Revision as of 11:50, 12 July 2021

From Chaos

In business, success often brings growth.

The ambition to expand and be able to have a bigger impact on the industry and the community naturally leads to an expansion in the company’s size. This involves an increase in the number of employees and the layers of the management structure.

Growth leads to complexity and can result in companies becoming disorganized and chaotic.

File:Chaos.JPG

In an attempt to keep control of the situation, managers often resort to an increase in bureaucracy by implementing more administrative processes in the organization. This often leads to a short-term increase in productivity and stability.

Then, something unexpected happens – a new development comes in the market, a new technology emerges, a competitor makes a surprising move. Then, instead of reacting quickly and adapting, the company is held back by the weight of its unnecessary bureaucracy.

What’s more, the talented staff in the company can feel constrained by the increase in administrative processes and the quality of their work and creativity will suffer.

To Growth

There are three roads a company like this can take in a situation like this.

1. Stay small and avoid adding restrictions, but limit your scope and impact. For Secure Group, this is not a good option, as it would not allow us to achieve our ambitious goals and vision.

2. Avoid rules as you grow and risk becoming too chaotic. This is a big risk for the whole organisation, and often leads to a bad experience for employees and a disorganised workplace. It also hinders the High-Performance Culture we aim for at Secure Group.

3. Use bureaucracy to manage the growing company, but limit creativity, flexibility, and the ability to respond quickly to changes in the market. This approach will not be compatible with Secure Group’s innovative and flexible mindset.

When faced with the challenges of growth, Secure Group responds not with increasing rules and restrictions, but by trusting its High-Performance people. We have faith in our employees and their drive and self-discipline and give them the freedom they need to continue working effectively and remain creative as we expand. This flexibility and flow of ideas is more important to us than plain efficiency in the long term.

Our approach can be summarised in two simple steps:

Minimise rules as we grow
Inhibit chaos with even more high performing people

Our processes

But then how do we manage our company without lots of rules and administration getting in the way? Simple – we believe that not all processes are bad. For us, a good process is one that empowers our employees and enables our culture of accountability. We only add those processes that are absolutely necessary and will not get in the way of our staff.

To minimize the necessary processes and rules, we ask ourselves a few questions before we introduce a new process. We determine whether it:

Represents the current tactic with full knowledge that the tactic may change
Tries to eliminate individual biases and assumptions
Allows us to reflect on what is and isn’t working using both qualitative and quantitative data
Helps us be explicit and transparent, so that everyone knows what we are trying to accomplish.
Provides our team with the opportunity to work flexibly, drawing on creative intelligence.

So only when we answer YES to all those questions we add the new process to our Responsibility Assignment Matrix – RACI.

The RACI matrix

The RACI matrix is a snapshot of all the processes that exist in a department. It allows us to track processes and visualise who is responsible for tasks and make sure all assignments are running effectively. This way every member of a project can be informed and easily updated on the progress.

There are a few different roles people can be assigned to in the matrix. They are:

Responsible (also Recommender): This is the person who needs to do the work to complete a project. There must be at least one responsible person for each task, even if other employees are required to work on it.

Accountable (or Approver): The Accountable is the person who is responsible for the correct and complete execution of the task. There must be only one person accountable for a specific task, and they are required to delegate the work to those responsible. They must give the final approval of the project before it is submitted.

Consulted (or Consultant): This is usually an expert whose opinion is sought in relation to a project. There is two-way communication between them and the rest of the people for the task.

Informed (and Informee): This is someone who is kept up-to-date on the project, often only on its completion. Communication is usually only one-way.

Support: This is someone who offers support with some specific process or concept on the task.

Benefits of using RACI

1. Increases productivity - separating our employees into the right RACI categories reduces the amount of confusion in their tasks. This helps them feel less stress and be more relaxed in their roles, as they know exactly what they are responsible for, and what they don’t have to worry about.

2. Makes employee training easier – once we separate employees in the right part of the RACI model, we can ensure they get the right type of training.

3. Decreases frustration with management – when there is an issue with a project and an employee does not know who to turn to for help, they feel frustration. By referring to the RACI matrix, a person immediately knows who to contact, which saves time.

4. Removes unnecessary meetings – we know who needs an invitation to a meeting based on their role in the project, which saves time for people who are not necessary for the meeting.

5. It aids alignment with organizational strategy – at Secure Group we value accountability. The matrix takes our organizational strategy down to the individual level, which allows our team members to be aware of what they need to be doing to ensure the company’s success. If we need to change our strategy we simply adjust the RACI model and everyone is refocused and moving in the same direction.

6. It enables performance – you will have a much higher chance of being a high performer if you know exactly what you need to be doing.

You can see how the RACI matrix works in practice when it comes to our Development in the Communications team.

