Human Operating System?

These 6 business sub-systems must be fully aligned and integrated to enable flawless execution.

I bet if I asked you what your company is all about you’d give me that same ol’ rehearsed elevator pitch. You’d be able to tell me what it does and why it’s important. But, if I asked you how. You just might stall. The answers on “how” a business does what it does lies in its unique combination of systems that governs how it executes its mission.

I like to call this collection of systems the organization’s “Human Operating System.”

Your firm’s Human Operating System is, of course, informed by your vision, enabled by your strategic plans and is translated into company culture. Here are the key parts of every Human Operating System:

1. Work Design Systems – These systems define how your business is organized. It determines your reporting lines, you workflow and the nature of your production and service delivery processes. These systems must be optimized and aligned to achieve your vision.

2. Communication Systems – These systems include, both, the formal and informal ways in which your business communicates within and without. Time must be spent to design these systems in a deliberate fashion. You want to achieve transparency and to field the necessary tools that make open, honest and ease of communication as simple and straight-forward, as possible.

3. Decision-making Systems – Decision-making support systems take many forms and provide many functions. They can be underpinned by “Big Data” and sophisticated analytics engines which crunch data and present it in meaningful ways. These systems also include the style in which decision-making is done by a firm, including such “soft” subjects as collaboration tendencies, empowerment levels and problem escalation principles. Care must be taken in the design and implementation of these systems because you want to ensure synchronicity with other desired company culture objectives.

4. Change Management Systems – These systems include all of the processes and procedures used to set direction and manage change. How well your people handle the natural evolution of your business environment is dictated by the change management systems that you put into place. These systems should be carefully developed to enable the “preparedness” of your organization.

5. Talent Management Systems – These systems entail the acquisition, retention and development of your human capital. Also included in these systems are training, career path design, job classifications and skills prerequisites. These systems must be fully integrated into your strategic thinking to ensure that the organization is hiring and developing for the future and not just filling its current open positions.

6. Measurement and Reward Systems – These systems must be tied to the work design systems so that measurements are done as work is performed and not counted and tallied after the fact. Additionally, rewards systems must be based on the achievement of desired outcomes, at both, company and individual levels, and not on effort or tenure.

To close, what does your organization’s Human Operating System look like? Is it fully aligned with your vision story and does it enable the execution of your strategies? If so, count yourself lucky – few businesses can claim full alignment and integration of the critical systems that comprise its Human Operating System. If not, keep the faith, there’s plenty of help available to assist you in re-imagining how to make them work in unison and achieve your greatest business goals and objectives. Don’t be afraid to reach out for what you need.

This article was published by Inc. on 5 December 2016.

What We’ve Got Here Is a Failure to Communicate: How to Create a Solid Communications Strategy

With all of the communication tools and technologies available today, why do so many businesses still have a communications problem? Here’s a simple 7 step process for building a solid communications program.

Many firms suffer from poor communications. It’s my theory is that too few firms have the necessary communications program in place to do it well. Take the following steps to develop an effective communications program plan:

1. Delineate your objectives – Determine what you expect to gain from your communications program. Objectives could range from enhancing service delivery and improving staff loyalty to gaining a bigger marketplace influence or upgrading relations with the media and regulatory entities.

2. Baseline your current communication practices – Once you know your objectives, perform a communications audit and evaluate how your business communicates. This characterization should involve: brainstorming with staff, interviewing senior leaders and surveying customers, suppliers and distributors with the sole purpose of discovering how, when, why and where your people communicate and message for, and about, your business.

3. Determine your key audiences – List all the audiences that the firm might want to contact, attempt to influence, or serve. At a minimum, these will likely include customers, staff, industry groups, business partners, and the media.

4. Translate these audience sectors into specific projects and programs aimed at delivering information is the best ways possible to each group – You’ll need to consider your baseline results (as determined earlier) and map that against available human and financial resources, of course. But, by crafting initiatives for each group, you’ll be much better positioned to achieve your Communication Program’s objectives.

5. Establish a timeline for execution – With the initiatives (which comprise your Communications Program) identified, it’s time to craft a calendar grid that outlines when each effort will begin and be accomplished. Group the projects and programs into 18 month intervals (what I like to call “Implementation Plateaus”). This enables your organization to better understand what will be done when to improve its communications infrastructure.

6. Estimate costs at an implementation plateau-level – By “chunking” the work effort into 18 month intervals and giving an estimate of that total investment, you can shift dollars as needed among the initiatives that make up a given implementation plateau. This provides some wiggle room for your organization as it evolves its communications strategies over time.

7. Begin to execute and evaluate – Shape a method for measuring results into each project / program plan that you launch. Be sure to track project / program progress on a monthly basis and report it back to your senior management sponsors as you evolve each effort.

To close, a solid Communications Program plan requires about is 60-90 days to complete. Once in place, though, with the proper level of executive commitment and maintenance you will a communications asset that can be kept in sync with your organizational advancement for years to come. To learn more, just reach out to me and we can discuss it directly.

Note: This piece was originally published by Inc on October 31, 2016. If you like this article, please subscribe to my column and you’ll never miss another thought piece!

 

All About Culture By Design

Company culture is a strategic imperative that must be created and transformed by design, not by default.

This is the first installment of an important 3-part series on company culture that I will be bringing to my Inc. readers. The series focuses on how to become more deliberate in creating a work environment that enables and empowers your organization to achieve and exceed all your expectations. I call the concept that I’m going to share with you: culture by design.

To begin, it’s essential to note that corporate culture determines the preferred way of execution and achievement within an organization. Every organization has a corporate culture. Sadly, many cultures evolve by default, not by design. Consequently, the impact can be characterized by all kinds of strategic misalignment and manifest in the marketplace as witnessed through declining product or service quality, unimpressive customer support and less than stellar financial results.

Despite the fact that most organizations can benefit from a cultural overhaul, there are many circumstances in which a senior leadership team should strongly consider re-imagining its de facto corporate culture and aim to create a culture by design, including:

• Immersion in senior leadership changes
• Pivoting in a new strategic direction
• Following significant M&A activities
• Responding to a marketplace disruption
• Managing through the entry to new markets
• Responding to a damage control situation
• Post spin-off
• When going global

If your organization is currently involved in any of these situations, then you may want to seek out the assistance of firms, like mine, that can bring you a leading-edge methodology that will enable you to develop a culture by design.

More on culture by design methods and practices in next week’s article. For now, let it suffice to say that each culture by design work product, of which there are many, needs to be informed by a company’s current state to better define a clear path to the culture that its leaders imagine for a firm’s fervent success. After all, the road map to the future has to start wherever you are!

To close, there is no doubt that company culture is influenced by the preferences and leadership style of the senior management team. But, it is passed down from generation to generation of worker through myth and legend — much like a country’s culture emerges through the stories that its people tell themselves. So, to change it, culture must be transformed deliberately — in essence, it becomes an effort of culture by design. Check back next week for a look at the work products that underpin most culture by design efforts.

If you like this article, please subscribe to my column and you’ll never miss another one!

NOTE:  This article first appeared in INC. on September 19, 2016.