Using your company’s services like a customer: your chance to learn and change?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by lawrence serewicz
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Ca...

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In a recent blog post, Dan Lee had an excellent suggestion that gets to the heart of local government improvement. On point 12 of the post, he suggested that

 “Use local government services like a resident would to see how you can improve things. Then tell someone how it can be improved.”

In this small suggestion, we see two powerful ideas for any organisation.  First, how do we look at what we provide our customers? Do we look at our business from the customer’s perspective or from the needs of the business? How do we reconcile them if they conflict? To that end, how often do senior managers “mystery shop” their own business or competitors for themselves? Second, how well do we learn from the feedback that we receive formally and informally from our service users?

 

One way would be to sample the call centre to see how customers are treated or to use the services offered by their own company or another company to see how it is done. Robert McNamara, before he became Secretary of Defence under John F. Kennedy, was the President of Ford Motor Company. In that role, he used to travel widely to Europe. When he would arrive at the airport, he would always rent a car made by his competitors (at the time Opal). His subordinates could not understand why he would not drive the “free” car offered by his own company.

What they did not understand, but he would explain later, was that he was trying to understand what his competitors offered and was personally quality testing their cars against his own. In that small act, he was sending powerful message by showing his commitment to understanding, and overcoming, his competitors. At the same time, he was demonstrating a focus on improving his own product to be better than others. As such, this was not simply benchmarking, but literally experiencing the service offered by others.

The same point can be seen in the blog Take a Number where the author visited Lambeth services to get a parking permit. The post is an excellent way that social media can highlight areas of development. The Council responded the next day to the blog. Setting out what had changed and what other options existed.

I did something similar when I worked at Starbucks as a barista. I used to visit other coffee shops in the area to see what they were doing. I would order their coffee to compare the taste as well as the service. I am curious about things and I love coffee so the visits were fun and informative. However, some diehards believed that was being “disloyal” or suggesting that the competitor was better.  What they missed was the fact that I was trying to find ways to improve and see the service from a different perspective. As Peter Drucker said, you may have 20% of all customers in the market, but that means you also do not have 80% so you had better study the 80% to see what they want.

Moreover, the key point of being able to notice ways to improve is to have a way to suggest those improvements so they are implemented. Does your organisation have a global “suggestion box” or something to help capture the learning within the organisation? Without that mechanism, or the empowerment to improve your own service, how do we affect change?

One could suggest that a suggestion box or an improvement system is a barometer for a learning organisation.  How well does your organisation capture and respond to suggestions to improve from both customers and staff? At the same time, do we use mystery shopping with our services to understand how they work? In that regard, social media, as suggested by Lambeth’s quick response to the post, can offer a way to consider the services we provide from the view of the user or the general public in a similar, if less formal way, that we can get feedback from citizen panels.  Finally, it takes senior managers to have the same culture and approach to learning but also to experimenting.  They, like Robert McNamara must have the opportunity to see how the other companies in the market are providing the same or similar service for themselves.

Posted in change managment, culture, customer service, innovation, local government, management | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The myth of the rogue employee: rotten barrels create rotten apples

Posted on January 7, 2012 by lawrence serewicz
No Myth

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Often people will say that a problem has happened because of one “rogue” employee (reporter, cop, trader, or whatever). This is a myth, a dangerous myth. Why is this a myth? All employees work and operate within an organisational context. For a rogue employee to exist, and operate, there has to be a lack of organisational (managerial) oversight. As Susan Silbey describes it there has to a rotten barrel to create a rotten apple.  A case in point is the trader who squanders billions in trades. Someone has to either look the other way or enable these trades. They rarely, if ever, have the sole discretion to engage that size of money in single unauthorised trades because of the internal controls all trading houses have in place.  In a sense, the rogue employee argument is a tacit or implicit admittance that the organisational control system is broken.  In that sense, the “rogue” employee is a dangerous myth because it is an attempt to cover systemic issues.

When a rogue employee defence is used, it is also an admission that the internal communication system, where negative (or critical) information is not being communicated upwards, is not working. https://openair.rgu.ac.uk/bitstream/10059/190/1/LRPpaper1.pdf

By that, I mean, junior employees, immediate subordinates, or colleagues, do not feel or believe they should communicate such “rogue” behaviour upwards.  They may look away because they are complicit, or because they fear for the own position, or because they do not care so long as it does not affect them personally.  “I’m ok so who cares if the organisation is going to be harmed, so long as I am safe”.

One of the more pernicious uses of this myth recently has been by the News of the World. The management there and in the News Corp consistently and persistently insisted there was one rogue reporter.  Even as the evidence mounted that this was not the case, the defence was still used.  Yet, the defence, undoubtedly developed for managerial reasons as well as legal reasons, left the organisation vulnerable to its unravelling. Once it was proven otherwise, the whole defence crumbled.  As it crumbled, the News of the World episode showed why the rogue employee is a myth and showed the corrupt culture within parts of the News of the World and News Corp.

