Snail memo or a power memo?

Janne works in a large organization that has a very complex structure. There are three companies that work under the same roof and each of those companies have a variety of units and subunits. They also do a lot of projects that require participation and decisions from different parts of the organization. The problem is, that when they need to implement something, it takes a long time, and it takes a lot of meetings and delegating to get the tasks to the right people. Janne once drew a picture, about the route, that one decision had to travel.

The different letters describe,  what is the role of different participants. Some are just informed, and some are consulted, but usually consulting is just deciding, where should the task be delegated. The steering group is accountable of the project and at the lower level are those, who actually do the tasks.  Usually this transferring of information takes about a week. Two days for the memo, and then a few days in mailboxes or waiting for some unit meetings.

When the next steering group approached this same structure flipped upside down, and the information about progress starts to flow back to the steering group. First the “Doers” tell the development managers what they had done, then managers report to unit directors and so on. Quite often the reports stop to someones mailbox and do not make it in time.  And again, this process takes about a week to go through, so often the info is outdated when it gets to the steering group. The work has already progressed further during that week.

And the real problem is, that since most of the organization is either informed or consulted during the process, the amount of mail was just overwhelming. Janne’s organization clearly has a problem with transportation of information or information flows.

You know you are sick when…

Now we come to the next symptom of waste in projects: transportation of information. You are suffering from it, if you notice these symptoms:

• Your mailbox is full of mails, that need your comment or are just for information to your or your organizations
• You transfer memos and delegate decisions that were done somewhere else in the organization
• You are constantly trying to gather information for status updates that you actually know very little about, but somebody in your organization is working with them.
• First you send the memo and then you get asked, where are the documents. You ask for them and then you send them as attachments.

All of the above is waste. You shouldn’t be doing it as it creates no value to your customers.

Lack of direct leadership is the disease…

The root causes for these symptoms vary, but these four are common:

• The steering group of the project is only a reporting entity. It’s not really a functional part of the project.
• Information flows in emails. Or there are multiple channels of information
• Organization is hierarchical and it really does not empower people. Management is not direct – it flows like a waterflow, and not like a networks.
• There is no visibility to the achievements. Your most accurate reports might be time reports, but you don’t know, if the jobs get done or not.

… Powermemo is the cure.

These root causes can be fixed quite easily. Since this is Akselworks blog, these are our insights.

• When something is decided, it should go directly to those who will do it. And with the same click of the mouse, you can inform all who need the information.
• Stop using email. Use a project software – like Akselworks. All material, decisions, comments and collaboration are in one place. Not in mailboxes.
• Think a little like Stalin. Trust is good, but visibility to achievements is better. You feel better about empowering people when you can see online, that task are done. It is not stalking, slavery or spying. It’s accountability.
• And most importantly. Stop informing everybody about everything. Most of it is just clutter. Focus on getting things done and make achievements visible. The thing is, that organizations don’t communicate enough about strategy, but they overcommunicate about everyday tasks.

Akselworks has already a feature, that is called the intelligent memo. It makes leadership and management more direct by eliminating waste. It will be updated to a powermemo in a few weeks and it will be even better.. We will tell more about it soon.

Note of caution: Akselworks does not improve your organizations leadership skills, nor does it make you a better human. But it gives you the tools to lead your organization more directly, if that is what you want.

Tommi and the Akselworks team.