Three ways to check your company’s health

Posted on February 13, 2014 by lawrence serewicz
Alfred P. Sloan

Alfred P. Sloan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most chief executives think that they can understand their organisation by what is going right. They look at performance indicators to see what is green, what is delivering the best results and what offers the most profits. For an individual, this makes sense. A manager or a worker must work to their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Good managers recognise this and create teams that complement their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses.  However, the same can never be true for a CEO who is managing an organisation. The organisation cannot mitigate its weaknesses or avoid the bad news in the same way. It cannot look to the next tier of management to solve their problem. These issues are doubly important for understanding corporate culture, which determines an organisation’s business health. To understand the health of the organisation, the challenge is to get more bad news reported the higher you go in the organisation.

What I mean is that the CEO should be less concerned with hearing about good news or how wonderful things are and more interested in hearing what is going wrong. I do not mean that they need to be negative or search out negative topics to criticise. Instead, I mean they need exception reporting on cultural issues. They need to search this out because reporting, especially on cultural issues, is always inverted in an organisation. Aside from the general concern with bad news, junior staff will have less incentive to report the bad news upwards. To counteract this natural bias to good news, the Chief Executive needs to look for topics that create an exception for the organisation and have those reported to them as standard items. As a standard item, they avoid the appearance of bad news. The topic becomes something that appears to be routine performance information.

Here are three exceptions that can reveal the health of their organisation’s culture. There are others and I focus on these because these are not simply issues of “bad news”, but they are areas where the organisation can see the consequences of its culture and internal procedures. The three areas are

  1. Grievances or disciplinary issues
  2. Compromise agreements,
  3. Exit interviews.

Grievances. Most chief executives do not bother themselves with this level of detail. Yet, grievances are an insight into how their teams are being managed and how the organisation resolves internal disputes. If a service or a department has a higher number of grievances than another, it is time to look at how they manage their staff. What is the culture within that team, department, or the service? What is the nature of the grievance and are there systems in place to learn from them? If the staff leave after grievances, is there something within the way they are managed. Does that unit or department have a “my way or the highway” management approach? If the organisation is not learning to avoid grievances, which are the breakdown of trust and communication between staff and between employees and managers, then where is it learning?

Disciplinary action.

Although these are directly related to grievances and are often lumped together, they need to be considered differently. Grievances may be a disagreement; a disciplinary is a formal process with a legally binding outcome. Here the organisation has to enforce its formal rules and culture. The issue is one where the rules have been broken and order must be restored. However, it is important to know why the problem emerged. What could have prevented it? Was it a problem of ignorance? Does it indicate a larger problem with culture or the way the system constrains the employee? What we may find is that the more the staff have to be disciplined, the less the system allows them to operate effectively or independently. Alternatively, the more staff are disciplined; it may suggest that management has failed because steps to prevent this informally or even formally have not worked. For each disciplinary, is the relevant manager being asked to explain what they did and could have done to prevent it. If an organisation is only efficient at completing these and not looking at preventing them, it may have to reconsider its culture.

Compromise agreements.

Depending on your organisation, the chief executive may not approve these. If that is the case, then it will immediately be an area for concern. At a minimum a Chief Executive needs to know how many, why and where they are occurring even if they do not personally approve them. If a department is using these more than it is using others, the Chief Executive needs to understand what that means. Are they using these to silence whistle-blowers? Is the unit a “soft touch”? Alternatively, is it creating problems so severe that the only way to avoid legal or regulatory proceedings is to “pay off” staff. These questions need to be considered to understand the corporate culture.

Exit interviews.

Exit interviews are often the least exploited asset an organisation has. Many companies do not use these. Some that do may only use them to make sure someone is not going to take the company to an employment tribunal. They use them as part of a dispute resolution or prevention system rather than trying to learn from them. Even where they are used and they are used for the positive reasons, they are not exploited for what they reveal about the company’s culture. The Chief Executive is not going to need to see each one. Instead, they need to make sure a system exists to collect them and department managers and unit managers review them to learn from them. In the same way that induction programmes are needed to introduce an employee to the organisation, the exit interview needs to complete that loop. The reason why people leave is as important as why someone wants to work for a company. If the two are not linked, then the corporate culture will not be revealed, and the organisation is unlikely to be learning.

These are all HR issues, why does the CEO need to know them.

HR covers all of these topics and the CEO needs to know them. If they are not performance indicators within the company, then how the CEO understand the corporate culture? Even if the CEO is too busy for this level of detail, they need to have them reported on some basis even if only in an abstract or aggregated level. They may not add to the bottom line, but they have a direct impact on your bottom line. An alert CEO will realize that if these issues are out of control or not being tracked then the organisation is wasting a lot of energy to deal with problems created within the organisation and not harnessing positive energy to deliver a better service for customers and clients.

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Is quality or timeliness the key to FOIA success?

Posted on January 31, 2014 by lawrence serewicz
Act of July 4, 1966, Public Law 89-487, 80 STA...

Act of July 4, 1966, Public Law 89-487, 80 STAT 250, which amended section 3 of the Administrative Procedure Act, chapter 324, of the Act of June 11, 1916, to clarify and protect the right of the public to information., 07/04/1966 (Page 3 of 3) (Photo credit: The U.S. National Archives)

Is quality or timeliness the key to FOIA success?

If you work with freedom of information, you face an eternal debate: is it better to have a lower quality response on time or a complete response that is overdue. In large organisations, it can be difficult to have quality and timeliness coincide for complex requests. The question is not an idle one because it can influence how organisations manage their FOIA process in the time of reduced funding for public sector organisations.

The choice is not without consequences. Late responses can lead to the regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), investigating and potentially issuing an enforcement notice, or, if response times are chronically late, monitoring the organisation’s responses for three months. The monitoring creates adverse publicity. By contrast, poor quality responses will lead to increased requests for internal reviews that increase the work at a time the organisation was trying to reduce costs. If a poor quality response leads to an internal review, and the applicant is unhappy with it, they can complain to the ICO. A complaint can lead to decision notices, which create additional work. At the same time, a rushed response may either release information inappropriately or apply an exemption, to withhold the information, incorrectly.

From my research and analysis, I suggest that quality rather than timeliness is the preferred choice because quality creates less complaints or additional work. To put it crudely, half a loaf is better than no loaf. If that half a loaf is high quality then there will be less likelihood of a complaint and additional work. To support this argument, I analysed the government’s published FOI response rates in 2012.

The central government’s approach to FOI suggests that timeliness rather than the quality creates the bureaucratic burden. Their approach creates more work. I would speculate that it reflects a concern with internal compliance, an output, rather than an outcome. By that I mean, the performance suggests a focus on a target, the response rate, rather than the outcome, the content or quality of its responses. Too much of a focus on timeliness, an output, will distort the desired outcome, inform the applicant. If the applicant is not satisfied with a response, especially those that appear cursory or refuse the information without good reason, they are more likely to request an internal review and complain to the ICO. An internal review and a complaint to the ICO mean more work for the organisation. One caveat to note is that I have not considered whether the organisation needs to apply more exemptions or specific exemptions because they hold sensitive material like national security documents.

