Musings on Efficiency

Good to see you again.

The New Year celebrations have been forgotten, and it is time to find answers to the question, "What is our response?" Let's begin by leading, don't respond, create. Earlier, I mentioned that things are changing. Tomorrow can be as different as today is to 1808. Yes. The flow of change hasn't slowed-down with the flow of money [1]. Begin with now, act and enact; don't respond.

People tend to "defend"[3] when they are not 'permitted' to understand, or come to understand, the situation. As I write we wonder if the USA defend by aping defensive policies in the EU[4]. When times are tough, we spend less and you look to get the best for your $1 spend, too. And you look for ways to get better results by reducing the out-flow of money (spending). Hey that's cool, spend less, get more. How?

The short answer, is to support agility, creativity and responsiveness in your team. Think of the current business climate as an ecological shift like an encroaching desert. Effective sensemaking among your friends and in your organisation is vital to meet a changing world[5, p.464].

1. Social context ... encourage conversation and discussion. I include contact with external sources of information to avoid groupthink.
2. Personal identity ... maintain a stable context of just who someone is and what they represent.
3. Retrospective ... preserve elapsed data and employ processes to make use of the data.
4. Salient Cues ... ensure the right, relevant and useful cues are scanned for and recognised. For example; number of customers might be more important than gross dollar sales.
5. Ongoing flow ... keep people busy, acting and enacting the next thing. Introspection is ot a pause, it is part of forthcoming steps. In my pre-sales meetings, I could highlight two things that went well, one unusual thing, and one problem; then in planning we ensure that we have options to respond or repeat these things (as desired).
6. Plausibility ...encourage people to swap and match plausable accounts. Some places call this a "reality check". There needs to be more — We want the plausible stories, not just acceptable, and critical thinking.
7. Enactment ... encourage action, replace hesitation with smaller steps. He who hesitates, defines smaller steps to meet or detours around the issue.

Quickly. Let's perform our own reality check. You can't afford this 'stuff'. I appreciate you thinking, it: (a) offers a Social context; (b) recognises to your individual perspective and Identity; (c) is couched in Retrospective situation of 2003-2008; (d) may not be checking the right news and Cues; (e) {missing in action}; (f) isn't really swapping Plausible accounts, everyone said the same thing[6]; and (g) encourages no Enactment, merely shrinkage or retreat.

Talk things over with the team. Adroitness is your most valuable resource.

William.

References ...

1. "Monetary economics" (wikipedia).
2. Jakovljevic, P.J. (2006) Tactical Human Resources Evolves into Strategic Human Capital Management, Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC).
3. Lawrence, Paul R.; & Nohria, Nitin; (2002) DRIVEN: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices, Boston, MA, Jossey-Bass.
4. IANS (2009) Are the EU and US edging towards a new trade war?, The Economic Times, 7-Feb-2009, 08:21 hrs IST.
5. Weick, Karl E. (1999) Sensemaking as an organizational dimension of global change; in Weick, K.E. (Ed.) Making Sense of the Organization. Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishers.
6. Foster, Richard (2008) Creative destruction and the financial crisis: An interview with Richard Foster. The McKinsey Quarterly 2008 (6).

# posted by Will : 13:05