What the episode demonstrated was that all employees rely upon the organisational structure to do their job. They need access to money and other resources to do their job. To get these resources, they rely upon the organisation and their colleagues. In this, someone else is going to know or be involved in their activity.  In some cases, the co-workers may be unaware of the activity or its extent. However, even a small amount of wrongdoing is going to be known by others simply through conversation and observation from interacting on a daily basis. For example, a rogue cop who has sex with female crime suspects or victims in a police station will start to raise suspicions. Why are there so many women in his company? Is he working on sexual assault cases? Why are the women always distraught after their interaction? Why is he always alone with female crime suspects? In that way an officer will start to exhibit a pattern of behaviour that his colleagues will either suspect, or know, is wrong.  Substitute the terms complaints from suspects or missing drug money and the story is the same. in a sense, there is no smoke without a fire.

What the rogue employee myth allows the fellow employees to feel that they have no responsibility for their colleagues’ behaviour.  At the same time, it presents a false, deceptive, dangerous image to the public. They are being led to believe there are no systemic problems within an organisation where the “rogue” employee emerged, but in reality, the organisation remains corrupted.  The culture and environment that allowed that rogue employee to exist and thrive, until their downfall, still exists. Only at the point where an organisation recognises the organisational or systemic problem will the trust be restored.

This is similar to but not the same as the rotten apple theory.  The rotten apple theory was often used to explain “rogue” cops. Everyone else was clean except this rogue officer. However, this argument no longer holds within police forces within the United States.  Instead, the argument is that the barrel becomes rotten before rotten apples emerge. Moreover, rotten apple theory does not explain why rogue police officers tend to exist within specific forces or specific areas within a force rather than across police as a whole.  In many ways, the rogue employee is more likely in a field where organisations are self-regulating, but that only explains how they emerge rather than how they operate. Although, for industries, like the international financial trading/banking, that rely heavily on self-regulating, it shows how important culture of compliance is by its absence.

The rotten or bad apple theory is also important for another reason. The psychological strength and structure of teams is the life blood of an organisations. The modern organisation is more a collection of interconnected teams rather than a mass of individual employees. In this sense, the modern organisation is more resilient and the chance of a rogue employee is reduced. However, the team structure of organisations shows that a reliance on them is less viable. What one may find is that “rotten apples” are employees who undermine team performance and in turn weaken the organisation.  In that sense, rotten apple employees (in any industry) can occur, but their effect can be limited. However, this is a different issue (team and organisational efficacy) than individually corrupt employees acting “rogue.”  In other words, even a rogue employee is still part of a team and team controls can limit their effect.

What you should consider the next time someone offers the “rogue employee” myth are the following questions.

  • Where was their manager?
  • What organisational controls are in place?
  • Where they applied correctly?
  • What system do you have for employees to pass critical (negative) information upwards?

How often is the crticial upwards communication system used? By that, I do not mean whistleblowing. Whistleblowing is an external activity. Instead, this is about how often fellow employees or other managers reporting the “rogue” employee’s behaviour.  To the extent that they were, you will find a healthy internal environment. To the extent that they were not reported, you will find an unhealthy internal environment.  In that sense, you will find the rotten apples revealing a rotten barrel.

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Posted in coruption, culture, management, phone hacking | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Do we still have typing pools?: Why culture trumps technology even social media

Posted on January 2, 2012 by lawrence serewicz
Screenshot of "Garys Social Media Count"

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Dan Slee posted an interesting and provocative post with predictions about the future of social media in local government. http://danslee.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/epic-change-12-predictions-in-digital-in-local-government-for-2012/  I thought I would give my response and my prediction at the end.

Overall, I tend to agree with him that social media will change local government, but not in the ways suggested in his post. For the most part, culture trumps technology. In many ways, technology simply reinforces rather than changes cultures within organisations.  As such, this is a general post about technology, innovation, and culture and is not reflective of any organisation or culture.  The comments are speculative and designed to develop a discussion rather than analyse how any particular organisation, including my own, works.

I would imagine that after the advent of the PC many organisations retained typing pools. Even today, it would not be unheard of for organisations to keep such institutions. Why? The technology is there for people to work differently, but the culture and the incentive to work differently do not exist. Even today, in the age of voice recognition software that would allow one to capture dictation or PDAs that allow people to enter the data directly, there will be services or organisations that rely upon typists.

The reason for this is that they have not seen the need to change. Some may use the typing pool less, but others will use it. Why? Because people hate change and the established ways of working, which give a return on investment and a certain measure of success, do work. Even if the success is sub-optimal, the success remains tangible and real to those who seek to defend it.  In these situations, the benefits from change are not manifested in the new technology so the culture does not need to change.

