Analytics on Analytics: Is Decision Management, the Last Frontier in BI?

 

Boris Evelson in his Information Management Blog / Forrester Muse titled "Decision Management, Possibly the Last Frontier in BI" leans on an excellent article on the subject by Tom Davenport and reports on Forrester Research and the trend for 'Thinking Ahead" companies  to venture into combining reporting and analytics with decision management along the following lines:

• Automated (machine) vs. non automated (human) decisions, and

• Decisions that involve structured (rules and workflows) and unstructured (collaboration) processes.

Unfortunately, current best practices and technologies to address these four distinct, but closely related requirements, come from different vendors, technologies and experts.

DR Damigos;PhD - DRibm - Driving Revenue Streams: Definition: Organizational culture, Values and Beliefs

http://o2ibm.blogspot.com/2010/08/thinking-ahead-insights-managing.html

Thinking Ahead Insights: Risking the Present for a Powerful Future

Managing the present from the future Assemble a critical mass of key stakeholders. Many more than just the top 8 to 10 leaders. Should include key technologists and leading process engineers. Group should be sufficiently diverse to ensure conflict, which will get issues on the table so they can be resolved. Have to decide how it's going to happen. Do an organizational audit to generate a complete picture of how the organization really works. Understand the competitive situation. Reveal barriers to moving from "as is" to the future. Core values. Key systems. Strategic assumptions. Core competencies, etc. Create urgency. A threat that everyone perceives, but no one is willing to talk about, is most debilitating to an organization Book of Five Rings � Japanese guide for samurai warriors. Written four centuries ago, directs the samurai to visualize his own death in the most graphic detail before going into battle. Idea being, once you have experienced death, there is not a lot left to fear: one can then fight with abandon. This helps explain the value of discussion about not changing and the dire consequences to a company in a difficult business situation. Harnessing contention. Conflict jump-starts the creative process. Most companies suppress contention. Control kills invention, learning and commitment. Emotions often accompany creative tension, and they are often unpleasant. Intel plays rugby; your ability at Intel to take direct, hard-hitting disagreement is a sign of fitness. Many excellent companies build conflict into their designs. Induce organizational breakdowns that foster out-of-the-box thinking and solutions. Breakdowns should happen by design, not accident. In trying to manage back from the future, concrete tasks will have to be undertaken; continuing on the current path will not get you there. Often you don't know how to make these tasks occur. This will generate breakdowns, which can generate out-of-the-box thinking and solutions, if the situation is managed/lead correctly. Continuous open dialogue is key to working through breakdowns. Setting impossible deadlines is another way to encourage breakdowns and out-of-the-box thinking   Insights from: "The Reinvention Roller Coaster: Risking the Present for a Powerful Future." By Tracy Goss, Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos.

What are the common Cultural Traits of Visionary companies?

Collins and Porras in 'Built to Last' explain  what great companies do to maintain their cultures, which they describe as cult-like.

1. The cultures in visionary companies are not soft or undisciplined:
"Because visionary companies have such clarity about who they are, what they're all about, and what they are trying to achieve, they tend not to have much room for people unwilling or unsuited to their demanding standards."
2. Visionary companies are not great places to work, at least not for everyone. If you can't embrace their ideology, they expel you like a virus. If you do not fit their practices, they will weed you out in the hiring process or shortly thereafter.
3. Cult-like cultures are key to preserving the core ideology of a company.
4. Visionary companies have these characteristics about their culture that are cult-like:
1. Fervently held ideology
2. Indoctrination
3. Tightness of fit
4. Elitism
5. Visionary companies create these cultures through practical, concrete things:
1. Orientation and training programs
2. Internal universities
3. On-the-job socialization with peers and immediate supervisors
4. Rigorous up-through-the-ranks policies such as promoting from within, and hiring young people and shaping their minds from the start.
5. Exposure to pervasive myths of heroic deeds
6. Corporate songs, cheers, etc.
7. Tight screening practices; hiring and removal in first few years
8. Incentives and advancement are closely linked to core ideology
9. Awards, contests and public recognition are closely linked to core ideology
10. Tolerance for honest mistakes, but severe penalties or termination for breaching core ideology
6. These cult-like cultures succeed because they are balanced by mechanisms to stimulate progress, e.g., taking on challenging tasks (Big Hairy Audacious Goals or BHAGs).
7. Adhering to a small set of core beliefs allows these companies to grant a good deal of operational autonomy.
 

