Monthly Archives: May 2009

Systems Thinking Concepts

Pay for Performance in Education: Part 2

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In the “Our Opinion” section of the paper.  There is an opinion/blog called Rewards due for our best teachers that ignores any reference to research or back the supported theory that pay for performance is a better way to run a school system.  I am not a teacher (and never have been), I do have children in school that I am concerned about.  Let’s review the article.

The Star correctly notes that “people enter a career of teaching for all sorts of reasons.  Seldom, if ever, is it for the money.”  Ding, ding, ding . . . they do it because they are intrinsically motivated to do the right thing.  Then the article says that people will respond positively to financial incentives.  W. Edwards Deming and Douglas McGregor (Theory X and Y) taught me that motivation that lasts is intrinsic (Theory Y) and that extrinsic motivation drives out the intrinsic motivation. It was Frederick Herzburg that told us that if we give two groups a task, one with an incentive and one without, that at the first call for a break the group with the incentive took the break and the group without the incentive worked on as their motivation was intrinsic.

The proposed incentive itself ($20,000 for the top 10 schools) wouldn’t benefit very many teachers or students.  The argument will be that we can wind up with some best practice that can be copied by other schools.  This is pure foolishness, copying without theory leads to disaster, this is always a bad idea.

The pay for performance has plenty of examples of bad outcomes.  AIG had a reward system where the de facto purpose became to achieve the reward.  I understand we are  not talking about millions, but this will predictably drive bad behavior (and outcomes) to win the award.  The “normal workings” of the marketplace have not worked for some time (go ask GM, Chrysler and Ford).  Scientific management theory was a break through in the late 1800s, but Deming, Ohno and others have shown us there is a better way.

The better way includes an understanding that the performance of our school systems is 5% the teacher and 95% the education system.  To propose such folly of pay for performance, focuses us on the 5% and not the 95%.  The sooner we look to our education as a system the sooner we can start to make a system that keeps kids in school (intrinsically) and have education that fits the needs of our industry.  Clearly, rehashing old theories that focus on individual performance is not the way to achieve improvement. 

The better way involves understand purpose, customer demand, value, flow and measures that matter.  You will find better ways by taking this systems thinking approach.  This is not an ideology (Republican and Democrat) this is a matter of method and doing the right thing by our children.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.

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Systems Thinking and Contact Centers, Systems Thinking and Measures

Call Center AHT (Average Handle Time) – Wrong Measure, Wrong Solutions

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I just finished reading Blake Landau’s blog (at customermanagmentIQ.com).  The blog is titled An “AHA!” Moment About AHT Average Handle Time and talks about how agents may “hang up” on customers to keep their handle time down to meet their target or quota.  I have seen such foolishness in almost every call center I have visited.

The Problem with AHT:

The problem here is deep, rooted in command and control thinking born from scientific management theory (F.W. Taylor).  Not only is this thinking old, but is displayed both in the podcast interview and comments on Ms. Landau’s blog.  This productivity mindset is over 100 years old and has run it’s course.  Better methods are at hand, but require a change of thinking from command and control to a systems thinking one.

The AHT target is the problem.  The AHT becomes the de facto purpose of the call center agent meaning their focus is on the target and not the customer.  The agent is left with a choice to either serve the customer or risk being paid attention to or not receiving some incentive for not achieving some arbitrary numerical goal (target).

Additionally, the target does not account for the variety of demand that an agent receives. I have seen on many occasions where the customer demand is a hard call (time consuming) and no agent wants those calls when they are under the gun of an arbitrary target.  Sometimes they hang up and some times they don’t give complete answers to customers leading to more failure demand (call backs, errors, follow-ups, escalations, etc.), this just increases call volume at great expense.

The Command and Control Solutions:

One comment to the blog suggests that having someone with greater than 15% AHT need to have the agent paid attention to.  The arbitrary 15% bothers me where does that number come from?  Why isn’t it 20% or 7% or some other number.  This person clearly does not understand variation (see Service Metrics: What You Need to Understand). 

