by Barry O'Gorman | Feb 22, 2020 | Disruption, Management
What are you trying to achieve through digital transformation?
The challenge is to look at the current business and think through how a new entrant, starting today, would construct a competing business – without a digital transformation, per se? The new entrant will not have the market presence, the customer base, the team, the systems and processes developed, modified, integrated over a number of years. The the new entrant may not choose to compete on the same basis.
Opportunities for new entrant
Where will new entrant prosper? Focusing on particular sectors, different supply chain, different business model, less capital investment, scalability, flexibility, different workforce structure, leveraging new and/or emerging technologies, pricing?
Why transform digitally?
If we can see real advantage for a new entrant – through leveraging digital solutions – then we probably cannot afford to ignore this. If the digital solutions will enable delivery of better services or products, more aligned with customer needs, at a discount to out cost base, then we have little choice but to transform. Otherwise we are relying on costs of entry etc. to preclude the new entrant taking our business.
What have I in mind when thinking digital transformation?
I need to imagine building my current business in today’s market place – leveraging changes in the market, in customer needs and the opportunities presented by current technology. The actual transformation bit is the important bit (if it is required) – the digital piece drives the change (ie the requirement to change) or enables the change.
Should we still be talking about digital transformation?
Probably not. I tend to think moving from paper to digital is less digital transformation than simply catching up. Writing things down on paper ad trying to share information thereafter belongs to another era. Digital capture and digital processing should be a given by now. The opportunities for transformation leverage the data being in a digital format. Many of these opportunities do not arise if paper based e.g predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, Extended Reality.
Conclusion – why digital transformation?
Being digital is a requirement – should be a given. Capture once, store, analyse, safeguard, whatever, stop wasting people’s time – empower customers and employees. If digital is a given then we need to talk about the opportunities presented through the new technologies and leveraging them differently. It’s the age old challenge of continuing to reinvent onself, seeking sustainable competitive advantage. Digital is just part of the environment and ‘digital transformation’ probably does not need to be called out as a separate or identifiable activity. Unfortunately, for now, we have many businesses who have not yet digitised – for them the challenge os one of staying relevant in a digital, data agile, world.
by Barry O'Gorman | Feb 21, 2020 | Disruption
A needed data Strategy
The paper (https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-data-strategy_en) outlines a series of steps designed to position the EU to prosper in the data agile world. Some of these will undoubtedly challenge the status quo and may provide contentious with some of the currently dominant providers. However looking at it from an EU Inc. perspective difficult to argue with the requirement for change, for investment and coordination – nor to deny the opportunity. Makes for an interesting read.
EU published European Strategy for Data on 19 Feb 2020. Makes for an interesting read – as EU looks to position/ protect itself to prosper in the ‘data agile’ era. The document is an interesting reminder of many of the developments, challenges and opportunities. And, inf this format, very much at the strategic, if not aspirational, level – but none the less important for this.
Have we missed the boat?
There is a sense reading this that the EU produces lots of data but has ceded much of the advantage to overseas players e.g. those running the data centers and providing the cloud based applications. Running through the document is a sense of a missed opportunity – which this strategy will now aim to redress. Some of it relates to investment, some to a need for improved coordination across the EU, some to training/ awareness/ education. and underlying it all is an uneasiness as to whether non EU owned cloud providers are committed to complying with EU legislation and expectations.
What is the opportunity?
The volume of data is only headed one way – continuing to grow exponentially. And the strategy paper anticipates most of this data will not reside in data centers. The data does offer huge opportunities for business and government to collaborate and great improvements in quality of life for EU citizens. But a number of frameworks are required if the EU is to exploit and leverage the opportunities.
Next steps
by Barry O'Gorman | Jul 26, 2019 | Disruption, Travel
In Ireland we have Uber in name – but not in the availability of private cars. What is the objection to this level of disruption? Would the disruption not result in better experience for consumers, better value for consumers, more capacity and greater use of these services by consumers? Clearly there would be disruption for the current incumbents – but this is inevitable with all new ways of doing business.
My own recent experiences in the US and Portugal have served to remind me that true Uber services are part of a modern economy – particularly when you are looking to attract and retain a strong tech community or to attract and develop tourism. And we want these people to grab an Uber rather than clogging up the streets with more cars.
Curious to see what transpires. Uber has of course attracted its own share of controversy in its short history. But as someone visiting foreign cities I have found the service to be outstanding – and represent much better value to me as a tourist than the traditional taxi options.
Just about to hop in another Uber…
by Barry O'Gorman | Feb 25, 2019 | Leadership, Book reviews - business, Management
Barry O’Reilly has written, ‘Unlearn’, a stimulating book for anyone interested in change management or business transformation. In every walk of life we need to be able to set aside our preconceived ideas and take a fresh look. And this is the theme of the book.
