Bryce Harrison

1. Worst record of welfare reform in the country
2. High error rates
3. Slow processes that fall short of federal guidelines and provide poor customer service
4. Inconvenient access
5. Lack of consistency
6. Lack of tracking capabilities and proper accounting programs

• Lack of a central accounting system
• A paper-based system
• A general rule based on theory that if you can find someone in the private sector doing a service that mirrors what the government is doing, chances are the private company is doing at much higher quality and a much lower cost.
• Efficiency leads to costs savings.

Seems like each time I read something coming from the Ash Institute from Harvard, I am left shaking my head in disbelief.  It has now advanced to the point where I just accept that they will say things that defy all reality.  They can spin a web faster then any spider I know. 
In the latest travesty John O’Leary in Driving Change: Go Big or Go Home likens government to driving a bus where everyone has access to a brake.  Meaning anyone can kill any change program in government.  He uses this as an impetus to basically run over people to achieve change.

With apologies to one of our fine educational institutions this is ridiculous.  What got us in the mess we are in today is our inability to seek knowledge before seeking change.  Government management can only make assumptions about one thing . . . that they need to get knowledge before introducing change.

The cost of not getting knowledge is to guarantee failure in any organizational change management program.  The result is higher costs, worse service and a poor culture.  The political spin of this has to be exposed as they administrations point to those costs that go down and not to the ones that increase due to this flawed approach.

Any new administration at any level of government management would be well-served to start by performing "check."  This means understanding the what and why of current performance.  Not to come in with pre-conceived notions, agendas, mandates, milestones, schedules and project plans. 

Further, Mr. Leary promotes the favorite of the Ash Institute which is cost cutting.  Even worse he promotes it as a top-down exercise.  Both of these again are command and control moves that increase government spending . . . let me explain.

Costs are often seen from activity and productivity numbers that are leading government management to take a shared services strategy or outsourcing.  What the fail to see is that cost are in the flow not the scale of activity (economies of flow).  To focus on costs increases them and instead we need government to focus on the causes of costs that are in the flow.

With respect to top-down implementation of a political agenda, we would be much better served to design our government systems from the outside-in.  This requires understanding demand while getting knowledge in "check."  When we don’t understand demand we stand to outsource failure demand (demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for a customer) or share services that shouldn’t be shared.

I have found a better way (as opposed to top-down) is to get knowledge of the work and engaging government workers.  Rather than a small group by engaging employees we get far more ideas for innovation.  And larger changes are accepted because when we make decisions with the knowledge of the work we don’t alienate those that do the work. 

Think about it . . . would you rather have a small group innovating or the assistance of thousands to help facilitate change?  When you don’t make decisions with the work we wind up with SNAFU and FUBAR types of results and activities.

Workers engaged and understanding purpose and customer measures should be allowed to experiment with method.  This experimentation can lead to new methods and innovation.  New administrations would be wise to tap into this valuable resource pool.

Indiana has had a massive failure in the Welfare Modernization project they just cancelled with IBM.  Let’s not spin this any other way than a disaster that cost taxpayers money by not doing the things I have outlined above.  More approaches like this and we will continue to have to sell the public’s assets to meet the fiscal responsibilities of the state.

Join us for a new and better way to improve government at www.thesystemsthinkingreview.com

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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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

As I was working with a client last week, I reflected on the role of a manager in a systems thinking environment.  If we are to improve the design and management of work . . . the way we manage must change.  This should be seen as an opportunity to a more efficient and compassionate leadership strategy.

Taking an outside-in approach we squarely place ourselves in alignment with the customer.  There is no need to manage the financials as this will take care of itself when the customer is the center of our thoughts.  Taking our minds away from cost control to focus on the causes of costs.

Organizational change management with all the restructuring that leads to new programs and no improvement, gives way to focus management attention on the work.  A far cry from the report-driven and anecdotal method embraced by today’s command and control style of management.  Silos become non-existent as doing what is right for the customer delivers value rather than turf battles.

Measurement derived from customer purpose replaces the functional targets set from the quarterly dividend, financial forecast or budget.  Managers are instead looking at how capable they are at meeting customer demand and the measures that matter to customers. 

