The Paper Herd

It was only recently that I've come to notice the herding instincts of paper.

Almost as soon as it comes through the network or desktop printer, it seems to search out others of it's kind.

Printing on paper, is just usually the first step in a long process of non value adding activities that seem to attach themselves to that innocent, first piece of printed paper.

Once it's printed, then

• it is collected from the printer
• it's fastened, sorted, stapled, folded
• it is physically transported around the office
• it waits in in-boxes for work to be done to it,
• in a serial process (only one person can work on the piece of paper at a time), then
• it is wrapped in a file folder
• which is stored in a file cabinet
• which is contained within a file room, where
• it's retention must be managed, after which,
• it is stored in an offsite facility, where
• it is utimately shredded, discarded or recycled.

So much non value adding activity surrounds EACH piece of printed paper, that one wonders why we haven't tried harder to achieve the "paperless office".

Are our customers really willing to pay for all of this? I don't think so.

I think the reason is, I.T. guys like myself, push paperless technology, rather than making a case that printing paper launches a series of non-value adding activities that are really expensive in aggregate.

What we failed to do, was make the cost benefits case.

Businesses understand costs pretty well. And if they are to change behaviors (like printing), there had better be a good reason for it.

Want to go paperless? Try demonstrating the herding nature of paper to your company.

The Journey to Lean and Agile

When you search Google for images using the keyword "Agility", Google returns tons of pictures like the one at the left.

Lots of dogs running through obstacle courses. The other general image is of athletes running a tire drill.

What the search doesn't return are pictures of businesses or processes.

Perhaps it's difficult to convey the concept of an agile process or an agile business in an image.

Or perhaps, examples are difficult to find.

I'm currently doing some work for a family owned manufacturing company who want to investigate lean manufacturing. Like every business that has contemplated change, the potential rewards (less waste, faster processes, less process cost) will be challenged by past success (always been profitable) and a stable long term workforce, who have always done things the same way.

It's a classic struggle - one that EVERY company goes through.

Judging by the fully booked schedules of the Lean Process consulting companies, our company is not alone in the desire to be lean.

(Aside: If you're a consulting company who claims to be an expert in Lean Processes and can't find a way to return a customer call, perhaps your processes need improving?)

The journey will be exciting, scary and hopefully beneficial. Over the course of the next few months I'll document our progress, challenges and successes and perhaps we can share learning experiences along the way.

Culture = CASH

Can you imagine working at a company, where one of the products you sell, is a book written by employees about what their customer service culture means to them?

Sounds outlandish!

Sounds like online shoe retailer, Zappos.

Tip of the hat to 37signals blog for including a link to a summary of Zappo's presentation at the SXSW conference. And if you want to see the accompanying slideshow, click here.

Great lessons in E-Commerce, outlandish Customer Service, the importance of hiring into and ingraining company culture and treating customer service like an investment instead of an expense.

Nicholas Negroponte was Right (Most of the time)

I tripped across a Nicholas Negroponte's 1984 presentation at TED.com. For the time, (24 years ago!) it's amazing how well he's predicted the future. (image from Wikipedia).

Using laserdiscs and color slides (no Powerpoint back then) he forshadows technologies that we take for granted today, including touch screens, contextual search, and video-conferencing.

To put things into perspective, in 1984 the music scene was dominated by bands like Culture Club, Wham! and a guy by the name of Bruce Springsteen, who had just released "Born in the USA".

It was also the birth year of the Apple MAC.

The 22 minute video is a fascinating historical "glimpse forward to today". His accuracy is uncanny.

Of particular interest to me was his quote;

Good education has got to be good entertainment

At the end of his talk he cites an example of a small child, considered developmentally disabled, who taught himself to read - solely because there was personal value in it for him. (Watch the video, you'll understand).

Something to think about the next time you ask someone to write a user manual.

The Connection Culture

Michael Lee Stallard has written a great manifesto entitled: The Connection Culture - A New Source of Competitive Advantage. available on the ChangeThis website.

Read it this weekend.

I'm not kidding.

He talks about three core values that are essential to the human connection; Vision, Value, Voice.

I've seen teams come together in amazing ways when these values are present. Hopefully Stallard's observations will ring true for you too.

