Common language for successful business

Still there are many way to improve the performance of a business. The classic frameworks are focusing on specific domain of business operations. These domains can be technology oriented like system architecture and lifecycle management. Other management systems and methodologies are developed upon human aspects. Such systems fall under category of organization development. What makes the picture more complex but even real is that corporates use not only one business improvement system, rather they mix multitude of relevant methodologies. Just name some of the big systems, methodologies or toolboxes: Balanced Scorecard, Organization Change Management, Innovation Management, Continuous Improvement, IT Service Management, Project Management standards. The variety of tools that are used to shape business are dependent on the conviction of actual leaders, the advisors who have wide range but different scope of expertise and seasoned by the given conditions of the company. The standard systems devoted to improve a dominant indicators of business with the promise that they will positively affect the company. Such performance drivers makes up an infinite list but to mention some: quality, total cost, efficiency, profitability, production time, time to market, customer base descriptors, customer satisfaction measures. In some cases we believe that the results are pretty easy to measure nevertheless, even simple physical, non abstract quantities show alterable importance by advance of time during the flow of the same process.

The encoded contradiction of business measures

Why is hard to follow up even simple measures of performance?  There should be a reference point which offers an orientation to evaluate the outcome. This reference point shall be a clear statement that everybody agrees on. For example if management agrees on the first milestone, the context around is also of high importance. What if in the meantime the staff changes or we realize on halfway that the product is far not competitive. Or it turns out that we need 20% more budget to safely keep the deadline. All the risk factors are difficult to state clearly on paper and register this criteria in a book that everybody reads. It there were a clear language that describes project conditions that should be agreed with all the stakeholders, at any level of the corporate hierarchy. The real life creates the practical situation where the conditions change unexpectedly even suddenly through the process of team collaboration that no benchmark can justify. Many times short after the start of project (or any type of collaboration) we do not find the compass to follow and forget about the performance indicators. Some invisible drive pulls the process forward and we create explanation of results afterwards.

How to control business measures?
It is necessary to have some common, simple agreed context whatever name we apply to that agreement. Businesses shall calculate with frequent occasions which are not foreseen and rely on intuition, a collective creativity and resilience. The reaction time is short and the team shall have always the best decision otherwise small failures will cumulate the error till the end of the game. Is is the experience of professionals that makes the collaboration super efficient? Or the personality of team members shall be properly selected and taken care? What if all conditions are given but the corporate culture is not mature yet because lack of company history. There are many tricks to overcome organizational and technical difficulties that is driven by the willingness and genie of the team and the whole company. But shall be a glue that guides the corporate community and keep them on the right track despite of big waves at any level of everyday business. Finally all company are different because they are composition of individuum, their own localization, leadership style, unique selling points and all contents that are generated in many threads real time. This glue what we seek is a common language, a virtual dictionary, a language that people use during business hours to express the common purpose.
What is the problem with applied systems
The standard business management systems or methods have their own dictionary. That is the foundation which is needed to explain the context of their own principles. That corresponding descriptive terminology is the core of the training material and later examinations. Methodology coupled terminology is usually intentionally establishes an isolated universe for many reasons. Some of the main reasons are the protection of intellectual property and the brading, so that methodologies differentiate each other for business and competitiveness reasons.
ERP systems which are implementing licensed business methods for management processes are even more restrictive. They draw a solid border around the freedom of thoughts and necessary extent of creativity. This limitations are determined in the user guide, in the online help material, in the hands-on training which is targeted to embed the selected software into the corporate business practice.  It is elemental because the deployed system shall be documented. All training material, certification processes enforce to settle the given software as a tightly integrated part of business operation.

What shall be the solution
Differentiation and competition is not bad in itself. If the management methodologies establish their own business languages the knowledge can be shared easier between subject experts. But the continuous change and innovation assumes that we bravely use new mix of methodologies and supporting software systems. To assure a universal glue we always shall find the common language, a real human style language that expresses the clear purpose of collaboration. How to set and keep common language in the team can be found during open conversation, simple inquiry in a professional conference or a meetup. Usually these helping tools are easy-to-learn, lightweight methods which can be applied in parallel to any standard systems or methods as a friendly extension. One example is a thinking concept called Domain Storytelling. It is derived or closely related to domain driven design, it helps to clarify the common purpose of the team. During Domain Storytelling sessions employees listen to each other and register the story using pictographic language. Its purpose is not the documentation, rather a guided way of thinking and express the given situation so that all stakeholders become positioned in the same context. This thinking is taught in workshop and can be learned by practicing. The benefit of its application is maintenance of clarity during the project and minimization the risk of misunderstanding.
Domain Storytelling can be used in vast variety of cases, mentioning some examples: motivation, value setting, decision support, risk management, quality management, requirement engineering, service design.