Meetings related to making sure the customer or supplier are adhering to contracts written, instead look at a systemic review of "what matters" to customers and create a cooperative environment.  Working together with suppliers and other managers to act on the system to improve flow rather than manage people and budgets.

Managers and workers learning together how to (first) understand current performance and learn what matters to customers.  We move from a reactive environment to an adaptive one.  Change is emergent as workers and managers try new methods to improve the work and innovation through better design.  Rewarded with the desire to learn more and continue the cycle.

Our need to redesign the way manager’s manage should be at the top of our 2010 to-do list.  Is your service organization or government ready for real change?

 

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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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

 

If I were to tell you not to share would I be asking you to break the Golden Rule we learned as kids?  Hardly, but I am badly outnumbered by the likes of such "thought leaders" as Gartner, Accenture, IBM, AT Kearney and other entities that promote a shared services strategy.  I have to be wrong when the numbers are so great against me . . . really?

As positive a phrase as "shared services" sounds, it belies the negative side that no one wants you to know about.  The government management paradox that shared services wind up costing you more for less government services.  What?  They didn’t tell you?

Let’s take a look at what is missed:

1.  Did you have an optimal design in the first place?  Rarely, are government entities provisioning services in an optimal manner.  The rush to cut costs bypasses a bigger opportunity for improvement . . . the design and management of work.  Something the US government management doesn’t do well (but neither does the private sector – even though they claim to provide better service).   Most of the time all we do in sharing services is perpetuate a bad design and locking in waste.
2.  Did we really need that front and back office in the first place?  This goes hand-in-hand with #1.  When we combined back offices, did we need that back office in the first place?  Most of these I have found can be designed out and services provisioned less expensively.  Our thinking is the problem as we functionally separate the work and try to optimize each piece creating sub-optimization. 
3.  Did you understand demand?  A bad assumption is that all demand is demand we want from our constituents.  This is never the case.  Failure demand (demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for a customer) can range from 25
   to 75% or more in government entities.  Sharing services without knowing this number is to lock-in and even increase costs.
4.   Did you know that costs are not in the scale, but in economies of flow?  A government management paradox is that costs are not reduced my scale, but by improving the flow.  A service provisioned well costs less tan one that isn’t.  To achieve this we must improve flow end-to-end from a customer perspective.  Understanding this can even have us achieve public sector innovation.
    

It is ridiculous to assume that combining things will lower costs in government, but a snappy tie or shoes and a well-known consulting firm, internet magazine or technology company can be mesmerizing.  Just remember that what you are seeing is slight of hand and will result in taxpayer and voter dissatisfaction.

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Learn more about improvement in government . . . the better way!  Got to www.thesystemsthinkingreview.com and make the taxpayer happy.

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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

 

I was in Canada last week working with two auto dealerships, one in Yorkton, SK and the other in Winnipeg.  These are not just any auto dealerships.  They are run by an innovative and forward-thinking owner named Terry Ortynsky.

Mr. Ortynsky has been working on systems thinking for a little over a year.  His tinkering with the concept during that time has led him to fully commit.  He sees systems thinking as a way to build a better auto dealership.

The Ortynsky dealerships had long fashioned their work to be customer-friendly like so many other dealers.  The difference being the action he has taken to live this principle.  Mr. Ortynsky doesn’t pay his salespeople by commission, they are paid by salary so that when sales are made they are in the best interest of the customer.

His commitment and belief that doing things in the best interest of the customer in sales and service led him to systems thinking.  He understands that by focusing the design and management of work to serve the customer will decrease costs, improve service and achieve a culture that people want to work in. 

Despite pressure from the manufacturers to submit to targets and other dysfunctional behavior, the Ortynsky automotive groups are focused on creating a better customer experience.  They are in the process of improving the customer experience by understanding the "what and why" of current performance and "what matters" to their customers.  This will lead to a system of continual redesign as employees are engaged at all levels to find new ways to serve customers.

A better leadership strategy (especially innovation leadership) can now be found in a car dealership.  Mr. Ortynsky and his folks are on a mission to serve the people of Canada though better service and thinking . . . for sure.

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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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.
 