What may change this is if senior managers, from the CX down, adapt and adopt new ways of working. However, even that is not a certain success because of the cultural issues (the generational issue (not related to age) about the systems and practices by which they succeeded. One can also see this as cultural path dependency. For example, if someone was successful with a Mac, they are unlikely to switch suddenly or voluntarily to using a PC. Therefore, if they are exposed to social media, say twitter and blogging, they may take it up as a novelty, they may even see it has its uses, but neither of these will be sufficient to change them or the organisation. They will need to see how these are applied, how they can improve performance, deliver results, and lead to the promised changes. All of this is very unlikely, as the senior managers do not have time to innovate and to “play around” with tools when they are trying to deliver efficiencies and performance results.

None of this is to say that senior managers are uninterested or resistant to social media or tools that will improve performance and outcomes. Instead, it is to say that institutional and cultural constraints will trump technology each time. For example, the idea that social media will become embedded assumes too much latitude and flexibility within local government at this time. Again, this is not to say that local government is inflexibility or resistant to change, far from it, instead it is to say that culture is risk averse. As such, the organisation or services will resist having an officer blogging or tweeting about work. Yes, there may be an information channel, but what the public want are opinions and explanations and these are usually fraught with political (both party and organisational political difficulties). Organisations want to control their message within their services and communities so I do not see 2012 as a year it will become embedded and bullet proof. For this reason, JFDI will continue.

 

The reason JFDI will continue is that organisations still have not mastered the art or the culture of internal communications. To the extent that JFDI or a “skunk works” exists (beyond those that are purposefully created) exists, is because internal communication is limited. By that I mean, organisations that culturally have a weaker internal communication system will be one where innovations occur through JFDI. This is a speculative hypothesis without any evidence (yet) to support it.  I would say a JFDI culture is more likely to occur because people do not know of other innovations or know how to connect that innovation across the organisation. They are more likely to seek forgiveness than permission. I would suggest that if an organisation has an internal social media platform, like Yammer, it could more easily share and innovate. In those organisations, the JFDI gets reduced because the innovations can gain traction because it is being communicated (and supported) more widely. In those organisations, I would suggest that the incentive to innovate exists. However, that returns us back to the original point: culture. Organisations, if they are to embrace and embed social media, will need to have the culture that creates the incentive for initiative.

Social media, by its nature, requires initiative and innovation to succeed. In doing so one must have create incentives to encourage initiative and innovation in local government. However, innovation and initiative requires an appetite for risk and local government, by its nature is risk averse (to varying degrees.) To the extent that it is risk averse and centrally controlled, there will be less incentive to innovate. Moreover, if the senior management, from the CX down, are focused on performance and delivery, they too will have less incentive to innovate even if they wish to encourage initiative and innovation.

In the end, I think changes are coming, but the urgency has not yet been created for the success of social media and its potential for transforming local government. I think digital will have a bigger effect in the ways that it replaces work. My prediction is that 2012 will see the first large scale approach to using algorithm-based systems to replace any services that have forms and judgements about those forms within their work. To the extent that forms are the basis for the work, such as benefits or planning applications, the more likely they can be replaced by algorithm-based systems that need fewer people. In much the same way that algorithms are, reducing the need for large number of attorneys to plough through documents looking for information under discovery motions, so the same will apply to other paper based systems. Organisations can outsource such work to smaller firms and cut their overhead while delivering the same service.  In doing so, they deliver the results, it is less risky, and it fits within a cultural framework that is understood.

 

To that extent, I think digital will transform local government but not in the ways we expect.

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Why Facebook and Google’s strengths are their strategic weakness: privacy and search logic become their downfall.

Posted on December 26, 2011 by lawrence serewicz
Architecture of a Web crawler.

Image via Wikipedia Web Crawler architecture

Google and Facebook are similar in many ways because they both work to find ways to profit from their service users.  In their own way, they want to take advantage of their respective strengths.  Yet, in this task, they show a strategic weakness.  What has made them powerful competitors is their weakness. Of the two, Facebook has the largest downside because it does not offer a service in the way that Google does, which means when its core business is potentially unsustainable.  In understanding Facebook’s weakness, we have an insight into Google’s weakness.

For Google, the search company, the task is to profit from the traffic through their site.  At one level, this comes from advertising, but to a lesser amount than Facebook. Google’s reliance on advertising means they are limited by the traffic, volume, and loyalty. At the root of their success, is the strength of their search engine, which is core to all their services.  Yet, by itself, that is not enough profit because they are not capturing much profit from the interactions.  In other words, they have volume and even loyalty, but they have not found a way to turn it into profit.  By contrast, Facebook offers loyalty, volume, and interactions, but they offer no service beyond hosting other people’s information and their interactions.  What each needs is what the other has.  Facebook wants to capture the value from the volume that Google possesses while Google wants the loyalty and residual value within each user.