To explore the issue, we need to look at the central government’s monitoring statistics. http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/mojstats/foi-statistics/foi-stats-bulletin-q2-2012.pdf . I selected the Department for Transport (DfT) at random.  If we look at the statistics over the last three years, we can see the following emerge.

First, the DfT has responded to 92% of its requests within 20 working days. On the surface, this looks to be a good response rate. Yet, we need to look beneath the surface to understand the wider context. We need to consider the rate of full responses, the number of internal reviews, and the number of decision notices.

Percentage of responses considered responses in full

A response in full is one where no information is refused or exempted. These requests are less likely to receive an internal review leading to a complaint to the ICO. The DfT had 70 % of its responses as being responses in full. This means they either exempted the material or were unable to provide it. By comparison, no central government ministry that is monitored for FOI was above 80% on consistent basis. This might suggest that the central government uses exemptions more frequently. An important secondary question, that a different research project could explore, is whether those exemptions are appropriate or are they overused to give a quick response. In other words, if in doubt apply an exemption. If the applicant is dissatisfied with the response, this will lead to internal reviews. An applicant can submit an internal review request when the 20 working day deadline is missed but most applicants request an internal review when they are dissatisfied with the response. The applicant would be able to complain that material was missing or that the wrong exemption was applied or the exemption was applied incorrectly.

Decision Notices tell a story

The DfT has received 30 decision notices in the last 3 years up to 2012. Of these decision notices, 21 were upheld and nine were not upheld. The ICO issues a decision notice after investigating a complaint. The applicant has to go through the organisation’s internal review process before they can appeal to the ICO. If the internal review does not resolve the issue, they can appeal to the ICO.  At that point, the ICO has to contact the organisation to resolve the complaint. In all cases, they ask the organisation to resolve the issue informally if possible. If this is not possible, they have to investigate the complaint and either resolves it informally, have the organisation comply without a decision notice, or issue a decision notice to require the organisation to comply or to uphold the organisation’s refusal.

A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

As a rule of thumb, for each complaint to the ICO, there are at least two to three internal reviews that are resolved satisfactorily so they never go to the ICO. Of the internal reviews that go to the ICO, usually, half of these are resolved informally without a need for a decision notice. What this means is that for 30 decision notices, you are looking at 60-100 complaints to the ICO. For there to be 60-100 complaints to the ICO, there has to be roughly 200-300 internal reviews.

Each internal review and each ICO complaint creates more work. This regulatory burden is self-inflicted. The focus on output, the timeliness of the response appears to undermine the outcome, a satisfied applicant. The dissatisfied customer creates more work for the organisation. The best way to describe this is that a stitch in time saves nine. If the organisation is focused on timeliness and quality of the response, a full response, then there are going to be fewer internal reviews and fewer complaints to the ICO. However, this would have to be balanced against the need to apply exemptions appropriately and when required. There is no advantage for an organisation to satisfy the customer at the cost of the organisation because it does work in the public interest.

Other factors to cut the regulatory burden can be useful. First, better customer service would cut its FOI burden by doing as much as possible to cut the complaints to the ICO. Second, proactively publishing more material will cut the number of requests. Finally, the organisation will want to check whether its internal process focuses on timeliness at the cost of quality. A process that provides better responses, even at the cost of timeliness, may actually do more to protect the organisation’s resources.

Conclusions

From my research, I would tentatively suggest that the best result is quality and timeliness. This is obvious as it is the ideal that all organisations want to deliver. The next best result is quality over timeliness. A high quality response reduces the chances of an internal review. There is still the issue of timeliness but that is less likely to lead to an internal review or a complaint to the ICO. The next best result is timeliness over quality. A quick response does show an efficient process even though it may not be an effective process. When timeliness is the priority, is that for the benefit of the customer or the organisation? The worst outcome is low quality and poor quality.

My results though are tentative. I would suggest that a research into the question would survey applicants to understand their preferences and their expectations about timeliness and quality. The approach would need to explore if organisation make the trade-off between quality and timeliness explicitly or implicit. Further research would consider how the exemptions used by an organisation influence timeliness. For example, are they using some exemptions quickly to buy time or to deter an applicant? Alternatively, the exemptions may be right but poorly explained. In any case, the use of an exemption will have an effect on their response rates and the quality of the responses. Further research is needed to confirm these hypotheses and explore how organisations apply exemptions as part of the trade-off between quality and timeliness.

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When will the professional troll hunters and RAT catchers emerge?

Posted on January 9, 2014 by lawrence serewicz

 

English: FBI Mobile Command Center in Washingt...

English: FBI Mobile Command Center in Washington DC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We have seen the recent headlines that anonymous trolls have been identified on Twitter and other social media sites so that people can take legal action. In most cases, the trolls are known or do little to hide their identity. In some cases, though, they seek to hide their identity or, in the case of “ratters” remain hidden as they have unauthorised access to your system. What victims need, though, is a way to identify their trolls so they can take legal actions. If someone is anonymous on the web, then it is hard to take legal action. Even if the service provider deletes the account, the “troll” can subscribe under an assumed name. The problem of identifying people on the internet can prove problematic for the victims. For example, one victim, Nicola Brookes, obtained a high court ruling to reveal the identities of the trolls harassing her through Facebook.

Even though trolls have existed on the internet since its birth, the legislation to deal with them has been unwieldy or just slow to catch up. Most legislation covering such behaviour pre-dates Facebook and Twitter. What has usually kept the trolls contained is that the social media sites have (usually) reacted quickly to complaints of harassment or online bullying. Many services allow users to report abuse. The recent cases that forced Twitter to reveal account identity details show that the companies and the courts are quicker to react to legal requests.

Finding a troll’s lair can be difficult

What Nicola Brookes case reveals are two distinct, but interrelated problems regarding the identity and prosecution of trolls. First, it is difficult to get the police involved. Even though there are laws in place for regulating such online behaviour, it can be difficult to get the police to see the issue as a criminal offence. Police forces may not have the skills, training, and resources to focus on these issues. For some forces, a troll appear less of a priority when compared against their workload of murders, muggings, and burglaries as well as a responsibility for counterterrorism. Given these constraints it is not unreasonable that the police may take the view that it is a civil matter for the victim to resolve through the service provider and the courts. However, the problem of taking a private legal action shows the second difficulty. The second problem is that it is difficult to track down and identify the trolls.

You may have an IP address but do you have the troll?

The internet provider or the social media company may provide the login details and the IP address, but that does not prove the person at the other end was the person responsible. A sophisticated troll may have taken steps to shield their identity through avatars, false names, fake accounts, and other devices that shield their identity or their IP address. To take legal action, victims will have to find their attacker’s identity. Here is where professional troll hunters may find a niche market.

The rise of the professional troll hunters.

