Does the organization produce outputs or outcomes?
Does it describe itself as a factory floor or see itself through its engagements with customers?
One way to find out is to simply ask colleagues: what is work and what does success look like? If the answers describe work and successes in terms of the tasks and processes of production or if the language is purely internal (e.g. speed and efficiency); the organization is in a factory floor model (internal and output focused).
If colleagues describe what happens to customers when they engage with the firm’s offering and can articulate the line-of-sight between what their own work is and the customers’ outcomes they are outcomes focused.
Give it a go. It is eye-opening to learn what the organization has been trained to look at, articulate and focus on in terms of why they are doing what they are doing.
Another way to find out is to look at what is being measured. Is the organization measuring, valuing and incentivizing internal efficiencies or valuable outcomes to the customer and the business?
And a third way is to examine the language the organizations uses when describing value. E.g. does it talk about efficiencies in the line-of-production or is it able to articulate what happens when their products or marketing leaves the factory floor goes out into the world and produces value through its interactions with its customers?
(If an organization does not have the language to articulate or describe something the chances of it acting on it are slim).
Internal or external focus
There is nothing wrong with being in the factory model if the organization is already satisfied with the value it is putting into or taking out of the market.
The factory floor is great If the organization just wants to keep doing whatever it is already doing, but more efficiently.
But if it is not 100% content with the value it is adding to or taking out of the market, and it is thinking there might be room for improvement or they face external changes, then the factory floor model on its own won’t be that helpful. Then the organization needs to switch its focus more towards the external environment and how to produce better outcomes.
To create new value an organization needs to explore and understand customers important unmet needs (1). And that won’t happen if the focus is on internal processes or improvements.
Checking colleagues’ feedback to the questions "what is your work?" and “what does success look like?” undresses the organization, goes beyond its power points and slogan exercises and gives a naked understanding of what the organization is focusing on.
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In most organizations there is a little bit of both, hopefully.
The gap
My assumption is that most organizations don’t recognize these two modes of operation and don’t distinguish between them.
So they are e.g. running an internal efficiency operating model while it is hoping to identify new value — with all their focus being inward.
Or they are trying to make their operations more efficient while making investments in innovation and experimentation exploring the external environment.
If we don’t have the language to explore what is happening we won’t be able to see it, discuss it, understand it or act on it. If we don’t distinguish our operating models to better fit what we want to achieve then we will never achieve it.
How to act?
The process to understand and act on this is simple:
It is a whole lot of fun!
Sources:
30 Years Marketing | 25 Years Customer Experience | 20 Years Decisioning | Opinions my own
2 个月It is not EITHER/OR Helge Tenn?. It can be AND as well. Take a credit card company like Capital One. It has a very exploratory front-end looking for new, often very time-boxed opportunties in the market. But at the same time it operates a card processing machine to administer cards, bills and payments. Like most large organisations it is a hybrid. It is an AND organisation. Br, Graham