How to Compose an IT Department in 10 minutes - 22 Lessons, Part 2
Jakob Anker Nielsen
Senior Platform Architect at ServiceNow | Customer Outcomes Advisor
What you will learn
Last week I published the first in a series of three articles. At the previous article you can read about my motivation and early experience volunteering as the IT Lead of Aid Ukraine Denmark.
This second article will focus on
The third and final instalment in the articles series will cover:
Lesson 6: The Issue with Classical Management
One issue - that probably stems from the industrial revolution - is that most management is founded on controlling people and processes. That made sense in previous times when the individual was little more than a cogwheel in a greater machine. When the Ford T was to be mass-produced, the most significant margin of error was from the people who were unable to follow the directed processes to a T (pun intended).
Then, it makes a lot of sense that the management of such personnel was focused on ensuring that they do the right things at the right time to ensure that they do not become a source of error or bottleneck for the rest of the assembly line.
And this method of management was hugely successful. Successes breed precedence, and we continue to do what is working. And for the longest time, the management processes related to the industrial revolution made total sense, as much of modern work is focused on producing goods.
Lately, though, there has been a shift. We are starting to become increasingly educated and carry out particular functions, where there often is not anyone more skilled in our area than ourselves or our closest colleagues. This impedes classical management, as it no longer is possible to govern a best practice, as much of the work carried out is highly specialized or creative. Then how do we manage?
On the management of a highly specialized knowledge worker, there can be a tendency to focus on word-of-mouth from peers, what the clients are saying, and any other factor that may give the manager an idea of the competence and performance of his knowledge worker to be managed. The obvious pitfall here, is that the manager relies on 2nd hand and biased information to make a judgment.
Regarding general performance of services - but also that of resources - Key Performance Indicators, Service Level Agreements, Service availability, cost of the ticket, and tangible metrics are put in use. In other words, we are attempting to pull the controlling management of the past over the enormous and complex head of creative, expert, and knowledge work.
Sure, we can get some green or red KPIs, and we can see if the cost of the tickets is rising or decreasing (if the organization is especially mature in its process- and data management). But, more often than not, these metrics are all pointing to what the classical manager wants to know: how much money are we earning, is the assembly line working, can we optimize any part of the supply chain?
How can a KPI measure the performance of knowledge work?
Lesson 7: The Issue with Metric-Based Management
In reality, it is not the cost of the ticket itself that is most important or how fast we are at closing a ticket. We are not in business because we have cheap tickets or are quick at ramming a solution to the caller reporting an issue. No, we are in business because we can deliver a set of relevant services for our colleagues, stakeholders, and customers. We are here because we are perceived to add value to individuals' daily operations and lives. Then, how important is it if we are fast as closing a ticket if we are not measuring our impact and customer sentiment toward our services? And what happens when we implement financially and time-based controlling metrics for complex services?
You guessed it. You get an uninformed basis for understanding the nature of the business's services and how they can be optimized. Instead of adding value to the resolution of an issue related to our services - potentially by taking extra time to ensure that the reporter is comfortable with the solution and that the reported issue was the root-issue and not asymptomatic from an underlying event. Instead of understanding the perceived value of our services and how value-drivers can be added and redundancies removed, we are looking to get the job done as fast as possible because that is what my boss thinks is important. It says so, plain an clear on our dashboard hanging on the wall of our office, telling us what metrics that are defining for our work performance.
KPIs are something. With great power comes great responsibility Peter Parker, Sr. Manager of Villain-Prevention.
Lesson 8: The Benefit of Value-based management
In aid Ukraine and Denmark, we do not have any KPIs. Partially because we are simply not mature enough in our processes to introduce such controlling and monitoring, and partly because it does not make sense. Or so I would like to think so.
The organization's core service is so simple: to accommodate those impacted by the war in Ukraine. It is near impossible for each domain expert not to understand what is most important.
People can thoroughly prioritize their efforts based on necessity (instead of imposed importance). Everyone knows that it is more important to ensure that a mother and daughter are placed immediately in housing instead of answering offers from volunteers because some arbitrary timer is telling us that we are supposed to respond to them within one day.
This is possible because we understand our service and our impact on the provided service.
If your organization needs a timer and counter to tell them what to do, I would argue that there might be a chance you are doing too little to convey the individual's place in the grander scheme of your service and value chain.
Lesson 9: There is a Time and Place for Everything
In the end, there is a time and place for both types of management. And complex knowledge work can also benefit from KPIs, though they are extremely risky. They are dangerous as they are only valuable if not interpreted at face value.
It is OK to understand the cost of a ticket or measure how fast you are at doing your work. As long as it is used strategically to understand the numbers related to the value you are looking to provide through your services.