In their own way, their search for revenue beyond advertising is revealing their weakness.  To put it simply, they both traffic in users privacy.  Although, Facebook’s business model relies upon advertising in its network and relies upon user-generated content, it trades on user privacy. Both companies are seeking to profit from user interactions. For a robust assessment of how Facebook’s business model can become a vicious, and not virtuous circle, in its use of privacy see Alan Patrick’s blog. http://www.broadstuff.com/archives/2214-The-underlying-flaw-in-Facebooks-business-model.html  and a related Harvard Business Review blog: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/05/facebooks_culture_problem_may.html  For an assessment of Google’s problems with privacy: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-02/tech/30349396_1_google-docs-user-data-google-and-microsoft

What the internet allows is a company to exploit user interactions and transitions. Google and Facebook are the best at capturing and monitoring these transitions. They are able to exploit what their users like, whom they interact with, and how they shop and browse. The companies can identify behavioural-based marketing for their users.  In the physical world, these interactions were ignored. For the most part, they were ignored because they were so hard to capture. However, the algorithm and behavioural advertising and marketing mean they can be exploited.  http://behavioraltargeting.biz/how-behavioral-targeting-changes-the-web/

Facebook’s success relies upon users trusting it with their privacy. The users then generate content. The company’s relies upon behavioural marketing of their privacy, preferences, and transactions.  Without users to generate that information, it is not a commercially viable site.

 

In the end, its weakness is that the public will slowly realize, especially from the behaviour algorithms, that their privacy is under threat and they are the engine of Facebook’s profit. In particular, the users will realize they are not benefitting from this service. Even if users do not turn away from Facebook’s privacy issues, the legislation around behavioural marketing may end up doing the same thing. http://consumercal.blogspot.com/2011/03/privacy-internet-and-new-legislation.html

 

Google has a similar problem because it is trying to find an alternative service beyond its search engine. As Google also trades in user privacy, tracking, tracing and marketing users, it faces privacy issues.  However, it still provides a service, its search engine that does not rely upon privacy. Yet, that underlying strength is also a strategic weakness.  One can see this in the search grammar one has to use to find * anything* through their search engine. http://www.howtogeek.com/98698/improve-your-google-search-skills-infographic/

The grammar fits their engine but this is not how the public search nor is it how the web is being structured. Instead, the public want, and they are increasingly turning to, semantic search engines. The future of the web, and most importantly searching, is a semantic based web. What semantic means is natural language and grammar are the search terms and search logic. What supports these are algorithms that allow the words to be searched as part of a pattern or concept *without the user have to designate the logic* which reduces their need to know a search language.  Google is aware of this issue and is trying to overcome it.

http://semanticweb.com/the-evolution-of-search-at-google_b25042

 

If Google is to get to the next stage, beyond relying upon advertising, it has to change its search engine to be user-friendly.  By that I mean, it has to be intuitive to use in the way that semantic web allows.  In many ways, records management is moving in this direction and the search engines need to adapt. On the relationship of search engines and records management, see my article “Do we need bigger buckets or better search engines?: The challenge of unlimited storage and semantic web search for records management”, Records Management Journal, Vol. 20 Iss: 2, pp.172 – 181. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1875526  Services such as those provided by Autonomy (an HP company) http://www.autonomy.com/content/News/Releases/2008/1028.en.html seem to be the way that records management, and by inference, those of search engines seem to be heading.

In the end, both Facebook and Google face similar problems about privacy. It appears Google is better placed to adapt. However, it still faces difficulty with regard to its core search industry as it seeks to support its place and expand into other markets.

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Meet and greet: using the festive season for cross departmental meetings.

Posted on December 20, 2011 by lawrence serewicz

With the holiday season upon us, it is important to reflect upon the meetings we are hosting and attending.  At these times, it is important to remember Peter Drucker’s advice in following Alfred Sloan.  All meeting have a purpose and only one purpose. Trying to combine meeting types and meeting purposes is a recipe for confusion and lost productivity.

One example is the urge to use holiday gatherings as a business purpose such as a year end summary or a look ahead for the coming year.  This is fine in itself. Yet, what happens is that managers attempt  to turn these into social events that are meet, greet and team building.  By trying to make these into hybrid meetings, they fail in both efforts.  They cannot decide whether to talk to the staff, give them a briefing, or have a dialogue and shared conversation.  In worst case scenario, they are turned into impromptu focus groups where staff are being asked to comment and contribute to the future strategy.

The challenge is to let staff know what type of meeting they are attending and preparing the occassion.  For example, if the meeting is to be team building across an organisation or departments, it is important to have name tags.  First, this helps break the ice because most people work inside teams rather than across them so one iteration beyond that team, the chances decrease that they will know the other staff by name. Second it helps to change the dynamic by placing everyone on the same level.

If the meeting is about team interactions, then the whole setting should facilitate that aim for eexample, seating could be by assignment to keep teams from sitting together. Otherwise you reinforce the walls rather than the interactions across teams. At the same time, the event can be broken into opportunities to mingle and interact either at the beginning or the end.  At one level this can seem contrived and artificial, yet one has to consider whether the “natural interactions” are sufficient to make the necessary connections. The best parties, like the best meetings, have a hidden structure that keeps them flowing even as they appear without structure or agenda.

In the end, the more the participants know what to expect the better their participation and productivity. If they come expecting a dialogue and discussion and get a monologue and a presentation, the less chance the meeting has of serving it intended purpose.