1. High error rates
2. Low job placement rates
3. Two dozen employees convicted of fraud
4. Federal Sanctions

All true as I witnessed them during my tenure as CIO at FSSA.  The problem is the context and many may be duped by these anecdotal comments.  The FSSA Secretary (Anne Murphy) reported $1 million losses due to fraud from 2005-2008.  Indiana will be spending (most likely) anywhere from 2 – 25 times that per year to prevent it.

As with most with political agendas the Indiana Welfare Eligibility Reform was doomed from the beginning.  FSSA entered to change the system without knowledge of the "what and why" of current performance.  They had a reform agenda and disrespected the state workers, recipients (now called clients), and the taxpayer.

Mr. Goldsmith outlines the usual poster child for reform . . . antiquated technology and a paper-based system.  Neither of these assumptions should lead us to  believe that more technology or less paper will actually improve things.  In fact, in a government management paradox more technology led to increased costs and the locking-in of a poor design of the work.

Further, Mr. Goldsmith talks about the risks associated with innovation as if this should be something to embrace.  When spending $1.3 billion of taxpayer money to take a risk on innovation, it should be done on a small scale to see if the concept works.  To do otherwise, is to be arrogant . . . not bold.

He makes a mistake in stating as fact that outsourcing employees made things better.  No data to support this statement, which seems to play to those gullible enough to believe such statements.

The usual blame about unforeseen circumstances and federal regulations attempts to pacify the reader that things just couldn’t be done any better in this attempt and avoid actually holding anyone accountable or responsible for this bold attempt.  To this I say "hogwash" (it is Indiana after all). 

Indiana FSSA could have (and should have) understood that the biggest opportunity for change is the design and management of the work.  With knowledge gained through understanding they would have been able to design a system and trial it on a small scale, but the rush to "be bold" was their downfall.

It is a John Seddon says "ignorant people shouldn’t be in government management."

Please join us for a better way to manage in government at www.thesystemsthinkingreview.com.

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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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

These results are from a bank management consulting engagement that resulted in a 20% reduction in expenses in one year.  You may be getting these results, if not, you may want to learn more about the Vanguard Method.

Leave me a comment. . . share your opinion!  Click on comments below.

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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

 

1. Have you personally gotten knowledge about the process that welfare recipients have to go through to get services?  Reason for ?:  Reports and reporting is not enough.  An executive must go to the work to understand the "what and why" of current performance.  This cannot be delegated to a contractor or employee of the State.  Plans not based on knowledge are just hopes, dreams and conjecture.
2. What are the High-Frequency Value Demands that applicants are giving to the State?  Reason for ?:  If the State understands the demands from applicants they can design a training program for state workers around the high-frequency demands.  This also will help prioritizing which demands need to run smoothly. 
3. What is the failure demand percentage of all contacts at the point of transaction?  Reason for ?:  Meeting the federal requirements is not enough.  An important metric for government is to determine how many contacts are failure (the failure to do something or do something right for an applicant).  My guess is that this number is between 60-90% of all demands from an applicant or a legislator, special interest group, guardian, etc. on behalf of the applicant. 
4.  What are the end-to-end measures derived from applicant purpose?  Reason for ?:  Spending time getting knowledge allows the State to understand what matters to applicants.  A timely response is most likely one of them, how long does it take today and how predictable is that measure.  There will be other important measures derived from what matters to applicants.  It is important to understand that costs are not from economies of scale, but economies of flow.
5. Is the State or the State’s vendors using targets and incentives with workers?  Reason for ?:  Targets become the defacto purpose as workers get focused on the target (usually with incentive) rather than serving the customer (applicant in this case).  This typically is a source for failure demand (described above), waste and sub-optimization.

If or when government management begins to understand that improving the design and management of work is the issue, we can move on to saving taxpayers money.  I am not talking about a little, but a lot.  Our thinking around the design and management of work must transcend politics and be the foundation to improving service and lowering costs.

Being good stewards of the State’s money means constantly uncovering better ways to think about the provisioning of services and even achieving public sector innovation.  Unfortunately, the prevailing thinking in US government and business is made up of command and control thinking.  We can do better than this.