 
• Insights from Built to Last. By Collins and Porras.
The authors conclude: "It means that companies seeking an 'empowered' or decentralized work environment should first and foremost impose a tight ideology screen and indoctrinate people into that ideology, eject the viruses, and give those that remain the tremendous sense of responsibility that comes with being a member of an elite organization. It means getting the right actors on the stage, putting them in the right frame of mind, and then giving them the freedom to ad lib as they see fit."

Thinking-Ahead Insights: Culture Change: John Kotter's perspective

Culture Change

1. John Kotter's perspective.
1. Definitions
1. "Culture" refers to norms of behavior and shared values among a group of people.
2. "Norms of behavior" are ways of acting that persist because they are rewarded and the group teaches these behaviors to new people, sanctioning those who do not conform.
3. "Shared values" are important concerns and goals held by most people in the group: they shape group behavior.
2. In Kotter's model, changing the culture is the last of eight steps, not the first.
1. "Even when there is no personality incompatibility with a new vision, if shared values are the product of many years of experience in a firm, years of a different kind of experience are often needed to create any change. That is why culture change comes at the end of a transformation, not the beginning."
2. Culture is not something you can directly manipulate, as if by decree. Culture change occurs after you have successfully altered people's actions and their new behavior has produced success, which can be traced back to the new actions and behaviors.
3. An adaptive culture, one that benefits the four main constituents: shareholders, employees, customers and management, while minimizing layers of management and bureaucracy, as well as counterproductive silos.
3. Anchoring change in a culture.
1. Culture change comes last, not first.
2. Lasting change depends on results. You must show new approaches work and that it's worthwhile to change.
3. Requires a lot of dialog.
4. May involve turnover of key people who block change.
5. Promotion practices need to be changed to be compatible with the new practices. New leaders should be compatible with the new culture and champions of it.
4. Shallow roots require constant watering.
1. Kotter uses an example of a technology-oriented company to illustrate the point. As long as the new general manager was around to focus the organization constantly on speed to market and the customer, progress was made substantial progress. When the GM retired, because the underlying cultural belief that "good technology will solve all our problems" had not changed, the company quickly regressed over two years.
5. In an organization, the less visible shared values and group norms are, the harder they are to change.
6. Culture is powerful for three reasons.
1. Individuals are selected and indoctrinated to support the existing culture.
2. Culture propagation occurs through the actions of hundreds or thousands of people in the organization.
3. This reinforcement happens without much conscious intent and is therefore difficult to challenge or even discuss.
7. There are different culture-change scenarios, some much harder to accomplish. For example:
1. The core of the old culture is not incompatible with the new vision. The challenge is to graft new practices onto old roots, while eliminating inconsistent practices. This is least difficult to do.
2. The core of the old culture is incompatible with the new vision. This is a much more difficult situation to cope with.

O2 inside business management: Culture Change: Summary of Key Thinkers' Ideas

O2 inside business management: Culture Change: Summary of Key Thinkers' Ideas: "Culture Change Summary of Key Thinkers' Ideas This is the result of an extensive set of discussions among a group of organization..."

The Pedigree of Emerging Leaders

Key points for spotting emerging leaders:

• individuals who consistently deliver ambitious results for the company
• individuals who consistently demonstrate the ability to grow, adapt, and be more flexible than their other top performing peers
• individuals who ask for opportunity and expand their capacity of operation and influence
• individuals who take things to the next level (ie: imagination, creativity, product futures etc)
• individuals who have strong powers of observation, judgment, reactions that are spot on, and EQ
• individuals who are clear thinkers and have a point-of-view that may be counter to the trend, and finally
• individuals who ask questions that are insightful that get the thought process into a creative frenzy.

