Excelling in “operations aspects” of business organisations – aspire, collaborate and build
Performance in business organisations is generated at the coalface. Consider simply a subset of the considerations and ingredients that blend to deliver sustained performance from the coalface which keeps up with targets. First, the mental states and intentionality of the individual employee. Second, the collective intentionality and doxastic states of the collective entity that is driving performance. Third, the skills and capabilities of employees. Fourth, the entrenched mindsets held by the organisation that can enable or limit performance. Fifth, processes and infrastructure that guide and enable performance. Sixth, cross-functional or cross-departmental collaboration and synchronisation to deliver desired outcomes.
And yet, this enumeration of factors is at best partial and representative. Moreover, this does not take into account the vagaries of the external environment. Such as the actions of customers including purchasing intent, reactions of competitors, and the state and momentum of the broader macroeconomic environment. Such multifarious performance factors along with their interconnectedness turns “operations aspects” of business organisations into intensely complex topics that are difficult to conceptualise, comprehend and manage.
Operations aspects of business organisations, therefore, are all matters related to the enablers and impediments of organisational performance that manifest at the coalface or frontline. It includes the management of operations and operating performance, the quality of execution skills, functional skills and capabilities, operating infrastructure that is specific to the function, and entrenched mindsets related to how superlative operations performance comes about.
The domain of “operations” has witnessed a level of conceptual flotsam and jetsam that is rivalled only by the topic of “leadership”. To have any meaningful and forward looking discussion on operations aspects of business organisations, one needs to clarify the meaning, contents and character of a few substantive topics that form the bulwark of operations.
The foremost such substantive topic is the construct of “execution”. While most in operations domains choose to keep the topic of execution for deliberation in the end, we believe it to be the starting point. Quality of execution is the first prerequisite for a high achievement operations environment, and clears the deck for an objective discussion on other topics. While the topic has been deliberated to death, it has received treatment from thinkers and practitioners that is blasé and engagement that is without respect.
Business leaders use the terms “leadership” and ‘execution’ together, as if a description of what constitutes the former provides obvious description of what entails the latter. Yet others are content to describe execution as the quintessential follower and conceptual converse of “strategy”. These conceptions are hopelessly far from providing a realistic and self-standing picture of what “execution” is, and under what conditions it gets instantiated.
The second substantive topic is “operations management” – a concept that has been riddled with references of and frameworks on “efficiency”. It is as if the quality of operations management is predicated solely on the level of efficiency that is inherent in it. Such an approach is misguided and incomplete, leaving open several questions. While the role of efficiency in operations is undeniable, what of measures and approaches that help sustain high efficiency levels over long periods? What of the role of “effectiveness” as an equal partner to efficiency? And what of the infrastructural and people actors that need to be built in for smooth and holistic operations management?
The final topic, and possibly the most caricatured one, is “operations excellence”. The idea has been to portray a functional ecosystem, such as the manufacturing or supply chain organisation, and design approaches that claim to inspire and sustain performance excellence. The resultant outcomes have been “systemic solutions” that cobble together bits and pieces of many things ranging from “goal setting” to “employee conversations” to “process solutions” to “skills and mindsets coaching”. While the central issue that plagues the function goes undetected and unresolved, operations leaders have often found cosy comfort surrounded by these bits of nothing solutions, all under the garb of “building a system”.
“Operating systems” are egalitarian by design, and are unable to identify, prioritise and disproportionately solve for the one issue that can break the back of the problem. Take salesforces for instance, where one endemic and serious issue is the oscillation between “pull-based” and “push-based” selling models and the organisation’s inability to find the right balance. Consider the supply chain function, which now has been relegated to a set of performance metrics, analyses, softwares and ERPs. The core malady of the function is the loss of the “human element” of service, and the reduced quality and relevance of the supply chain organisation.
Consider the example of the R&D function. The march of processes through the heart of R&D has robbed the function of “creativity” and a “creative process” that strikes the right balance between harnessing serendipity and enforcing process discipline. Or consider manufacturing, where systems-driven approaches have made irrelevant the role of individual leadership and enterprise. “Operating systems” water all holes in equal measure, and hence fall woefully short of solutions that impact in significant and sustainable ways.
Operations aspects, by definition, refer to performance matters of collective entities within the business organisation. Driving improvement in such domains require employees to “align” their personal and professional contexts, “collaborate” across adjacent performance units, and “build” processes and performance culture. But first and foremost, and before doing all the aforementioned, businesses need to look at the hard problems that ail their operations, get rid of jargon and so-called “systemic solutions”, and resolve to adopt “first principles based” and “direct” approaches to face these hard problems.