The Cynic loves the organisation

When you pick it up a tool should fit your hand and way of working (like my Macbook and social computing in general) rather than requiring me to bio-reengineer my hand (and often my brain) to fit some idealistically designed and all too often fetishistic tool. 

Whilst Dave used this in a rant referring to KM approaches and Social Networking, but I am overwhelmed by the relevance to Lean and other forms of Business Process Re-engineering.

This relevance refers to some recent exposure to some zealots who have perpetuated every case-study of failure I have read of the Lean approach. It always seems to be a failure of leadership... I mean really, if it is always the same failure mode, surely one would've figured out the cure...

Or maybe Leadership is really just a figment of one's imaginations... but that is more the realm of Scott Adams.

So what does leadership do? Well it appears that they convert the low-level non-believers to this one true way of Business Improvement, but the hardened rebels and cynics are culled to make way. This then appears to constitute 'Success'.

So if you need to reengineer your organisation to make the approach work, maybe it is not the right tool... 

The title is also attributed to Dave Snowden

A Great Week

As I started in a recent post, this week is seeing the culmination of some big projects. The next one is an administration support review, which all but finished on Tuesday with a backlog cull.

The manager of the staff had been trapped by the sheer weight of their backlog, which had peaked at approximately 900 items ranging from emails, projects, reading etc.

Now, whilst I conducted it with GTD mindset on the recommendation of Iain. I was brought to back to earth by the comments of my supervisor that I was implementing a 2S instead of a 5S. This was only telling as I had particularly railed against some of the Lean zealots that seem to be popping up around the place.

To be fair, I have nothing against Lean or 5S and in fact think they are quite fine toolsets for the right problem or part thereof. The bit that intrigues me is that it seems to inspire cult-like followers that only ever speak of success except to note that when failure occurs that it was due to a like of higher management support... I don't think I am alone in suggesting that if failure is not publicly spoken about, it is more than a little suspicious.

In fact the Change Management Guide questioning approach was created in hope that some attention might be paid to the people (especially the ones who dared offer resistance or criticism), thus some potential to actually achieve a culture of continuous improvement.

Upon reflection, there were 4S (Shine would've been waste of time as these people were nearly OCD-style clean) used but in itself it was not a Lean intervention. There was far more invested in resolving some of the emotional issues such as stress and disengagement. I find that this merely confirms that the Lean stuff is just a hammer not everything is a nail.

The Exchange...

As mentioned in passing and inspired by a conversation with Iain today...

Selection for the Exchange is based on the submission of a project, I am thinking Engineering and Maintenance or Business Consulting (actually am preferring a combination)... So, I am looking for ideas...

The Yin-Yang of it

Alot of organisational change and focus is centred in Changing the Culture in a so-called positive way. I put to you the traditional change management principles of conversion through enthusiastic souls. By this I mean identifying Change Champions, and influencing Opinion Leaders and so forth. When the process is called out in this way, it sounds kind of sinister... In fact it reminds me of an atheist tale.

So then what of the counter-culture (I am looking for a better name for it)? We kind of know about this, I mean our anxiety must on average be correct some of the time when we suspect that everything is not fine... That sometimes the attitude at the proverbial watercooler is a little different to the 'Everything is awesome, Boss'... So what of this counter culture?

The current approach is to first try to convert them, picking off the weaker resistors, then claim the remaining Neutral ones and cry VICTORY in the name of Goodness!

I pose that the counterculture is equal in importance and represent some different views, are you so sure that your plan can withstand the critique? If not, then allow the plan to be improved... If so put it to the test... How? Encourage the questions...

To what end? We seem to be comfortable that things find their equilibrium, yet for some reason in organisations we engage in change that is out of balance...

Equilibrium does not mean stagnation, I think if we look around everything is changing and rebalancing thus why should an organisation be different? At any given time a thing may be in balance but over time it responds to its environment, thus change is inevitable...

So my thoughts are to embrace this so-thought darker side, otherwise an equal and opposite force will meet you in a less favourable way.

FARR CIO

I am not one to give out too many compliments, but I guess this case is special coz I also don't like to agree with the crowd. With this in mind, I have to take my hat off to Defence's CIO who's efforts have notedly changed the direction of CIOG over his tenure. I have no doubt that the tides had started to move under Monaghan, but I must say that the improvements in the Restricted Network has been phenomenal under Farr...


But it is a long way from being able to significantly input to Network-Centricity. A move toward being a Defence Capability with a tad of change management project could allow CIOG to drive Defence technology innovation.



If there were a Change Management Project underway somewhere, potentially dropping CIOG a copy of the Guide could help to allow the use of freeware in locally supervised sandboxes.


Help us if they think we are ready for this

The journey not the end...

If I were to tell you a story of a Superhero, you would expect a villain. And there would always be a villain or else the Superhero would become the villain and the people (police, DA etc) take the role of Superhero. (I am aware that this is more eloquently put by Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight)

Thus we have centered stories on a co-emergence for as long as Hero stories have been told... and even in Newtonian physics forces were described in this fashion. So why then do we engage in behaviours and expect it to asymmetrical benefits in the long term? If Lean is the Hero, who is the Villain?

And then there is from Villian to Hero

To draw on my observations... During a tender for outsourcing, a service provider may be able to underbid the incumbent which is a fantastic proposition (unless it is your job, but you will probably work for the outsource company anyway). But once the tenderer is selected what then occurs? the environmental constraints have changed and thus a lack of competition ensues and the performance adjusts the old environment and you run out of TP. So surely one might be able to see that the state of competition is in fact the better option and not the selection of the winner. I think that an attitude closer to this might allow us to avoid prescriptive recipe books like six stigma (Sorry Dave, I had to steal that... You can have Pathological Deconstruction)

I take this as not a mere coincidence but a fault of replicating the end conditions.

Or am I being too yin & yang?