Managing Enabling Technology

This Southbeach model shows an impact analysis for using Technology in business. Reading from bottom left (Technology) to top right (Increasing Profit), we can see a chain of useful and harmful effects as the intended results of automation and combining information in new ways to create new capabilities and business oportunities have their shadow harmful consequences of loss of control, information overload, and increasing cost and complexity resulting in risk of technology outages.

There is a significant management overhead for all enabling technologies. Additional risk management erodes away profits still further, whilst the use of technologies like Business Intelligence to find correlations in market indicators through data mining and provision of multi-level active drill-down reports for management to make sense of the increasing information overload permits evidence based decision making at the highest level in the organisation.

New business opportunities are identified and this often results in yet more technology to overcome the limitations of previous IT systems, and restore control to the business so that opportunities can be properly exploited.

This represents an interlocking of two evolutionary systems in an organisation; the business, and the Information Technology. They enable each other. The boundaries become blurred with time, and the politics of deciding which side of the fence to pitch your tent increase as the cycle of improvement on one side amplifies the other, and technology and business change fall out of sync resulting in solutions that were intended for one purpose being used for another, or investment being targetted at exploitation of existing technology beyond its capacity to support the growth in demand from the business.

Managing enabling technology requires a thorough understanding of both the business and the Technology, and a foot in both camps. In today's world, neither can exist without the other; Building value with business-led inovation requires a supporting culture in the people and a collaboration rooted in relationships built on trust.

Drucker - Spirit of an Organisation

This Southbeach model shows a perspective of Peter F. Drucker; "the man who invented management". The column on the left represents qualities of the people in an organisation, and on the right, we have the activities of the organisation itself. These two systems are inextricably interlocked and require each other in order to succeed.

In Drucker's book, The Practice of Management, at the beginning of Chapter 13: The Spirit of an Organisation, he says:

"Two sayings sum up the 'spirit of an organisation'. One is the inscription on Andrew Carnegie's tombstone:

Here lies a man
who knew how to enlist in his service
better men than himself

The other is the slogan of the drive to find jobs for the physically handicapped:

It's the abilities,
not the disabilities,
that count.

Management by objectives tells a manager what they ought to do. The proper organisation of their job enables them to do it. But it is the spirit of an organisation that determines whether they will do it. It is the spirit that motivates, that calls upon a person's reserves of dedication and effort, that decides whether they will give their best or do just enough to get by."

Drucker believed that the key to excellence is focussing on people's strengths, and that recognising excellence, encouraging excellence, rewarding excellence, and providing full scope for individual excellence is what creates good spirit in individuals. Furthermore, it is this good spirit that provides the motivation that leads people to excel and do the best they can do rather than just enough to get by.

The excellence of the organisation then, is the result of making this excellence productive for others so that the overall strength of the organisation is amplified by the strengths of all the individuals within it, each of their weaknesses being counteracted by the strengths of those around them.

In the 1950s, Drucker was the first to say that people should be treated as assets, and not as liabilities to be eliminated, the first to argue that substance was more important than style and that good practice would always win out in the end over charismatic or cult leaders. Drucker originated the view of the corporation as a human community built on trust and respect for the worker and not just a profit-making machine.

Sustainable success for an organisation is a result of individual success at every level, and individual success is enabled and amplified by the organisation that focuses on its people and on building on their successes.

How can we create successful individuals?
How can an organisation make the most of its people assets?


Management must invest the effort in understanding what people have to offer in order that they can focus on their strengths to enable them to build on their abilities and create success. Building on people's abilities builds their spirit, as does individual success. This creates a company spirit that leads to the success of the organisation as a whole. Focusing on people's weaknesses on the other hand, and building on their disabilities, often results in failure and destroys the spirit of the individual. An organisation's spirit is a result of the spirit of its individuals. So take Peter Drucker's advice, and spend the time and effort to understand what people have to offer and build on their strengths.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applied to business

According to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, each need in the hierarchy (physiological, safety, love/belonging/social interaction, esteem, self actualisation) must be met before the needs in the layer above can truly be met. This is contested by some, sighting examples as the artist that will starve themselves through being absorbed by the need to express, create, self actualise; Parents that will sacrifice their health by giving their food to their children; A bear that will put herself in danger to protect her cubs, and so on. Nevertheless, the hierarchy has stood as a recognised basis from which to describe a theory of motivation. Exceptions permitting - good management and judgement must always override any rules or guidelines, the focus here when applying Maslow's hierarchy of needs to business is to ensure that people's needs are met in order to capitalise on Maslow's main proposition, namely, that once all other needs are met, these needs are no longer noticed, and the individual becomes self actualise - the only level in the hierarchy that creates growth and maximises potential.

This Southbeach model shows the motivational context that is often created in business to meet the needs identified by Maslow in the hierarchy.

Risk Management

This Southbeach model shows some general principles of risk management. In this example, Work is the focus and is done in order to achieve the Goal. Issues and Risks may counteract achievement of the goal. Some risks may turn into issues and require significantly more effort to resolve if they are not addressed early. Risk mitigation is a useful activity and counteracts the risks and also reduces the diversion of resources that results from dealing with issues.

The following Southbeach model provides a more detailed example of risk management in action with the addition of a grid to separate the agents in the model by timespan and aspect. This simplistic yet realistic model shows how Southbeach can be used to assess the potential impact of issues and risks and how to mitigate against them.

This example shows swim lanes running across the page separating different aspects of a project into meetings, activities, Issues & risks, and mitigations. The columns represent months in the project plan. The project status meeting in October identified the issue that there are "more problems with the solution than expected". This model was then created to perform an impact analysis and create a risk mitigation plan.

The focus of this model is "delivery of phase 1 of the solution". The goal is "sign-off for phase 2". The ultimate delivery of phase 2 and realisation of benefits, the ultimate goal, are counteracted by lack of adoption of the solution, which has various root causes such as lack of understanding and lack of awareness. These are counteracted by different parts of the change management plan.