Almost all the responses were from command and control thinking.  Items like more quality monitoring, scorecards, coaching, training, etc. that only add waste to a poorly designed system.  Most of these solutions focus on the individual (except scorecards) and the problem here is that 95% of performance comes from the system (work design, technology, management thinking, constraints, regulations, policies, procedures, scripts, etc.) and only %5 is attributable to the individual.  Scorecards are just doing the wrong thing, righter (see: Balanced Scorecard . . . MBO in Sheep’s Clothing).  These solutions have the displeasing odor of command and control thinking.

A Better Way: Systems ThinkingOne thing I have found is that command and control thinking doesn’t work very well.  Systems thinking (by nature) focuses on the customer.  Decisions are made outside-in and not top-down starting with understanding purpose from a customer perspective, deriving measures from this purpose and liberating method.  The focus becomes serving the customer rather than some arbitrary target.  With an understanding of customer demand, we can design systems against this demand.  In a management paradox, this improves service and cut costs by eliminating failure demand.  This is something that command and control (production) thinkers don’t understand . . . to them there is always a trade-of between costs and good service.

The better way eliminates the need for quality monitoring, scripts, mandates, procedures, targets and the like saving organizations from wasteful costs.  Other benefits are improved culture from putting the decision-making back with the work and allowing agents to think again instead of “dumbing them down” with costly technology and monitoring.  The real question is  . . . are you ready to change thinking to get the benefits?

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.

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Systems Thinking and Government, Systems Thinking Concepts

A Step Back: Pay for Performance in Schools

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The artificial competition being created by the State’s Superintendent of Public Instruction (Tony Bennett) is a non-starter.  This approach is a first step down a bad path . . . backwards.  Now more than ever, we need cooperation amongst schools in search of better methods to educate our children.  Additionally, this has started a feud between two folks that need to work together . . . the State Superintendent and the Indiana State Teacher’s Association.

Innovation in education comes from the folks working together in a system that for a long time has been broken.  The teachers are in the best position to understand the effects of new methods that will improve results and not results that will give them new methods.  Administrators need to be understanding their systems and improving them rather than being wrapped up with new targets of increasing graduation or “No Child Left Behind” programs (see my blog The Waste of Targets in No Child left Behind).

The focus of results and rewards is a command and control mentality born from scientific management theory.  The words of W. Edwards Deming ring true, “The management of results only makes things worse.”  In service industry I have always found results and rewards to get less rather than more.  New thinking is in order . . . systems thinking.  Where government management is working on the system of education and constantly asking the question “By what method?” and not pounding the table for results.  No  matter how hard the pounding for results with “carrots and sticks”, it will always be reliant on method.

I do commend Dr. Bennett on bringing a group of school superintendents together  to discuss ideas.  It would prudent to see a more diverse group of superintendents, principals, teachers and businesses working together to find new methods that will give our children education in professions that will be needed coming out of this economic crisis.  This would be an improvement over the “pay for performance” and target riddled approach.  Cooperation over competition will liberate method and lead us to a better way.

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Systems Thinking and Technology, Systems Thinking Concepts

CRM: Worth the Gamble?

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This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJl9EEcsoE is a classic, take a couple of moments to watch.  You will enjoy.

Is this the future of CRM?  Sounds a bit intrusive, doesn’t it.  As a customer, it gives me the heebie-jeebies.  I really don’t want all that information known about me by every one I do business with.  I just want companies to know what I feel they need to know to provide me with the service or product I desire . . . but please, no more.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) has the following benefits from what I have researched:

  • More focused “marketing”
  • A way of tracking customer’s buying behaviors
  • A sales tool
  • Builds better customer relationships 

I am not sure how much is too much, but the thirst for information by companies is insatiable.  But in the words of W. Edwards Deming, “Information is not knowledge, let’s not confuse the two.”  Knowledge about customers comes at the “touchpoints” of the organization (or the points of transaction as my 95 partners would say).  What this means is that we can be misled by data without understanding the context in which it is used.  In a previous blog, Death by Call Center executives believed (from reports) that sales calls were not being converted into sales when the reality was that they were receiving more calls through the sales line because customers were avoiding their IVR system.

