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It seems that organisations these days can’t simply get away with having “just good people” to drive successful change and operational outcomes.  The key to driving performance does not lie in the pure formal structure either, but rather how the informal network of people, processes, resources and knowledge components get tied in together to create value. Organisational Network Analysis is starting to make some inroa

The way work gets done in companies is not always obvious from organisational charts. Often tasks, functions and process maps are only seen from a mechanistic perspective. Processes and task performance are improved and often changed by social and influential relationships found in a company’s shadow network. Increasingly, a growing body of knowledge about the shadow organisation, the network effect and the role of r

Companies are continually searching for top talent to replenish their human capital requirements in order to cover their key man dependencies and to remain sustainable within very cut throat environments. Most of this talent will have to be mined from within the “Y” generation, also known as the millennial generation, as they are the fastest growing segment in today’s workforce. This generation is, broadly speaking,

As IT practitioners specialising in business consulting, we have been taught that the success or otherwise of business depends on three main components; Man, Method and Machine. Man is the human action and interaction on projects of change. Method refers to the techniques and intellectual tools that we use to solve problems. Machine refers to the technology used to determine a particular outcome. Now let’s take a clo

“I can’t change the direction of the wind. But I can adjust my sails.” — Anonymous People experience change in a very personal way; no matter if the organisation is fighting to survive or at the top of a growth curve. They need to do things differently or stop what they have been doing. Tomorrow’s uncertainty, confusion and vagueness replaces yesterday’s predictable and stable environment. In spite of logic, cr

The variety of discussion people have in elevators without any regard for the unknown audience amongst the rest of the vertical travellers often raises an eyebrow.  Last week however my reaction was somewhat more contemplative and left me pondering the subject matter for some time. I overheard two employees in a corporate client’s elevator discussing their performance appraisals. The one was astounded that her collea

It is always interesting to observe the exponential ramp-up in work effort during the early months of the year. But this year seems different. It seems that the so-called time for “talking” is over. The time for “walking” has come. Financial Services organisations have (for years now) made elaborate plans, creating massive architectures and process frameworks and mapped countless application components into disparate

As the basic building block of organizations, individuals are the ultimate innovation conducting or isolating elements. Organizations themselves do not innovate; it is the individuals and the interaction between individuals that allows an organization to innovate. The increasing push towards specialization also further fragmenting organizations where every individual becomes responsible for a smaller and smaller part

The quantitative outcome of architectural and design related efforts is often regarded as a notoriously difficult task. The challenge of business benefit quantification in the software environment is also emphasized when medium to longer term impacts need to be assessed. The fuzzy nature of architecture level principles, the lack of relevant measures and overall traceability of architecture and design efforts through

Developing a really compelling offering into a competitive market is a challenge. Today, the offering, as we term it, is a unique combination of services and products which form the overall proposition to an organisation’s customers. Within a competitive market the uniqueness, coolness, functionality, price and value adding services, in combination, will determine the success or otherwise of an offering in a given ma