Mindful Monday: More re-thinking about ESM

Improvement often requires taking a new perspective, but this kind of re-thinking can result in dramatic simplification that benefits the entire enterprise; see the webinar replay, ESM and the Big Re-Think.

…Simplifying internal processes and structures will have positive impacts on the entire value creation capability of a company.

Deloitte

A frustrating part of continual improvement can be the different perspectives that people bring to the conversation. But these perspectives can help us think differently about complex problems; in fact, it is sometimes complexity itself that drives creativity and improvement.

A dose of complexity can disrupt overconfidence cycles and spur rethinking cycles. It gives us more humility about our knowledge and more doubts about our opinions, and it can make us curious enough to discover information we were lacking.

–       Grant, Adam. Think Again (p. 165). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

But complexity can also be an impediment to creating and delivering value, partly due to the confusion it creates.

For example, one day we have a clean looking org chart, and suddenly someone offers up an inverted org chart…’top-down’ becomes ‘bottom-up’! Suddenly our world is upside down! Or someone else offers up a radical enterprise view and starts the confusion all over again. Of course, these are just perspectives — and upside-down org charts and radical enterprises illustrate a purely people (WHO) view.

Or, someone else (perhaps from marketing?) may bring the Golden Circle into a discussion. This puts WHY at the start, HOW next and WHAT is last! USM says a different order! Of course, service definition using USM’s customer-supplier interaction model can be guided by—and help guide— answers to the question, WHY?

But the Golden Circle’s perspective may be more about governance; vision/mission (i.e., what is our purpose?) and is not really focused on a management system. Again, very important but a different context!

So, when you think about enterprise service management and the complexity of multiple practice frameworks, shifting organizational structures and rapidly changing supplier relationships get crazy…

Think Again...

simplicity in service management is possible!