Many organizations pride themselves on having predictable policies and procedures that drive performance and growth. However, given the rate of change in today's business world, sometimes being inflexible can be a problem rather than a solution. Having an agile process can help.
Agile processes are plans that involve advance planning and organization but also allow you to quickly change course if needed. To learn how business owners create agile processes in the real world, I consulted Mary Ellen Slayter, CEO of Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based B2B content marketing agency Rep Cap and Matt Weinberg, president of interactive digital agency Vector Media Group in New York City.
Why Use An Agile Process?
An agile process can be advantageous because it mandates a close consideration of your business goals, but can also be adjusted as you gain more information or as circumstances evolve.
“The agile framework forces owners to make decisions quickly and communicate frequently," says Slayter. “The emphasis on testing frees you from best practices so you can pursue the surprising insights that are unique to your business. In the end, the risk is actually lower because you're making fewer big bets."
It's also important to realize what agile is—and what it isn't.
“Just because you're agile doesn't mean you don't have process," Slayter points out. “Agile is not about flying by the seat of your pants—it's dynamically deciding how to deploy your resources to achieve your goals."
Are financial experts afraid of automation? Not exactly. If you talk to many of them, you’ll hear that technology has actually changed their jobs for the better and has positively impacted how they work in their organization by eliminating manual processes, increasing accuracy and efficiency, and facilitating valuable customer interactions.
I rounded up some of the best thoughts on automation from big timers in the industry. Here’s what they had to say.
“Automation will change how we insure property, loan money, invest money, deliver technology, write research reports, and what professionals in financial services do every day. Every week in the news we read about a new application for artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, or robots — whether it is self-driving cars, AI assistants, predictive models, robots building (or printing) hardware, or how to invest our money. Put these all in the category of automation — and that is what will impact finance the most in the next decade.” David Reilly, CTO of Bank of America, as told to Tina Wadhwa, Business Insider.
“Open digital technologies will continue to support finance transformation. Transformation is accelerating in terms of companies and people needing investment decisions, as well as the development and implementation of new business models. This will require increased automation and simplification to drive process efficiencies, increased analytics to provide high-speed business insight to drive better business decision-making, and, finally, better collaboration so business connects in a much more seamless way.” Richard McLean, regional CFO, Asia-Pacific and Japan, SAP, as shared on the SAP blog.
“We developed a chatbot named Eno, an automated program that can communicate with the bank’s customers via text message to give them information on their accounts and help them make credit card payments from their smartphone. The gender-neutral virtual assistant uses artificial intelligence to respond to natural language text messages from users about their money. For example, customers might ask Eno to show them their recent account balances or pay off a credit card bill.” Ken Dodelin, vice president of digital product development, Capital One, as told to Anne Irrera, Reuters.
In the interest of productivity, some organizations have a predetermined scheduling policy, requiring that tasks be completed in a particular order. For example, we’ve talked about citizen development a lot on the Fast Track, and low code application development may indeed be one of those situations where a specific, sequential process has been implemented.
But in today’s work environment, professionals increasingly have more freedom over their time. Pursuing the noble goal of loosening their reins, employers are allowing their people to follow a prescribed schedule or choose to deviate, completing tasks in a different order at their own discretion.
Thanks to technology advances and the rise of virtual work, it’s easier than ever for employers to grant this sort of independence, and there’s no doubt that workers value it. But a new study from Harvard Business School found that, unfortunately, deviating from an organization’s prescribed task schedule tends to erode productivity – even among the most experienced workers.
In an article soon to be published in the Management ScienceJournal, researchers Ibanez, Clark, Huckman and Staats detailed their study, which asked about the drivers leading workers to deviate from employer’s task scheduling policy, and about the performance implications of doing so.
Using data from 2.4 million diagnoses derived from a large outsourced radiological services firm that staffed doctors whose jobs involved sequentially reading and diagnosing X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, and ultrasounds, the researchers found that doctors prioritize similar tasks and those tasks they expect to complete faster. But do these strategies impact their productivity?