What the troll hunters will do is find your trolls. They will likely be private investigators with a skills set for this type of work. They could use techniques as simple as the police officer who “friended” a gang in New York so that they could be tracked and captured. The troll hunters can benefit from the tools that are available to monitor the internet As recent news stories have revealed, the  various law enforcement agencies monitor social media as an extension of their public order role. Although the police do not appear, yet, to be policing the web, they and other related professional prowl the internet. These professionals may use more invasive techniques to identify the trolls. Their services can then balance the power between the victim and the troll. If more trolls were prosecuted, it would send a strong deterrent to those considering it. However, trolls are only one part of the problem, a less well known problem are rats.

Who will catch the RAT?

What is a RAT or a ratter?  A ratter is someone who uses a Remote Administration Tool (RAT) to access or gain control of someone else’s computer. They exploit a security flaw or a security lapse to gain access and control of the victim’s computer. Most ratters are men and they use the system to spy on women. However, they can use the system to steal banking information as well as encrypt files and hold them to ransom. They will share or sell the “slaves” or bots they have created. Slaves being the term for the people, usually young women, whose computers they can access.

Few Rats are caught but that may change

Such access, while illegal in many countries, can be part of legitimate products such as those that provide remote administration tools for laptop finders. However, in most countries unauthorised access to someone else’s computer is illegal. The problem, while it is not widespread, is that very few ratters are caught. In the United States, the FBI has pursued cases where the ratter has spied on and tried to extort hundreds of victims.

For the most part, a person can escape being a victim of a RAT if they are vigilant about their online security. However, you may not know you have one in your system until it is too late. For some people, going to the police or the authorities may not be an option. In other cases, they may wish to pursue civil penalties against the RAT.  If the police are not interested, then you will need someone who can catch the RAT for you. Like the troll hunter, they will not only remove them from your system, but locate them.

Like the Troll hunter, they are likely be private investigators with a skill set for this type of work. They may offer their services to track a RAT down or log in to the various Hack Forums to find locate the people who use the information obtained through a RAT. In the past, the hack forums may have acted as if they were immune, but rat catchers may raise the risk. If the risk of getting caught increases, then RATs may be deterred from their behaviour.

The electronic tools available to the government will become publicly available.

The techniques to track and trace a user can run from the relatively mundane, of geotags, to the more sophisticated and advanced FLAME virus. The FLAME virus though shows an evolution in the process because it allows tracking across systems.

“One aspect of the success of this particular malware is due to its ability to log into what’s being said or typed across the many multimedia aspects of today’s desktop PCs and laptops – things like webcams, microphones and Bluetooth features.”

 What the FLAME virus that infected a number of computers in the Middle East showed was the ability to track users and their data across locations. The virus allowed files that were infected to be tracked by their locational data. As the virus had the capacity to override normal antivirus protection software, it meant that it is harder to hide if someone is looking for you. Unless someone always live completely as a proxy or without making contact outside of TOR or another deep web system, then they can be found. If you can be tracked, you can be found. If you can be found, you can be brought to justice. Even if you cannot be tracked, the effort required to avoid tracking is likely to keep trolls or RATs from acting on more than an infrequent basis.

For the moment, the capacity to use a FLAME virus is going to be limited to governments. However, the same techniques, will become available.  One only need to consider that satellite imagery was nearly the sole preserve of governments in 1970. Now, with Google Earth people can access satellite images. Even if the full powers of FLAME do not become available, similar technologies, below military or government grade, will be available and used by private investigators working in this area. They could use legal means to track and trace a person by searching for them online. When their pictures are found, or their IP signature found, it is only a matter of time before finding their physical address. Once their physical address is known, they can be served with court papers.

Private investigators for the 21st century

In one sense, the private investigator has always existed. What will be new is how they will use technology and the internet vulnerabilities, like geotags in photographs, to track and trace trolls who believe they are anonymous or disguised.  Once the trolls become aware of how fast and easy it is to identify them, unless they take extraordinary measures, they will soon realize that trolling is not easy or penalty free.  Even if they cannot be brought to court, their identities can be made known to service providers who can then block their access.

Prove you are not a troll by using your own name

What we see on the web is that people are willing to use their own identity as a brand. By using their picture and name, they create transparency, which encourages trust and acceptance. Within social media, transparency is reciprocated so that people will interact. By doing this, the person shows that they are less likely to be a troll because they are acting in their own name. The sooner the troll hunters capture some trolls and they are brought to justice publicly, the sooner more people will be encouraged to blog and write in their own name.

Will this have a chilling effect on anonymity?

In some cases, people will want to remain anonymous either for protection or for legal reasons.  For example, whistle blowers may need or want to post anonymously in forums to raise issues. People may use avatars to hide their identity because of medical or legal reasons such as hiding from domestic abuse. In these cases, the courts and service providers are going to be sympathetic. The burden of proof regarding trolling is usually a bright line. A victim comes forward with a persistent campaign of abuse and attack. By contrast, an anonymous poster or a hidden identity is not going to attract the same interest from the courts.

A business opportunity that is ripe for growth.

The web is changing and social media allows us to see a new era has begun to emerge. What we now see are the slow, but certain, ways in which the internet begins to police itself and how it is being policed as forms of order are created. We may see a new form of community governance emerge as the state of nature, which seems to identify much of how the web operates, gives way to a relatively ordered community. For businesses there is an opportunity to exploit this emerging security enforcement breach. The ones that can do this successfully can create a brand that people will trust. One can also see large firms offering this service to protect their users and their employees. See for example, this recent article in the Financial Times on hacker hunters.  Although focused on security measures, rather than independent hunters, it does suggest that there is a business case to be exploited.

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Company Building

Company Building (Photo credit: Mennonite Church USA Archives)

Dear Subscribers,
I have decided to launch a new media company. As this seems to be the must do social media activity, I thought I would get involved. To join this group, I have created Media Meditations. It is 500 words on media, politics, and current events.

It will only last as long as people are interested in reading it. If there are less than 50 subscribers or 10,000 visits after 31 December 2014, then it will close up shop. If it meets either of those targets it will continue.

The format is no post will be more than 500 words. It will cover the media and it will explore a series of propositions about the future of journalism.

The first blog will be published on 15 January 2014 its title is The journalist as the internet political activist.

I hope you subscribe you can find it at this link mediameditations.wordpress.com

Yours sincerely

Lawrence Serewicz

Posted on January 1, 2014 by lawrence serewicz | Comments Off on Launching a new media company: Media Meditations

If it is not written down, it did not happen: a problematic approach to customer service

Posted on December 14, 2013 by lawrence serewicz
English: This is an example of a Customer Inte...

English: This is an example of a Customer Interaction Model (CIM) in the Pronto methodology in Dutch. An organisation (Organisation) identifies possible transactions (“Verkrijg product” means “Acquire product”) with customers (Klant) about the requisitioning of a product that the organisation can deliver. Nederlands: Dit is een voorbeeld van een Klant Interactie Model (KIM) op basis van de Pronto-methodologie. Een organisatie identificeert transacties (“Verkrijg product”) met klanten. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The phrase is often used to describe the need for good records management and good documentation practices in investigations. One website suggests it as an approach to capture knowledge [link], while another suggests it can be used to help investigations [link]. The phrase can also describe how bureaucracies work because they rely on precedence, evidence, and rarely consider verbal authorisation as sufficient for decisions.  The approach would be appealing to those organisation that have regulatory bodies or an ombudsman to investigate customer complaints. In the public sector, where there are a number of regulators and an ombudsman, complaints have to be investigated with that destination in mind. As a result, the approach may prove attractive. However, I believe that such an approach while laudable will create a customer service problem.