It is even OK to have a goal of reducing the cost and time of a ticket. We just need to make sure that we understand what/and if we are losing value drivers important for our services to reduce our metrics.
In my experience, I would say that metric-based performance monitoring is not used correctly in large organizations. They induce tunnel vision and behavior that is counterintuitive to the nature of the organization's services.
It takes immense knowledge about the underlying service and value chain, as well as how each component/resource in your department adds to it, to be able to efficiently read a metric KPI on knowledge work performance.
Maybe you are now thinking "phew, luckily this does not apply to me then, as I am very knowledgeable about our services". If that is your first thought, I would recommend that you reconsider that thought, and in any case that you go and take a hard look in the KPI-mirror and what type of behavior it drives in your organization. Maybe even talk with the measured resources about their take on the metrics, as they - as mentioned in previous sections - are the most knowledgeable about their specific services.
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Lesson 10: Example of Metric-based Management of Knowledge Work
You might introduce a KPI that seeks to drive knowledge sharing. Maybe you deem it a good idea to measure how often an employee shares knowledge with coworkers. Perhaps you would even introduce a hierarchical grading chart where employees can gather enough points to move up the scales by proving that they have shared knowledge. Maybe you would even make bonuses and pay-raises contingent on this and like-minded KPIs.
All in good spirit.
But now, the employees are thinking about their actions about how they may impact their scaling of the grading system. Now they are using time thinking about how they can optimize their metrics; they are using time reporting every time they share information of any sort with more than one coworker. Previously, they were focused on delivering the services they are the experts in providing, the job they were hired to do. Now their job is to report about their job.
The KPIs are green, the grades are rising, and we are removing focus from our core business.
KPIs should never be a hindrance to the value drivers of your services. Any time a new KPI is introduced it implies a cost and a shift in focus. Is the cost and shift in focus informed and valuable enough to optimize service output?
Lesson 11: How to Lose Momentum in an Organization
In modern business, there are a lot of red tapes associated with providing a service. It has its merit in some situations when we need to ensure that sensitive data that is being processed, or the processes that are managing them, can do so with respect for the individual and organization.
Though, probably as an extension of classical management, there exists a trend that everything needs to be approved by your manager. You are almost deemed incapable of thinking yourselves / your thinking and decision-making need to be reviewed and approved by a senior. Here we hit the expertise problem again, where you often are the most knowledgeable about your topic and are sometimes subjected to redundant presentation meetings and reports to be presented to the guy with the golden rubber stamp.
There is little more defeating and demotivating in this world than the seeming mistrust such practices imply.
Lesson 12: How we waste our time
More often than not, we have plenty of time in our professional lives to do menial tasks that ultimately are synonymous with busy-work. We need to be at work 37,5 hours a week, so that is how long our jobs will take.
We have status meetings, meetings about our meetings, and meetings about the number of sessions.
We do tasks mindlessly, tampering away at our keyboards without thinking about the possible approaches that might cut the needed effort in half or if the work itself is meaningful enough.
We have been encoded from before we could walk that there are institutions, expectations, and processes to be done. You are to learn like this. You are to teach like this. You are to lead like this. You are to work like that.
We blindly accept.
I can recall an episode from my professional life where I attempted to challenge a KPI that was driving focus away from the value drivers of our service. I was met with a remark saying that this person had realized that it was easier to just get with the program throughout his career. And the room nodded in consent.
Rarely have I felt as disheartened. To have a whole room agreeing that we should not challenge the status quo. No thanks.
Lesson 13: How to Foster a Sense of Responsibility through Responsibility
When your ass is fully covered, you are less likely to take responsibility
In the case of Aid Ukraine Denmark, we did not have the luxury of spending half of our waking hours working on our projects. We had limited time, and every action had to be meaningful for us to be efficient enough to have a positive impact.
In Aid Ukraine Denmark, I started explaining in detail how I wanted to organize and deliver to the volunteer organization based on a user-centric approach. I wrote extensively on the subject and sent it to my immediate manager, as I was so used to aligning and presenting strategies to ensure that management would be OK with any given approach.
I was told "We don't understand that, Jakob; it seems like you do. Please do what you see most fitting".
What a relief it was, and unexpected at that. I was simply trusted, and they expected that I knew how to carry out the task better than them.
An extraordinarily unexpected and gratifying experience, and it motivated me tremendously. It was MY decisions and ME that impacted the services.
It was not my work and ideas being accepted or rejected.
I had complete control.
I was solely responsible, without the usual benefit of having a manager or customer sign off on your approach so that when it fails, you can point back and say well, he OKed it.
With all of those filters removed, when it is just you and your ability to collaborate and produce results, then it becomes real.
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