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A frustrated customer

Some weeks ago I bought an economics book that also had an useful web resource. Enclosed was a key to access the resource. It tried to use it and login, but did not succeed. I contacted the support and it took several emails back and forth to understand that the key could not be used. Since their web shop had no button to add this web resource item to my basket, I asked them how I could buy such a key. They redirected me to sales. Yet another email, this time to sales. Sales department could not find the ISBN number in their Canadian system and therefore could not give me a price. Period. That was all. How hard can it be? Here I was, a customer fighting to buy an item! I gave up.

Standardized services

This led me to think about services and their design. The above has happened many times in different situations. In the name of effectiveness and optimization I am forced to fill in standardized forms or talk to people that can handle only one type of questions. Sometimes I have to talk to an dumb automated teller without pardon. Why can’t I be guided to the right answer by a real person?

Services are designed with the assumption that 1) problems can be a categorized and 2) the customer can understand this categorization. In real life there is variety and the problem told, might be hiding the real one. What is the real result of this categorized service? People call again and ask questions. Are the customers slow to understand? Is the problem on the customer side? Should we optimize the categorization? No!

Failure demand

Service design seems to be guided by factory thinking. Usually the intelligence is put in an information system. This way, standardization can be applied by specialized service people. But this factory thinking, this system (encompassing much more than the IT system), hinders variety and create unhappy customers. It creates a demand of help or more information because of failures.

Absorbing variety

We should accept that variety is part of life and design the services accordingly. You may react: we cannot afford that! But what if the unnecessary questions, the “failure demand”, actually generate a lot of unnecessary work? This waste of time could have been avoided if the customer got all the help he wanted at first contact. Real people are the best absorbers of variety. When designing services, the workers that meet the customer should handle as much as possible and be a guide to the solution. This generates happy and returning customers.

Applying

The observant reader has noticed a change in the title of this blog. Do you see the change? I have changed it because I want to emphasize the application of systems thinking even more. Thinking high and lofty thoughts are not enough. I am interested in changing the way things are to the better.

One reader asked me: what do you offer? I gave it a thought. I like to solve problems and find new ways. As a consultant I have many years of experience of building IT-systems to solve problems. But there is a bigger perspective. Information technology can produce a lot of “waste”; information that does not add real value.  They can also just reinforce bad ways of doing things. It is better to do right things than to do less of wrong things.

You are in a situation and you are not satisfied. There is a problem, an undesired behaviour or you want to move on and find new ways of doing things.  How can you proceed?

System behaviour

When we are looking for solutions, we have a tendency to single out one or two possible causes and attempt to correct them. We fail to see the big perspective and because of this, our solution does not lead to long-term change. It is as if what we trying to change have an inherent resistance to change. After a while things revert to the old conditions or get worse. We fail to see that material and immaterial things around us: habits, machines, people, programs, attitudes and culture are connected to each other and form a system. Different parts of this system depend on each other and interact. It is the system that probably produces the undesired behaviour and not a single part, a single process or a single person. I can help you to identify the relevant perspective.

We have a tendency to focus on certain details (abstractions) for optimization. This can be negative for other parts and for the whole. What we call side-effects are ordinary effects, just like the effects we desire. The abstraction exists only in our minds. For example, we have focused on transportation and considered pollution a side-effect. But this “side-effect” is biting us badly now.

Time

We need to increase the boundaries of the area we study and take into account the time factor. Systems have inertia and different parts interact through feedback. Changing one part might produce something unexpected in another part. Consequences might take a sudden turn and not behave as nice and calm as we thought.

We should recognize properties of connections and relationships as having real importance, just like the properties of the parts. Some strenghts only exist because of relationships. People are not like a container of competence that you can move around. We often talk about employees as resources. If you reorganize, have you considered what will happen with the relationships of trust within groups of people?

Leverage points

There are places in this mix of parts and connections where you can get the most long term change with minimal effort. These points are sometimes not so obvious and perhaps counter-intuitive. The discipline systems thinking calls these places leverage points. Efficient problem solving is done by studying the whole system and finding the leverage points. I can help you to find these leverage points.

Problem solving can result in a redesign of a system. It can also mean that we learn to navigate more efficiently in a system we cannot change. Actually we can control much less of our environment than we think.

How to do it

There is a practical approach of how to efficiently solve problems. It can be done with a series of meetings or modelling sessions where a group of people together with a facilitator meet. The facilitator guides the group through the process and together they co-create the solution. The outcome might be a process map, a vision statement, an informational model or just a bunch of good ideas. The dialogue during the sessions is very important. The journey is just as valuable as the result. By working together a shared view of the problem and the solution is built. I can help you by guiding you through the problem solving sessions.

Computer model

The system dynamics discipline takes it a step further by attempting to make a computer model of the relevant part of the system. During the modelling sessions we build a flight simulator where different policies that can be tested and evaluated. It may sound strange that is can be useful to build computer models with “soft” variables. But even a limited model is of great value, since during the work hidden assumptions are made visible. A shared “live” graphical model says more than thousands words and can be of great help in to learn to think systemic in a situation.