Does it create or destroy trust?

The approach is problematic in customer services because it inverts the relationship with the customer. The employee becomes the person of record instead of the customer. If an employee does not write down what happens, then it did not happen. No matter what the customer says, they will have to prove their case and refute the evidence written down by the employee. In an investigation, the approach makes sense. Investigations are designed to find out what happened and assign blame. Investigators have to reviews the available evidence and this is usually what was recorded contemporaneously about the event. In customer service, by contrast, the issue is usually alive in the customer’s memory so there is no need for the customer to record it.

Can the customer ever prove they are right?

When the approach is used for customer service, it undermines the idea that the customer is always right (within reason). I say within reason because a customer is not allowed to abuse an employee. The relationship is based on trust. The approach that if it is not recorded it did not happen is based on distrust. The approach asks the customer to prove their claim and provide evidence that can refute what the employee has recorded. In many ways, we can consider this as being wrong until you can prove yourself right, which can be a standard for industries with a regulator or ombudsman. If your industry does not have a regulator or an ombudsman, the approach will be problematic because it would drive away customers and business. A for profit business has to retain business and the trust of its customers. In the public sector, where the customer cannot choose their service provider, the approach will be problematic.

In the public sector, the organisation either regulates a business or enforces statute. The client or customer cannot take their business elsewhere and the organisation has greater power over them. If customers and business do not need to be retained, then trust is less important because there is no need to worry about competitors. However, the issue is not about competition or a market approach to public service because those approaches create their own problems. These issues are beyond the scope of this blog.

How will the customer respond: record everything, forget nothing

When organisations use this approach, it forces the customer to write down or record everything they did with an employee just to make sure they had a fair hearing. The distrust that is implicit in such an approach becomes explicit. In local government, we can see case where distrust, for reasons other than this approach, displayed when clients and employees covertly record meetings and conversations. There have been recent cases where social services have had their information recorded and employees have taken covert recordings as evidence in employment tribunals. [see court cases]

The vulnerable are at the mercy of the bureaucracy design to protect them

The approach is particularly problematic in social services because the social worker’s notes that make up the official record are what the court relies upon in its judgement. The practice does not avoid “He said/She said” exchanges. Instead, it creates an institutional bias against the customer. We can see this bias in two ways. The first is that the customer does not know the organisation operates in this manner. They do not know that what they say or do can and will be recorded to their disadvantage. Second, they are not aware that only what the officer wrote down is the official and accepted version of events. If the customer becomes aware of this practice, they will start to record every interaction with the organisation. They will also make more subject access requests (SARs) under the Data Protection Act. However, these will not be enough. The notes will only reflect what the employee recorded.

What will happen is that the customer will want to record and submit their version of events. In time as technology allows, they will move from contemporaneous notes to capturing the event in real time. The customer will no longer make notes of a conversation or a meeting. Instead, they will want to record it. The trust between the employee and the customer will disappear because the organisation has undermined it.

What the regulator requires becomes the bureaucracy’s business model.

A related problem is that the approach will reflect the demands created by the regulator or the ombudsman. For example, the Information Commissioner regulates data protection and freedom of information issues. As a result, officers prepare responses to the applicant with a view that the complaint will end up with the regulator. The regulator begins to shape customer service and customer complaints. If the regulator tells organisation “if it is not written down it did not happen,” then the organisations will respond accordingly. A perverse outcome is possible because the approach creates more complaints and more appeals to the ombudsman for the apparent unfairness of the approach.

At a deeper level, the approach creates a severe disadvantage for vulnerable clients and customers. If a customer distrusts the organisation, they will want to record the meeting. If the organisation refuses to cooperate and refuses to meet if the customer or client wants to record the meeting, then the customer has to accept that what the company records is the official record. In that scenario, the customer or client is in a double bind. The employee’s record is official because what they write down is what happened. The applicant is left defenceless because they have no basis to challenge the official version.

A system open to abuse? 

A further danger is that an employee can exploit the approach. The customer is wrong until they can prove they are right and they do not even know they are wrong until they try to prove they are right. They can only prove they are right based on the official record kept by the employee with whom they are in dispute. If the employee insults them, they have no redress because the employee keeps the official record. The employee has an incentive to write down what puts them in the best light rather than what happened. Would any employee ever record that they insulted the customer or provoked the customer? No. Yet, that is what happens with the logic of “If it is not written down, it did not happen.” They can write down whatever they want, following a meeting, a telephone call, or conversation, because they keep the record.

Record more, but do you change the culture? 

An organisation may try to avoid this by recording telephone calls. The approach can help to mitigate this approach, but it leaves unaddressed those issues that are not handled by telephone. Unless an organisation is prepared to record all customer-based events, it will prove difficult to manage this process. Few companies will have the resources to record all interactions. The problem, at its core, is about culture rather than technology. Technology may limit or restrain the worst aspect of culture, an employee will be more circumspect on the telephone, but that does not change the approach to customer service.

Customer service creates the trust and respect needed for business 

The approach to complaints and customer service has to be based on mutual trust and respect. As soon as that disappears, the relationship goes from consensual to adversarial. If an organisation uses the “if it is not written down” approach to avoid regulatory or ombudsman complaints, it will be at the price of customer trust. Is this a price worth paying just to avoid ombudsman complaints?

Would you run your customer service on that basis?

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Is the tech revolution helping or replacing the front-line worker?

Posted on November 18, 2013 by lawrence serewicz

I have noticed some trends in recent statements about the future of work that I want to explore with this post.

The middle manager is now the front-line worker and is soon to be replaced.

The first is that the future technological work seems to be designed by technology evangelists for technology evangelists without considering front-line workers. To achieve the technological evangelist’s future, they convert senior managers to bring the revolution to their companies. As a result, the technological revolution focuses on the benefits to senior managers and not frontline workers. The evangelists rarely look at the way the frontline worker because technology is designed to replace them. As we know from economics, technology is a labour saving investment.  To the extent that the front-line worker is not a knowledge worker that is they do not have the work of strategists or chief financial officers, technology will be designed to replace them as the highest cost of labor. Despite the technological marvels, the management theories, and the new ways of working, there is still a need for the front-line worker, which creates an additional problem.

We face the problem that we cannot all be knowledge workers because someone has to do the work. We see why the technological evangelism falls short of its promise.[1] Instead of the knowledge worker who has to make sense of the technological evangelism, often described as new ways of working, it is the front-line worker. Yet, the technological gurus rarely sit down with the frontline to figure out what technology will work for them because technology is designed and developed to replace the frontline worker. In turn, the middle manager is eliminated as frontline workers become augmented, or they become the frontline worker, as the organisation gets flatter.