A better (systems thinking) way to get knowledge is to perform “check” (understand purpose, value, flow and constraints) at your touchpoints so the context of the information can be realized.  You can not substitute information for knowledge.  For this reason, I continue to hear about the failure of CRM and the data analytics that go along with it.  These are expensive propositions with software and databases.  Before gambling on a CRM implementation, a service organization should first take time to understand the customer management process.  I believe it is necessary to understand demand, value and flow, something we don’t see from vendors pushing CRM solutions.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.

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Systems Thinking Concepts

AT&T: What End-to-End Customer Service is

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As many of my readers know, I recently switched cable services from Comcast to AT&T and also purchased faster internet service.  Consider this Part II to AT&T: How Not to Do a Survey.  This is probably multiple blogs as the events are something out of an old horror movie, except it is real.  The reality show continues:

Wednesday:  I was scheduled  to have a service technician (tech) in between between 8 – 10 AM.  At 9 AM I received a call from Michigan telling me to expect the service technician between 8 and 10 and that he would call ahead of time.  I am not sure of the purpose of the call and would have to consider it waste from a customer perspective.

The tech came 20 minutes later (no call ahead, making the Michigan call worthless), he asked me a series of questions.  Many that the salesperson had already asked (waste) and began the installation process.  Seven hours later he finished and many problems were uncovered during this process the most notable were my security system was improperly wired (not AT&T problem) and an hour wait for the cable to be properly provisioned (more waste).  Ultimately, things seemed to work OK when he left.  A few hours later my internet was constantly getting a router-router error kicking me off the internet everytime a wireless connection from a laptop or iPod touch was started.  The final straw was the TV locking up over and over again.

Thursday:  I called the customer service line next day and after navigating my way through the IVR (3 minutes) I was able to talk to a customer support representative that helped unlock my TV and fixed my conflict of my routers, but I discovered that AT&T could only see 3 boxes and not the 4 located at my home.  Total call time almost 60 minutes.

Friday:  The TV locked up again and I called support, navigated the IVR and was informed that the TV that was locked was the one they didn’t show in their system meaning a tech would need to come to the house again on Monday.  While getting the necessary information off the router (during the troubleshooting process) the whole system went down phone lines, internet and cable.  I reset the router and while the system was coming back up the customer support rep called me on my cell.  The system came up and things were running again.  Total call time over 90 minutes.

Saturday: our main TV goes down while watching Pirates of the Caribbean. I call customer support (again) and to be honest I really don’t want the IVR at this point.  I am basically told that I am hosed until the tech comes in on Monday. Total call time 14 minutes.

Monday, the box that wasn’t recognized by the customer support reps was caused by a line split something the first tech missed.  The problem with my router-router error was diagnosed as conflicting firewalls between the my AT&T router and my Apple router – a problem we resolved Thursday night without taking down my Apple router now required taking it down.  This leads me to now have a Mac that has questionable connection via the Airport rather than being through the direct connection to the router (more than I want to know too).  The short of this:  good internet connectivity except on my wife’s Mac . . . just kill me now. (4 hours to resolve all issues including a new router because the one I was given was defective and a phone call from home office saying the tech was taking too long).  I will be having to call again this weekend to resolve my wife’s Mac issue or I may be in deep manure.

One other tidbit, the salesperson overstated the capabilities of the system. The system does not:

  • Allow me to have 3 HD channels working at once, only two
  • I can record or pause only on 1 TV not all 4
  • Slice, dice or crawl on its belly like a reptile (OK, made that one up)

I am afraid to see how my first bill looks when it arrives.  Now you understand why the survey for the salesperson proceeded the service.  I did not answer the survey because I did not know if the service was accurately represented – it was not. 