I'll never forget the first time I had to file taxes as a small-business owner. Between the myriad of IRS forms, deductions, payroll and quarterly installments, I was overwhelmed. I quickly learned that the best plan of action was to concentrate on how to file taxes throughout the year, rather than waiting until the precious few days before the early spring deadline.
This month, I spoke to three small-business owners who know a thing or two about how to file taxes. Along with her partner Beth Doane, Kelly Gibbons runs the communications firm Main & Rose in Los Angeles; Nick Pirollo is the co-founder of Philadelphia-based scholarship website Scholly; and Vincenzo Villamena is the owner of tax consultancy Online Taxman in New York City.
Some business owners view taxes as one of the least fun aspects of running a business. Why is it important to know how to file taxes?
Kelly Gibbons: Taxes are definitely an aspect of business ownership on which most people have a horrible perspective. We made a conscious decision to look at taxes as something positive. Filing taxes is a reminder of all the great things we take for granted living in a first-world country with countless opportunities. We want to pay our fair share and the focus should be on just that—paying the amount we should be and honoring why taxes are not a bad thing. It behooves owners to know tax law, to hire experts and to make smart decisions that benefit us now and for the long term.
Nick Pirollo: Taxes are logistically challenging and "giving away" money always hits home. It's for those reasons, however, that doing your taxes properly is an important business focus. I've seen a good number of businesses retain a lot more income by adopting better tax habits. The secondary benefits of proper planning are countless, including being better prepared for audits, seeing issues in your expenses and minimizing inconsistencies in your books.
Vincenzo Villamena: Tax planning is important because it represents an immediate and definitive short-term return of investment in accountant fees. Business owners can make decisions based on real analysis on the tax rates and associated scenarios.
What is your tax preparation process like?
Pirollo: My preparation officially begins in December, but because I don't manage my year-end filing in-house, it is important to manage the relationship with my accountant year round and make sure they are clued in before tax season rolls around.
In December, I round out my books, gather any necessary paperwork and make projections for the remainder of the month in order to form a full picture of the business year. This means I am only making slight adjustments once December's final numbers come in. It also makes the coming year much more manageable, giving me ample time to get any extra cash in place to cover costs.
Villamena: We generally sit down with each client and look through their previous filed returns, examining improvement areas—for example, investment in capex before year-end, retirement plans, making an S-Corp election or declaring year-end bonuses.
Gibbons: We prepare well in advance with respect to our cash flow, and set aside more than we think we will need in order to compensate for higher earnings than what we may expect. This is crucial with a client-based business like ours.
When undergoing process improvement, understanding your process from start to finish is the best way to prevent certain inevitable problems from occurring.
Joseph Drasin is the director of University Process Innovation, Division of Information Technology, at the University of Maryland. In a recent article for Educause, Drasin described his dealings with the university department known for being inefficient and difficult to work with. “Their processes were perceived as cumbersome, costly, frustrating, and antithetical to their stated objectives,” said Drasin. “Several IT systems had been purchased and implemented to address these issues, which actually exacerbated the problems.”
Drasin and his team worked with the department in question to develop an overarching process that improved service and reduced administrative costs. After ensuring that all practices were consistent, aligned, and adding value, the group was able to implement a complementary technology solution.
Reflecting on the redesign process, Drasin shared words of wisdom that likely apply to most readers here. “When an organization buys a shiny new piece of technology and then tries to implement it without first having looked hard at its own processes and people, the vast majority of the time, the project doesn’t live up to expectations,” he said. “Even when successful, too many times the new technology looks a lot like the prior technology in terms of how it works.”
“It is easy to let the conversation go straight to the details before describing the environmental context and determining what the individual processes are and how they relate to one another,” said Drasin. “Everyone needs to be on the same page contextually, and you’ll need to emphasize the importance of discussion — or the project can derail quickly.”
