Discovering reality in business

We developed a new software product that could replace paperwork on field with simple electronic worksheets. We realized that large amount of information was generated about the work including the business transactional data and also employee behaviour. Our customers got aware of that and started to ask more and more reports that they can see using this information right in our software. We started to extend our application with report services but it become more and more difficult to handle efficiently this part of our service. There were many complaints about the quality of report and the service consumed far more resources from us than it was reasonable to invest. We started to find a partner who was good at business data visualization and was flexible enough to fit the scope of our business model. In the same time our customers had to be convinced about the reasonable scope of reporting to adjust the trade-off between benefits and costs. With switching off our own reporting module and change to professional partner service, finally the reporting part of our offer proved itself by quality and operated with acceptable positive margin.

There are limitations that the company shall understand and handle. It is hard to see a clear picture in time, but the sooner we understand the real situation, the less resources we shall sacrifice.

My former employer, a telco company, donated me many great stories like the following. I was a part of small team who discovered that top clients shall be served different. Imagine a company with 4 million clients in the 90s. Out of them we selected the top 500 clients. They were really big ones. So, after that wonderful recognition a new business organization were established. Naturally the main purpose of this new formation was to stimulate more revenue out of key customers. That was the first time in my life I met and worked close together with sales people. They were recruited from many other companies in a large number with good salary. Much higher than mine. They had no sense to technology, telecommunication and was full of, as I realized, stupid questions. I thought it is a lost game if we hand over these customers into their hands. I insisted on to work with employees who already knew the products and let them sell. I decided to leave the new team before the total destruction. Then, to my great surprise, the new business organization started to work and fulfilled well its mission. Later in my career I was acting as key account manager, and had similar duties as they did. I understood the sales is paired with large responsibility, assumes good heart and psycho, that shall stimulate always new approaches to win the client attention and keep them loyal. During my over 20 year career I changed a lot and I come to a conclusion that selling is based on holistic thinking, it is an attitude to others rather than essential product knowledge.

The purpose can define a team. But only in idealistic way. In many cases there is no full freedom to select team members, corporates have to accommodate to the given conditions. Changing the organization can be successful if employees have clear understanding of the goal can express their contribution and able to work on it together.

I recon the story of a programmer who I met in a conference and could follow his career for many years. He was always well oriented about the new developer tools and methodologies. He were member of online clubs and actively visited events that were organized about software development topics. Later we worked together on projects from the planning till delivery point. He always tried to find the latest technology to build up the service, in all cases successfully. Our company made a decision to develop a software product and we had to settle at one set of techology for a while. That decision put him in uncomfortable situation and left for another company, a startup. There he had the chance to trial out the latest working environment that matched to the mission. He told to me that the startup company started the development from scratch 3 times in less than 2 years. I know he was working many times overnight, took over design and architectural duties, trained the others. All that he did successfully. He gained even more energy, remained fully engaged and productive.

Personal motivation shall be in harmony with the team interest and the business goal of the company. Sometime tiredness can be the sign of disengagement, sometimes engaged employees never get tired, because they are self energized.

Defining the realistic company

Earlier productional and organisational development methods are suggesting that we shall keep on eyes on strict rules as the outcome is linear improvement of using accessible physical resources. I call this the push model. After having problem with this linear and material thinking, even forcing the quality control and measuring tricks, the  team dynamics came more seriously in picture. Sustainable productivity can be targeted only in well orchestrated collaboration between business goals and the individuals who participate in it. The awaited consequence should have been the productivity, too, but in an other way around. I call this greyhound run model.

In reality things are optimized to the limitations of actors (resources) not to the goal.  As they are independent of each other, first we shall start to better understand our limits and what we can do with them.

Evolution of Companies

I believe both push and greyhound run models are the responsive way of handling the problem without touching the soul of the context. The energy of leaders, managers, employees, the collective glue and stimulus is very important but not in the “greyhound run” way. When they do not understand limitation in context they are misleaded (most by themselves). The motivating goal appears always in front, but they never reach it. Rather they shall co-operate honestly and have success every day, so that the real stimulus is kept without the need of forcing them sometimes or most of the time. Any forces in engagement cause loss of energy and degrading performance. Contrariwise, the corporate will build up good teams, they will generate small and bigger business successes. That enables us to innovate, revitalize the organizational processes, the corporate culture and relation the all players in business life. Let us start experiencing the reality around.

Reality is just wonderful.