So by all means have a holiday get together but don’t confuse the festivities with a focus group othersie you are likely to get more coal than candy.

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Outsourcing Records Management and Archives: A hypothesis in search of evidence

Posted on November 26, 2011 by lawrence serewicz
Records Life Cycle consisting three stages: cr...

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In today’s financially constrained times, there is a search to find ways to do more with less yet increase efficiency and effectiveness with records management.  One area where savings and efficiencies have been promised is in records management.***  In particular, the promise of the digital age, where paper is reduced and all records can be tagged, searched, and held securely, offers that type of hope.  One is tempted to say hype, but the reality is that for many organisations is digital.  Yet, paper, and the paper-based record, remains the backbone of many organisations even if their central nervous system is electronic.  Thus, they have a records management requirement to handle large volume of paper records.

 

Local authorities in the United Kingdom have to find creative and effective ways to manage their business records. Their task is to make the digital and the paper work together.  For some authorities, they solve this by outsourcing their records management function.  For others, they solve the issue by retaining an in-house records management function.  Both have their merits and drawbacks.  Yet, there is a relationship that is often overlooked. Some organisations are public records depositories.  They have a legally prescribed archival function. What do they do about records management?

For these authorities, there is an inbuilt archival function.  As such, they may face constraints if they decide to outsource the records management function.  In local government, the smaller authorities are not public record depositories so they do not face this issue.   The challenge raised the following hypothesis for me. I am now in search of evidence to test it.  The hypothesis has some further implications for the choice between internal and external provider records management function.

My hypothesis is this: Are authorities that are public record depositories more likely to have in house records storage function than authorities that are not public record depositories?

On one level, there should be a strong positive correlation. However, there could be strong negative correlation because they are seen as two distinction functions within an organisation.

I would be interested to know how authorities that are public record depositories handle their records management.  Do you have both in house? Alternatively, do you have your business records (day-to-day storage requirements) externally provided?

My hypothesis is based on a basic division between records management and archives.  By this, I mean that what is in the depository is “archived”. The records are inactive business records.   By contrast, the semi-permanent “active” business records, which may be needed on a daily basis, are ones that need to managed for access and control purposes.

If the two are strongly correlated, organisations that have the “archive” responsibility also have an in-house storage, what are the outcomes? Do they find that it is more cost effective and efficient to keep them together? Alternatively, is that effectiveness and efficiency less than what is found for those who keep the two separate?  If they are negatively correlated, so that “archive” responsibility is in house and “active” documents are managed externally, are the more cost effective and efficient than those who join them together?  Finally, for organisations that have no archival function, does the hypothesis stand up? Are you more or less likely to keep your records in house? If you do, is that more or less effective and efficient than if you made it external?

I would be interested to know the experience of others on this issue. Is it a good business case for in house or external records management?  The decision may depend on whether they are strongly positively or negatively correlated *and* if the offer (or fail to offer) efficiencies and cost effectiveness.

Whatever the outcome, the authorities that are public record depositories have a particular challenge in integrating it, if at all, with their records management function.

***Here is a sample of companies offering services that will outsource records management.

http://www.tab.com/Implementation-Services/File-Room-Management.aspx

http://www.dahill.com/esolutions/Software-Solutions/DocuShare/pdfs/xgs_whitepaper_records_management_outsourcing.pdf

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/9/prweb8792592.htm

 

Please note that I am not endorsing these services or products. I found these first with an online search.

 

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Posted in knowledge worker, local government, management, records management | 4 Comments

Media response to a political crisis is different from business crisis: lessons for Microsoft

Posted on November 22, 2011 by lawrence serewicz

The difference between a political crisis and a business crisis, from a media response perspective might be small, but it is important.  The structure to a political crisis has a different focus and context. Politics is structured around wrestling in that the goal is not to “solve” an issue but to create the best solution for the problem when with the resources available. Once done, the task is to move to the next issue without focusing on the previous issues, unless they re-emerge.  By contrast, managers, though political with a small “p”, run business.  Managers are good at solving problems or facilitating solutions by others. They seek to solve the problem and the solution is constantly tended and nurtured with the focus on fending off future threats to that solution.  I argue the two cultures are fundamentally different and that difference has to be understood in the crisis response. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_management

The political context requires obfuscation and denial as the politician or the political organisation seeks to rebalance itself within the political context.  The goal is not so much to solve the problem as to make it get smaller or go away.  By contrast, the business scandal does not go away and cannot be made smaller so the business can be rebalanced within the business climate.  In that regard, the business crisis usually ends up in the courts.  The political crisis may get to the courts, but for the most part as soon, it leaves the political domain it ceases to have bearing because the revelations and the damage are known. What are left are the consequences and not the crisis itself.

