I mentioned in the last blog that we’ve been scratching our heads harder on being social as opposed to using social media. Similar stuff, changed point of view. Tim Kitchin is a treasure chest of thinking who I first worked with back in his Ogilvy days, knew through his Glasshouse adventures and he’s the reason we’re in Charlotte St. Tim’s a member of our advisory board and director of stakeholder relations at CropLife.
Below is his commentary. Read it all the way through, its valuable. I’ve added Charles Leadbeater’s ANIMATION that resonates with his thinking at the bottom.
“Peter
I agree with your direction.
To build on it, today’s organisations run, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, on institutional cynicism. ‘Everybody’ knows that current structures, processes and management systems don’t work. They don’t prevent bad decisions, and they don’t manage positive outcomes and they don’t make people happy.
Because organisations have no conviction, they have no courage.
Because they have no honesty, they build no trust.
Because they are disjointed, they cannot improve.
Because they are too complex, there can be no accountability
This will only get worse. Markets are not factoring in the gigantic hidden risks of this fundamental loss of control, enabled and accelerated by information technology and management consultancy. Stakeholders cannot engage actively with organisations, because they have no meaningful or viable point of traction or leverage.
I suspect:
That (almost) all organisations underestimate the role of emotion and human inertia in innovation and transformation.
That (almost) all organisations are driven by what they feel compelled to do, rather than what they are inspired to do.
That (almost) all organisations fail to anticipate their own irrelevance/obsolescence.
That (almost) all individuals in any corporation are operating way below their personal potential.
That (almost) all organisations underestimate the importance of delivery to generate customer loyalty.
These frictions in the deep structure of the organisations create a tangible loss of opportunities and profit, through productivity-erosion, customer disloyalty, and regulatory handcuffs. These are the outwardly visible signs of a fundamental internal conflict between extrinsic goals and intrinsic capabilities.
In future, organisations will fail even more often and more profoundly as a result of this cynicism. Just as shareholders are entitled to ask whether free cashflow is better returned to shareholders, so stakeholders are entitled to ask whether free energy could be better employed in a different direction.
Tomorrow, because organisations are now too big to change, they will ultimately learn to live without control and instead function like political leaders. They will need to learn build stable and consensual structures from the bottom up and shore up existing processes through investment in soft skills of sensing and listening. Responsiveness and ‘followership’ will be key.
Instead of spending all their time trying to correct for failure, future organisations will experiment more and learn to build on, and celebrate small successes.
Six sigma and other quality thinking drives a negatively-framed control process – to reduce deviation from the norm.
The challenge of an organisation should be positively-framed, to raise the norm.
The role of consultants in this context is to offer plan B, and a plan C…based on an analysis of genuine competence to and a mapping stakeholder/market demand, rather than to refine and re-refine plan A, which may well be doomed to obsolescence – Microsoft? Nokia?
The scale and style of this intervention will be nano-scale consulting. Teeny nudges with unpredictable consequences.
Faced with this reality, organisations should use consultants to:
1. Pre-empt the business’s own demise, by starting anti-businesses
2. Use consultants’ freedom to move like oil within the structure of organisational culture, to allow them to cajole and inspire learning
3. Spot and address underutilisation of free energy
4. Encourage self-service/buyer-centricity, inside the corporation.
I envision a transition from matrix structures to community and corporo-political systems, with infrastructure, amenities, retail and services. All stakeholders are member of the community. Instead of titles and hierarchies, social credit buys goodwill and participation across the community.
In a world of cynicism, the only reliable weapon is innocence…nurturing the honest corporation.
Free-flow over. ;-)
Tim
Tim Kitchin”
Charles Leadbeater’s site We-think is another mine of information. Take a look at the animation. It reflects the context and challenge to traditional businesses and organisations. Succinctly.
After a fascinating few days chairing Contact Centre Week in Dublin, one always reflects on what new insights to share with colleagues on returning to the ranch.
Yes I loved BT’s Nicola Millard’s entertaining style – futurology and all that stuff. But I would because it’s the same stuff we already do today. It’s more today than tomorrow to be looking at new customer behaviours, blogs and wikis and new operating models for business with feedback built in.
