Dominic Sayers

How organisations really work

Benjamin Waber has a grim piece of news for managers and CEOs: You're out of the loop. - Wired magazine, 16 August 2008

This is something we all suspect about large organisations - unless you're a senior manager in which case you probably think all valuable communication goes up and down the management hierarchy. Clive Thompson's short article in Wired makes me want to read the full MIT paper by Benjamin Waber and his colleagues (how can I get a copy?).

Almost every time he analyzes a group, Waber discovers that the super-connector — the crucial person who routes news among team members — isn't the manager. - ibid.

The research team discovered this by putting location-aware badges on everybody and mapping how long they spent in proximity to each other. Using this information they could identify the Jan Molbys of the organisation - the midfielders who made and received the most passes. Information was flowing through the organisation in ad hoc patterns, enabled by these super-connectors. The data was good enough to predict when and where some of these exchanges would take place in the future - information that could be used to make sure the super-connectors were able to do their unofficial function more effectively. I have worked in organisations where this data would be used to quash this sort of unofficial communication. Where is the cost-benefit analysis, managers would cry? How do we know these people aren't simply gossiping? How can we keep them at their desks longer? This is why the permanent use of such location-aware devices isn't going to happen in any organisation I know. Such snooping would certainly be verboten by the Workers' Council in any German organisation. For every benefit to the organisation and its employees there is a potential Big Brother use too - what's to stop the people in possession of the data from identifying people who spend too much time in the restrooms for example. There's a trust issue, and if you're in an organisation where the senior management is trusted then its communication channels are probably in a fairly healthy state too. So the permanent use of location-aware badges is unlikely to happen in your organisation, but the knowledge gained from this experiment could be of lasting value. It might be possible to identify the super-connectors in your organisation without such intrusive monitoring. If you value their networking skills then you should find ways to support them.

The inverted grip of Kevin Pietersen

If you're not a cricket follower you may have missed reports of Kevin Pietersen's unusual feat in hitting two sixes in a recent match with a reversed grip. In other words he turned himself into a left-handed batsman just before the bowler bowled and scored a maximum not once but twice. If you're not a cricket follower the rest of this article probably won't be interesting anyway - move along, there's nothing to see. If you're interested enough to want to know what I'm talking about, here's a video capture of KP's coup de theatre: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU354DdX6Eg] Despite the furore surrounding this latest example, it's not a particularly recent innovation. Here's a video of KP hitting Muttiah Muralitharan for six with a reverse grip two years ago: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnShx-eALhY] And again last year in the World Twenty-20: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipB1jFcOgxs] It happened in a game I played in myself about twenty years ago. A batsman saw the opportunity to take advantage of a very short offside boundary by converting it into a legside boundary. He turned round and reversed his grip as the bowler ran in. The bowler saw him do it and tried to bounce him. The result: a perfect reverse pull for six. Magnificent. Thanks for the memory, Taffy. If you still can't see what all the fuss is about, here's Sachin Tendulkar playing a brilliant reverse sweep without altering his grip. This shot has been around for a decade or more and any initial controversy has long since died away. Indeed this shot is now taught by coaches, initially by the late Bob Woolmer in the 1990s. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk8jY5d9zaA] BBC Cricket Correspondent Jonathan Agnew believes that the reversed grip should be outlawed forthwith. And indeed the MCC (the guardian of the game's laws) is meeting today to discuss the matter and possibly act to prevent any batsman from attempting it in the future. If I may say so, this is entirely typical of both Agnew and the MCC. The MCC failed to act on, or even notice, the new shot when it was introduced. Now they are responding to a tabloid-style drama created by journalists such as Agnew. I'm afraid I must add them to my list of low-quality sports governing bodies. I think it's because a player is doing the innovating, rather than the governing body, that the response has been so negative in these quarters. Governing bodies are there to control and when innovation happens elsewhere it demonstrates how tissue-thin the veneer of control actually is. It is threatening and their reaction is understandable. Nothing will happen as a result of the MCC's meeting today and I'll tell you why. Firstly, governing bodies are good at one thing and that's inertia. To change the law because of one player is almost unheard of (although Trevor Chappell and Harold Larwood spring to mind because of their captains' instructions). But mostly because there is no mechanism for punishing a batsman except by dismissing him. To add "reversing the grip" to the other ten methods of dismissal would be a seismic overreaction. Ungoogleable cricket question (I've tried): when were the ten methods of dismissal introduced? Were they all in the first set of Laws published? I don't know the answer but I'd like to. Edited to add: I should have said this post was provoked by my former colleague JP's thoughts on the subject.

