Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

A delayed flight back from Sydney the other week was not all bad news, as it did give me a bit more time to catch up on some extra reading, and discussions with the colleagues with whom I shared the additional delay.

We might make an additional post later, on our discussions about the ways in which a customer service opportunity was wasted by that particular airline…

This post, however, is about this article “The Execution Trap” by Roger Martin in the July-August 2010 issue of the HBR.

It’s a good article (and I also appreciated the comments underneath).

Interestingly, this article was also copied into the September issue of AFR Boss.

Something’s not right?

The article starts with the statement that:

“the idea that execution is distinct from strategy has become firmly ensconced in management thinking over the past decade”

However, it also poses what I see to be the key question:

“If a strategy produces poor results, how can we argue that it is brilliant?”

Hard to argue with that logic – and I believe that it would be misguided and myopic to try.

My own experience

The author holds (and I agree) that it is the dogmatic belief that strategy and execution are somehow separate, and sequential, that is the root of this malaise.

At its base level, this reverts to something along the following lines:

The self-professed “Doers” in the organisation looking to the self-appointed “Thinkers” and saying “just tell me what to do”

The Thinkers, in response, trying (but failing) to be fully detailed in terms of what to do, how, where and when (plus maybe why).

The same Thinkers then looking on in shock when the Doers proceed to implement something that is not precisely what the Thinkers had in their heads at the time (if, indeed, they had even a fully formed plan to begin with).

The Doers look back at the Thinkers with a smug “I knew it was not going to work” smirk (in part because of some insights about the customer, or the process, that were not shared with the Thinkers, or which were shared and not respected).

Both “sides” (as if there should be sides) blame the other for the “failure of implementation”.

In my own experience (both in this company, and prior) it would seem to be that this belief is also endemic, as well.

I’ve been working for 20 years now, and have been amazed at this needless dichotomy for more time than that – such as I’ve posted here and here.

This is one of the reasons that I am striving for what I’ve currently termed “autonomy” as the fourth of our core values.

A better (truer) paradigm

The author proposes that:

“we should conceive of the corporation as a white-water river in which choices cascade from the top to the bottom”

As some people have commented at the bottom of Roger’s article, the metaphor is not perfect – though I believe that the choice of “cascade” is important.

He continues:

“In this model, employees are encouraged to make thoughtful choices within the context of the decisions made above them.

The approach rests on the belief that empowering employees to make choices in their sphere will produce better results, happier customers, and more satisfied employees.”

I agree with this model (though I don’t particularly like the term “empowerment”), and have been trying to implement this in our company from the first day the company started….

Notes of Caution

… however I have done it poorly.

It was not until I began our autopsy 2 process that I became aware of how the act of “setting and holding the vision for the business” and establishing our core values was (in effect) the decision making context that resides at CEO level.

It wasn’t that I did not do this – it was “just” that I did not realise how consistently and frequently I needed to communicate these things.  I just thought they would be self-evident.  Obviously not…

If this is done right, then decisions under this framework can begin to cascade down to the lower levels.

I’ve also come unstuck, in the past, with having the wrong people on the bus, and/or the right people in the wrong seats.

With such a situation (i.e. wrong people asked to make the wrong types of decisions, based on unclear direction) was it any wonder that the decisions we made in the past were not as good as they could have been?

Thankfully we’ve started to turn this around, and now:

1)  Have a clearer sense of company mission, vision and values;

2)  Have started to put the right people on the bus, and in the right seats – though we have a way to go at this, and need to do this in line with our “bootstrapped” approach to development.

3)  Have started to look (holistically) at the personal development plans for each individually – such that everyone is developing skills and capabilities that will be of value to us as the business continues to grow.

4)  Have started to have much more constructive discussions with our customers now.

As a result, we now have a chance of getting where our bus is headed.

.

PS - Why I’m not fond of the term “empowerment”

As a buzz-word, it has become overused, and hence means a whole range of things to different people.

I’ve seen it held up to mean a similar kind of thing to “emancipation” – as if to say that Management has some divine right to firstly enslave Workers, and thus also has the right to secondly (and unilaterally) grant these same enslaved Workers their freedom.

Such a perspective has never washed with me (from either perspective).

Rather, my concept of Autonomy is similar to:

the Dependence – Independence – Interdependence maturation process in “7 Habits” ; and
the Warm – Cold – Hot sequence in “the Myth of Nine to Five”

Key to this difference is to understand that each actor in the business transaction has their own free will to participate as they wish – even if some people will go a long way to abrogate responsibility for their own free will.

Tags: strategic planning, strategy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Article Review, Value4 - Autonomy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.