The intersection of people, process, and technology is what many business experts deem as the most common elements to drive action, change, and innovation in organizations. What is unrealized from these factors is that it is the people WITHIN organizations that are the culprits for the resources they hire, processes they develop, and technologies they acquire.
We haven’t become so automated in organizations that robots are making decisions for us. The day when that comes will be the end of human innovation and the beginning of a new kind of human slavery where man (note: in this blog man also implies woman) will answer to artificial intelligence. Perhaps we are moving in that direction but I think we are still ways from that kind of corporation.
The issues with organizations today have nothing to do with the processes executed or technologies acquired – these are all man-made and man-executed. The issue is really man itself and the inability of man to make decisions using his resources available in alignment with rapidly changing mission priorities and external factors impacting the organization.
People say technologies in the public sector are lagging anywhere from 4-8 months from the private sector. Perhaps this is gap is closing in but there is NOTHING being really done today to close the gap in the public sector. Organizations are helpless due to the people inside the organization.
The people in the organization and their inability to deliver the SAME SERVICE with the whatever technologies and processes that are available, is the issue. Processes and technologies do make organizations efficient but when there is no mechanism or real enforcement of performance, you don’t really have any efficiencies gained and most organizations are lackluster in monitoring performance.
The truth is that old technologies can be just as effective as new as long as people understand the positions they play and the and the inputs and outputs of processes relative to the technologies available to them. The technology in this case doesn’t change, the processes don’t change, the organizational mission doesn’t change – it’s the “checklist” of what the people perform as a results of inputs and outputs from the technology to meet the organizational mission that does change.
The checklist needs to be the fulcrum of the organization. Work products coming in and out of standing agreed-upon processes needs to be documented in the checklists. People need to be hired not just for one checklist in the processes but a multitude of checklists.
People also say that processes must be continuously changed to keep with changing times. This is a bluf you need to catch as organizations exist to serve a need, so as long as you build processes to serve the need, all you really need to do is only focus on the socio-technic processes where human to system touchpoints are made.
Processes don’t need to be changed – it is the misunderstanding of people and their lack of using their knowledge, skills and abilities through checklists that is the problem. Organizations need to continue to deliver services in alignment with checklists while allowing innovation with hired resources to hone creative juices to create new services or products.
Most if not all technologies can be used out of the box with little configuration. Once you align the socio-technic processes to business needs, people can fit in like legos if they are hired correctly.
Most organizations hire resources based on reactive psychology, personal egos, and hidden agendas which needs to stop. The checklist is the answer to the people problem in organizations. You can use the checklist to eliminate egos, agendas, and psychological blunders as these are all personally driven, and instead use it for delivering the true purpose of organizations: the creation, marketing, and delivery of outstanding services and products.