Our People

The key to the success of the matrix is our people. We aim to minimize the frustrations and extra steps for our processes in order to make room for superior performance.

Our system is dynamic, and big changes can happen overnight. What a person is assigned to today may be different from what they are doing tomorrow. This is why we value our employees’ adaptability and flexibility. It takes a mature person to take responsibility for their tasks and remains concentrated. We realize that may not be easy for everyone, but we strive to attract the highest performers who will be able to adapt quickly and be responsible for their input.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-<center> '''From Chaos to Growth'''.</center></br>
+= From Chaos =
-It's common for companies to curtail freedom and become more bureaucratic as they grow. First, because the desire for a bigger positive impact creates growth naturally. Growth, on the other hand, increases complexity and often shrink talent diversity because some people tend to like stability when they realize some sort of chaos:
+In business, success often brings growth.
+The ambition to expand and be able to have a bigger impact on the industry and the community naturally leads to an expansion in the company’s size. This involves an increase in the number of employees and the layers of the management structure.
+Growth leads to complexity and can result in companies becoming disorganized and chaotic.
-[[File:Chaos.png|400px|center]]
+[[File:Chaos.JPG|500px|center]]
+In an attempt to keep control of the situation, managers often resort to an increase in bureaucracy by implementing more administrative processes in the organization. This often leads to a short-term increase in productivity and stability.
-To address this situation, most companies tend to adhere to more bureaucratic procedures to stop the chaos, but it's known that this solution tend to drive more talent out:
+[[File:Chaos2.JPG|500px|center]]
+Then, something unexpected happens – a new development comes in the market, a new technology emerges, a competitor makes a surprising move. Then, instead of reacting quickly and adapting, the company is held back by the weight of its unnecessary bureaucracy.
+What’s more, the talented staff in the company can feel constrained by the increase in administrative processes and the quality of their work and creativity will suffer.
+= To Growth =
-[[File:Chaos2.JPG|500px|center]]
+There are three roads a company like this can take in a situation like this.
-</br>
-It's a fact that bureaucracy brings seductively strong near-term outcome but then something unexpected happens, for example, the market shifts due to new technology, competitors or business model. If there's alot of unecessary bureaucracy, the company is unable to adapt quickly and the existing processes become painful and irrelevant. There are 3 likely eventualities in this scenario:</br>
-# Stay creative by staying small, but therefore have less impact > This does not help us achieve our mission and vision.
+. '''Stay small and avoid adding restrictions''', but limit your scope and impact. For Secure Group, this is not a good option, as it would not allow us to achieve our ambitious goals and vision.
-# Avoid rules as you grow and suffer chaos > This is painful for employees and does not promote a High Performance Culture
-# Use bureaucracy as you grow to drive efficient execution of current model, but cripple creativity, flexibility, and ability to thrive when your market eventually changes > This does not fit with our innovative meaningful mindset
+. '''Avoid rules as you grow and risk becoming too chaotic'''. This is a big risk for the whole organisation, and often leads to a bad experience for employees and a disorganised workplace. It also hinders the High-Performance Culture we aim for at Secure Group.
-</br>
-And then there's Secure Group solution: avoid chaos as we grow with even more High-Performance people – not with rules. This means we can continue to mostly run informally with self-discipline, and avoid chaos and also the fact that we are running informally enables and attracts creativity. So if we wanted to summarize our solution it would be like this:
-# Minimize rules as we grow.
+. '''Use bureaucracy to manage the growing company''', but limit creativity, flexibility, and the ability to respond quickly to changes in the market. This approach will not be compatible with Secure Group’s innovative and flexible mindset.
-# Inhibit chaos with even more high-performing people.
-# Flexibility is more important than efficiency in the long term.
-</br>
-Then there comes a very important question. Are all processes bad?</br>
-Not really. We believe that good processes are the ones that empower our employees and enable a culture of accountability, for example, to implement a tool to clearly define roles and/or to create an index to manage knowledge within the company.</br>
-Since bad processes tend to “creep in” we try to get rid of rules when we can, to reinforce our point.</br>
-</br>
-However, whenever we see the necessity of creating one process we ask ourselves:</br>
-Does this process...?</br>
-- Represent the current tactic with full knowledge that the tactic may change</br>
-- Attempt to eliminate individual biases and assumptions</br>
-- Allow us to reflect on what is and isn’t working using both qualitative and quantitative data</br>
-- Help us to be explicit and transparent? Meaning, everyone knows what we are trying to accomplish, minimize, and maximize</br>
-- Provide our team with the opportunity to work flexibly, drawing on creative intelligence</br>
-So whenever we answer YES to these questions and once we have defined a new good process, we add it to our Responsibility Assignment Matrix - [[Roles|RACI]].</br>
+When faced with the challenges of growth, Secure Group responds not with increasing rules and restrictions, but by trusting its High-Performance people. We have faith in our employees and their drive and self-discipline and give them the freedom they need to continue working effectively and remain creative as we expand. This flexibility and flow of ideas is more important to us than plain efficiency in the long term.