Working with IAG
O’Reilly references in some detail the work he did with the IAG team some time after the appointment of Willie Walsh. And he obviously has a proven method – and supporting tools – for getting senior executives out of the office and into a creative environment. In my own consulting work over the years I have always seen major benefits in getting people out of their day to day working environment. It never ceases to surprise me how reluctant many CEOs seem to be to free up the time to make this happen.
C.S. Lewis
The book draws on many experts and is full of memorable quotes. My favourite is from C. S. Lewis: ‘You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending’. This seems to me to speak to so much to the reluctance to change, the resistance to kicking off transformation programmes. Do not waste too much time thinking about what went before. Preferably celebrate it. But look to what you can influence: changing the ending.
I have run many projects in the past focused on business process redesign. More recently I have become a convert to Lean – focus on customers, constant process improvement, work in the Gemba and relentlessly seek elimination of non value add. Barry O’Reilly references Toyota in a number of places – and picks out a quote from Taiichi Ohno which very much supports the Unlearn approach: ‘We are doomed to failure without a daily destruction of our various preconceptions’.
Leader challenges
O’Reilly sets out a number of challenges for current leaders – and is not shy about their likely need to unlearn much of that they practice. I thought his reference to entities with too much focus on cost cutting was interesting: risking resulting in people who cease to solve problems for themselves and embrace disempowerment. His definition of the job of a leader would challenge many: to design systems to enable people to experiment with potential opportunities and learn as quickly, cheaply and safely as possible while they discover how to achieve the desired outcome
In conclusion I thought this was a pretty good read – and introduces a number of interesting references. While I thought the pace of the book slipped in the second half, I do not believe this detracted much from the value of the book as a read for anyone looking to lead change or business transformation.
by Barry O'Gorman | Dec 23, 2018 | Business, Healthcare, Management
Beyond heroes – a lean management systems for healthcare by Kim Barnas
Just finished reading my Kindle edition of this lean book. Great reminder of what I learned a couple of years ago, completing my lean training. Describes how lean was adopted in Theda Healthcare in the US. Not all plain sailing. But lots of lessons learned. And lots of progress made.
Leadership and culture
Barnas puts the challenges to leadership/ management up front – side by side with culture. If lean puts continuous improvement at the centre then how do we sustain the improvements? Q leadership and culture. ‘Leadership succeeds only when it learns to evolve’ and ‘new management duties encouraged everyone to be more respectful, improvement focused and process orientated’.
Principles of lean management system
Barnas describes these, for Thedacare, as:
- Managing by process
- Using A3 and
- Plan-Do-Study-Adjust (‘PDSA’)
Standard work
The emphasis on ‘Standard work’ attracted my attention: ‘they use standard work for all value creating and incidental work in the enterprise – designed, documented and continually audited, revised and improved by line managers and work teams’. Barnas sees stability in work processes underpinning continuous improvemet.
End to end value streams
Thedacare sees the patient as the ‘product’ and the flow of the patient through a cycle of care as the value stream. Barnas noted that most patients pass through more than one value stream. And Thedacare set end to end improvement goals across some of those value streams – with 3 or 4 multidisciplinary kaizen teams.
by Barry O'Gorman | Nov 25, 2018 | Book reviews - business, Management
Is business now KPI mad? In fact are organisations KPI or metrics mad? Just finished reading ‘The Tyranny of Metrics‘ by Jerry Z. Muller. And it does give reason to think again about the curent obsession with KPIs and ‘if you can’t measure it you shouldn’t be going it’.
Muller provides a good background – why we have seen the focus on KPIs. And it’s not a new phenomenon. It seems attractive to professional managers – if we can figure out what’s important to the performance of the organisation or company why not measure that? To some extent the various reporting processes – annual inancial statements, monthly management accounts, variance analysis against budget and/or forecast – are all part of this measurement process.
Key performance indicators
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) seem attractive – capture the essence of performance in a discrete set of numbers (preferably calculated automatically). But unfortunately some of this attraction is the weakness. Selecting a KPI which is calculable – but which may be too simple to measure what si actually a moe complex process. And lot’s of important activities may not lend themselves to trasditional KPIs at all.
Cross industry challenge
Muller does a good job of looking through different industries and sectors – be they health, policing, univestities, etc. Ineach case he points out eamples where the metric is not comprehensive or causes people to game the metric. Almost more worrying, he lists lots of exampels where the metric causes sub optimal behaviour.
Conclusion
So what’s the answer? Do we stop measuring – because it’s too hard, demotivates people, encourages the wrong behaviour. The balance of the book is so critical of metrics that one could find oneself headed that direction. I do not believe this is the intent – and I do not think it the right conclusion. Rather we need to review again the strategic and operational objectives (in a more holistic way) and determine whether there are appropriate measures in respect of each of these. We need metrics which will motivate performance in line with organisation or corporate objectives.