I received a second survey via email for one of the phone calls I made – I just don’t know which phone call because the survey doesn’t identify which of the three.  Further, the language in the survey doesn’t identify the problem in a way I understand or the multiple problems I encountered.  The only way for management to understand is to experience it as I did.  No mystery shopping or fake customers are needed, these things are happening everyday to real customers.  Get off your rumps and go see for yourself.

A systems thinking organization understands the end-to-end customer management process is what matters to me . . . the customer.  I did not expect to have a tech in my house 11 hours or spend almost 3 hours (and counting) to play troubleshooter.  The waste in this system is enormous and 95% of what I saw was attributable to the system that AT&Ts management put in place.  Only 5% of what I saw was attributable to the worker.  The work design is broken, not the individual.

I can only hope that AT&T and its competitors read this and understand the opportunity for improvement is great, but the command and control style of management that they display is broken.  Business improvement can be accomplished there is a better way.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.

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Systems Thinking Concepts

Wake Up, America!

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One of my favorite movies is Tora! Tora! Tora! when after the attack on Pearl Harbor Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto declares “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”  We are experiencing an economic Pearl Harbor that up to this point had been a slow drip of wealth and economic power from the United States.

Now we have a full blown crisis, the second major one in my lifetime.  The first was the decline of manufacturing in the US that started after the “Japanese Industrial Miracle” created in large part by an American W. Edwards Deming.  A traitor . . . no, he saw that the US after WWII was engaged with filling the world’s need from product and not interested in new (and better) thinking that had already been proved during the war effort.  Scientific management theory (Frederick Winslow Taylor) won out, productivity over continual improvement.

The second crisis is now.  Manufacturing is just about finished in this country.  People wrongly believe that this is because of labor costs, so we outsource and share services to reduce costs.  The “Big 3″ automakers (I use that term loosely now-a-days) did. They outsourced and cut costs and still could not compete.  So, the focus of reducing costs has been a non-starter . . . a loser.  What sells cars or service or anything else is the ability to provide value to customers, slashing costs is the beginning of the end.  How fast the end comes is dependent on the size of the organization and the management dolts that can cut costs as their primary focus.  Never knowing how to create value, after all any moron can cut staff . . . but to build value?  That takes talent.  That is leadership.

Dr. Deming, Taiichi Ohno, and others have offered us a better way.  It requires different thinking than the command and control mindset that still prevails since the manufacturing crisis.  Lean Six Sigma, A3, FMEA and all the tools will not lead us out of this crisis.  New thinking is required about management, work design, measures, technology, outsourcing, benchmarking, shared services and command and control thinking in general.

In 1988 Konosuke Matsushita (Founder of Matsushita Electronics) is quoted as saying this to the US:

“We will win, and you will lose.
You cannot do anything about it because your failure is an internal disease.
Your companies are based on Taylor’s principles.
Worse your heads are Taylorized, too.”

So when will the sleeping giant awaken?

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.

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Systems Thinking Concepts

World Class Customer Service? Apple? Zappos?

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Consultants train it. 

Service companies claim it. 

Customers don’t believe it. 

What does it mean to have “World Class” Service:

  • Being nice to customers?
  • Getting little extras or freebies?
  • Delivering what is promised?
  • Handling problems well?
  • Willing to go the extra mile?

I am not really sure.  It’s probably a combination of things.  Apple seemed to be the focus of customer service for a while, I’ve never been fond of their service.  Great marketers Apple has proven to be, fun products, lots of hype, but haven’t really found them to back their product or that they have selected partners well.  The latest hype is Zappos, I have never used their product.  I have read about them in Business Week and these guys are all over Twitter.  Still, I will remain unconvinced until I have my experience and that the phenomenon becomes greater than a “flash in the pan.”  Hey, everyone needs a skeptic. 

Ok, so Zappos receives 5,000 phone calls/day in their call center.  Are all of these value calls to place orders?  I doubt it.  Inevitably, some portion are going to be failure calls (got the wrong shoes, haven’t received my shoes, you didn’t call me back, etc.).  What percentage of the 5,000 calls are of this nature?  In most service organizations this number is between 25% and 75% of all phone calls into their call centers.  I’ve got to tell you that “service with a smile” can only go so far.  In most service organizations, I would be characterized as the difficult customer because just fixing the problem isn’t enough (nor is the expensive recovery process), it is never having to make that (failure) call in the first place.