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For more on the public sector and systems thinking go to www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps service 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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.



 

I caught John Ketzenberger on the Gerry Dick’s Indiana Business Review this past Sunday (10/18) talking about how to get more revenue for the State of Indiana.  I have long admired John’s writing in the Indianapolis Business Journal and The Indianapolis Star.  He has an Indiana Conservative bend to him and tries hard to be balanced in his reporting.

With his move to The Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute in September, I was a bit disappointed that the topic was how to tax more services and how we compared to other states in taxing these services.  I guess I see things differently, as I believe the burning question as how do we provision services more cost effectively so as not to have to raise taxes.

I always struggle with the word "revenue" to replace the word "taxes" when it comes to government.  This must be the new reality.  Remember when we had money and these things weren’t an issue?  Or even the time when we didn’t have to go to other countries to beg for jobs?  Those were the days . . . I digress.

I would much rather see the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute help find ways to help provision services better.  The waste is costly whether privatized, outsourced or government run.  Other countries are finding ways to provision services less expensively with better thinking about the design and management of work. 

This may lead you (John) to find out why they are being so successful and bring new thinking to government through your research.  Entrenched government management may not be open to new ideas otherwise.  And in these times we could use some new ideas on greater effectiveness in government.

With this approach you won’t have to continually be creative in the new taxation arena, because it will require less (hmmmm) "revenue."  Public sector innovation and working on provisioning services better and with less tax dollars is certainly a more attractive option.

 
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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 our international government services www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk[email protected].  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt. 
    Contact us about our intervention services at

It’s like a bad movie that seems to get replayed in every city, state, or federal government.  It starts with strategic intent and political bravado that turns to a feeling of malaise.  That uneasiness that accompanies you when you know things aren’t just right.

For me it has always been that technology just can’t deliver the goods promised.  No matter what the industry I have worked in doing consulting work the mantra remains the same.  We can automate it, there’s way too much paper or manual processing. 

Seems plausible to anyone seeking to modernize the work that is being done.  If you are in government management you know that is where the money comes from to modernize via the use of technology.  After all, this is what public sector innovation is all about.

Yet, this is the great technology caper.  We spend millions to modernize and yet services continue to become more expensive and provide us with worse service.  The hype just doesn’t live up to the value.

The issue is not technology in and of itself, but the fact it is not the biggest lever for improvement.  The design and management of work is our opportunity.  Government management has pieced together a system comprised of front/back offices, redundancy, handoffs, queues, multiple sorts and other bad designs that don’t need to be automated, but redesigned.  Technology just locks in the waste if the system isn’t designed well.

But that is not the end of the story as just redesigning systems isn’t enough.  We must rethink the management of the work and the way we increase complexity to inspect in quality rather than fix the problem or put in targets that create sub-optimization and waste.  It doesn’t stop there either . . . mandates, legislation and other mis-guided efforts have led to a financial infrastructure that our US tax base is unwilling to continue to bear the weight.

The great modernization caper has to include a willing participant or at least an ignorant one.  As grasping at straw men like shared services, automation and outsourcing is certainly better than doing nothing (which it is not).  Attractive ideas that really have no way of helping.

As we enter this age of provisioning services with less and less "revenue" from the taxpayer base.  We are in need of better thinking about how these services are delivered.  Let’s just not get carried away with the technology.

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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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.


 

By now, some plans for 2010 have been made.  Or may be in the throes of debate, conjecture or finalization. It has become a staple for service organizations to plan, and execute to the plan with milestones, schedules, cost-benefit analysis and deliverables.

Would it be so bizarre to skip this step?  How much time is eaten up by this exercise?  Does it bare fruit?  I say it is a wasteful endeavor, but so do the likes of John Seddon and Mary Poppendieck.

We would be much better off without the command and control, top-down style of management that planning promotes.  The plans are almost always made without knowledge of the work they are planning.  Conversations in planning meetings usually surround budgets and revenue is fore-casted with stretch goals and worse-case scenarios based on nothing more than a guess or BHAGS (Big Hairy Audacious Goals).  What a crock!

