Maturity Models and Excellence

As all good managers know, what gets measured gets managed. What gets managed gets improved. And what gets improved helps achieve better outcomes.

The best managers are constantly testing and improving the way in which their part of the organisation operates. They're never just stood still in tick-over mode.

The term "maturity" relates to the degree of formality and optimisation of processes, which range from ad hoc practices through to active optimisation of processes.?By increasing maturity, managers and their teams can create more reliable environments where their products, services and departments can be more efficient, effective, and successful.

“We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, then, is not an act, but habit.”

– Aristotle

With so many different aspects of an organisation to optimise, there is a growing number of maturity models, which help organisations assess the level at which they perform in a particular discipline. And of course maturity across disciplines can vary a great deal.

For example, the maturity of operational excellence is often higher in an established organisation than in a start-up. Whereas the agility of a start-up is the envy of people who might have to endure the painfully slow pace of an established organisation.

Maturity Model History

With the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) being an early software development model created in 1986, maturity models are nothing new.?That of course was superseded by CMMI, which was developed by Carnegie Mellon University to assess the expertise and quality of software contractors for the American Department of Defense.

According to the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, CMMI is intended to:?

Help integrate traditionally separate organisational functions, set process improvement goals and priorities, provide guidance for quality processes, and provide a point of reference for appraising current processes.

The Maturity Movement

Maturity is about being judged by how good your organisation or system is at self-improvement. Since those early CMM development days, maturity models have themselves matured and multiplied. Aside from CMMI, a handful of areas where maturity models have become more commonplace include:

• Project Management
• Change Management
• Business Processes
• Digital
• Business Transformation
• Cybersecurity
• Agile

Example:

The illustrations below show the People dimension in the Digital Maturity Index.

While anyone can recite cliches such as: "it's all about people and culture" and "people are our most valuable asset", knowing exactly what specific actions need to be taken to bring about improvements in that space isn't so easy. Which is where maturity models can help.

The illustrations show at a high level, how a maturity model can help provide the detailed steps required to improve maturity in just one of six digital maturity dimensions.?

Learn more about this at Digitopia.

A Question of Alignment

In the context of an organisation, the word "maturity" can often seem nebulous to anyone who isn't immersed in it. So to help everyone in your team get clear and aligned, it's worth asking some basic questions such as:

• What disciplines are of fundamental importance to the achievement of the CEO's strategic objectives?
• What is meant by the term “maturity” in the context of the disciplines we need to focus on?
• How can we assess the maturity of a particular discipline? What should we measure? And what tools are available to help us do it well?

Until your team can align on the answers to those questions, it's possible your people will have very different answers to the questions.

So first get aligned on what the answers to these questions should be for "your" organisation. Because only then will you be able to start rowing in one direction.

Prioritised Learning

When you decide to work with a particular maturity model, you begin with an assessment to determine the level at which the discipline in question is currently performing at.

Once you've carried out an assessment to determine your maturity level, then you use the level above your current level, to prioritise what you need to improve and exactly how you will do that.

This prioritisation of learning is a big benefit of using a maturity model. It's based on the notion that if you are at level 2 in something, it's important to learn the things at level 3 before you focus on level 4. In simple terms, you need to walk before you can run.?

A good example of this is with transformation. Whether you call it digital transformation, business transformation, or something else, until your organisation is sufficiently mature in key disciplines, which are collectively integrated, you can't realistically expect to see very much in the way of transformation success.

It's a bit like golf. No player expects to do very well if their putting is at level 5, but every other aspect of their game is below level 2.

The maturity model you choose to work with will serve as a valuable guide for what to learn, and it provides structure to what might otherwise be a confusing process.

Reasons to Be Cheerful - About Maturity

Halil Aksu - CEO of Digitopia - described six reasons why organisations should measure their maturity. I've summarised them below but you can read Hail's full article here.

Alignment

The most common reason for failure is misalignment because people run in different directions, without telling others. This results in siloed rather than holistic joined-up efforts.

Assurance

If you agree that enterprise transformation is an ongoing journey, then it makes sense to have a map, navigation system or guide to help you be properly equipped and stay on track.

Acceleration

The best performing companies accomplish goals in the right sequence, faster and better than their competition. The value of speed during these times of flux and uncertainty is huge, but a prerequisite to that speed is adequate maturity in key disciplines.

Executive Learning

Just by reviewing the maturity of your key disciplines in an unbiased manner, executives and managers get to self-reflect and learn as individuals, as well as across their functions and business units.

Vision Setting

Taking digital maturity as an example, if level 5 is your north star, knowing what you need to do, when, and how to achieve your north star vision becomes clearer, more tangible and achievable.

Value Add

Improved maturity results in better business performance. It’s no secret that digital maturity can result in huge competitive advantages these days. Similarly, sustainability maturity is becoming increasingly important too.

What's Key to Your Growth?

With digital, sustainability, customer centricity, and business transformation just a few of the topics on the boardroom agenda, what's important enough for you to be measuring and maturing right now, and what tools are you using to get the job done and put a smile on your CEO's face?