Ultimately, whether Zappos (or any company claiming the status of “World Class”)gains or maintains such a lofty status will depend on whether it is built on the fabric of command and control thinking or systems thinking.  Has the customer management process been designed form top-down (implying inside-out) or outside-in?  Don’t know, appear to have.  Is the work based on scientific management theory (functional separation of work) or based on demand, value and flow?  Appears to be based on the latter.  Is decision-making done separate from the work or integrated with the work? Not sure.  Are they focused on financial and performance targets or capability with an understanding of variation?  Don’t know . . . but I do know that time will tell.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger, consultant and antagonist to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.

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Systems Thinking Concepts

Leadership and Systems Thinking

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One of the great mysteries of the world is what leadership is and after doing a Google and Twitter search I am no more the wiser as to what agreement there may be.  For some it’s about coming through some great crisis that a public figure had survived like George Washington, Abe Lincoln or Winston Churchill.  Is it because they survived the crisis or because they did it with dignity and grace.  In the case of a public figure we might recognize Hitler as a great leader, I have to admit putting “Hitler” and “great leader” in the same sentence makes me a little uncomfortable even for effect.  But no seems to recognize a loser as a great leader unless we are talking about the movie “Braveheart.”

The leadership coaches all seem to have different definitions.  They seem to be drawn more to traits like integrity, self-management, communication, cheerleader, “can-do” attitudes (win one for the Gipper) kind of stuff.  W. Edwards Deming outlined traits like “knowledge, personality and persuasive power”, but his traits were aimed at using these for the transformation of the organization.  So, this is where we begin.

Deming had his 14 Points and 7 Deadly Diseases that he used as his base to transform “from and to” to form a new organization based on different thinking.  A better way seems to involve this transformation and leadership (by any definition) should be the ones leading it.

Common place today are highly paid executives that don’t understand the business.  They have never been a teller, a software developer, a call center representative, a claims processor or any of the activities of the business they run.  If these executives did show up two things would happen: one, the staff would fall over . . . and two, the staff would beg them not to actually “do” anything.  So how can these folks be effective managers if they don’t understand the work?  Some will say they know the numbers (financials) or they are great strategists or marketers.  I say BS . . . how in the world can they make decisions about the work they don’t understand.  They lack context and worse . . . they lack knowledge.  This by itself leads to such foolishness as benchmarking, targets, outsourcing, shared services and all the other bad stuff that goes with command and control thinking.

Being a leader needs to include understanding the organization as a system.  Leadership development should include starting at “check” (purpose, capability, flow, constraints).  This allows an executive or manager to get knowledge about their system.  The first step to improving the system and beginning the transformation from command and control to systems thinking.

Government management should especially follow this method as they come flying in every two to four years with new mandates before they even understand the system.  Putting in financial and performance targets (bad in and of themselves), mandates, policies, without ever understanding the systems they are changing.  This isn’t just wrong . . . this is stupid.

Leadership may include all the things we’ve looked at together, but systems thinking should be at the top of the list.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.

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Systems Thinking and Contact Centers, Systems Thinking and Technology

The IVR Fallacy – It Doesn’t Save You Money

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I read them all this past weekend.  Technology to the rescue!  We (tech firm) have an IVR systems that is bigger and better than the rest!  Our IVR system will save you time and money!  Everybody uses IVR, you would be stupid not to use this technology!  The conventional wisdom is the IVR!  But we are in need of a shepherd, not sheep!

So why am I the one guy (other than my 95 Partners) saying that the IVR is typically a waste of money and worse . . . a customer satisfaction killer?  The IVR is really just a self service “sort and batch” front-end system built off of a functional design (scientific management theory – read more on this here).  This functional separation gives us tremendous opportunities to improve by replacing it by designing against demand.  However, it would be wrong to simply turn-off the IVR system (similar to mistakes made by by manufacturers in 1980s by stopping inspection when W. Edwards Deming said “Cease reliance on inspection”).  The IVR system was built on existing management paradigms regarding work with the aim to increase productivity.  Human Facts International says that “shaving a second off the phone time could save organizations hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year” . . . all I can say is stupid is as stupid does.