A return to sanity for those looking to get ahead of the behemoth service organizations that usually adopt this type of planning.  How about getting knowledge and taking action based on that knowledge for a change?  I have found this to be a better process for those wanting to achieve corporate cost reductions.

This planning change leads to decisions made based-on knowledge rather than opinion.  Executives and managers going to the work to understand customer demands on their service organization.  With this knowledge the service organization will develop measures related to customer purpose different than the top-down, financial-driven measures usually accumulated.

Armed with knowledge of customer purpose, demand and measures, a service organization can gain innovation leadership and new insights to improve value.  Increased value drives more business in from customers with less marketing and less expense.  The management paradox being that eliminating planning reduces all the expense associated with it (and that is quite a lot).

Things are changing rapidly in this economy and those left with old mindsets will be gone in a few years.  New thinking is upon us to bring more value for customers, profit and competitiveness.  Are you ready to change the way you plan?

Leave me a comment. . . what do you think?!  Click on comments below.

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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.



 

1. Technology companies exist to sell hardware and software.  Many times in the sales process or later I ran into problems with the technology company wanting to "meet schedule" or "make the sale."  This attitude didn’t help the bank improve the work and worse automation of a poor process was implemented.
2. The design of work is fundamentally flawed.  The whole front office-back office design of work in banking (or any public or private service organization) is fundamentally flawed.  The hand-offs, routing, queuing, sorting, etc. is all waste.  The design leads to much of the failure demand (i.e., the demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for the customer) that customers give to service organizations leading to increase costs.
3. The standardization required leads to entrapping technology.  Technology organizations require standardized processes or work to code the flow.  Standardization is the great management paradox in service industry.  Why?  Because standardization can not absorb the variety of customer demand that service organizations receive.  Inability to absorb variety leads to increased failure demand and thus higher costs and worse service.  Technology just locks in the waste.

• How much work?
• How many people?
• How much time?

 . . . drives organizations to believe they are achieving innovation leadership when in reality they are increasing costs.  Improvement of costs require redesigning the systems against customer demand then pulling technology.  As costs are reduced through the flow not the scale (see: Economies of Flow Defined for Service).

Leave me a comment . . . what do you think?  Click on comments below.

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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

Let me take you back to a simpler time when people helped people.  I’m not talking about Little House on the Prairie times, but probably late-70s and early 80s where computers began to dominate the scene.  Since this time our fascination and zombie-like attitude toward information technology (IT) has continued . . . at great cost.

A combination of media, business and government  with unbridled exuberance has done nothing to . . . well, keep things in perspective.  When improvement is needed we turn to technology.  Innovation leadership can not be achieved without IT, correct?  Wrong, and not just wrong but costly wrong.

In our collective psyche we have managed to place IT on such a pedestal it has become a dominate industry, more so than the industries to which they serve.  But in a management paradox, IT has failed to deliver in many cases.  And I am not just talking about missed schedules and cost over-runs.

The problem is that in our rush to go paperless (never happened) and automate (not always a good idea), we lost track of the ability to design and manage work optimally.  The current thinking of outsourcing, shared services, business analytics, Business Process Management, IVRs would never have been possible without Information Technology.  But one question never seems to get asked, "Since IT can, should it?"

I have to say a resounding NO is in order.  In fact, I would submit to you that larger gains in innovation can be achieved through better thinking around the design and management of work and pulling IT into the work as needed is more in order.  Then maybe, just maybe we can learn that cost reduction and business improvement can come from better thinking and not IT.

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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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.




 

I just finished an ezine management article about American arrogance and our collective inability to change thinking, especially management thinking.   My belief is that we are still basking in the sun of our tremendous wealth that was produced between 1950-1968.  All until the Japanese came along and ate our collective lunches.  Bye! Bye! Manufacturing! But that’s OK we have service right?

Service industry with a huge competitive advantage in technology.  Oops! We outsource software development and hardware manufacturing.  After all, good management means a good IT outsourcing strategy to other countries.

Good call center management means that we lower transaction costs to add to that bottom line.  What fool wouldn’t want bigger short-term profits to hit that quarterly dividend target or bonus? 

