is against good reference practices, but of course I will list title and author of a book (or article) where I got the notes from.

I do that with hope that at least some of you will reach for mentioned magazine or book when you will find my notes interesting. Ach, one more thing: small number of notes do not mean that the book or magazine was not good…

Here is what I noted from the article “Leadership in context” by Michael Bazigos, Chris Gagnon, and Bill Schaninger:

“Great leaders complicate leadership development […] as the lessons that emerge from one leader’s experience may be completely inapplicable to another’s.”

Agree. Leadership is not a set of universal traits one can copy.

“…If only we had a clear set of keys to effective organisational leadership – a “decoder ring” to understand which practices produce the best outcomes. Our latest research […] does point to one major element of the equation: organizational health.”

“…Organizational health changes over time. Effective situational leadership adapts to those changes by identifying and marshalling the kinds of behaviour needed to transition a company from its present state to a stronger, healthier one.”

“…When we examine survey data through the lens of the different levels of an organization, we find that leading executives typically have more favourable views of its health than do its line workers.”

“…In ailing organizations, for example, the leadership tends to rely on very detailed instructions and monitoring […] A healthier organization’s leadership […] shows greater support for colleagues and subordinates, and sensitivity to their needs […] Leaders at elite organizations challenge employees to aspire higher still by setting stretch goals that inspire them to reach their full potential.”

“…analysis yielded what we call a leadership staircase – a pyramid of behaviour analogous to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In our hierarchy […] some kinds of behaviour are always essential. As organizational health improves […] additional behaviours become apparent.”

“…The following practices are appropriate no matter what a company’s health may be: effectiveness at facilitating group collaboration, demonstrating concern for people, championing desired change, and offering critical perspectives (all of them represent baseline behaviour). The absence of such fundamentals of healthy interpersonal interaction invites disorder […]”

“Companies in the lowest health quartile confront stark […] challenges, such as low-level of innovation, declining customer loyalty, wilting employee morale, the loss of major talent, and critical cash constraints […] these companies lack some or even all of the baseline forms of behaviour […] under trying conditions, the most effective forms of leadership behaviour are making fact-based decisions, solving problems effectively, and focusing positively on recovery (digging out behaviour)”

“…major differentiating leadership characteristic of companies on the upswing is the ability to take practices that are already used at some levels of the organization and use them more systematically, more reliably, and more quickly. This shift calls for behaviour that places a special emphasis on keeping groups on task and orienting them toward well-defined results. Such situations also favour leaders who embrace agility and seek different perspectives to help ensure that their companies don’t overlook possibly better ways of doing things (moving on up behaviour).”

Motivate and bring out the best in others, and Model organizational values – to the top behaviour.

“…Emphasising kinds of behaviour that are not attuned to an organization’s specific situation can waste time and resources and reinforce bad behaviour […] it can make an upgrade to a higher health quartile even more difficult.”

Connecting organizational health to leadership is for me a chicken and an egg problem. In my opinion, organizational health is a result of leadership. If leadership is bad, health of organization is bad. Leadership – or people in position of leaders – affect everything. Sometimes even without knowing about it. Bad leaders will quickly destroy the best and healthiest organization. Therefore before you will be able to somehow use above research results, you need to get rid of bad people first. Good luck in that – before it will be too late.

Empowerment

Tags

empowerment, flat structure, flat structures, Gary Hamel, organization, organization size, The Future of Management

In his book, „The Future of Management“, Mr. Gary Hamel says: “…When you’re up against a belief that seems set in concrete, it may be helpful to ask, whose interests does this belief serve?” (page 138). It is actually very universal truth, which Mr. Hamel applied to managerial dogmas which we are dealing with in overwhelming majority of organizations. Those dogmas first and foremost have to do with a fact that managers are there to watch, supervise, monitor, judge, motivate, punish (and rarely reward) workers to make them do what the organization wants them to do. In the opinion of Mr. Hamel, workers are capable of doing all those things themselves to themselves. Or differently said, we can have now empowered organizations with less managers and more peer pressure to perform, where organization in question is based on functional teams whose members control each other. The result is less managers, flat structures, better communication, quicker reaction and… less cost to the organization itself. If you don’t know what this is all about, it is about money. Another sentence which is usually true.
Is the new managerial fad a real breakthrough or is it just another way to exploit workers? Secondly, can we really in all organizations have flat structures, where teams decide what and when needs to be done? I know that army cannot function like that, because unit on the front line has no idea what the whole army does, therefore their independent actions could damage the whole plan. Taking the size of the army as an important factor (since small Special Forces unit do work independently and successfully fulfill their tasks) I also think that the empowerment works only up to a certain organization size, namely that of a group which still has social factors intact. Or easier said it works where people still know each other and talk freely to each other. I think that this is also a somewhat hidden message of Mr. Hamel’s book – I am still reading it, so I am not yet sure. But I think that regardless of the empowerment or managers as forces behind performance of workers, the size of organization does make a huge difference in quality of work performed and on quality of internal communications. Maybe here lies the problem, not in the managerial layers.