In a management paradox, this productivity mindset leads to the thought that saving time on the phone is the end game. It is not.  To lower costs we have to change our thinking from a productivity mindset to a systems thinking one.  Meaning understanding where costs come from to achieve business improvement and designing out the waste.

So, what should be done to achieve a better way?  The process of designing out needs to start with an understanding of the nature of demand.  This means an understanding of the type and frequency of demand from customers.  This will lead to understanding demand as value (calls we want) and failure (calls we don’t want), failure demand offers huge areas of possibilities for improvement and represents between 25% and 75% of all phone calls.  As opposed to the productivity mindset of reducing “a second from talk time” part of the redesign involves eliminating failure demand which represents a larger opportunity to improve.  Over and over again do I see call center management focus on the wrong measures, creating increased costs and customer dissatisfaction.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  He is focused on exposing the problems of command and control thinking and the termination of bad service through application of new thinking . . . systems thinking.  Download free Understanding Your Organization as a System and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.

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Outsourcing, Shared Services, Systems Thinking and Measures

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Benchmarking, Outsourcing, Shared Services and Command and Control Thinking

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Pestilence, War, Famine and Death . . . the four horsemen of the apocalypse.  Benchmarking, Outsourcing, Shared Services and Command and Control Thinking are the four horsemen of the business apocalypse.

Let’s begin with a brief overview of benchmarking (pestilence).  This is comparing one organization against another.  This violates a fundamental premise of systems thinking . . . that systems are the same, they are not.  Foolishly, organizations compare costs and performance against competitors or other “similar” organizations.  This usually leads to copying when systems (organizations) are designed differently by customers, technology, work design, policies, management, workers, etc.  W. Edwards Deming first warned us that “copying invites disaster” because of the difference of systems.  Also, benchmarking can be limiting by using a standard, why can’t we shoot for something better?  Like perfection, continually improving our products and services.  For more reasons please read “Benchmarking: What is it Good For?” from this link.

Outsourcing (war) has its own systems thinking problems.  Other than the pure cost, the most blatant is the outsourcing of waste (call centers).  Service organizations consistently outsource their failure demand (problem calls, follow-up calls, etc.) to other locations and countries.  Not to much of a concern other than the fact this number represents between 25% and 75% of all call center contacts.  The outsourcing separates the people that need to work together as a system to fix the problem.  Please read Think First: Call Center Outsourcing and/or 3 Things to Consider before Outsourcing.

A shared services strategy (famine) has become a favorite of both the public and private sectors.  The assumption is combining call centers, HR, finance departments, etc. will save costs when we find it usually increases them.  Service organizations become so enamored with the savings they forget the system, pushing things together like two puzzle pieces that don’t fit.  All the while after the “savings” from economies of scale and forgetting that costs are driven from economies of flow.  The information technology that enables shared services actually entraps the waste created by it.  Please read more Failure through Shared Services and/or Government Shared Services- A Recipe for Disaster.

Finally, we have command and control thinking (death).  The horseman that has been slowly deteriorating our economics since a better way was discovered by Deming, and Ohno.  This thinking involves the use of scientific management theory born from Frederick Taylor in the late 1800s a breakthrough in its time . . . now a Dodo bird.  Except the Dodo bird is extinct and command and control thinking lives on.  For more please read Command and Control Assumptions Challenged and/or 5 Fundamental Thinking Problems in the Service Sector.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse are upon us . . . economically speaking.  They promise lower costs for numbers that we can see on financials, but not the ones that matter . . . total costs.  There is a better way . . . systems thinking provides improved service and lower costs with better thinking.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  He is focused on exposing the problems of command and control thinking and the termination of bad service through application of new thinking . . . systems thinking.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.

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