Unfortunately, just like the Mesabi Iron Range . . . the cream is gone.  Our management style no longer achieves innovation leadership.  Instead we follow in the wake of our short-term thinking.  All the while thinking how great US management is.  Except for the awakening that we have fallen behind because we mistook good fortune for good management.

Leave me a comment. . . what do you think?!  Click on comments below.

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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

OK, Labor Day and I’m looking for a picture of istock.com that depicts the cooperation between workers and management . . . none found.  Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by the absence of such a picture.  The management and the work have been separated for far too long . . . one of the reasons we have too many chiefs and not enough indians.  You can either be counted as a manager that does something (command, control, edicts, policies, rules, etc.) to someone or be the someone and most people don’t like to be the someone.  Because the someone gets coaching, appraisals, targets, carrots, sticks and when things really get bad blamed or reduced.  If that isn’t enough, management gives the someone tools and technology that make the work harder.  By the way, I am not talking about your company . . . I’m talking about the other company.  Like Congress, it’s not MY representative it’s the other ones.

The problem with this in service is the culture and bad culture is expensive to maintain.  Think about if you aren’t having to inspect and monitor everything because of incentives, policies, compliance, etc., you have to inspect and monitor because of distrust.  Inspection and monitoring is expensive and adds to costs.  Firing is expensive because we have to hire another worker and train them and who knows the next someone may be worse than the someone you just had.

My modest proposal is to give the worker a better job to do.  When workers understand the purpose of the work is to serve customers and not targets and incentives, new measures emerge and these measures are relevant to the customer.  A far cry from the traditional measures given to them top-down with targets and incentives.  New measures and understanding of purpose give way to liberating method where the work becomes more interesting (as opposed to the prescribed method of telling what to do) and innovation follows.  This method leads to business improvement and corporate cost reductions (structure costs less to support) accompanied by improved culture.  Then maybe . . . just maybe we can find a picture of management and worker happily together at istock.com.

Leave me a comment. . . share your opinion!  Click on comments below.

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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

The appeal for a change of thinking in the design and management of work in US service organizations is one requiring a certain . . . attention.  So, as opposed to a change of thinking, a brain enema may seem more appropriate.  A complete flushing, not of gray matter, but of the flawed beliefs that inhabit the gray matter regarding business improvement.

What is at issue?  Quite a lot for service organizations, these items are well-documented on my website.  The command and control approach which is diametrically different than systems approach I promote (see command and control vs. systems thinking).  But the problems run deeper for me, as a "reformed" Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt I have seen more waste and sub-optimization than I care to post.  When you see that Lean and Six Sigma are very limiting compared to the magnitude of change that you get from a management brain enema.  I have seen black belt projects that save anywhere from $25,000 to $300,000, but with systems thinking the magnitude is far greater and systemic.  This is especially applicable to service and improvements come quickly.

What needs to be flushed?  One management paradigm to be expelled is the notion that work is activity and activity is cost.  The preoccupation with 3 questions:

How much work is there to do?
How many people will it take to do the work?
How long will it take people to do the work?

These questions lead to focus on the wrong things like targets, procedures, scripts technology, standardization and many other cost increasing, service decreasing actions.

Economies of flow has caught the attention of many readers.  Here is where we flush out the three questions (above) and look at our systems from the perspective of the customer outside-in and dump measures of activity to those associated with customer purpose.  The result is better service, increased capacity, reduced costs and improved culture.  Yes, even culture is improved as purpose is understood and better measures from the work a service company can allow the worker to engage their gray matter to improve method and even to innovate.  Sure beats the prescribed, command and control method that only audits compliance based on subjective criteria.

Flushing out the brain can lead to improved performance for your service company, but only if you replace it with better thinking.

Leave me a comment. . . I can take it!  Click on comments below.

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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

• inspection and monitoring believing they make quality services
• the belief that economies of scale will reduce costs
• the belief incentives will motivate people
• leaders need visions
• managers need targets
• technology to drive change

Businesses and government have become dysfunctional based on flawed thinking.  A better way to think about the design of work . . . we reference as systems thinking.  By taking people to the work and getting knowledge we can show them new ways to improve and it exposes problems to the way they currently think.  It is that shift in thinking, but egos and position get in the way.  The (typical) US mindset inhibits us from admitting mistakes in our thinking and moving on.  One is left to ask,"How could I have been so wrong about the design and management of work?"  It is to admit failure from some people’s mindset.