To the extent their role was more a supervisor and less a knowledge worker, they are no longer needed. We can see this in the public sector where tasks like planning applications, HR and benefit assessments are turned into routine tasks supported by “smart forms” and algorithms. The same is occurring in the private sector as legal services are being transformed by the need for less routine legal tasks.

Technology to remove judgement and avoid responsibility.

The second trend is that technology is being used to replace, or at least, augment a worker’s judgement to make them more efficient or to remove them. Technology will remove the need for human judgement.  Frontline workers can make errors or can make mistakes. The reason why they make mistakes is that they have free will and can make their own decisions. Instead of better training or supervision (active management), we see technology used to supervise their judgement or to remove them entirely.

We can see how algorithm and automated trades have changed the way Wall Street works. Another way to see the process at work is to consider the intent of Privacy by Design. The process is there to remove any chance a person will have access to data, which could compromise someone’s privacy. The worker will not be taught about privacy, trained to use their judgement, or have the laws explained to them so they can work effectively and efficiently. Instead, the goal will be to remove their judgement by creating a technological process that removes them.

The future though is not that robots will replace workers or that workers will become robots. Instead, the future of work is that the worker is needed as a source of judgement to be harvested by the technological process. The social worker will still need to visit the client, but that will not be by their judgement but by the prescribe systems set out by their organisation. The command and control that they usually escape by being in the field will be with them at each stage. They will only act on or within a framework of instructions to reduce or eliminate the need for judgement. We can see this at work in the Data Protection Act as organisations struggle with how to share personal data in a way that complies with the law. The law is often blamed for the failure to share in critical cases.

Upon analysis, we find the law was only an excuse. The actors involved failed to share because they were uncertain of the law or feared blame. As a result, they acted on the belief that it was better to do nothing, not share. In other words, they acted on the belief that what is not allowed, is forbidden. Now organisations have started to reverse the equation so that workers are encouraged to share unless there is a reason not to. In other words, what is not forbidden is allowed. Yet, neither view is correct. Both subvert the law because they flout its letter, you must have permission to share, or its intent, you are not to share without good reason.

In both approaches, the organisation avoids the problem that they have to train and trust staff to use their judgement. Some organisations may develop their staff and train them to make the right decision. Even if they avoid the “sheep dip” approach to mass presentations that simply tell the employee what to do rather than help them learn, it will fail because of technological demands. Each failure will increase the pressure for a technological solution.

Workers who neither want the responsibility nor are rewarded for the right decision will encourage the technological solution. The solution will be an algorithm or a computer programme that indicates when and how information is to be shared based on the content and context of the data. A worker, or the customer, will input the data and the system will read it and use an algorithm to classify the data for how it is to be shared.  The organisation can avoid responsibility because the programme or technology have made the decision.

Even though both trends are encouraged because they seem to help the worker and give them greater freedom to act, the reverse is true. The trends encourage a greater command and control in the guise of a networked worker. What remains to be done, though, is to work out how these systems and processes will be implemented in the public sector which is slowly waking up to their opportunity.

I would be interested in your views on these trends.

[1] I do not believe that all manufacturing or all services can be reduced to automatic systems. Someone has to build the machines and someone has to maintain them. Even if 3D printing makes the parts or a more advanced computer assisted manufacturing process, there will be people who need to assembly the item. At the same time, unique services will still need more of a human element than a mechanical or technological element even if technology can enhance or augment it. To put it directly, robots will not replace all workers and workers will not become robots.

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How well does your company handle a fire drill?

Posted on October 2, 2013 by lawrence serewicz
Fire alarm notification appliance

Fire alarm notification appliance (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As a chief executive or as a senior manager, you will want to know the health of your organisation. You will want to know if the organisation can carry out your vision. Are staff engaged with the company? Will they give a discretionary effort, an effort beyond their job description? Many companies turn to consultants for this work and they measure how well the vision and effort align. Inside the company, senior managers might use employee surveys or focus groups for the same purpose. However, there is an inherent risk with these tools and techniques.

The risk is that the employees will say what they think or know that senior management want to hear. If an organisation has few systems for critical upwards communication, then bad news, or news that challenges the perceived status quo, will not be volunteered through these methods. The employees will see these efforts for what they are; an attempt to elicit good news, and not what they are intended to achieve; an attempt to assess the company’s health. The employee will either game the responses, say what they think the senior managers want to hear, or avoid the topic. If they speak candidly, they may find their opinions discounted.

I only listen if you tell me good news

In the worst possible scenario, for the health of an organisation, two effects converge. The first is the automatic vigilance effect. Here senior managers reject any news that does not confirm their position. The second is the ingratiation effect. Here subordinates exaggerate their agreement with senior managers. When these combine, it can destroy a company.[1] As Denis Tourish explained in his excellent work on critical upwards communication, such an organisation is waiting to fail. The organisation is unaware of the problems within it, even if each manager know the problems. In part, this occurs because even the best managers are susceptible to confirmation bias.  They will look for evidence that supports their views and discount the evidence that disagrees.

Despite these hurdles, a tool will let you check the health of your organisation in an unbiased way- a fire alarm drill.

A fire alarm is a mirror on an organisation’s soul

My suggestion may sound counter intuitive. The drill is practiced and everyone knows how it works. How will that show us anything about the health of the organisation?  I would ask that you consider the following.

First, all employees take part at the same time. Unlike a focus group or an employee survey, you do not have to worry about a sample size.

Second, the drill shows you an activity that all parts of the organisation, will have practiced and have been instructed on how to complete it. You can compare how different teams, services, and departments complete it.

Third, the drill avoids the ingratiation effect or the automatic vigilance effect. Either the employees complete the task and followed instructions or they don’t. They cannot hide the bad news.

Finally, if employees exit in an orderly manner you know they are well trained. Do they go to the right rally point; have they brought their roll call lists? Are senior managers leading by example, going to the rally point, and support the company’s fire marshals?

Through a fire alarm drill, all parts of a company show their ability to complete the task. Do some teams talk a good game about leadership, teamwork and delivery, but are unable to deliver it when it matters? A better-organised team will likely perform better. However, if a team says they are organised and work as a team, but respond to the fire alarm with poor teamwork, poor leadership, and poor communication, then there is a gap between promise and performance. If employees are not well managed in a life or death issue, how will they handle the routine tasks? If the senior managers are not leading by example, on a life or death issue, what does it tell staff about management’s commitment to its employees?

Do senior managers lead by example?

The drill can also allow a chief executive (and the staff) to assess the senior managers. If the senior managers are not at the rally point are they leading by example? If they cannot lead by example, how can you expect staff to follow them? If the staff mill about the entrance rather than going to the rally point, who is leading them? The exercise will let you see whether corporate communication and training filter through the company. If the senior managers and middle managers cannot train their staff on the fire drill, how can they expect them to deliver the vision and deliver discretionary work?

The fire alarm can also alert you to some other danger signals. As a chief executive, if you find senior managers yelling at the fire safety officer about a drill in the cold, in the rain or in the middle of the day, you can see a problem with responsibility. Fires do not occur on schedule.

