It is the assumption that knowledge and innovation can come out of them.As if our companies were some sort of orange to be squeezed into a pitcher and served up as a healthy and tasty accompaniment to breakfast.
The trend has a long history that is still being played out today, though we see some hints of change.ERP, MRP and Supply Chain systems took the principles of the assembly line and applied them to business processes -- from how things are made to how they’re transported from here to there.These gave rise to HCM systems which took the same fundamental approach and applied it to how people (human beings) are managed and placed and categorized and “quality assured” in an organization (that last part being your annual review).
Recipes of Business
The fundamental assumption and fatal flaw in all of these software “systems” is that process, those recipes of business, are actually what make the product, bring in the revenue and service the customer.They rely on a terribly thin lie: that the process is understood, the recipe is known and all that is left to do is find more efficient ways of executing it.It is shake and bake business.If we just automate our phone help desk with push-button easiness and route exception calls overseas, we’ll increase success in business.
Small Earth Syndrome
In many ways we’re the victims of our own technological success. We’ve succumbed to “Small Earth Syndrome." The industrial and information revolutions are said to have shrunk the planet.That’s a lie.They've extended our reach, but they did not shrink and they didn't simplify.
Complexity has increased magnificently and terribly in order to access our large planet.Sophistication of our systems are increased to handle the complexity.Each new permutation of observer-induced cybernetic feedback was identified as the last bug to fix, rolled into our software systems and re-re-re-released with great fanfare. All the while the information was coming in -- a tsunami made of 8 billion individual spigots left running and our collective sinks overflowing.We see huge potential in this ocean of information.Our flaw is in thinking that our old assembly-line thinking and linear systems can classify, index and handle it if only it gets just a bit more efficient.
Getting Ahead
This is not what brought us the revolutions in industry and information.Intentional collaboration: directed, focused and goal oriented, gave us superior suspension in horse buggies, line-cook short-order restaurants and enterprise content management software systems. Accidental collaboration: interaction with information and insight regardless of original intent gave us the GPS system from people listening to Sputnik and doodling calculations that determined its location in the sky, then reversing those to calculate positions on earth.Accidental collaboration gave us Big Data, Big Insight and will drive the next phase of innovation.
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Mar
30
An Optimized Customer Contact Strategy Combines Transparency and Intelligence: The State of Outbound Communications
Learn from the Neustar-commissioned Forrester Consulting study on challenges and solutions for contact centers
Webinar
Apr
5
Adopt a Modern Digital-First Marketing Strategy
Learn how to use a composable DXP to your advantage
Webinar
Apr
13
Accelerating Content Velocity Across the Digital Supply Chain
Learn to integrate DAM with upstream tools to improve workflow efficiency.
Webinar
Apr
13
Composable Commerce The Future of Retail
The Adobe Commerce approach to composable and why it's best in class
Webinar
Apr
18
Drive Business Growth Through Customer Service and Support
Defining the future of technology. What is AI’s role in the future of customer service?
Webinar
Apr
26
Future-proofing Your Marketing Through Better Customer Understanding
Understanding your customers and how to reach them in real-time across all channels
Webinar
Mar
30
An Optimized Customer Contact Strategy Combines Transparency and Intelligence: The State of Outbound Communications
Learn from the Neustar-commissioned Forrester Consulting study on challenges and solutions for contact centers
Webinar
Apr
5
Adopt a Modern Digital-First Marketing Strategy
Learn how to use a composable DXP to your advantage
Agile management, a flexible serendipity-allowing reaction to process-centric thinking, is a small step in the right direction.It is an attempt to inject some organic fuzziness into the creative sculpting of product, be it code or physical.
The requirements for getting creativity out of your collaboration are agility, real-time availability of your information archives and cross pollination of expertise and interest.The first provides nimbleness.The second provides access to information that you’ll never know you want until you need it.The third brings divergent thinking to bear and allows those "what if?" questions to arise more easily.
So how is your organization doing in spurring creativity in your collaboration?
Title image courtesy of Joop Hoek (Shutterstock)
Editor's Note: You may also be interested in other articles on social business from Billy Cripe
Three Lessons from Love for Social Business
