some great points by Steve Denning, Senior Contributor: (my comments in italics)
“Think about how most large companies operate, (and where YOURS exhibits these traits - is your management mature enough to have an open discussion about each and honestly admit where they fall short?) :
- Big-company politics tend to rule the day. Discussions are not forthright.
- Meetings are layered in so much posturing and subtle deception, they are downright Shakespearean.
- Seniority and titles matter more than having the right data or insight.
- People speak out of both sides of their mouths. They smile and nod their heads yes without agreeing. In this world, civility is more important than being right. Results suffer for the sake of harmony.
“pervasive customer-obsessed mindset. Customer obsession is not just for top management, sales and marketing. Everyone is expected to be obsessed with knowing about and enhancing the impact of what they do for the customer.”
“CEO Jeff Bezos announced this in his 1997 letter to shareholders and Amazon has relentlessly stuck to that obsession ever since.”
“As Rossman explains:
In most big organizations, customer data—where it exists at all—is spotty and soft, while financial data is hard and ubiquitous. Guess what drives decision-making? The hard financial numbers consistently trump any soft customer numbers”
“customer value” wins battles that it wouldn’t win in firms run with a financially oriented mindset.
Amazon doesn’t start an activity or develop a capability unless and until the team has figured out how it will measure customers’ response.
the single biggest opportunity for companies operating today is to completely rethink their concept of metrics.
Today, you need real-time data, real-time monitoring, and real-time alarms when trouble is brewing—not lag-time metrics that hide the real issues for 24 hours or longer. Your business should operate like a nuclear reactor. If a problem arises, you need to be aware of it immediately.”
6 page narrative imagined future press release describing benefits customers are getting, answers to 'frequently asked questions' and how activity was developed.
A set of metrics by which customer benefits of the activity will be measured in real time.
Senior managers are doers, not merely overseers of others
Communication between teams is unnecessary & even wasteful.”
Forcing function - ... teams dedicated to creating innovation need to be separated from the teams representing the status quo...
More about independence from the legacy bus & having unfiltered comm & collaboration with a company's CEO or senior leader.
70-90k/650 empl build capabilities 11-14%
(some different view points to mull. If you can’t print this out, circle where you see an opportunity for the company to improve behaviour, and have an open discussion with executives about it, you fall into the category of ‘most’ disorganizations.
It’s easy for most disorganizations to see where they fall short. It’s actually more work to do nothing about it) - yet this is their typical behaviour - stay disfunctional & burdensome).
Full article: How Amazon Became Agile
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2019/06/02/how-amazon-became-agile