Issue 2: Decisions by consensus
“You should never vote on a process or other business decision,” said Hajek. “Those should be grounded in facts, not popular opinion. If there are two competing choices, decide on the criteria you will measure them by, but let the options go head-to-head against each other on their own merit.”
Issue 3: Placing stock in the law of averages
“It is very uncommon for averages to help you improve processes,” explained Hajek. “For instance, the average ship time compared to your target time tells you very little about on-time delivery. The average size of the component may make it look like a part is in tolerance when in reality it has a high defect rate. Make sure you have some way of looking at the spread of your results rather than just the average.”
Issue 4: All hail the artifacts
Drasin described physical deliverables like diagrams and flowcharts as artifacts. Problems occur when teams focus on artifacts to the exclusion of the processes and conversations that build them. “If the tools themselves held the value, you could simply borrow flowcharts from a similar organization and implement them. But developing artifacts alone, without the necessary context and commitment, rarely results in effective recommendations,” Drasin said.
Issue 5: Unclear rationale
Nothing feels worse than when people start questioning your process after you’re off and running. “Stakeholders may be confused as to the objectives, begin questioning previous decisions, or ask if the effort is even a good idea,” said Drasin. “The answers to these questions may be vague, and there may be a lack of agreement about the real objective.”
At this year's SilkRoad Connections conference, IDC VP of HR and Talent Research Lisa Rowan discussed the differing expectations that recruiting and hiring managers have regarding HR-related issues. These disconnects matter because the all-important employee experience begins with the first candidate contact, and employees are at the heart of the customer experience.
In a 2015 study of 500 executives, IDC examined gaps in the following 10 areas:
Gap #1: Corporate Culture:Culture is viewed as a shared responsibility with an emphasis on HR. Line of business managers want more HR involvement. The main issue for HR? How do you translate culture?
Gap #2: Employer Branding: Managers want HR to do more here as well. If the brand is good, respondents feel that it sells itself. But if it’s unclear, how can we figure out the right message for candidates, and whose job is that?
Gap #3: Leadership Development: HR professionals think the responsibility resides with them, while line of business managers think it’s a joint effort and would actually like more direct involvement.
Gap #4: Translating Corporate Goals: HR professionals feel they should lead the charge here and line of business managers think it’s a joint effort. Both groups would like more involvement and collaboration.
Gap #5: Recruiting Strategy: Both groups are split on whether this was mostly an HR or shared responsibility, but both also feel that HR should do more. HR would like a bigger role in the overall workforce strategy, which directly impacts the recruiting plan.
Gap #6: Candidate Pipeline: HR professionals see themselves as mostly responsible, while line of business managers feel this is a shared activity. Both groups want more control over the candidate pipeline.
Gap #7: Writing Job Descriptions: Sixty percent of HR professionals say this is a joint activity and 60 percent of line of business managers admit that they should step up and do more.
Gap #8: Job Posting and Social Outreach: Line of business managers are vocal in wanting a bigger role. The survey was clear that they aren’t being asked by HR to tap their networks for promising candidates.
Gap #9: Screening of Candidates: HR is frustrated by line of business turnaround times. These professionals acknowledge ownership but nearly all (98 percent) want managers to step up!
At this year's SilkRoad Connections conference, keynote speaker Cheryl Cran challenged our attendees to upgrade their leadership operating systems to meet future work requirements. How can we change how we think, do, and share?
Twenty-First Century Changes and Challenges
The future of work will be about saying goodbye to blaming, bureaucracy, and bad leadership. Gen X, Gen Y, and Zoomers (baby boomers who refuse to age and retire) will work together to create an environment of shared leadership, freedom of expression, creativity, inspiration, and fun. And work will look very different. By 2020, 90 percent of employees will stay on the job three years or less, 50 percent will work remotely, and a majority will be independent contractors. Given these changes, the person who can embrace flexibility will have the most power.