If staff resist going to the rally point and argue with the company’s fire safety officer, you may morale issues or even a passive aggressive organisation. At a deeper level, it may suggest a blame culture because employees look to blame someone.

A fire drill where employees and managers work together, support the fire safety officers, and go to the evacuation spot will reflect an organisation that is well managed, works together and knows how to execute its plans. If your business cannot execute a fire drill, can it execute the routine work?

How does your company handle a fire drill?

[1] Denis Tourish explores these and other issues in his paper on critical upwards communication. https://openair.rgu.ac.uk/bitstream/10059/190/1/LRPpaper1.pdf I recommend his work highly for its insights and suggestions on how to improve.

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The tide is coming in: Archives and the digital tsunami

Posted on September 27, 2013 by lawrence serewicz
English: Storage hallway at the National Archi...

English: Storage hallway at the National Archives I building. This was taken with permission at the Wikipedia 10 Washington D.C. event. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like all businesses, archives face the challenges from the social media economy.[1] For most people archives can seem a dusty forgotten place that only scholars or researchers would have an interest. In many ways, this is true because it is concerned with the past and papers while most people and technology, in particular, is focused on electronic data and the future. That image also reflects the fundamental mission of archives to preserve and protect cultural or institutional heritages and memories (or at least the engrams), which are mainly found in paper form. However, this image is changing, which is putting a strain on archives as they adapt the archival prime directive to handle digital records.

The technological changes from 25 years ago are now arriving with greater force at the archives. By that, I do not mean that the technology that archives uses is 25 years old, but rather the first wave of documents created from the period when PCs became widespread are now arriving at the archives. The challenge for archives today is that the archival education and most organisations that have archives are not well ready for the changes or the tide that is now swelling to a tsunami. The following sketches three key areas that will overlap to shape the future of archives. The first is ICT role, the second is the demand for archival digital skills outside of archives, and third the future of archival training.

Digital Archives are emerging from the shadow of ICT

As I mentioned, the first wave of the digital tsunami has arrived. The long awaited and much heralded shift from paper to digital has arrived at the archives.  The paradigm shift has begun and it is now happening with such speed that it threatens to overrun the archives. The archives are challenged to adapt to the vast amount of technological devices and opportunities that are available. They, in turn, create a demand from customers and from those who supply the records on the archives to have the digital capacity to handle them. Unlike a business that can choose its operating platforms, an archive has to have the ability to manage records from a variety of platforms. Even without the supply pressure, the technological pressure within demand creates special challenge.

Archives face the challenge of augmented reality devices that use the source material to create a different view of the archives.  Along with the demand or opportunity created by technology, there is also the increased supply of digital documents and digital records that are arriving in the archives.  If this was not enough, the archives, especially in the public sector, have to deal with “born digital” records. To handle this influx of new material and manage the opportunities, the archivists need to have digital archival skills, but the digital skills have often been seen as an ICT domain. The demand for digital archival skills was often hidden under ICT skills. If you needed some digital work done for the archives, you brought in someone from ICT to set up the system or maintain it. The systems were considered an adjunct to the central archival tasks such as handling documents, preserving them, curating them, and making them available for the public. Now, though, with the demand for analytics, data mining, and excavating unstructured data, the digital archival skills have grown into their own identity. Therein we see a second strain because the demand for digital archival skills is not being driven by archives so much as private sector companies who need to manage and curate the vast amounts of data and documents created by digital work.

Caught between born digital’s arrival and the demand for digital workers.

Even though the principles of archival work remain the same, the medium within which they are used has begun to change. The challenge is not only to find a way to make the archival principles explicit in the digital domain, but to find a way to sustain them against the digital demands. To put it very crudely, the challenge is to find a way to bridge the gap between the digital and the paper. The promise of digital documents has arrived as retention periods from the early digital era expire and material comes to archives. The arrival from digital records created 25 years ago is happening at the same time that digital work is exploding. However, the system is focused, rightly for the moment, on managing paper records. The tension is not just in managing the digital demands that shape the current context; it is also between two different approaches to archives. The paper archive is beginning to pass and the digital archives are emerging. Although paper will never disappear and the full change will not be felt for at least 10 years, the change is clear and the direction is clear. What is different now, though, is that digital archival skills are in demand outside of the archives. Will schools producing tomorrow’s archivists be able to produce digital archivist are they caught in the paper past?

A two tiered future between paper and digital?

The last threat is that the field will become two tiered field with paper vs. electronic. The paper is ascendancy as all archivists have been trained in this work and the schools are based on this paradigm. The arrival of a new archival identity is challenging the one so strongly associated with paper. For the first time we will see a new medium dominate the archival world. Paper is soon to be a minority in the archives. The question the field has to ask is whether the schools providing archival degrees now are looking at the past (paper) when they need to be looking at the future (digital). In one sense, they can bridge that gap by focusing on archival principles, but these are under challenge because the nature of digital archives are that they are less permanent. To date no one has found a digital equivalent to paper in terms of archival durability.[2] At the same time though, the skills shortage may continue because students may not stay in the archives once they have their archival skills. The question for a student (and the school training them) is “Do you get an ICT degree and learn archival skills or do you gain archival degree and learn ICT skills?” With informatics and e-disclosure as well as digital curation coming into their own there is an increased demand for digital archival skills outside the public sector archives. To some graduates in archival skills the question is “Why wait for born digital material to arrive and work in archives when the same skills are in demand in forensic informatics?”

The field faces significant changes over the next 5 years. The challenge for public sector organisations, in particular, will be able to create the digital infrastructure needed to sustain a digital archives. At the same time, archivists face the paradigm shift between paper and digital. They have the privilege or curse to be a case study of how people and an industry respond to a paradigm shift.

[1] Museums face the same challenge and face similar issues to the archives. This article focuses on archives and in particular, public sector archives. For a helpful introduction to the digital challenge and opportunity, see the paper by G. Wayne Clough Smithsonian on Best of Both Worlds. http://www.si.edu/bestofbothworlds

[2] See for example this paper by Rosenthal et al. The Economics of Long Term Digital Storage. http://www.lockss.org/locksswp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/unesco2012.pdf See also these articles on the problem of digital storage and the digital infrastructure needed to maintain digital storage. (Saving our data from digital decay) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101116072749.htm They reflect on the research that suggests digital material can be stored on microfilm, which is based on this paper Schilke and Rauber Long-Term archiving of digital data on microfilm http://www.inderscience.com/offer.php?id=36900 The practical problems of born digital can be seen in his article on the preservation of Salman Rushdie’s archive. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/books/16archive.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 For a wider discussion of the need for digital continuity, see the UK’s National Archives material on digital continuity. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/our-services/digital-continuity.htm

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Who is creating the rotten barrels in your company?

Posted on August 7, 2013 by lawrence serewicz
English: A rotten apple. Suomi: Mätä omena.