World's worst sports governing body

I have in mind a post about various governing bodies of world sport, comparing them to see which is the worst. Every time I sit down to write it, another governing body makes a spectacular arse of itself in some way and puts me back to square one. The obvious candidates are these (in no particular order at the moment):

• The Federation International de l'Automobile (FIA). Max Mosley. nuff said. But the historical track record of the FIA is not good either, having been in Bernie Ecclestone's pocket for a long time (for sound financial reasons of course).
• Any international governing body of professional boxing (e.g. IBA, IBC, IBF, IBO, IBU, WBA, WBC, WPBF, WBF, WBO, WBU). It's not a crime for a sport to have many governing bodies, but to have so many ineffectual ones that have no interest in the participants' welfare is remarkable.
• The International Olympic Commission (IOC). Has there been another governing body whose members are so willing to be induced?
• Oh yes, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). The rot starts at the top.
• And so we come to the International Cricket Council (ICC). Supine in the face of political awkwardness and dominated by self-interest, this organisation is ill-equipped to govern a rapidly-changing sport.

So there's a lot to write about, and my thoughts are not really in order yet. This pilot post is to ask if anybody can answer the following questions:

1. Is there a world governing body that does a good job, i.e. acts in the long-term interest of the sport without favouring any subset of its exponents?
2. Have I missed any obvious bodies from my initial list?

Answers on a postcard.

The company hierarchy - is it necessary?

One of the most consistent routes for people to find this blog is through the search term "company hierarchy". At present, this just leads them to a rather trite cartoon by Hugh MacLeod that I continue to find amusing only because I work in just the sort of organisation it depicts. I do, however, have some personal opinions about organisations and how they are managed. And since passers-by drop in occasionally I don't see why I shouldn't inflict those opinions on my visitors... Previous posts:

1. Real-time communication makes traditional hierarchies unnecessary
2. What we call a "boss" is simply a collection of roles in a set of business processes

We can manage people's roles in business processes the same way we manage, say, access to network resources; through people being members of groups. People can be a member of an arbitrary number of groups, groups can have an arbitrary number of members. Managing the membership of these groups is simply a business process that a particular group is permissioned to do. Let's call that group the Board of Directors. When it comes to giving me a pay rise, the traditional organisation will leave that to my boss. But in a "matrix" organisation it will be a collaborative decision between my functional line manager and my regional line manager (or whatever the dimensions of the matrix are in your company). Managing the matrix is where the complexity arises in larger organisations - whatever dimensions you choose (function, asset class, region, grade etc.) are likely to be wrong for many situations. And you can't have different dimensionality for different people without it all getting very confusing. Contrast this with the simple idea that the people who give me a pay rise are members of a group. A group with the permission in the pay rise process to award me a pay rise. Of course, my pay rise cannot be chosen in isolation. It must be done in the context of next year's budget and other people's awards. So the group of people who award pay rises to individuals needs to be aggregated into a larger group that norms the awards across the population. This can be done by simply making my pay rise group a member of another larger group, a group that has access to real-time conversational tools to achieve a global consensus about pay awards. I'm not talking about a hippy nirvana. Certain roles in certain processes would clearly be very powerful. What I'm saying is that rather than aspiring to be higher up the hierarchy, you could aspire to have more important roles in critical processes. In effect this is what we do anyway - job descriptions are altered to fit people's aspirations and negotiated terms of reference. Today's CIO might have far less power and independence than his predecessors even though the job title remains the same. What we need to do is lose the antiquated framework we currently use to describe people's jobs.