I always love hearing more about first direct, Virgin and any company that bases its customer approach on how it treats its people, on its values. The basics of recognising people as people, and treating them accordingly, just shine through time and again.
But one thing struck a large note of curiosity and that was Virgin talking about generation Y and how they are different to work with. They had a great list of aspirations that went deeper than just what Virgin do, dressing down or dressing up.
So I did a bit of digging – take a look at some of the research into the 3 generations at work today – baby boomers, generation X and generation Y. And how it’s changing work as we know it into “Work 2.0”. Actually the trends just seem to be what we’d all want and reflect what many good businesses have done before anyway. Less patience with poor management or poor development is a good thing. Wanting more gyms and sabbaticals is hardly new.
Perhaps being prepared to stand up and take more risk to get it, this is where the difference lies with generation Y. I can’t help but admire the “balls” of gen Y to go out and get what they want. Well most of them. And not put up with something less, preferring to keep searching rather than do something less than what they want. That’s great if you got an education. And a disaster if you didn’t.
I’ll put away my UK crystal ball at this point as it’s gone a bit dark and nasty. In China and India every gen Y person and their gen X parents or baby boomer parents and grandparents want one thing – the best education you can get.
In some ways th gen Y behaviours are no surprise. I use my daughters as examples of this new generation at every opportunity when talking about customer behaviours. If you’re a student, you don’t knock next door to see who’s going for a drink, you IM them. What’s email when you can talk to several people in real time. If I can’t update my Bebo pages, how will people know that I’m alive?
Of course it left me very confused – being a perennial 18 year old, I can see all 3 sets of behaviours in what I do…..but I didn’t see how I recognise the 3 generations differently at work and manage their motivations differently. So I will look harder in future. Once I’ve understood the differences between men and women, this should be a piece of cake!
Heh its David Naylor birthday in Wednesday(www.budd.uk.com/founderdn.html) . He is still a teenager apparently as it’s his umpteenth birthday today. Which kinda made me notice that it’s Budd’s 6th birthday this week too!!
My US colleague Bill Price (http://www.drivasolutions.com/) also mailed about the 6th birthday as he started in the US at the same time having just left Amazon’s customer service with a world beating record. In March you’ll be able to read the book “The Best Service Is No Service” that he’s co-written with our Aussie colleague David Jaffe (http://www.limebridge.com.au/ ). He records that we have now worked for 72 clients in the US with top ones being well known names like Expedia, Dell, McDonald’s, Microsoft, CheckFree and Hyatt.
So how far have we got in the UK? 45 clients and counting – but heh does size matter when Brits last longer? Whoops, better be careful of Anglo-America relations given Bush n Basra.
It’s nice to be able to say thanks to prestigious companies such as Norwich Union, RIAS, HSBC, M&S, RBS, Axa, Nationwide and Pru in retail financial services; 3, Orange, Vodafone and Vertu in telecoms; AOL, Microsoft and Ingenico in technical support, not to mention many others.
So enough of the ads – what about the hindsight – what did we say 6 years ago, more importantly what are we saying about 6 years out?
Well 6 years ago we said the same stuff as we’re saying now. CRM is dead, fancy stuff doesn’t work. Brilliant basics is what customers want: The best service is no service, Fast+Simple experiences.
What’s new today is we’ve developed some sexy ways of getting those brilliant basics in place.
What’s it to be in 6 years time? 2013 – now that sounds spooky. What will be the big thing?
Well of the things being talked about today that I’d bet on, here are my top 6. What’s yours? 1) Most companies will still be thinking about doing good things for their customers rather than doing them 2) India will start offshoring calls to England 3) Self service will become ‘community service’ and become effective 4) The embedded web will be in most applications we use to work and play with; the idea of looking at the web will die out 5) Your granddad will be dictating software applications, it’ll be that simple; and my software will still crash daily 6) Buying will drive the way we do business, not selling ( ok may be I’m too optimistic – make that 12 years)
Send me your 6 year out bets….. Happy birthday David Peter
#humap what if 360 reviews said "how I feel as a result of working with u" rather than "what I think of u"08:01:25 PM February 02, 2012from web
don't you just hate turning up the airport early for a flight that doesn't exist.... And apols to those I'm missing today due to deadlines08:57:52 AM February 02, 2012from web
