How to Craft a Culture of Disruption- Valutrics
It should be clear by now that digital technology accelerates business cycles. Things that used to take place over days or weeks now occur in minutes. Not surprisingly, this changes everything about IT, and it extends far beyond bits and bytes.
One of the biggest obstacles on the path to progress, observes Mike Sutcliff, group chief executive at Accenture Digital, is the common refrain, “That’s not the way it works.” But this misses the point. “In the digital age, things don’t have to work a particular way,” he says.
In order to become an innovator and disruptor, an organization must adopt a risk-tolerant culture—one that spots possibilities and opportunities. That starts at the top. “You have to have a leadership team willing to test and learn with things that do not necessarily feel natural, if you actually want to gain a competitive advantage,” Sutcliff explains.
Senior executives across different groups and domains must work together, and they must understand the mechanics of business in ways that they may not have previously considered, he says.
All of this spans people and systems. “The traditional side of the business must learn to go faster,” Sutcliff says. “That’s unconformable, but it isn’t a choice. If the traditional systems of transactional processing and control can’t operate at a faster cycle, then someone else will be leapfrogging you in the marketplace.”
A key point, he says, is to understand that getting people in sync isn’t just a digital problem, it’s a general business problem. Different parts of the organization—sometimes serving different customer segments or constituencies, and with different levels of funding and expertise—typically attack the same problem on different timelines and from different angles.
That’s fine. Sutcliff says that it’s probably not possible, or even desirable, to sync the entire organization. “The real issue,” he says, “is, Does the management team have a process that can spot, react, and leverage ideas, breakthroughs and success stories in the fastest way possible.”
How can an organization accomplish all this? How can it transform the culture to support digital disruption? A strong governance model is critical, but it’s also important to introduce a high level of flexibility—including microservices, APIs and open architectures—so that it’s possible to spur innovation internally, but also build an ecosystem that extends to partners and others.
That, in the end, makes it possible to plug in technology and solutions in the most agile way possible and move your company at digital speed.
The shift to ad hoc
Today’s work environment is increasingly services oriented.
More employees perform “knowledge work,” characterized
by non-routine problem solving and regular use of
convergent, divergent, and creative thinking , often in real
time. Some estimates suggest that up to two-thirds of a
knowledge worker’s day is spent on ad hoc, unstructured
tasks that don’t follow standard, prescribed paths. These
ad hoc environments are increasingly common in claims
processing, customer service, and complaint management
functions, among others. Because these functions are
flatter organizational structures in which employees are
empowered to make more decisions, they cannot be
managed effectively – much less improved – using rigid
processes alone. Organizations should design effective continuous improvement processes that focus on value and
key objectives in order to enable flexibility on top of the
appropriate common process “chassis.”
Regardless of the level of flexibility or customization,
there are aspects of most processes that could or should
remain relatively consistent (the “chassis”) while also
striving toward common objectives. Take, for example,
how companies approach making enhancements to their
technology applications. Each enhancement can be very
different in nature – some may only require changing the
options on a drop-down menu, while others may require
a wholesale update of the underlying code. These teams
can adhere to a common set of basic activities (clarifying
customer needs, designing the change, testing it and
implementing), regardless of the complexity, while also
adhering to consistent objectives such as adherence to
delivery dates and customer satisfaction.
Adapting to 3D printing
For companies that manufacture goods, disruptive
technologies and processes such as additive manufacturing
(also called 3D printing) and robotics increasingly require
quick adaptation to stay ahead of competition. These
technologies and processes can lead to improved efficiency,
innovation, and bottom-line cost savings. However, these
innovations also have the potential to completely upend
conventional wisdom and approaches to continuous
improvement. A traditional Lean approach to identify and
remove waste to drive efficiency along the production line
may be usurped by this completely new way of delivering
value to the customer.
The very nature of the workforce is changing
Workforces are evolving to become a mixture of full-time
and part-time employees, contractors, and freelancers.
People also move more freely from role to role and
across organizational and geographic boundaries through both formal rotational programs and informal channels.
Increasingly, companies are rethinking their resource models
– moving toward project-based work models, building
new “labor supply chains,” and engaging the power of the
crowd – to respond to this desire and structural need for
flexibility. The implication for continuous improvement is
that knowledge transfer, documentation, communication,
learning, and accountability measures are more important
than ever before.
Big data creates big opportunities and big challenges
With increasing access to troves of rich and varied data
from diverse sources, businesses should be able to more
easily identify opportunities to improve. In particular,
data analytics (backward looking) and predictive analytics
(forward looking) make it easier for companies to find
patterns in data, which can help to increase customer
value. However, knowing which analytics tools to invest in
and having personnel with the knowledge and skills who
can generate the most relevant outputs from big data
remain significant challenges. This may require continuous
improvement professionals – either within the organization
or external advisors, or some combination thereof – to
elevate their “game” by:
• Understanding which data sources to tap
• Formulating questions and hypotheses that lead to
targeted and efficient data analysis
• Interpreting the results in the appropriate context
including both the continuous improvement program as
well as the broader business priorities
• Communicating results to stakeholders in compelling
and actionable ways so that they don’t get lost amid the
“noise” of other day-to-day activities
Outside the rink, effectively embedding a culture of
continuous improvement continues to be a source of
significant, transformational value for businesses
worldwide. The fact that the work environment is rapidly
evolving, driven by economic, cultural, and technological
changes, makes a continuous improvement culture both a
strategic imperative and a growing challenge.