Twenty20 cricket - a disruptive technology

I started to post this as a comment on JP's blog, but it got a bit out of hand so I'm posting it here: I think Twenty20 cricket is classically Disruptive in the sense that it was not conceived as a replacement for other one-day formats but will inevitably replace them. All the futile tinkering with one-day cricket, like PowerPlays (yech!) and the Pro-40 competition, is the equivalent of management-driven technology "innovation". The real action is somewhere else altogether. Allen Stanford in the West Indies and the Zee media group in India got it, and launched their own Twenty20 competitions outside the official management structure. Now, belatedly, the national boards and the ICC are coming to the party with their World Twenty20 Championship, mere months ofter the disastrous 50-over World Cup earlier this year. 50-over cricket might survive a few years longer, but the money is in Twenty20 right now. 50-over cricket can't survive without sponsorship.

Books I should have read, update

Latest status: 1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell (job done) 2. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell 3. The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki 4. The Cathedral & the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond 5. The Mythical Man Month, Frederick P. Brooks (purchased but not opened yet) 6. Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis (now finished. Yes, good stories but not sure what it signifies today. Enjoyable nonetheless) 7. The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand, Chris Anderson 8. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Clayton Christensen 9. The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, Matthew May Oh dear, the list is getting longer faster than I can read. To add to my woes Mike Masnik has now published the bibliography for his collection of essays on the economics of ideas and content. I suspect that I should have read more of his list than I actually have.

Decommissioning stuff

I've been thinking about decommissioning IT systems, mainly because I've been asked to turn a few systems off at the place where I work. I've done this a few times before and it's never as easy as you might think. Removing 80% of the functional value of a system and 80% of the users is the easy bit. The last 20% of both is usually difficult both technically and politically. So a way of making the process of decommissioning an IT system more deterministic would be a good thing. Before I start trying to turn a system off I'd like to know what my chances of succeeding are.

Stakeholders

One thing I think you need to establish at the start is who the stakeholders are. For systems that have been around for a long time this can be surprisingly hard. These systems are often part of the furniture to the extent that users don't even realise they are using the system, it's just how they naturally do their jobs. An old system may have no formal governance because it was introduced at a time when the control environment was not as far-reaching as it is today. All this can make it hard to find out who is affected by the decision to decommission the system. What you would have ideally is a clear ownership of the system by the business, with a named owner and some sort of representation from each part of the business that uses the system. From the technical side you would have a named IT owner who understands the dependencies that other systems have on your target system. If these things don't exist for your target system then you are probably going to have to invent them. Because the first thing you need is a statement of the system's functional value from its users - if you can't get that then you should probably just turn it off anyway and see who screams. Armed with a statement of value and an analysis of functional dependencies from your IT owner, you at least know what work needs to take place to make conditions acceptable to turn off the system.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

A timeless story of innovation is that a functional gap has been plugged by a tactical system. The system is highly specific to the functional niche it inhabits and over time it comes to do everything the users want and they have learned to operate it efficiently. Then along comes Strategy, lumbering through the IT undergrowth like a tyrannosaurus. Whole swathes of tactical applications are replaced by one strategic system because it consolidates costs and organisation into something that senior management can understand. The strategic system is specified on the basis of functionality that is required by the user. Inevitably you are proposing to replace a tactical system that does everything the user wants with a strategic system that only does what they need. The cost distribution of the new system will have been worked out "fairly" by accountants. Which often means that your longest-standing users end up paying more for a system that does less. It can be a hard sell. Fortunately you have senior management on your side and if the users don't like it they can do their complaining from the deserted outpost they are transferred to.

Data retention

Your users are going to ask for all the data in the system to be retained indefinitely, and made available on line for ad hoc queries. Ignore them, they always say this. In my experience of having acceded to user requests like this, the data is never looked at after the end of the first month of the new system. Suggest a rational data retention policy and a straightforward migration of any applicable to data to the replacement system (if any). Be aware of legal and regulatory requirements.