Cran asked attendees about their top challenges related to HR and the future of work. Not surprisingly, they cited recruitment, retention, and skill development. We are fighting for talent globally and many twenty-first century skills such as creativity and agile leadership are sorely lacking. These skills are not natural and we have to teach them.
HR’s top three opportunities, according to Cran’s survey, are partnering, having a strategic advantage in the organization, and leading change. The biggest challenges, on the other hand, are transitioning to a fully digital andsocial mindset and mobile friendliness. In recent years, HR has made progress using dashboard analytics to get a real-time view of people and processes, and leveraging robotics to automate basic tasks, but there is still work to be done.
Cran pointed out the differences between the work environment of the past and that of the future. In the 1990s, for example, business was autocratic, centralized, task-focused, and based on the single perspective of the leader. But today and in the years to come, work will be shared, values-based, virtual, creative and revolutionary, and based on multiple perspectives.
I asked three business owners—Zeeshan Ali, CEO of screen printing company The Zee Group in Chicago; Bryanne Lawless, managing partner of PR firm BLND in Los Angeles; and Michael Mogill, CEO of Crisp Video Group in Atlanta—about how they turn historically slow seasons into growth periods.
What are the ebbs and flows of your business in a typical year?
Ali: Typically, the start of the school year and the end of the year—as we are ramping up for trade show season—are our busiest times of the year. We have focused on diversifying our portfolio of clients this year, so the wavelength is a bit different than in past years.
Lawless: The beginning of the year is always the craziest since businesses want to re-market themselves, update their branding or expand their social media presence. The slowest time is usually the third quarter because companies are running out of budget for marketing and PR efforts. Luckily for us, almost every business needs PR to compete and be seen as an expert in its industry.
Mogill: The slower times of the year are the early part of Q1 and Q4. Starting the year, our sales pick up stride as we get into March and are very strong through Q2 and Q3. In Q4, things start to slow near Thanksgiving, not just because of the holidays but also because clients are going out of town.
Can you predict when activity will slow down? How do you prepare for slow seasons?
Mogill: Absolutely, since we have tracked activity data over several years. Because we are able to anticipate them, we can ramp up marketing significantly during slow periods to ensure that we are still able to be productive and hit our goals. Also, we frontload our goals through the early part of the year rather than spreading them evenly over 12 months.
Lawless: When our pipeline slows down, that’s a signal that everything else will follow. It’s important to focus on the clients we have, but we also have to make sure there are always clients ready to sign and hit the ground running.
Ali: We use the reporting feature in our CRM and in QuickBooks to monitor slow and peak periods of activity. This information dictates how we should manage our expenses and allows us to accurately forecast each month.
For the rest of the interview, head over to the AMEX Open Forum.
I got into Northwestern University despite far-from-perfect SAT scores and missing the valedictorian spot by one grade. If I were a millennial, I would have had much longer odds. Born in 1976, I’m a late Generation X-er and have had less competition for everything pretty much all my life.
You’ve heard of Generation X. Due to plummeting fertility rates, the media called our birth years the "baby bust." Gen X includes those born between 1964 and 1979 and is bookended by the massive baby boomer generation (those born 1946–63) and the even more massive millennial generation (those born 1980–95). Historically, we’ve either been ignored or called slackers by pop culture and advertisers.
But we’re more influential in the modern workforce than we tend to get credit for and are about to become more so. And if the coming baby boomer exodus from the workplace is just revving up and Gen-Xers are next in line to fill the roles boomers retire from, it won't just be a sheer numerical advantage that plays to our favor. Here's why.
So while millennials may be unfairly caricatured as socially inept much the way boomers are wrongly dismissed en masse for poor technical chops, the trends in companies' staffing needs are unmistakable. Gen X-ers, on the other hand, may be more likely to prove communication maestros by comparison.
We grew up socializing without devices in our hands. Whether it was learning to cope with the neighborhood bully or sweet-talking our parents into letting us stay home alone while they went on vacation, many of us knew how to use words and persuasion to problem-solve and solicit cooperation.
