The work we have been doing with our relatively new Service Assurance team has not gone unnoticed in the company. In the last 8 months, we have set-up quite some processes that improved the quality and effectiveness of the work done and time spent, and we cut cost by standardising and automating many manual processes and actions. It is a good start, even thought there will always be more to work on.
Now we are asked to apply all this to other offices of the company, under the name of Service Industrialisation. Now I know that in the strict sense, what we’ll be doing will not be industrializing, but applying best practice identified elsewhere.
Many of the problems that can be foreseen in these kind of projects are related to the differences between the organisational structure of these offices, the acceptance of change, and other (mostly cultural) indicators.
In this case the main issues we foresee is the fact that each office is ran completely different, different management structures, with more or less hierarchy and is geographically linked to very different cultures.
Our office, as the “template” is a fairly new one, with a slimmed down management structure. We are increasingly empowering employees on all levels to take decisions and take part in different types of projects aside from their standard day-to-day job, creating a high sense of responsibility and involvement. Also being based in the centre of Barcelona, Spain enables a “relaxed” culture, that when well managed, adds up to a very nice atmosphere.
If we look at these parameters elsewhere, for example an office somewhere in the south of England, we look at a completely different situation. They work with a complex and strict hierarchy and employees are boxed within their job descriptions. Empowerment is strictly defined per level within the complex many-layered org chart. The office in this example is located in an area, or in the middle of nowhere in an about 3 hours drive from London.
This is just an example of the diversity, between two offices that are geographically not very far apart. Other examples, with even more extreme differences can be found in South Africa, or Malaysia.
I strongly believe that what we have started achieving in our office is due to only a few factors:
- Empowerment, though the Continuous Improvement feedback cycle, in which employees on all levels give ideas, and volunteer to form task/project teams to work on them and more simple things like assigning intranet admin tasks to them.
- An Open atmosphere, mostly due to the multicultural aspects (around 20 Nationalities in 1 office) and the location of the office.
- Improved Communication, thanks to new platforms as the Intranet, or TalkFreely, People are made more aware and participate more with what is playing on all levels, giving a greater sense of involvement.
Now applying these factors to other offices will be the real challenge due to their cultural differences characteristics.
As a start we have identified several risks and dependencies, not surprisingly related to all the above. I believe that there are certain elements we have looked at, that are not packagable or exportable. Mainly because it is not each element as such, but a complex mix, that delivers such an effective outcome. Fine-tuning that mix or modifying it to fit the cultural and organisational characteristics of each office might make exporting our local setup completely unnecessary. If, on the contrary we try to apply this as-is, we might be running into brick walls wherever we go.
The project is still in its initial phase; we are meeting people and will start auditing other teams and other locations soon. I will write about our progress here, as I believe this is or can turn out to be a very interesting challenge.
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This is a continuing story. Because I was not sure how to reply to the question asked, I did the least effective… I asked my boss. Not my direct report, but his boss.
