Author: Rafa Baena

February 16, 2021

Projects and Organisational structure: a shift in power

Collaboration
Projects are being increasingly used to deliver innovative products and services, to perform change and transformation and – in general – to get work done in organisations. As such, a growing number of organisations perform a considerable part of their processes and activities as projects.

However, according to the International Project Management Association (IPMA), in terms of organisation structure and company leadership, most organisations continue to be organised based on the principle of dividing the work in functional activities that are organised in specialized functional departments1 (such as Sales, Human Resources, Finance, Marketing, Productions, etc.), and tend to follow a top-down, command and control hierarchy.

Performing projects within such an organisation structure and leadership hierarchy is not ideal for project delivery and success. Surprisingly, projects can all too frequently be seen as a source of additional ‘burden’ to the teams engaged in projects (who are mobilised from across functional departments), as well as to the heads of the functional departments being ‘disturbed’ by the project (who have their teams and resources dedicated to a project). Moreover, it is not always clear the command hierarchy between the Project Manager and these departmental heads.

The bottom line is that the more projects a traditionally set up organisation performs, the more ‘burden’ it needs to cope with.

IPMA points to an opportunity to optimise efficiencies, delivery and increase the likelihood of project success by enabling the creation of a Project Based Organisation (PBO) that can be mobilised and empowered within the existing traditional structure. The interesting features of a PBO are that it is a temporary structure (i.e. in place for the duration of the project), and it is flexible and adaptable to the specific circumstances of the project and its context for the business. A key consideration within such a structure, is the fostering of a symbiotic interaction between the PBO and the enabling or supporting functions in the organisation1 (Sales, HR, R&D, etc.); the functional departments are in a supporting not a controlling role.

Here is where the role of the Project Manager becomes crucial. In a PBO, the Project Manager is no longer an individual who is merely competent in the technicalities of Project Management processes, methods and tools1. The Project Manager needs to be competent in leadership and should possess the authority to engage and direct the support of the heads of the functional departments. In addition, the Project Manager should have the skills to establish strategic direction, mobilise and facilitate collaboration between all teams involved, and steer the project towards a successful outcome in line with the organisational goals.

The ability for project-oriented businesses to harmoniously create and run temporary PBO structures embedded within the traditional organisation structure opens the opportunity to increase project efficiencies, reduce the burden of projects on the organisation, and ultimately lead to greater chances of project success and the overall contribution to organisational goals. A key figure becomes the Project Manager with a strong leadership skillset.

1 https://www.ipma.world/will-project-based-organisations-new-normal/

January 26, 2021

A systems approach to digitisation in the workplace

Technology
The workplace is an ecosystem. It consists of an interdependent series of teams, knowledge, functions, services, resources, infrastructure and space, operating together in a system towards fulfilling goals and objectives within pre-defined time, budget and scope constraints.

In knowledge businesses, the competitiveness and profitability of the business is largely determined by the effectiveness of this ecosystem to perform and deliver. One way of gaining business advantage is to look at enabling this ecosystem to run as efficiently and seamlessly as possible.

However, the appetite to look at optimising workplace dynamics has typically been low in the average company. Many business leaders felt that their workplaces were already running sufficiently. Others adopted a ‘leave well enough alone’ approach, while many others simply considered that priorities need to be elsewhere, such as focussing on customer acquisition, securing new contracts, product and service innovation…

And then along came the pandemic. And suddenly, overnight, workplaces across the globe had to quickly find a tempo to continue operations in a remote working scenario. Like in so many other times of crisis and dramatic change in the history of mankind, human beings (and businesses alike) have shown an impressive ability to adapt and pivot as part of our deep rooted survival instincts. As we now start to stabilise and find our way forward, there is an opportunity for businesses to reassess their workplaces and how they function, and to find a new workplace advantage by becoming digitally equipped to thrive in a New Normal.

This is a particular opportunity for businesses from the knowledge economy, in that knowledge-based businesses lend themselves particularly well to ‘virtualisation’, i.e. their activities can be decoupled from the physical world.

Let’s look for a moment at the current digitisation trends in businesses today. The landscape in many companies consists on the one hand of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution for managing the sales pipeline bringing new contracts into a business, on the other hand an Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP) manages resources and revenue recognition. The space in the middle, which is the critical space ‘where work happens’ (and where employee satisfaction, customer success and profitability margins lie), tends to be comprised of a fragmented and disconnected mix of offline processes, spreadsheets, email and a plethora of numerous niche or point applications for the management of projects, task execution boards, expense apps, corporate travel management suites, time management tools, communication tools, and now even Apps that are designed to manually connect other Apps. The problem is that companies that digitize how they work by contracting an increasing number of niche or point tools, end up with an overinflated technology overhead (with associated costs and maintenance burden). The ensuing tool overload leads to technology stress in workers, a disjointed workplace experience, and dispersed information (with data and processes being silo-bound), all of which contribute to a productivity slide. Moreover, instead of maintaining one application, companies need to maintain multiple, and instead of training and onboarding staff on the use of one application, they need to be trained on the use of multiple.