The business crisis usually seeks to use the same techniques as the political crisis because the media advisers work through those assumptions.  For example, the recent scandals at Microsoft show the problems associated with the “political” approach to managing the media side of the crisis.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/8901043/Scandal-hit-Microsoft-admits-blow-to-morale.html

In this story, about sexual harassment, the Microsoft media team try to counter this by downplaying the issue, stressing the family friendly policies and programmes, and taking umbrage at the claims.  The following, taken from the article above, show the approach.

“Our staff were not happy to see Microsoft’s name in your paper, in that way,” “Nobody likes to hear those kind of stories about their own company. Inevitably it causes people to look at it very hard and – you know, we were quite upset by it.”

Since then, Microsoft has not taken any direct measures to change its culture because, the picture painted by the legal battle is “very difficult to square” with what he knows of the company: “I see a very open, respectful culture -constructively self critical. We’re a business like any other business.”

“We’ve got bump-to-balance clubs when they come back to work. We do an awful lot around supporting diversity…in its broadest possible sense,

In effect, the goal is to avoid the issue, focus on the positives, and rubbish the negative comments.  The problem, though, is that it amounts to a denial.  Therein lies the problem. By this approach, the message runs contrary to the business ethos of problem solving.  A stronger approach would be to admit there is a problem, agree to investigate it, and then if wrongdoing is discovered punish it.  Instead, the denial only creates further problems.  More and more witnesses and victims come out wanting to tell their story.  As a result, the media stories continue, which reiterate the problem that Microsoft is trying to deny or downplay.

On the surface, the current approach could work if there was no underlying problem. However, the problem exists in the form of lawsuits and emerging claims.  The goal now has to be see it as a problem that needs to be solved. However, the issue is one tied intimately to the organisation, which makes a problem solving approach.  The hierarchy now realize that the problem reflects the senior corporate culture, which in turn requires a fundamental change.  As the fish rots from the head down, the problem can only be solved at the top.  Yet, that is where the denial is deepest because to admit that it exists invalidates the senior team’s status.

What makes the crisis troubling for Microsoft is that it is similar to the dysfunction in Enron. The culture shares many similarities.  First, they both rely heavily on the rank and yank culture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve  See also this assessment of Enron’s rank and yank culture. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,129988,00.html The apparent sexual harassment culture that seems to emerge with each scandal shares some similarities with what was beneath the surface at Enron. http://crab.rutgers.edu/~mchugh/Enron_s%20Dirty%20Laundry.htm Now, like Enron, analysts have become sceptical of the business.  One hopes that the accountancy issues that brought Enron down are not lurking in the shadows. Even if there are no accountancy issues, Microsoft has to look at its corporate culture.

A fish rots from the head down and the inside.

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Does the fish rot from the head down? When organisations go toxic

Posted on November 21, 2011 by lawrence serewicz
Xenophon (431-355 BC), a Greek mercenary comma...

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An ancient phrase says that a fish rots from the head down.  The phrase is known in China as well as Europe in the middle ages. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fish-rot-from-the-head-down.html  What is interesting about the consistency between the meanings for the phrase is the idea that the top determines the content.  Therefore, if the leader is tyrannical, then the organisation will follow suit.

In many ways, the great corporate scandals have reflected the problem of a fish rotting from the head. Enron was a case study in leadership gone nearly amok. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron The Chairman (Ken Lay) unable or unwilling to intervene and see the problems for what they were.  A Chief Operating Officer (Jeffrey Skilling) pursuing personal gains that became a criminal activity.

A good business advice article applied this phrase to show how leaders set the tone within the company. http://www.smartbiz.com/article/articleview/228/2/3/.  On the surface, this makes sense.  If the leader is dour and demanding, the staff will be defensive and seek to avoid blame.  If the leader is supportive and outgoing, the staff will show it.  However, there are some issues to consider.

First, such a theory assumes that the leader’s will is all determining.  Many organisations thrive despite weakness, venality, or tyranny at the top.  In all but a few cases, the leaders only are able to influence their immediate reports and a few others.  Their own role is only part of the story.  What we need to consider is something else.

The second issue to consider is that for a leader to disrupt their organisation or create a toxic atmosphere, they need people to enable them.  There has to be officers willing to comply with the tyrannical aims, the venality, or the toxicity for their own purposes.  They may do this out of fear, or favour, or simply because they subscribe to the same views and approach.  At the same time, though, there is a third area to consider, the organisational structure.

