Re:Think: Junk the Review Templates and Dashboards
It is a common assumption that in many enterprises that mid-level managers do not encourage or inhibit innovation. Recently when I spoke to many of my former colleagues on how many people are creative? Their response was most of the people are creative except in IT Services. Why is this premonition that people in Enterprise IT or IT Services are not innovative? Or is it that we hold a different standard for innovation?
There are multiple challenges that mid-level IT managers encounter in their daily work schedule – trying to meet their key performance indicators in an ever-reducing budget. If there is one inhibitor that can at least start a re-think in the way mid-managers perceive their role – then it is the review templates and dashboards that they continuously monitor and present in the meetings.
One of the biggest inhibitors to encourage innovation in Enterprise IT is the templates that are used for weekly/monthly/quarterly and the project/program level review templates. It is no uncommon for senior managers to be bombarded with slides and slides of data points. Usually these templates start innocently, but with inputs from every department incorporated they become a numbers nightmare. Mid-level managers are expected to adhere to bounded values, and any deviation would require a detailed explanation not only to the managers of peer departments, and up the hierarchy.
And compounding the problem is the concept of Dashboards. 10 or more slides from earlier templates are now compressed into nice graphical picture and put on one slide. Except for the great graphical representation, they add no additional value. The only major benefit is that the earlier 100 slide templates are now in 10 slides as Dashboards. The effort and time spent by project managers and mid-level managers is humongous, and the effort spend by the teams to feed the dashboards for their managers is extremely time consuming. And every review meeting, senior management is pounded with data to show that the function unit is performing within the parameters of key performance indicators. As one manager commented to me, these review meetings tell when we need to see the ophthalmologist.
If you can manage to junk these templates and dashboards and come with simpler format, it would be most valued by all your team members. Most of the data is any way available in online reports or dashboards. And we end up listening to people repeating the same data! As all of us heard during our career but have forgotten them in the side-lines of progress, Keep it Simple.
To drive innovation, during the next review meeting, spend only 1/3rd of the designated time on reviewing the templates and ask the team to just sum up their presentation and review within 1/3rd of the time. Spend the rest of the time, asking people for ideas to improve the applications and systems. There are multiple models to solicit or generate new ideas. Use the model that would suit your style of management. Be it the random thoughts model, SCAMPER, Concept Trees, brainstorming 6-3-5, etc.,
But one model that interested me was ask the team to ask questions. Do not pass any comment, judgement or opinion on any of the questions generated. Ask the team to express the questions they have in their mind on the internal IT Systems. Encourage every member to participate. Provide the confidence that they can ask the silliest question they have also. As a senior management, just inscribe these questions into your “Idea Journal”.
These questions may become your ideas for innovation!