English: A rotten apple. Suomi: Mätä omena. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In an earlier post, I discussed the myth of the rogue employee. The post focused on how the term was used when an organisation wanted to scapegoat an employee. When that happened, I argued that the organisation used the term to avoid the work required to deal with systemic organisational failings. After I posted it, I was asked if a senior manager could be a “rogue employee”. At first, I thought it was unlikely because they would be unlikely to be scapegoated because of their relative corporate standing and most importantly they would be responsible so less likely to be a problem. From the perspective of the organisation, senior managers could be best placed to be a “rogue” employee. As they are senior, there would be less likely to be closely supervised in their work. At the same time, they would have more opportunities to present good news upwards and suppress or hide bad news. Where there is a lack of organisational (managerial) oversight, the rogue employee is more likely to emerge. Yet, the problem is more than supervision or oversight. The deeper problem is the corporate culture. As Susan Silbey explained a rotten barrel creates a rotten apple. The question that needs to be asked is: “Who creates the rotten barrel?”  In most organisations, the senior managers create the corporate culture, which means that when a senior manager becomes a “rogue” employee, the effect is worse for the organisation.

Rogue managers can drain energy from the company

As employees will know, a rogue senior employee drains the organisation of energy. Like a rotten apple, they begin to infect and shape their colleagues. If they succeed, their influence increases at the expensive of the organisation. A case study in this behaviour is Enron, where the top managers set the tone for the company. Other senior managers are unable or unwilling to challenge the “rogue” employees and the corporate culture became rotten. Managing directors perceive the rogue senior manager as good at delivering results. The managing directors rarely look at how those results are achieved. What often happens is that the rogue manager creates a fear or a blame culture  and they work to suppress bad news while they report good news. One result of a rogue manager is that staff fail to exercise initiative, for fear of blame, which makes the senior manager appear effective and decisive. In an extreme case, staff will wait to be told what to do.  Initiative is drained out as compliance and obedience are rewarded as innovation and challenge are punished or not rewarded.

 A blame avoidance culture can help rogue managers

In many cases, a rogue manager is effective in blame avoidance cultures. They make sure that work is over resourced and duplicated to avoid any blame. As a result, they seem to be delivering results. They leverage their appearance for competency and delivery to enhance their reputation. They protect themselves by focusing on their reputation with corporate directors, which is at the expense of their staff.  In any setting, they question and challenge reports that suggest fault or bad news. Direct reports will know that good news is expected so they quickly comply. At the same time, other managers will avoid the struggle with such a manager. They look to cooperate. The senior manager will be sensitive to appearances. When something appears to be a failure or dissent, it is immediately punished or addressed. In turn, this enhances their reputation for being decisive and delivering improved performance.

 Is bureaucratic infighting a sign the barrel is starting to rot?

In time, as they manage the appearance of competency and delivery, other managers become unable or unwilling to challenge them.  Even though they seem as borderline bullies, they are careful to avoid undue attention. They may develop a reputation but no one sees it who can challenge it.  Most importantly, they understand bureaucratic warfare. They undermine other senior managers by bureaucratic means. They challenge on low-level issues or insignificant issues.  As a result, a normal manager will wonder why this manager is fighting over paperclips. In time, the normal manager believes that if they give in on the small decisions (paperclips) the other manager will cooperate on the large decisions (budgets or staffing levels).  However, what the normal manager does not realize is that in compromising on the small issues, they have made it more difficult to resist the large issues. A variant on this strategy is that the rogue manager will wait until the last minute to suggest changes. If the normal manager does not accept the changes, they appear to be the one who caused the deadline to be missed. In some cases, the rogue manager may simply insist on their way. To back this up, they appeal to the managing directors to undermine the normal managers. The other manager, who wants an easy life, will find it easier to let them have their way than constantly have to explain why they are interfering with a “performer” or someone “who delivers.”  In time, the normal manager becomes co-opted in the way that the direct reports have been co-opted.  In serious situations, the managing directors will weary of the fight and encourage their direct reports to “work with the manager” or “find a way to accommodate them” because they produce results and are important to the organisation.

If you tolerate rogue behaviour are you helping the barrel to rot?

When a senior manager is rogue, a number of people will be aware of their behaviour. They exhibit a pattern of behaviour. Colleagues will either suspect or know it is wrong. Yet they will likely shrug their shoulders and say, “Thank goodness I am not working for them.” In some cases, they may say “It is not my problem to fix”. The other senior managers begin to feel that they have no responsibility for their colleagues’ behaviour. They may justify this by the belief that the managing directors condone the behaviour. We can see this in the LIBOR fixing scandal where Barclays staff were fixing the rate to “protect” the company.

The barrel is often rotting before the rogue senior manager emerges

The barrel is rotten before the senior manager assumes power and position. The rogue manager will have worked within the company so they have been promoted from within. Along the way, they will work diligently, and ruthlessly to remove those who have initiative or were brave enough to challenge them. They reinforce a culture of compliance that existed as they grew up in the organisation. Karl Albrect described the Despotism syndrome in his list of 17 syndromes of organisational dysfunction. In doing this, they were surrounded by a wider corporate culture that likely valued appearances and good news. The concern with appearances then undermines critical upwards communication. In turn, the junior employees will understand that they need to conform and make sure that the good news is being promoted up. The employee understands that their voice is not to be exercised.  In some organisations, the managers will discourage internal communication that allows workers to organise or compare their work. In these companies, social media is resisted. In other cases, they may be monitored so heavily for “dissent”, that staff soon refuse or choose not to use them.  Instead of internal communication, personal networks emerge. You will find that the organisation does not have a robust system for sharing information and learning, which allows the rogue manager to flourish. Instead of a social media organisation, where employees are able to share their ability, the system becomes command and control.

What is to be done?

To some, the above may appear a bleak summary of an organisation; to others it may appear exaggerated. In most organisations, the situation never becomes as problematic as described because they have mechanisms in place to prevent them and to contain them should they emerge. For example, they may have a “No assholes rule” or they may pride themselves on good customer culture turned into good customer service. What these firms show is a strong corporate culture that staff and managers understand as they agreed and accepted way of getting things done. If your organisation does not have the following characteristics, it is a good sign that the barrel is becoming rotten.

First, the company’s internal communication system allows bad news to be told to senior managers.

Second, senior managers will check their corporate culture.  They want to support their corporate culture and be concerned that the corporate culture is not being followed.

Third, managing directors will reward senior managers for how well they treat their staff as well as by their results.

Finally, the managing directors will be interested in the number and types of grievances, disciplinary cases, dismissals. They will check exit interviews to learn about why people are leaving the company. If you have a strong corporate culture, your organisation will want to understand why staff leave and learn from their departure.

 

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Culture eats your structure for lunch

Posted on July 10, 2013 by lawrence serewicz
English: Burkle Building, Peter F. Drucker and...