For any organisation to go toxic, there has to be an organisational structure, that allows the toxicity to take root and then to flourish.  Here is where transparency and accountability within corporate governance can help, but also where it can hinder.  I say hinder because as these organisational checks are undermined (over time) the organisation starts to weaken, become vulnerable to corruption, and then becomes toxic.  The case of Doncaster Borough Council is indicative of change over time.  The problems developed and festered over 15 years before the Government took the dramatic step of direct intervention to resolve the toxicity.  The problem did not develop in an instant or because of one person. The toxicity developed over time and because of the people and the systems.  The press release is here: http://www.communities.gov.uk/newsstories/localgovernment/1587704112   The full audit report is here:http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/inspection-assessment/local-gov-inspection/reports/Pages/201004doncastermetropolitanboroughcouncilcorporategovernanceinspection.aspx

What this illustrates is a problem endemic since ancient times.  The desire to understand, and if possible overcome, the decline and fall of regimes.  For the ancient philosophers, the question was to find a regime that would not decay or be destroyed from within and still be amenable to the good life.  While Sparta survived for over 1000 years, its internal life was not conducive to philosophy.  As such, the goal was to find and sustain a decent political order.  To that end, the philosophers looked at the sources of corruption within a regime and why they decline.  In particular, Xenophon looked at the example of Cyrus the Great. He came to power, changed Persian customs and after he died, his empire collapsed. (From Republic to Empire: Political Revolution and the Common Good in Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus, Nadon, Christopher American Political Science Review 1996, Vol 90; Number 2, pages 361-374.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2082890)  What was interesting within this example, is how Cyrus worked to change the institutions within the Country to achieve his ends.  In that regard, the small changes became larger problems. To be sure, he was a dynamic leader casting great influence across the regime, and yet, he changed the institutions that would have resisted or at least curtailed the excesses of his vision.

In modern organisation, the same institutions exist.  In the case of Enron, the Board of Trustees was slowly undermined by the profits as well as the lack of information needed to curtail the excesses.  When they did find out, it was too late for the organisation. In another area, the HR function worked to corrupt the organisation.  The rank and yank process for selecting managers for promotion or retention became corrupted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve The appraisal system, intended to reward initiative, talent, and hard work, became an instrument for discipline, dismissal, and favouritism. What is particularly interesting is the following article that describes Skilling’s role in developing that culture. http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jan/27/news/mn-25002

For stronger view of HR’s role in Enron’s problem, see the following: http://www.drjohnsullivan.com/newsletter-archives/46-did-hr-cause-the-downfall-of-enron

At the same time, the institutions and the people within the organisation matter as well.  The leaders may set a tone, but it is the people and the institutions that slowly bend to their will or dismiss them.  For example, the rise of a blame culture or a blame avoidance culture is only partial directed from the top.  Senior managers as well as middle managers have a choice as to whether to work that way or to encourage it.  In many ways, the blame avoidance culture can be a sign of emergent toxicity. Here is a good description of the issue by Christopher Hood but related to a different issue of transparency and blame avoidance.

“That is why a number of widely observed but often-criticized behavioural patterns in public management seem to constitute a set of agency, policy and presentational strategies that lie precisely on this troubled frontier territory between the force of transparency and the apparent imperative of blame-avoidance. Examples include the well-known phenomenon of managers ‘managing to audit’ to minimize the risk of blame, the learning problems that arise in politicized blame-obsessed organizations where any admission of failure is taboo and apparent disproportionality in approaches to some kinds of risk (such as ‘gold-plating’ in the transposition of guidelines or directives to lower levels, efforts to eliminate the last few per cent of any problem, irrespective of cost (Breyer 1993), and a preference for blind rule-following over common sense or sensitivity to context)”. (What Happens When Transparency Meets Blame-Avoidance? Christopher Hood Public Management Review, 2007 – Taylor & Francis)

One way to look at this is to consider the amount of policies and procedures that you have to follow at work. If your judgement, initiative, and instincts are constantly constrained then you may need to reconsider the corporate culture.  For leaders, the same issue applies, but from a different direction.  What are you trying to achieve by developing policies, procedures, and guidelines that create blind rule following?  Are you encouraging your middle managers to develop policies and procedures where common sense and judgement are better suited? If common sense and judgement cannot be allowed, what are you telling staff? Will that encourage staff to speak up and resist the excesses that lead to toxicity, or will it encourage them to follow the rules and allow the toxicity to develop?

While the rot may be most apparent at the top, the rest of the organisation is part of the process. In the end, the toxicity or “rot” of an organisation is from the inside out and not from the top down.  The cure begins within and that is where managers must look.

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Freedom of Information and Transparency performance improvement tools: Case Study: Camden squatters and empty properties

Posted on November 14, 2011 by lawrence serewicz

In the press there has been some concern that the move towards transparency either in £500 spend lists or specific requests for disclosure of information, has led to increased fraud.   However, I would argue that neither FOI nor the transparency agenda are at fault, although they are often held up as the culprit.

The reasons for disclosing the £500 despite the recent concerns about fraud, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15660029 , is related to the same principles used to uphold the Camden decision about squatters and void property information.

http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/DBFiles/Decision/i560/20110902%20Decision%20EA20110007.pdf

In that decision, the Information Tribunal was saying that if Camden had the systems and procedures in place to cut the number of voids or empty properties, then the risk of squatters would be reduced.  The information and its disclosure was not the issue. The issue was the system and procedures in place to deal with the empty properties.

In this sense, one can see FOIA and the transparency agenda as a service improvement tools. Because of the FOI disclosure, Camden will have to do more to cut empty properties or voids.  [None of this is intended as a criticism of Camden Council. It is only that their appeal to the tribunal provides the context within which to consider the Information Tribunal decision as well as the context for understanding the Transparency Agenda as exemplifying a service improvement tool.]