So what do I offer? I offer you help in solving problems and finding new ways by applying systems thinking.

Today I read an interesting article in the March issue of Systems Thinker. It is titled A Systemic Path to Lean Management by Thomas Johnson. He exposes the heart of Toyota’s Lean thinking and why so many have failed to follow their example.  Businesses have achieved temporary improvements, but the long term average for most of them has not been satisfying. Toyota on the other hand has managed to continuously improve their performance over a long time.

Go deeper

What is the difference? The reason for failure is, according to Johnson, that the Lean practitioners do not go deep enough and change their underlying thinking. The followers emulate, but does not see the system change needed. Most managers believe that to increase output they can manipulate the separate parts of the business operation independently. The prevalent idea is that the financial results is an linear addition of the contribution of the parts. A company could almost be condensed to, expressed in and controlled by a spreadsheet of financial results. The company is viewed as a machine.

When the management try to improve financial results, they will probably destroy relationships; the core of true business. They might have short term improvements, but the results will be devastating in the long run. This way of thinking of a company is influenced by the old concepts of Physics about mechanical processes and has been erroneously transferred to social systems.

A living social system

This is not the Toyota way, according to Johnson. They build their business as a system that itself naturally produces results. Business is most of all a human living social system, a system of relationships and improvement lies in nurturing and reinforcing the system of relationships that produces the desired results, ultimately for the customers.

Accounting

Johnson challenges the usual management accounting practises, by saying that one-dimensional quantities can only describe a living system. They cannot successfully be used to explain what is going on or used to control multidimensional interactions going on in the business. Toyota dispenses with the usual production control and accounting control for daily operation. They do it differently. Johnson says:

The prevalence of management accounting control systems in American business probably contributes more than any single thing to the confusion of levels that causes managers to believe they can run operations mechanically by chasing financial targets, not by nurturing and improving the underlying system of human relationships from which such results emerge.

This is very interesting stuff, isn’t it? Lean thinking and systems thinking, hand in hand. It deserves a closer look, especially how Toyota implements it. Does Johnson have a too idealistic view of Toyota? He continues to discuss this subject in Profit beyond Measure. This book ended up in my wish list at Amazon immediately.

I have just completed Behind Closed Doors by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby.  I wanted to read something by these authors, since I will be going to their Problem Solving Leadership training in January in Uppsala, Sweden. Gerald Weinberg will also be part of the teaching team and you can be sure I look forward to it.

The book

I read this book two times and that tells you how much I appreciated it. Behind Closed Doors is about best practise in management. Rothman’s and Derby’s approach is a bit different than in many other books. Here we have a story about fictitious manager, Sam, newly employed at a software development company. You follow him as he deals with different situations and uses sound management principles. The story is accompanied with the author’s comments about the situations. At the end there is a chapter called Techniques for Practising Great Management that discusses some of the principles in greater detail.

Story-telling

The story-telling ingredient in the authors teaching style is a great idea and it enables them to communicate and paint the picture of good management even better. Though the story does not have novel quality, it carries the message in an acceptable way.

Team building

It is very interesting to see how Sam treats the development department as a system and how he works on jellying the leader group together. Leadership is creating an environment that enables people to work successfully. Sam spends time every week with his group leaders in one-on-one meetings. He helps them to see the big picture and their role in the company. Together they create shared goals as a team and time boxed action plans.  Sam coaches them to formulate personal goals that fit into the company’s goals.

Ego

People often optimize for their own success, at the expense of the team or the entire organization.  I have surely been guilty of this. We are working each one in our own hole, digging and shovelling. There is clearly a need for leaders who can bring people together.

System problems

We are quick to blame each other for problems, but often problems are not caused by individuals. The cause can be  rooted in the system and its processes. People do not see the system problems, because they are part of the system. They are on the inside of it. An experienced manager (systems thinker) can see the system and facilitate the group’s problem solving work. A system problem can only be solved by the involved group of people. This is very interesting. The ability to take a step back and reveal what is going on and see the system processes is extremely valuable.

People

Sam is very interested in each one in his department employees. He coaches them to improve their capabilities and gives them clear feedback. Step by step he builds a successful team in difficult situations, prioritizing (and reprioritizing as circumstances change) the work that supports the goals of the group and the organization.

Simple principles

Rothman’s and Derby’s main tenet is that the principles of good management are not that difficult to understand. They discuss for example one-on-ones, portfolio management, feedback, coaching and delegation. The thing is to consistently and reliably perform these practises week after week.

Wise thoughts

I have started to read good books a bit more careful lately. When good thoughts are brought to us, we can act as they are just interesting; like standing at a distance and observing them. But wise thoughts should be treated in a better way. If you find them, take the time to expose yourself to them. Thoughts are powerful. Let them sink in and affect your mind-world and your feelings. There is plenty of room for some changed worlds today.