Operational Innovation and football
Innovation is a key factor for companies in the Øresund IT region. To be at the top we need to be faster and in the long run more effective than the competition. There are talented people in many locations and technology travel well so we also need other differentiators. In the EURO 2008 football matches, a success factor is how well the players interact. Is interaction and synchronization one of the arenas where we can outsmart the competitors by breaking the common rules for how we operate?
Peter Drucker compared the knowledge intensive organization with a symphony orchestra. A development organization is more like creating the symphony instead. What will happen is to some extent unpredictable like in a football match and thus must be improvised. – and you only play each match once. Yet managers need to have predictability which is why agile has met some resistance despite its positives.
This tension, improvisation versus predictability; can serve as an example of how we can question established practices and find opportunities for operational innovation. Management practices have developed to deal with this situation, specifics can differ but the basic assumptions behind them are the same. Two of these practices lead in combination to the opposite of what is intended.
Balancing load and capacity
Most companies have more ideas than resources. Different stakeholders are pushing their interests so new tasks or projects are pushed in with limited respect to current load. “We push until people scream” is a real life quote. Imagine a football tournament where the players are allocated to more and more matches at the same time. To a certain level individual player utilization would increase but very quickly player unavailability would be a major problem. It is probably based on the assumption that the sooner a development effort starts, the sooner it will finish. But that is not valid in a multi-task/multi project environment. The result is that the more is pushed in, the slower it will be.
Time estimates
It seems like an obvious thing to try to get accurate individual time estimates. Imagine a football match with fixed milestone minutes for each pass; the plan will be obsolete after 10 seconds. Since development is uncertain by nature, the only way to achieve high estimate precision is to add safety, but then most things are done late, which leads us to believe there is no safety. The result is a paradox – it leads to the opposite of what was intended – longer times and increased variability.
The combined effects of these practices are that work flows are slowed down and the result of the company team play suffers. Bottle-necks seem to be in many places, hidden spare capacity is disguised by prematurely started work. By re-thinking these practices some companies have increased speed and productivity dramatically.
By breaking the mainstream operational logic there is a potential to become better in a way that takes time to find out about and to copy for competitors. Each company needs to find their own unique levers and approach.
Just like the football coach plays a crucial role to enable effective play in the team, the manager holds the key to enable operational innovation and effective execution. Think counter intuitively, look for contradictions and ask
why many times.
The future is fantastic. Most innovations are not done yet.
Lars Peterson
Partner, VMG
lars.peterson@vm-g.com