Astronauts Riding Donkeys

Slow learning in today's AI-enabled world is the fast lane to efficient dysfunction. It's like an astronaut riding to the launch pad on a donkey.

I see it all the time - organizations earnestly implementing new technologies based on old and outdated information. It is an anachronism guaranteed to disappoint.  

Truism - If you want to improve a process, customer experience, or pretty much anything, accelerate the pace at which you learn.

Accelerate learning? This little considered factor in leadership and team dynamics can be a huge determinant for progress. The cognition of your organization as it relates to your service delivery process is the basis of continuous improvement. Without it, progress is slow at best. That seems simple enough. But, have you been intentional about increasing your team's speed of learning? Forget investing in artificial intelligence if you have not. You need more organic intelligence first. Artificial Intelligence can be no smarter than its' creator. Ignore this advice, and you will likely be automating your donkey. 

At its essence, artificial intelligence is about prediction, and that is all about data. Data is the organic substrate of intelligent judgment. Said another way, if you are planning to venture into the new world of AI, you better be ramping up your learning curve. 

If you're still reading, congrats! You have that curiosity factor that enables learning. Let's set the context with an example. If your team missed 25% of your customer service appointments last month, that is interesting history and maybe actionable in an after-the-plane-crash kind of way. If you learned that 25% were missed in the previous hour, that is hugely actionable. You can change the trajectory of the next hour. 

Counting what you missed last month is the equivalent of airline safety management by reading NTSB postmortem crash findings. Helpful in a lagging indicator kind of way. You learn things slowly and after the fact. There are lots of casualties, however.

If you could learn what your appointment missed rate was last week, that is a 4X speed improvement over the monthly approach. Or how about if you learned what the miss rate was yesterday? That would be a 30X speed of learning improvement over the monthly learner. 

The point is obvious. When you are situationally aware, you are learning at the speed of digital operations. Situational awareness is about learning things at high speed. Once mastered, AI-driven prediction becomes possible. 

Consider these eight cognition accelerants:

1. Change the speed of measurement -

Merely changing the measurement cycle from monthly to weekly or daily creates a massive lift in learning opportunities. I follow a simple rule. The faster I need to improve, the quicker I measure. 

2. Take action more frequently -

It does no good to ramp up measurement speed if you simply admire the results more frequently. When presented with compelling new information, you must take definitive action. Learning how to alter a trajectory is to demonstrate control over your process and change the future outcome. 

3. Learn the root cause of your success and failure -

Ask 'why' for each success and failure over and over. Yes, success has a root and learning that is powerful. Don't be satisfied with merely knowing you missed appointments. You must learn why. 

4. Learn your 'high bar' -

Pareto chart your process issues by categories of error. You probably have a category of root-cause that is twice the impact of everything else - the high bar. Do you know for a fact what that is?  That should be your priority.

5. Learn Corrective Action -

When you get radar-lock on the action that will prevent a given process malfunction from ever happening again, you are poised to eliminate it forever. Once eliminated, then the next highest bar is promoted to the top of the pile. Wash, rinse, repeat.

6. Learn about your cycle time - 

By measuring frequently and with proper process methods, you will learn tons about the things that decelerate your workflows. Measure and determine the cycle time of each process step. The sum of the parts is what your customers and shareholders get to enjoy. Faster is ALWAYS better – and cheaper.

7. Learn the source of your rework -

Every process has dysfunction and generates errors, causing rework. Rework is the bane of efficiency. Learn where it is coming from at a root level, and you learn how to run faster. Plus, you stop paying the 'rework tax'.

8. Learn what is dissonant to your customers -

They will be happy to educate you. One need only ask. Customer dissonance is almost always rooted in poor process performance. Learn what those things are and seek never to make the same mistake twice. Go to your customer service department. It is the motherload of customer feedback. Everything you need to learn is there hiding in plain sight.

An old mentor once told me, 'there are no bad people, only bad process.' While a noble sentiment, it is not true in the real world. It does, however, capture the idea that your team is chocked full of smart and capable people. If you could orchestrate and focus that intellectual horsepower by learning the truth about your service delivery, everything becomes possible. Even the process of determining the right question to ask of your process is powerful. Remember, revolutionaries always start with the learning institutions.

Be intentional about accelerating your organizational cognition. When you teach your team to fish, you feed them for life and maybe make the world a better place. And that is what leadership is all about.

Besides, you get off the donkey.

What can I do for you?

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