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Strategy Execution in times of Uncertainty

	In this unpredictable economic climate, leaders must be capable to lead their companies to quickly adapt to new market forces. Business models are changing to catch up with the emerging drivers of competition. Success hinges first and foremost on "Thinking-Ahead" strategy  and robust execution. Because execution plays such a critical role in success or failure, especially during a crisis, many companies are turning to new technology solutions to ensure they can deliver on strategies and emerge even stronger. Any company that fails to adapt quickly and efficiently to market changes can miss important opportunities ir risk their very survival. Here are some key points to consider: A new strategy is not enough - executing under these extreme market conditions is not enough, meaning you need to make sure you touch every point of the strategy timeline and product offering. Align your workforce with what you want to accomplish - workforce alignment and performance is critical. Be prepared to change course or rethink your strategy monthly - it is difficult to get your strategy right the first time so review religiously.  Leverage performance and talent management solutions for business execution - this will help you attain the top and bottom line results.    Key points from Workforce Magazine (June 2010)
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Thinking Ahead Succession Planning - The Key to future success

"Thinking Ahead"  succession planning enables organizations to takeover new responsibilities in a much faster way and with least disruption in the business activities.	An article highlights four best practices to ensure effective succession planning that can be implemented in any company - Analysis; Development; Selection and Transition. Having a structure in place that carefully engages in those best practices will set the new leaders firmly towards future success. Link to article >
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Thinking Ahead as a True Leader

The ability to 'think ahead' and plan a strategy, implies keeping in touch with employee opinions, technological advances and market trends that will help shape your vision - to be shared. Leaders, by definition, must have followers that aspire to the leader’s vision. Once you’ve  'thought ahead' into the future, you need to communicate your vision with conviction and confidence, as to inspire, energize and unite your team. A leader must be capable of shaping internal politics that will support performance improvement initiatives. During times of change, uncertainty and fear reign supreme. As a result, leaders confronting strategic and organizational change, have to manage communication effectively. As a leader, you have to portray a compelling vision for the future, while implementing change.  Processes that build a shared vision of the future, create positive coalitions, and allow open expression of competing views will prepare people for the change. Motivating people to peak performance is a must of  leadership. But how can you unleash the full individual emotional commitment and collective potential of your people so that they achieve higher levels of performance? Generating emotional energy and commitment takes time and effort, as to ensure that the right balance between achieving the task, building the team and  sustaining morale.

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Integrative Leadership: A collaborative model that delivers results

"In the twenty-first century a new vision of leadership is needed more than ever. Leaders must integrate knowledge and talent from individuals in the private, not-for-profit, and government sectors to advance the common good."   Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Chairman Carlson School of Management Integrative Leadership  = leadership that promotes innovative, responsible, and effective solutions to cross-sector challenges locally, nationally, and globally.     Integrative leadership identifies the common ground among sectors and leverages their unique influence and resources to better move organizations, communities, and society forward in times of increased interconnection and rapid change. The Center for Integrative Leadership at the Carlson School of Management - University of Minnesota aims to better understand how collective action across sectors (business, government, nonprofits, media, academia) and geographic boundaries can solve some of the world’s most pressing and complex societal problems. Integrative leadership is driven by the following key concepts: Inclusion Involving stakeholders who can affect change in the process is a crucial task. Shared purpose Getting key stakeholders to agree on common purpose is critical to building sustainable solutions. Systemic thinking Helping members of a group to see the interdependencies of various actions and contributions they make to resolve a problem contributes to greater understanding of a problem and increased support for the solution. Sometimes, the least obvious factors are the most important. Inquiry Questioning all of the stated or unstated assumptions about the problem and facilitating an open and honest analysis of alternative points of view leads to fuller engagement by stakeholders. Consideration should be given to multiple working hypotheses. Constructive dialogue Choosing language and methods of developing shared meaning is important. Innovation Creatively resolving differences among opposing ideas can lead to innovative outcomes. Many problems are solved when a group uses inquiry to discover a new solution or a variation of a solution that is acceptable to members of the group.   O2ibm > Learn & Lead

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