The Better way, you may never have heard of
The ability to discard thoughts of failure in favor of learning is a fine line.  Can we not learn or was that only for when we were in college?  The management paradox of new thinking may be the decider.


The above table offers a change to the fundamental thinking we have all been taught as the best way.  Our only hope is to continue to improve the way we think about the design and management of work.  There will always be a better way to do something.

The wonderful thing that happens as we change thinking is that we are given the ability to improve exponentially.  The improvements are large and will give any organization employing it an unprecedented competitive advantage in improving service, cutting costs, improving culture and innovation opportunities.

Looking for strategic change management that gives you wholesale business improvement requires a change to the fundamental thinking about work and how irt is managed.

Leave me a comment. . . I can take it!  Click on comments below.

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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

 

Talk about overused phrases in business . . . the phrase "best practice" is at the top of my list.  Annoyed by a word that can immediately shut down the brain.  While doing bank management consulting the Fortune 500 company I contracted with threw this word out consistently in discussions with customers.  "This is best practice to process applications this way" or "You really don’t want something different this is best practice", and often I would stand in disbelief as the banking customer or prospect actually believed it.  Rarely was there any evidence to support the "best practice", but even if there was, what purpose would it serve?

One thing drilled into my head through W. Edwards Deming, Taiichi Ohno and application is that organizations should never blindly copy.  The minute I heard that a bank was copying another bank I knew trouble would be found in time.  All systems/companies are as unique as each individual.  They have different structures, work design, management thinking, workers, skills, constraints, customers, demands, etc. And copying a process or idea from another company does not guarantee success and my experience is that either it flops or new ideas and thinking is stifled.

So What’s the Big Deal?
Simple, "best practice", copying and standard work and the like don’t allow the absorption of the variety of demand offered by service.  I love the Olympia Restaurant skit from Saturday Night Live (click here to watch).  This to me is what I see in service organizations.  They have built systems with "best practices" that don’t allow the customer to pull value.  It’s much simpler to code software, have standard work and scripts as the bean counters will say, "we saved money!"  Customer demands have variety and they say, "I’ll go somewhere else to get my demands satisfied." 

Taiichi Ohno built Toyota to handle variety of demand and in service the variety of demand is even greater.  Ohno understood that costs were not in "economies of scale" (another best practice), but that in a management paradox, costs were in demand and flow (economies of flow).  He understood that focus on flow reduced costs, focus on costs and costs will rise.  Further, by taking a systems thinking approach I have found that things like "best practices" inhibit flow.

Taking approaches such as "best practice" allow people to quit thinking and start doing.  But the approach Deming and Ohno pursued was that there was always a better way . . . so why stop thinking?  Each unique system has  everything you need to know to make it better.  There is no reason to seek a best practice, copying or benchmarking.

Our approach is to begin by getting knowledge in your system, but starting with "check." Check allows an organization to understand the "what and why" of current performance or get knowledge about their own unique system.  It is a better way.

Leave me a comment. . . I can take it!  Click on comments below.

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 or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

 

• The use of targets making the performance worse making them the defacto purpose rather than the customer.  Always people are focused inward vs. outward.
• Raising new specifications for compliance without knowledge to do so.
• The assumption that shared services will reduce costs. This thinking based on economies of scale rather than economies of flow.
• The waste of money by preparing for inspections and obviously supported and recognized by the comments at the Local Government Chronicle.

• Reign back its activities to following the money.
• Limit inspectors to one question: "What measures are you using to understand and improve performance?"
• Put measures and method with the local authorities to promote innovation and responsibility.

• Automate a manual system
• Replace "old" technology or an antiquated system
• Reduce costs

1. Technology becomes the solution and everything has to "fit";
2. Standard work/process/procedure and best practice make coding easier, but does not allow for the absorption of the variety of demand received;
3. Viewing customer demand from the inside-out rather than outside-in;
4. Schedules and due dates are achieved to satisfy completion requirements; and
5. Public and private sector organizations just don’t think this way.