This article states our position that operational excellence in large enterprises cannot be achieved under a governance practice that allows divided authority and accountability. This is no surprise since the concept of Unity of Command is long known throughout history and is well documented. Rather, our point is that the transformation towards the right governance requires a deliberate “seeking of accountability” by leaders and process owners throughout the corporation, and that this process of Seeking Accountability ought to be guided by experienced facilitators.
In a world of large or critical business transformation programs, a world of complexity, of high cost -- staff and consultants -- and of high risk of failure, we’ve often heard clients say they feel as if they are trying to change a flat tire while still driving just as fast as they can. They have to keep the business going at full speed while at the same time changing the way the business works. Leaders of these programs strive constantly to balance competing agendas and incentives, to keep an eye on too many moving parts, and to keep everyone - including senior management - committed until success is achieved. Few succeed.
Such transformational programs don’t lend themselves to the usual process of defining the problem, envisioning a solution, creating a business case, then launching the project. Getting to the root of big, long-standing, intractable problems, requires a willingness to engage senior and junior people to define the problem from all sides, to understand why previous efforts failed to solve it, and ultimately have the breakthrough that re-frames the problem at the root causes level.
The majority of these projects fail. A 2007 IBM study showed that number to be sixty percent. Only 40% of the projects realize some benefit, although some do so spectacularly. Why? Accountability!
In the successes we’ve seen first-hand, a critical enabling factor was that the people accountable for running the business were also accountable for the transformation. They had changed the governance of their processes, such that only process owners had the authority, and the budget, to invest in processes and process changes, including process automation. There was no separation between doing business and improving how they did business. The person “driving the car” was also in charge of “changing the tire.” This is in contrast to the more typical split of those responsibilities between the COO and the CIO. This Unity of Command is a concept very familiar to the military, to captains of ships and pilots of airplanes, and in those settings, it is well understood that it is essential for their mission to succeed.
Yet in many businesses, accountability for transforming the business does not lie with the manager who’s accountable for running the business. As a result, transformation efforts are done for and to the business, not for and by the business. We are so used to this division of labor that at first glance this seems logical. But in practice, it creates an “us versus them” culture that becomes increasingly divisive, and that division comes at a cost in the form of excessive bureaucracy, governing standards, managing interdepartmental contracts (SLAs), monitoring compliance, and the list goes on. And worse, because it became the culture, it is the way we work. It will be difficult and failure-prone to extract ourselves from an accepted but dysfunctional work process.
Our point: large transformational programs with divided accountability are unlikely to succeed.
However, we foresee that more and more CEOs will adopt the model of holding one person accountable for both “driving” a business process and continually improving it. We believe that they will want to emulate the Toyotas and the Apples of the world, and seek managers with the dual experience of operating and of improving their process to lead their departments. And, we believe, facilitation will play the catalytic role – the ingredient without which the required “chemical reactions” cannot occur -- in bringing this change about.
To give shape to this transformation, CEOs cannot but rely, we feel, on the company’s own employees and process owners to architect a gradual and deliberate transfer of responsibility back to process owners. Picture workshops and off-sites where people can have the conversations that need to happen to ensure that accountability transfers are thought-through, methodical, and supportable.
Our business is ensuring that such transformational programs actually realize their intended benefit, i.e. operational excellence, and do not collapse with a bang or peter out with a whimper. Our particular contribution to achieving these results is through facilitation. With high-productivity teams, our techniques deliver breakthrough, new insights in how to operate differently from today, and our techniques “seek accountability” for delivering on projected business benefits.
Breakthrough
Einstein once said, “A problem well-defined is a problem half solved,” and we are committed to creating shared understanding of the problem from all relevant perspectives. At the start of large transformation initiatives, this level of shared understanding seldom exists. To create it, we step teams through a rigorous problem-definition process. Forced to check their facts and test their assumptions, teams almost invariably have a breakthrough that opens the way to a solution that addresses and eliminates root causes.
The breakthrough in problem-definition sets the stage for breakthroughs in problem-solving. Once the team deeply understands the problem and its root causes, preconceived solutions no longer fit, and simpler solutions become visible.
Accountability
Breakthrough thinking isn’t enough. That’s why we also facilitate the commitments and accountability agreements that will carry the breakthrough from concept to implementation to measurable business benefits.
The more complex a process or a project, the less clear what it means to be accountable. People make commitments, then discover they can’t keep their commitments because of some inter-dependency they had not fully understood. Instead of holding themselves accountable for results that serve the common good, people fall back to “doing their best”. Over time, more and more promises get broken, and commitments cease to have much meaning. Accountability has broken down.
This is a foreseeable risk, and like most problems, it is much easier to prevent than to cure. That’s why our teams take great care to create an environment of accountability that will survive the challenges ahead, so that they will know how to rely on one another through thick and thin.
In summary: We have illustrated the correlation between successful transformational process improvement projects and a transfer of accountability back to process owners, and our belief that this transformation will happen through deliberate, facilitated change projects.
