Decision making process relied for ages (and still does in a majority of cases) on a top-down approach, where decisions are taken by senior executives and executed by all layers below in a pre-defined way.
This hack defines a revolutionary decision making process which allows employees to participate to the decision based on new social networking tools. Benefits for the company are:
- Better integration of the logic of the decision,
- Optimized tactical execution of tasks,
- Prevention of positional bias from execution levels,
- More useful alternatives to "standard" options.
Companies regularly fail in implementing successfully strategic decision. Main problems are:
1. BLURRED LOGIC: contributors to the implementation of a solution do not generally understand the logic of the decision because they don't have visibility on all elements behind the decision. Social-networked decision process allows open and consultative discussion of the logic which should result in better adherence of all participants to final rationale.
2. EXECUTION DISCONNECT: too many strutural layers often prevent implementation with limited feedback of the decision and suboptimal tactical decisions are taken, sometime even in contradiction with the initial decision. Social-networked decision process opens up for multiple levels of feedback on the reality of the implementation and provides real life solutions to existing hurdles.
3. PERSONAL BIAS: Positional bias takes place at all levels in the execution chain and facilitates implementation of the best solution for the individual often to the detriment of the best solution for the company. Social-networked decision process discourages middle-management from using personal agenda and forces best solutions for the company to be defined and agreed by all contributors.
4. LACK OF OPTIONS: when decisions are taken in small groups, it is likely that the same decisions will be taken over and over again, preventing better solutions being articulated based on a larger community of contributors. Social-networked decision process multiplies the options with an increased number of participants, even outside the perimeter of the concerned entity if need be.
Key components of the solution are the following:
1. Executive level support for the process
2. A template that allows decisions to be “social-networked” that includes:
- Opportunity/Issue to be addressed
- Recommendations on who, when and how, to address it
- Investment case with clear identification of pay off
- Key implementation steps
3. Supporting technology to host the social-networked decision process. It is essential to implement a decent and easily understood polling and voting mechanism, genuinely a case of the right tool and process helping to make the outcome work.
4. An execution Framework that describes how decisions get finally executed?
- Revolving Peer Group which role is to encourage consultative work with some level of moderations and make final summary of inputs. One Group is to be defined for each decision channel
- Governance to identify which entity (or person) ultimately makes the decision - Consultation vs. Decision
5. An incentivization Scheme:
- Put in place incentives directly correlated with impact of the decision on participants (What is it in it for me?)
- Some “gamification” in the process can encourage non directly impacted persons to contribute ("Most Valuable Player" title for example)
Let us take the example of a company which needs to change the way IT Customer Service should be provided. Current situation involves internal support team with field engineers in each location. The CIO wishes to centralize some resources to optimize costs and leverage knowledge transfer. Impacts on quality of service to users have not been properly analyzed.
The traditional way of taking the decision would have consisted in discussing the matter at the Executive Board and presenting the Business Case. Impacted field engineers would have heard about the project, not knowing the impact on their day to day activities and fearing for their future. Service would have started to degrade and use satisfaction would have dropped.
Let us now imagine that the CEO and the CIO decide to go for a Social-Networked Decision Process.
The CEO starts by appointing a Social Peer Group which will facilitate a social network platform to discuss the intention to optimize Customer Service, presenting the rationale for consolidation, encouraging inputs from internal IT support functions as well as users in the regions. All employees can have a say on the logic for the decision, presenting the benefits and the practical hurdles of implementation (such as disruption of ancillary services provided by field engineers who are not properly "identified" in the job descriptions).
By opening up the decision to all parties, it is very much likely that new options might be considered. For example, a federated model by which Customer Services are virtually centralized per region but not necessarily physically displaced.
At the end of the consultation process, the Social Peer Group can advise the CEO about the best decision to take. All employees are then fully aware of the logic behind the decision; they clearly identified the execution practicalities and the necessary work-around; nobody can play personal agendas (job protection) and new innovative options have been considered.
In a short, main impacts are:
- Quality of the decision increases
- Implementation speed goes up (with al parties' support)
- Employee motivation and buy-in is higher , knowing that there was participation to the decision making process
1. Find 2 or 3 executives who would be ready to use 3 different kinds of decision channels (HR, Technology, Finance...)
2. Explicitely state that this is experimental only.
3. Attempt a careful identification of the areas in which is crowd sourcing / crowd discussion is beneficial; in the initial days it is better to begin with tactical moves or initiatives that affect operations or have a direct impact on employees work.
4. Start with small experiments in “educated” teams i.e.
- Involve some research engineers or developers who are already used to communicate to achieve their objective
- Select preferably a majority of young staff members already faced to Social networking behaviors. However it is also important to include Gen X, Y, and Baby Boomers to ensure that lessons are learned about adoption and change management from across the age groups
- Communicate to the entire staff about the experiment and the goal to achieve (more transparency into decision making to reach company objective more quickly and more efficiently)
5. Experience incentives and timeframe (e.g. 12 experiements in 3-6 months) e.g. include reward based mechanisms that could follow gaming principles to encourage adoption and sustainability
6. Celebrate Success
Hi Michael
I did not hear back from you and I don't know if you are still interested to join
If so, please give me your email as the content has laready evolved with inputs from other participants
I will be delighted to add your inputs to the defintion fo our Management hack
Looking forward to it
Thierry
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Dear Michael
I started to circulate my 1st dratf for the complete definition of our Management Hack
I am missing your email address to be able to work offline
Thank you for sharing it with us as soon as you can
Thierry
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Dear Michael
I am happy to count you in.