English: Burkle Building, Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Peter Drucker allegedly said that culture eats strategy for breakfast.  If strategy is for breakfast then your structure is for lunch.  Culture will overcome any structural chart or any reorganisation. Companies fail because they believe that a restructure will change the culture of the company.  Even if a restructure creates temporary success, culture will reassert itself. Often senior managers ignore organisational culture because it works for them, by ignoring culture; the senior managers indicate that the organisation cannot learn because they engage in single loop learning. If senior managers cannot talk about culture, they are incapable of double loop learning.  Culture refers to “the way we do things around here” , which means it requires double loop learning. Culture cannot be fixed by simply fixing mistakes. Culture is what creates the mistakes and it will always remain no matter the organisational chart or the structure chart.  One of the main reasons why senior managers pursue restructures is that they believe that structure determines culture.

If structure determined culture, why would we talk about culture? The question captures the tension between culture and structure. What links them is organisational learning. A hierarchical learning organisation will behave differently than a matrix or decentralized organisation that cannot learn. What we find in organisations that can learn or have a learning culture is that teams and units work well because they can learn and adapt.  As a result, they do not need to restructure. What they do need, though, is to be refreshed with new members or new responsibilities.  However, the successful managers never confuse a restructure, a structural change, with double loop learning, a way of working. As complex entities, teams explore why they succeed and what needs to be changed to maintain that success.  By contrast, most managers and most organisations focus on single loop learning so they turn to restructures in the hope that they will achieve double loop learning and changed ways of working.  Successful managers look at ways of improving their teams and their units by building on their existing culture.  The manager and the teams are both learning. They understand that maintaining a successful team requires adjustments and some change yet that change or outcome is not determined by the structure. If the structure is wrong, it is changed because the culture is working.  The changed structure will not bring a new culture.  As they realize the importance of culture within the team, and the wider culture of the organisation, successful managers reject the belief that minor adjustments within a team or teams can be scaled up to the whole organisation to achieve the result seen within the team.  When managers and senior managers believe that minor changes in structures or teams can be scaled up to the organisation, they have forgotten culture.  In the same way that those managers who are short sighted or simply without vision seek to restructure as an end in itself.  In a dysfunctional organisation, senior managers start to restructure as a conscious strategy to avoid dealing with the corporate culture.  

Restructuring to avoid dealing with a corporate culture When senior managers use restructures to avoid dealing with culture means that everything is in flux. Teams, units, and divisions are constantly working out their roles, responsibilities, and resources, with each restructure.  Instead of creating a new culture to adapt, they only learn to adapt the existing culture to the new structure.  As such, they are not doing double loop learning.  Instead, they are using the restructure as single loop learning by adapting the existing culture to the new structure. Chief Executives, especially new ones, believe they have to stamp their authority on the organisation. Many do this by changing the structure to fit their vision.  Often they choose a structure over culture because structure is concrete and easier to manage.  Culture is harder to express than a structure on a single PowerPoint slide. However, successful CEOs will know that they will need to work with the culture to ensure their restructure succeeds. Experienced senior managers know that changing a culture will have a greater impact than any change to the organisational chart or roles and responsibilities, which means the two aspects need to work together.

Does your structure reflect your culture? In a learning organisation, the answer is yes.  The reason why it will be a yes is that the managers are asking questions and challenging the organisation on a regular basis. When managers claim to have a decentralized and empowering culture often referred to as tight/loose, but the structure is hierarchical and centralized, you can see a gap.  When senior managers claim they empower front-line staff, but give money and resources based on the hierarchy, the language does not match the reality. What we see is that the managers have stopped asking questions about the effectiveness of their culture. The structural problems reflect the cultural problems.

Restructuring is a way to solve many problems except for culture. Restructuring is popular because companies can find it difficult to talk about culture. It can also be difficult for an organisation to know itself. Instead, managers talk about their strategy, their structure, or even their values, such as being customer centred, but will find it difficult to articulate, described or even speak about their culture. Culture is messy. It gets back to identity and engagement neither of which is easy for a manager to do. Yet, culture is what creates an engaged employee willing to do more for the company.  A company’s culture is more than a list of values, yet many companies will point to a list of values and say “That is our culture.” If that is how you understand your culture you will not be able to change it because you do not know what it is. Culture is made up of the myths, stories, and accepted practices that infuse an organisation and explain the way we do things around here. For many managers culture is a challenge because they take it for granted. “It is what it is, so why change it”. For others it is resistant to change because of tradition, inertia, and habit of ways of working  that require too much effort to change so it is best to work with it. “You are never going to change it, so why try?”  In truly dysfunctional organisations, the Chief Executive or senior managers make their peace with the organisation and begin the slow, but certain, process of becoming institutionalised. “It’s not perfect but we are getting improvement so if it aint broke don’t fix it.” When that occurs, especially after a restructure, the organisation has exhaled. It can now breath again after the uncertainty of the restructure. The senior managers reach a new equilibrium and a culture change is avoided.  The senior managers settle for what is working and do not seek to push the organisation to improve. They stop asking the questions about the culture, challenging the myths that hold the company back and just look happy to get along with the organisation.

Culture is messy; Structures are tangible We can see why senior managers want to avoid the culture discussion, or avoid trying to understand the way we do things around here, by focusing on structure and strategy.  Senior managers can busy themselves with meeting after meeting discussing the strategy, or the structure, without examining or understanding how things are done. When an organisation cannot talk about its culture but is sure of strategy and its structure, it sees restructure as the solution. The management team will solve the problem it knows. However, each subsequent restructure fails to achieve the required results so more restructures are needed.  The restructure cycle begins, but never embeds because it does not address the culture. The cycle unfolds in the following stages.  The first stage, we see the management team arrive bringing the solutions searching for a problem. They scan the organisation and take stock of teams and talents.  They then decide that a restructure is needed. The next stage emerges, which is the post-restructure period.  As the teams and units are pushed into uncertainty, some respond and others continue to lag.  Overall performance improves as individuals and teams seek to benefit from the changes. They believe the new ways of working will lead to a change in culture.  After a few years, the culture has not been addressed, except in a superficial way, the third stage emerges.  In this stage, culture reasserts itself.  There has been some change and some improvement, but the underlying organisational culture remains.  In a sense, the organisation cannot learn which creates its blindness to the need to change culture.  The next restructure is done, and the cycle continues.  Once restructuring becomes an end in itself, has management stopped?

Speeding up the restructure cycle will not change the culture. We may continue to restructure and find an initial benefit as people seek new ways of working to adjust to the change in structure.  Yet, that too will slowly, or quickly, unravels because the organisation, like its culture, is just waiting to exhale.  The changes will be absorbed and the organisation will return to the way it has always worked. More and more restructuring will not change the culture because the restructure does not address the issue.

What needs to be done? An organisation and its managers need to be able to talk about how things are done. For example, if an organisation claims to be customer focused, putting the customer at the heart of everything it does, why does it have such high numbers of complaints? The managers have to look at the culture and the systems they have created. They need to look why their intended outcomes are not being achieved. What is also needed is a willingness to hear bad news and find a way to discuss it. If the organisation cannot find a way to discuss bad news, it cannot address its culture. An organisation may survive a long time with single loop learning and restructuring, but it will face a reckoning point where it has to change its culture or collapse. When you face your next restructure, ask yourself; is it to avoid dealing with the culture or because it reflects a learning culture?

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