Cultural Change: WTF has it to do with super chickens and if we need two TVs or not?
- Simon Mackay
- Apr 20, 2018
- 3 min read
One of my favourite TED talks is about super chickens (YouTube, 15 mins) another is about why I bought two TV's (YouTube, 12 mins).
Quick Review of TED Talks
i) Perceived super stars dominate at the expense of others rather than actually perform any better.
ii) Lack of consequence of decisions made and lack of empowerment both lead to status quo being maintained.
Both are inhibitors of the cultural cultural change required and reasons why the status quo needs to be challenged.
Cultural Change Today
Lets be clear, the majority of cultural change today is aiming to support the speed of change in the marketplace.
This is or will be a major strategic change for you company.
If you are not a start-up or a greenfield opportunity you will also have legacy issues to overcome. "We have always done it that way" syndrome, even if most agree 'that way' is cumbersome and inefficient.
So, even though the cultural change focuses on people and organisational structure we still need to contextualise the change required within your organisation
Focus of the cultural change
The Revenue Generating Service (RGS) is that context (What are RGS?)
Having the focus on RGS enables two views
External - Impact on Customer Behaviour
Internal -Impact on Support Service Innovation
The External and Internal are the 'yin and yang' of innovation
You need to quickly understand what your customers need. Yin
The needs must be quickly defined, prioritised & created. Yang
After creation,transition quickly into consumer offerings. Yang
Finally, you need to be in a position to sell new offerings. Yin
Your ability to react with speed, agility and quality depends on your current operating model and ultimately the skills of people engaged.
Warning
Yin and Yang work together; changing one side without the other will not work.
An insurance company wanted to become agile and bring in DevOps methods and techniques to their IT organisation. They were a windows organisation and sensibly moved to Azure. All good? NO!
The transition of IT organisation was a success in the strict terms terms of moving from data center to cloud BUT none of the expected benefits were realised.
The development organisation and business areas were not involved and were not in a position to take advantage of the new technology.
The architecture of the applications meant they used the same "server" configuration as in data center so no improvement to elasticity, DR or business continuity.
The time taken did not suit and some business areas invested in their own PaaS and SaaS solution without the knowledge or but in of IT organisation. Reducing demand on new cloud services but also introducing new integration demand.
The result was:
Successful technology transition
Increased Costs
Cost of existing DC AND new cloud
Cost in new SaaS and PaaS purchases,
Cost of new integrations.
Unchanged Revenue
No change to applications,
No change to revenue generating service,
No change to customer behaviour
Increased Costs + No Increase in revenue = REDUCED MARGINS
Cultural Change Tomorrow
Nothing stands still and cultural change just a specific type of change adding to your demand backlog.
You need a system to enable continual change of your culture to take advantage of new opportunities.
In terms of near term cultural change the move is from:
Silos supporting generic activity to pods of varied expertise supporting the specific dependencies of the RGS.
Large pools of generic engineers to small focused teams of architecture & design experts
Managing full technology stack to managing services be they IaaS, Paas & SaaS
IT and Business separation to one of collaboration
The problem many organisations face is they are starting this cultural change from a tech focused standpoint and worse an infrastructure focused view. Lift and shift as an approach which should be avoided at all costs.
You also need to understand WHY you are making the cultural change and monitor the impact of these changes otherwise, like in the example, there could be unsatisfactory unintended consequences.
How MacKayser enables Cultural Change
MacKayser has the model to understand your position today and support you in your journey into the future.
Remember, this type of change is a just a different kind of demand.
During the engagement we focus on the the specifics required for your organisation.
An overview is provided in the following posts:
For more information please contact:
culturalchange@mackayser.com
Hold On! What about Super Chickens and and TV's?
What you cannot allow is for Super Chickens to control debate and direction of travel at the expense of the softer voice.
In a work context you don't need two TV's.
Work with your peers and work together to ensure the organisation is successful.
You all play for the same team and the MacKayser approach will allow you to share and develop your improvements, This will enable collaboration and growth as a team rather than having a star player dictate how you have to play.
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