The Myth of Management Innovation

Jim Heskitt has a post on HBR's Working Knowledge entitled "Where Will Management Innovation Take Us?" It discusses some of the concepts in Gary Hamel's new book entitled; The Future of Management.

He argues that Management Innovation, to date, has been an oxymoron (my words not his), but that its time has come.

He argues for the transition from a command and control model, to a nimble, team based, single purpose focused model where innovation is in everyone's job description.

I think innovation starts and ends with the org chart.

Modern businesses are comprised of jobs, feeding heirarchical reporting structures. Very neat. Very organized. Well documented job descriptions, complete with lists of required tasks to be performed. Easy to measure individual performance (against a pre-defined task list). The focus is on task management. We measure people in the same way we monitor a manufacturing process - throughput.

There's no place for innovation within this structure.

BUT, give a person a role (with responsibilities) instead of a job (with a set of tasks to be performed, wrapped in pre-defined boundaries) and watch what happens.

No longer does the company have to spend countless hours "supervising" the tasks of subordinates. They need only measure employee impact. Is the role being performed or not? The position tasks become the domain of the individual within the role. (S)he is the master (or mistress) of their domain. They are set free to innovate, to try new things, to experiment, to fail, to learn, to adapt, to grow in their role.

As a manager in this new age setting, you set direction, maintain singleness of purpose, encourage innovation and coach the team (without providing the answers).

You "set free" unprecedented innovation within the ranks.

All this comes at a cost, of course. Working in an environment of responsibilities vs tasks involves a huge leap of faith and comfort with change. But after all, isn't that at the core of innovation?

The major roadblock to Management Innovation is embodied in a phrase I once heard from a leader in a multi-billion dollar organization. He said: "I don't mind change, as long as we don't have to do anything differently."

That says it all.

My Google Suggestion

After spending some time with Google Sites, here's a suggestion for Google. Start a premium YouTube channel.

Why not allow private YouTube channels using the same privacy logic as you do for Google sites - based upon a common email domain or by specific invitation?

I think this would open your service up to companies, who simply don't have the resources to setup their own video servers, nor want the muss and fuss of managing, cataloging and publishing the content.

You folks have a user friendly framework already setup. You have a huge base of users who are comfortable with the technology. It's time to help spread this creativity to the workplace. Imagine a private company site with playlists entitled:

Employee Life at XYX Company: with an introductory video welcoming new employees to the company, providing a virtual tour, outlining the HR Policies and any Safety rules.

XYX Training Playlist: Where you could go for training on systems, processes or professional development.

Product (or Service) Overview: Where your products or services are explained.

News: Short videos of what is happening at your company, including financial reporting, major project updates or milestones.

And get this. Companies might even PAY for it!

Just an idea.

More (FREE) Advice

John Quelch of Harvard Business School, has recently written a brief entitled, Marketing Your Way Through a Recession. You can find it here.

Add his suggestions to the 20 tactics I previously wrote about and let me know if we've missed any obvious ones.

My Google Sites Test

I spent some time this past weekend, with Google Sites, the new FREE service from Google that enables Team sharing and collaboration. I've long been a huge supporter of tools that enable teams to collaborate and so I had to give Sites a try.

Now I'm not highly technical. I don't code with HTML. And I had no trouble creating a sample company intranet site and also a Customer Site for a service business.

I was easily able to embed and use all the other Google tools (Docs, Calendars, Email, Picassa slideshow, Presentations, iGoogle gadgets) as well as the Sites tools (Filing Cabinet, Announcements, Dashboard and Lists.)

Here's a screenshot of the sample customer service site I created.

Now I've only spent a couple of days with the application but I can see that it will begin to level the playing field for small to mid-sized businesses who simply don't have access to the I.T. resources that their larger competitors do.

With Sites, companies with 10-300 employees could really support improved communication and collaboration.

And they could also use the tool to get closer to their customers.

Sites offer you the opportunity to create a variety of sites under a single account. So I created a sample company intranet and then created a sample customer service site, where my fictitious company could track and communicate issues resolution, share documents, push announcements and even IM with customer contacts.

All in all, my time was well spent.

If you're involved in a small business, or work within a team setting, you'd be doing yourself a favor if you checked this out.