Anna Garvey at Social Media Weekcalled Gen X the "Oregon Trail generation,"referencing the 1980s adventure game that had millions of kids glued to their schools’ desktop computers. The idea was to get your wagon to Oregon before you lost all your oxen or died of disease. Oregon Trail and games like it showed us how to tinker with this new and strange technology and become masters of the machine.
Heading off to college and our first careers, the electronic age really started heating up. As Garvey aptly put it: "We came of age just as the very essence of communication was experiencing a seismic shift, and it’s given us a unique perspective that’s half analog old school and half digital new school."
To be sure, not every Gen Xer grew up the same way or acquired the same skills through their experiences. But our careers have tracked the rise of the digital workplace, and the foundation that's given many of us may pay dividends in helping us navigate the boomer brain drain.
In my first job at a PR agency in New York City, I dealt with issues typical of the alienated, twenty-something X-er. I struggled with how to meet people who could help me do my job, and how to talk to my boss about getting a raise.
But I was the only person in the office who knew how to use a search engine. I learned to survive in the boomers’ business world, but I also helped usher in the "tech everything" one that millennials would soon populate. I developed a useful hybrid of offline and online communication skills, easily shifting from one medium to the other.
When workplace clashes occurred, I understood where the boomers were coming from but also intuitively "got" the millennials. Eighteen years later, that role as a bridge still serves me well. Every day, as I serve as a translator and perform mediation and mentorship duties for boomer and millennial colleagues and clients alike. In the process, my skills as a leader of a multi-generational workforce only increase.
Of course, I'm just a sample of one. But the research seems to suggest that many other Gen X-ers share my experience. In a recent EY study that surveyed 1,200 professionals across generations and industries, Gen X scored higher than the other generations when it came to effective collaboration. In separate research published by the Center for Talent Innovation, 65% of respondents associated the "team player" label with Gen X-ers (compared to only 45% associating it with millennials).
Even if these findings don't reflect the innate personality traits shared by an entire generation—as some psychologists are quick to point out that they probably don't—they may still hint at the stage in our careers where my peers and I now find ourselves. More than that, from what we know about the skills companies need most in their new leaders, the research suggests that we're uniquely prepared for those roles—not just next in line for them.
In March, Gartner analysts Mbula Schoen and Michael Hanford outlined their recommendations for new PMOs in a detailed report, The PMO Leader’s First 100 Days.
Schoen and Hanford defined project management office, or PMO, as a function designed to facilitate and improve the management of projects through the application and use of PPM disciplines, such as project management and program management. The PMO also participates in business and IT governance activities by providing some degree of execution, analysis, and visibility into proposed and existing initiatives.
New PMO leaders must balance the need to build relationships, meet expectations, and gain acceptance and buy-in. The analysts suggested that they view target outcomes in terms of five phases that often overlap: Prepare, Assess, Plan, Act, and Measure.
Prepare Phase (Days −10 to 15)
As with any new strategic role, it helps to optimize your chances for success before you “officially” begin. “Prior to starting work, you must work with your (almost) new boss and major stakeholders to be sure you’re all on the same page regarding expectations and a shared view of what success is and what it will be,” said Schoen and Hanford. “Check, at a minimum, that the following are in place as you go forward.”
A reporting relationship to an influential, well-positioned executive who embraces the value of the PMO. His/her authority and political connections are one of your major assets.
A good understanding of the purpose of the PMO, ensuring it is aligned with organizational objectives. Many new PMO leaders wrongly assume their purpose is to institute tighter controls, often slowing down the system, when the actual purpose is to speed the system up.
A set of expectations by those leaders who agreed to the need for a PMO. Determine that the PMO can (mostly) meet these expectations inside the current culture, its proposed organizational location, and the political climate and organizational maturity.
A proposed level of staffing and resources that’s a realistic match to the expectations.