Execution

I think the steps towards making a decision to decommission a system are these:

1. Establish a competent governance framework for the system.
2. Get a statement of the functional value of the system from its business owners
3. Get an analysis of the dependencies on the system from its IT owner
4. Get a signed agreement that certain named projects will replace any valuable functionality
5. Agree a rational data retention and migration policy
6. Get a signed agreement that the system can be turned off subject to the aforementioned project deliverables and data policy.
7. Plan the decommissioning like any other change using your best practice Change Management procedures.

Turning IT systems off is a good thing. I think it signifies that an IT organisation is mature but not senile. If understand your system landscape well enough to be able to say with confidence that this system is no longer required then you are doing something right. If you can actually execute that decision then it also reflects well on your relationship with your customers.

A surprisingly pleasant user experience

I thought I'd pass on to you a totally unexpected experience. I just called Sky to cancel my subscription with them, and managed to get it done in seven minutes talking to a cheerful Scottish lady. She asked whether I was cross with them or anything and I said no, I just didn't watch their subscription channels enough. She applied no further pressure except to mention that there were lower-cost packages than my current one, which is fair enough. This positive experience makes it much more likely that I will choose Sky as a digital service provider in future.

Outboard memory

I started taking photographs of my whiteboard a couple of years ago. I use the whiteboard as a thinking tool. Start with what you think you know then, pen in one hand and eraser in the other, you go through a hundred iterations in about fifteen minutes. With ideas, it's deliver early, deliver often.

I became reluctant to clean the whiteboard, realising that I had not fully exploited the ideas that were being generated. But in a shared office this is anti-social at the very least. When is it OK to erase somebody else's thought stream? When it's been there a day, a week? It's a tricky social problem. The answer for me was to photograph the whiteboard when the burst of creative energy had run its course. I put the photographs in dated folders on my computer. Ideally this would have been a taggable repository like Flickr, but my computer at work is a pre-Vista PC so the tagging option isn't easily achievable.

Now my screensaver is simply a slideshow of pictures from my computer, including (almost coincidentally) the whiteboard pictures. The unexpected side-effect is that I am exposed every day to my thoughts from the last two years. For me this a great thing. I don't have one of those minds that can remember lists. In other words, my mind is almost stateless. The whiteboard photographs act like session cookies, enabling me to remember where I am on a much wider range of topics than I could without them. It seems like the external artifact is an intrinsic part of the mental process. The memories of those thoughts are there but I cannot unlock them without the visual key. I've put some of the photos here so I can refer to them in discussions and possibly blog posts.

Organisational hierarchies - an alternative model

You are my boss. I am their boss. That model breaks down immediately in the global organisation that I work for because we try to have international teams led by people who have global responsibility. However in some regions people must have a local line manager. Hence for some processes their boss is a local person, for other processes their boss is somebody in a far off location. Conflict ensues. But only because we call these people "line managers" and "reports" and stick to the fiction that there is a single hierarchy that fulfils all requirements of communication and decision-making. When you acknowledge the regional dimension you create a "matrix organisation", which is simply a hierarchical organisation with its management complexity squared. There isn't really any need for this structure to be imposed on the organisation. It's a legacy of the way that primitive companies were organised before real-time communication made other models possible. Now all we need to do is define an individual's role in a process. More particularly we need to define an individual's role in an instantiation of a process. I decide that person's bonus, she has spending approval against that cost centre, they need to approve changes to this system. Being a "boss" encompasses several roles in a number of processes. Some of them are interdependent and there may be an advantage in one person handling a portfolio of process roles with respect to another person. But this should be informed by a thorough analysis of these processes and an understanding of the roles within them. Here's 30megs, now go run Germany.  This isn't an advert for Thingamy, but I'm sympathetic to the idea that we overcomplicate management issues by clinging to outdated models of military organisation.