Please let me know what your motivations are in making this mini hack a success.
I will welcome any contribution to the moonshots and the rest of the editorial work.
I am looking forward to it
PS: To improve our joint editing capabilities, could you please communicate your Email Address? Many thanks in advance
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I want to join this team. matthew.watson@caresource.com
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Dear Matthew
Welcome to our team.
I am looking forward to your valuable thoughts and ideas.
I will share a draft of the mini-hack for us to work on pretty soon.
Stay tuned.
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I would like to join this hack;
Although social collaborative decision making is an option; what does it say about innovation, agility, rapid decisions and being competitive. I think in some cases collective decisions could result in mediocrity?
email is peter.duplooy@engenoil.com
regards.
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Mediocrity is indeed a risk which any crowd is at risk of achieving. The least common denominator rule might apply also to social systems. However the optimistic angle is to look at what each participant brings to the community and to capitlize on what is in many brains instead than one. It needs focus and a clear measurable goal(related to performance of the business either on selected leading indicators, financial or operational)
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I am very interested in social media aspects of reaching and interacting with our members. The younger generation is tied to their mobile devices. With that in mind how do we get them to interact with us to improve their quality of care. Internally we are in the process of changing our culture to become more innovative. We are going to start by providing a tool for our front line employees to be able to submit and comment on ideas that will hopefully become game changers. In both cases we are utilizing a "Gaming" type methodology. Looking forward to seeing how we can exploit social media, not just in twitter, facebook, and google.
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Hi Matthew
I very much like the idea of gamification. The intrinsic reward-based system that gamification automates can be used in place of monetary rewards to foster participation and engagement. Am happy to have your contribution to progressing the definition of our mini hack
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Social mechanisms have certainly opened opportunities to change the way we communicate in organisations. Communication is usually either bottom up or top down. Very often bottom up ends up being 'the grapevine' and less formal, while top down is directional.
Top down is usually driven by the CEO and CXO team and their appetitive for using communicating mechanisms and also the level of detail they are comfortable sharing. To some extent this comes back to perceptions of bureaucratic versus open cultural organisations.
Leaders play a large role in the organisational values and cultures and without support from the CXO group, implementing social type mechanisms for communication and decision making will fail. Leaders vary in the levels of acceptance and use of technologies not always driven by age but often categorised by age. Without the proposed social communication being top down, bottom up will be viewed by the CXO group as rumour mongering and will through the usual company policies live a short life.
I am sure that most leaders would like to use the 'wisdom of crowds' concepts to help tune their thinking and directions and if this 'non-threatening' approach is taken, it could foster greater collaboration, sense of contribution and organisational well being. However, the success will depend on how many of the ideas or collective decisions are adopted and implemented by the leadership group.
Organisations will not survive without leadership and collective wisdom could merely result in mediocre decisions and 'normalisation' rather than competitive differentiation. Of course if the culture of the country in which the organisation operates is one of equality, competitiveness does not matter, but most societies are competitive by nature.
The change management, objectives and outcomes will need to be carefully crafted to ensure adoption and sustainability of a corporate social network. Some parameters will need to be set up front to ensure that the 'rules' are clear. Our society is one of rules and change has a long time line.
Having subgroups or specific outcome generating groups using collective collaborative technologies similar to this one, could work well in organisation and might be the early testing ground to larger roll-out. They do however take time and commitment from those participating to make it work and to sustain the sharing. Unfortunately in many cases there is a 'what's in it for me' approach and with social, mobile and cloud technologies moving closer to individual marketing and the market of one, we seem to be going down the route of pull and individual centric thinking. These macro trends will need consideration as employees need to feel that being at work becomes an extension of the 'individual world'.
The more employees get involved in generating ideas and social sharing, the greater the amount of data and information to analyse and internalise so the idea of having more time will soon disappear! Think of the different cultural groups in an organisation and the different meanings applied to similar words, or different ways of expressing ourselves, or different short cut codes, supposedly all using the same language....
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Hi Peter
Your analysis of the success factors is very accurate and I agree with you that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" The success mechanisms of any social network initiatives apply to work environment at a bigger scale. My idea is that we replace email exchange in companies with broader exchange of ideas in circles where those ideas are to come to actions. It is there to help accelerating the decision making process and not slowing it down.
This requires a well articulated definition of the "circle" and the assignments of the participant to a well defined goal.
This does not prevent applying weight to the opinions depending on who is formulating those opinions at the risk, I must admit, of replicating hierarchy and bringing back self-censorship
I am definitely interested in having you joining our team if you wish. We can start exchanging via mails to further refine the definition of the mini hack or if you officially join, you can have editorial rights to the mini hack (in a well applied crowd sourcing principle)
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Thanks Thierry, I want to join; please advise next steps. email is peter.duplooy@engenoil.com
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Dear Anantha
I am happy to count you in.
Could you please communicate your email address so that we can start the editing work together?
Thank you in advance. Thierry
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Hi,
My email id is anantha.sayana@larsentoubro.com
regards
anantha
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I would like to join this hack -david.clark@gartner.com (Hi Thierry)
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Hello David
I am very sorry for the late reply but I was one week away on vacation.
You are more than welcome to join
I will send you the last version of my hack for your comments and changes
Looking forward to your inputs
Kind regards, Thierry
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If you wish to join the team, please let everyone know why you are interested in this mini hack or what you find compelling about it?
Where would you like to see the team take it and what ideas do you have to share?
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