And here is where we need to circle back to the start of this article. The workplace is an ecosystem. By this we mean that it is made up of subsystems (i.e. teams, functions, processes, knowledge, internal services…). It is dynamic; so it is constantly evolving and changing. And it is interdependent; an update or action in one of the subsystems tends to be relevant for others in the ecosystem. The best way to digitise such an ecosystem is via a ‘systems approach’[1], which is based on a number of fundamental principles that are particularly powerful when considered in the architecture of a Digital Workplace:

  • Holism– a change in any part or component of the system affects the whole system directly or indirectly.
  • Specialization– the whole system can be divided into smaller components so that the specialized role of each component is appreciated.
  • Non-summational– every component (subsystem/partial system) is of importance to the whole, and as such it is essential to understand the actions of each component for gaining the holistic perspective.
  • Grouping– as the process of specialization can create its own complexity by proliferating components with increasing specialization, it becomes essential to group related disciplines or sub-disciplines.
  • Coordination– the grouped components and sub components are coordinated and controlled so that they can work in a concerted manner in keeping with a unified holistic concept. If we design an architecture where by the coordination and control can be enhanced and enabled with Artificial Intelligence tools then we can data-drive an intelligent ecosystem.
  • Emergent properties– the group of interrelated entities (components) has properties as a group that is not present in any individual component. And this, combined with the intelligence mentioned above- is the true power of a systems approach.

Applying a systems approach to the digitization of the workplace as a dynamic and interdependent ecosystem should be the way forward in driving the digital transformation movement in knowledge businesses.

[1] https://ecomputernotes.com/mis/information-and-system-concepts/systemsapproach

January 26, 2021

Sustainable Digitisation: a digital strategy that can go the distance

Productivity
In 2020, amid the massive flurry of ‘going digital’ that was occurring across Europe (and indeed the world), The European DIGITAL SME Alliance- the largest network of the small and medium sized ICT enterprises in Europe, representing about 20,000 digital SMEs- proposed the coining of a new term: sustainable digitalisation.

Digital SME defined sustainable digitalisation (or sustainable digital transformation), as the ‘process of digitalising the economy in a long-lasting, green, and organic way by building on its key strength: innovative SMEs and their business ecosystems’ and with the long-term goal of strengthening European digital sovereignty.

We would like to bring our reflections to the concept of sustainable digitisation at the individual company level.

First of all, we would like to differentiate between digitisation of the running of the business (i.e. the internal operation of the business), versus digitisation of the business model (e.g. e-commerce, servicification, etc.). We strongly believe that the digital transformation of a business needs to occur from within. In the quest to design digital strategies for innovating their business models, companies should not overlook the digitisation of how they run their workplaces and their operations.

Secondly, while the word sustainability is increasingly associated with the environment and the Green movement, in its most generic sense, sustainability is the ‘ability to continue at the same level for a period of time’, i.e. the ability to go the distance at a continued pace. This is very important when we talk about workplace digital transformation. So let’s consider the massive wave of ‘digitisation’ that occurred as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, whereby overnight companies made the lightening move to adopt digital tools to ensure that they could keep their teams up and running in the new remote working scenario that was the consequence of lockdowns and restrictions. Is this sustainable digitisation? We certainly feel that it is the beginning of the wave: so most companies have finally gotten into the Digital race. But will they last the course? Well, The European DIGITAL SME Alliance themselves made a poignant observation when they said: ‘Companies, but also society as a whole, need to understand that ‘going digital’ does not stop with a Zoom subscription.’

We feel that a massive opportunity now exists for progressive companies to step off the track for a moment, to pull into the Pit Stop, and draw up an enduring digital strategy, that focusses first of all on using technology to improve business performance thanks to increased automation, optimisation and the ability to process internal workplace data and to convert it into actionable information and insights for fact-based decision making and planning, recommendations, and predictions. The digitisation of the processes that enable us to get work done ultimately give us a Workplace Advantage, and this is an ideal front- runner for moving on to define a strategy for creating new market and competitive advantages with technology and innovating our business models.

Just one final reflection on sustainability; another important aspect when we consider workplace digital transformation is that of worker ‘buy-in’, and company-wide, sustained use of the digital tools that are central to the transformation. It needs to be an ‘all-in’ approach; this is vital if we are shifting manual and offline processes on-line and if we are moving to a data-driven organisation. To really reap the power of ‘data-driven’, data needs to be complete and robust. Everybody needs to be using the tools systemically and systematically. Data holes lead to blind spots and distortions. For Digital to work its magic in enterprises, it needs to be, just that: sustainable.