Please note that we do not, and cannot, take credit for the breakthrough that the teams we facilitated achieve. That credit goes entirely to them and only to them. They know their industry and their domain of expertise. Our deep domain experience is people.
In a world of large or critical business transformation programs, a world of complexity, of high cost -- staff and consultants -- and of high risk of failure, we’ve often heard clients say they feel as if they are trying to change a flat tire while still driving just as fast as they can. They have to keep the business going at full speed while at the same time changing the way the business works. Leaders of these programs strive constantly to balance competing agendas and incentives, to keep an eye on too many moving parts, and to keep everyone - including senior management - committed until success is achieved. Few succeed.
Such transformational programs don’t lend themselves to the usual process of defining the problem, envisioning a solution, creating a business case, then launching the project. Getting to the root of big, long-standing, intractable problems, requires a willingness to engage senior and junior people to define the problem from all sides, to understand why previous efforts failed to solve it, and ultimately have the breakthrough that re-frames the problem at the root causes level.
The majority of these projects fail. A 2007 IBM study showed that number to be sixty percent. Only 40% of the projects realize some benefit, although some do so spectacularly. Why? Accountability!
In the successes we’ve seen first-hand, a critical enabling factor was that the people accountable for running the business were also accountable for the transformation. They had changed the governance of their processes, such that only process owners had the authority, and the budget, to invest in processes and process changes, including process automation. There was no separation between doing business and improving how they did business. The person “driving the car” was also in charge of “changing the tire.” This is in contrast to the more typical split of those responsibilities between the COO and the CIO. This Unity of Command is a concept very familiar to the military, to captains of ships and pilots of airplanes, and in those settings, it is well understood that it is essential for their mission to succeed.
Yet in many businesses, accountability for transforming the business does not lie with the manager who’s accountable for running the business. As a result, transformation efforts are done for and to the business, not for and by the business. We are so used to this division of labor that at first glance this seems logical. But in practice, it creates an “us versus them” culture that becomes increasingly divisive, and that division comes at a cost in the form of excessive bureaucracy, governing standards, managing interdepartmental contracts (SLAs), monitoring compliance, and the list goes on. And worse, because it became the culture, it is the way we work. It will be difficult and failure-prone to extract ourselves from an accepted but dysfunctional work process.
Our point: large transformational programs with divided accountability are unlikely to succeed.
However, we foresee that more and more CEOs will adopt the model of holding one person accountable for both “driving” a business process and continually improving it. We believe that they will want to emulate the Toyotas and the Apples of the world, and seek managers with the dual experience of operating and of improving their process to lead their departments. And, we believe, facilitation will play the catalytic role – the ingredient without which the required “chemical reactions” cannot occur -- in bringing this change about.
To give shape to this transformation, CEOs cannot but rely, we feel, on the company’s own employees and process owners to architect a gradual and deliberate transfer of responsibility back to process owners. Picture workshops and off-sites where people can have the conversations that need to happen to ensure that accountability transfers are thought-through, methodical, and supportable.
Our business is ensuring that such transformational programs actually realize their intended benefit, i.e. operational excellence, and do not collapse with a bang or peter out with a whimper. Our particular contribution to achieving these results is through facilitation. With high-productivity teams, our techniques deliver breakthrough, new insights in how to operate differently from today, and our techniques “seek accountability” for delivering on projected business benefits.
Breakthrough
Einstein once said, “A problem well-defined is a problem half solved,” and we are committed to creating shared understanding of the problem from all relevant perspectives. At the start of large transformation initiatives, this level of shared understanding seldom exists. To create it, we step teams through a rigorous problem-definition process. Forced to check their facts and test their assumptions, teams almost invariably have a breakthrough that opens the way to a solution that addresses and eliminates root causes.
The breakthrough in problem-definition sets the stage for breakthroughs in problem-solving. Once the team deeply understands the problem and its root causes, preconceived solutions no longer fit, and simpler solutions become visible.
Accountability
Breakthrough thinking isn’t enough. That’s why we also facilitate the commitments and accountability agreements that will carry the breakthrough from concept to implementation to measurable business benefits.
The more complex a process or a project, the less clear what it means to be accountable. People make commitments, then discover they can’t keep their commitments because of some inter-dependency they had not fully understood. Instead of holding themselves accountable for results that serve the common good, people fall back to “doing their best”. Over time, more and more promises get broken, and commitments cease to have much meaning. Accountability has broken down.
This is a foreseeable risk, and like most problems, it is much easier to prevent than to cure. That’s why our teams take great care to create an environment of accountability that will survive the challenges ahead, so that they will know how to rely on one another through thick and thin.
In summary: We have illustrated the correlation between successful transformational process improvement projects and a transfer of accountability back to process owners, and our belief that this transformation will happen through deliberate, facilitated change projects.
Please note that we do not, and cannot, take credit for the breakthrough that the teams we facilitated achieve. That credit goes entirely to them and only to them. They know their industry and their domain of expertise. Our deep domain experience is people.