The Council may not want to do this because it conflicts with their spending priorities. They may have other pressing priorities on other issues. However, that decision is not related to the information. Indirectly, the Council is being held to account for its spending and service priorities in relation to the issue of empty properties.  This is not to say that Camden does not take the issue seriously.  Rather it is to say that the disclosed information only reveals a gap within the Camden system.  See for example, this report on void in 2007, which recognized it as an issue. http://democracy.camden.gov.uk/Data/District%20Management%20Committee%20-%20Hampstead/20070621/Agenda/$Report-Item%2016%20%20%20Housing%20Management%20Improvement%20Project%20Proposals%20for%20Change.doc.pdf

More recently, a report shows the concern about the empty property rates in 2011.  http://democracy.camden.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=4552   All of which may explain why there is now a job advert for voids manager for a housing association in Camden. http://www.jobsgopublic.com/jobs/service-improvement-manager-voids-planned-and-cyclical-works-n-a?cf=rss  The question to ask is whether an authority should refuse to disclose information that shows gaps in service provision.  Imagine if the request and the information were about sub-standard kitchens for nursery and infant schools, would the response be the same?

In other words, if voids were reduced to 1% and all empty homes were attended to within 10 working days, then the opportunity for squatting or other activity would be reduced. In that case, disclosure of the information would have no tangible effect on the situation.  The information is only problematic because empty properties or voids need to be addressed.

In the end, the effect of the squatters only appears because of the volume of empty homes. To put it differently but directly, the squatters were already an issue *before* the request was made. The disclosure of the information now makes the issue tangible it did not create the issue.

From a political judo perspective, the council could then use this disclosure to enhance its work on voids and empty properties. For example, it could say, “If you do not re let quickly it could be ripe for a squatter.” It could also be used to let the public know to report squatting or an empty property to the council more quickly.

The transparency agenda offers Council a way to leverage certain activities or explain to the public why they have

The international squatters' symbol

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prioritized topics. I would suggest that the benefit from the transparency outweighs the costs or problems that are associated with it.  In the case of the fraud claims, fraud existed before the transparency agenda.  Moreover, the transparency agenda can be used as an incentive to make the anti-fraud systems and procedures more robust.  The transparency agenda is only making the issue tangible; it is not creating it.  Then again, the best fraud is the one that never gets detected.

 

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Words that kill customer service

Posted on November 5, 2011 by lawrence serewicz
Montage of languages. Prototype header for the...

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When dealing with customers, the language you use can mean the difference between a satisfied customer and a lost customer.  In particular, when trying to recover a customer, such as following a complaint, it is important to avoid these words.  Two of the words to avoid are “unfortunately” and “obviously”.  Both of these words signify an organisation that is not thinking about its customers or what they are saying.

What do I mean by that?

If you are a customer you do not want to have someone describe your situation as one created by fortune.  If your car is crushed by a falling tree, that is unfortunate. If you did not get the job, that is not a question of fortune. The organisation made a decision; they did not flip a coin.  Or, maybe they did.  Using the word “unfortunate” suggests that somehow it is out of the organisation’s control and not something they are ultimately responsible for doing.  Such language suggests an organisation that does not encourage people to take responsibility and does not reward people for taking responsibility. Instead, it suggests an organisation that seeks to avoid blame and responsibility.  Then again, it could just be an “unfortunate” choice of words.

One has to consider if the managers are consciously using these words or if they have imbued the culture of the organisation.  In that regard, one needs to have a greater attention to the standard form letters. Yet, that is one area that is likely to be overlooked and simply accepted as being fixed in place. Yet, a well written letter or email can do wonders for helping a customer or winning back their custom.

The second word that kills customer service is not “unfortunate” as its use has a deliberate and intended meaning.  One should never tell a customer, especially one lodging a complaint, that something that the organisation is doing is obvious. If an organisation is “obviously” doing or going to do something, then there is no need to say that, it is, well, obvious.  For example, you would not want to tell a customer complaining about access to breastfeeding rooms would “obviously” be considered. Alternatively, if you say the process is obviously to consider feedback from users, then there is no need to say obvious.  Just say that it is going to consider the feedback.  Moreover, if you tell the customer, especially one who is complaining, that something is obvious, you may just irritate them more.  If it is obvious, why is not fixed? Or if it is obvious why are you telling me it is obvious?

In the end, the lesson is that organisations need to consider the language they use. At the same time, the managers have to think about what language they use with customer and staff.  Do you have an approachable style that is suitable to the topic? Does it set the right tone?  When you have bad news to tell someone, there is no sense making it worse with the tone or style of your letter.  In many cases, your letter could be the last interaction you have with that customer and it may decide whether you hold on to them or lose them.

It is so obvious that it may be unfortunate to overlook it.

P.S. I would be interested in any words you think also kill customer service.

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