+Our approach can be summarised in two simple steps:
+* Minimise rules as we grow
+* Inhibit chaos with even more high performing people
-</br>
-<center> '''Aligning employees (or employee roles) to our processes in an effort to make our business run smoothly in a “Context, not Control” environment.'''</center>
-</br>
-The RACI matrix is a tool to help us deal with ambiguity. It represents a snapshot of the processes that an employee can be assigned and how we keep the teams informed about the many fast changes that happen in a department. The RACI allows us to map and visualize those responsible for each stage of our processes in a simplified way. It enables a clearer division of tasks, enabling easier visibility of who is responsible and accountable for each. It also prevents tasks from running without anyone being accountable for them.  The matrix ensures that everyone who must follow the project will be kept informed as it lists those who need to be consulted or updated on its progress. Visualization of the distribution of tasks also allows them to be more fairly allocated.</br>
+= Our processes =
-* Responsible (also Recommender): Those who do the work to complete the task. For each task, there must be at least one responsible person, though others could also be required to work on the task.
+But then how do we manage our company without lots of rules and administration getting in the way? Simple – we believe that not all processes are bad. For us, a good process is one that empowers our employees and enables our culture of accountability. We only add those processes that are absolutely necessary and will not get in the way of our staff.
-* Accountable (also Approver or final approving authority): The one ultimately answerable for the correct and thorough completion of the deliverable or task; the one who ensures the prerequisites of the task are met and who delegates the work to those responsible. In other words, an accountable must sign off (approve) work that the responsible person provides. There must be only one accountable specified for each task or deliverable.
-* Consulted (sometimes Consultant or counsel): Those whose opinions are sought, typically subject matter experts; and with whom there is two-way communication.
+To minimize the necessary processes and rules, we ask ourselves a few questions before we introduce a new process. We determine whether it:
-* Informed (also Informee): Those who are kept up-to-date on progress, often only on completion of the task or deliverable; and with whom there is just one-way communication.
-* Support: Those who will support some specific process or concept.
+* Represents the current tactic with full knowledge that the tactic may change
-</br>
+* Tries to eliminate individual biases and assumptions
-What the RACI delivers:
+* Allows us to reflect on what is and isn’t working using both qualitative and quantitative data
-# It enables employees to be more productive: When we defined which category of the RACI model each employee fitted into, it reduced the amount of confusion associated with typical projects and processes. This, in turn, helped employees feel less stressed and more engaged in their roles. They know precisely what they are responsible for and what they do not need to worry about.
+* Helps us be explicit and transparent, so that everyone knows what we are trying to accomplish.
-# It assists with employee training: Once we assigned employees to each part of the RACI model, we could ensure employees in every category could get the right kind of training. We believe traditional training is a waste of time unless employees are learning information that will add value to their roles and our business.
+* Provides our team with the opportunity to work flexibly, drawing on creative intelligence.
-# It decreases frustration with management: Frustration came about if employees did not know how to escalate a problem or whether to just go ahead and fix it. By assigning RACI roles, every employee knows precisely who to speak with about a potential process change or hang-up. This alleviates frustration with management.
-# It helps save time in meetings: How many meetings have you attended where you wondered, “Why am I here?” Unfortunately, this happens all too often. But with the RACI model, we know exactly who needs an invitation to a particular meeting based on their roles in a particular project or process, saving time for those who do not need to be there.
+So only when we answer YES to all those questions we add the new process to our '''Responsibility Assignment Matrix – RACI.'''
-# It aids alignment with organizational strategy: The RACI model takes our organizational strategy down to the individual level, so every employee knows what they need to be doing to contribute to the company’s success. If we decide to change our strategy, we can adjust our RACI model accordingly so everyone in the company is refocused and headed in the same direction.
-# It enables performance: If you know exactly what you are supposed to do, you will have a much higher chance to be a high performer. Simple as that.
-Here you can check the example of our RACI Matrix when it comes to Development in the Communications team:
+= The RACI matrix =
+The RACI matrix is a snapshot of all the processes that exist in a department. It allows us to track processes and visualise who is responsible for tasks and make sure all assignments are running effectively. This way every member of a project can be informed and easily updated on the progress.
+There are a few different roles people can be assigned to in the matrix. They are:
+* Responsible (also Recommender): This is the person who needs to do the work to complete a project. There must be at least one responsible person for each task, even if other employees are required to work on it.
+* Accountable (or Approver): The Accountable is the person who is responsible for the correct and complete execution of the task. There must be only one person accountable for a specific task, and they are required to delegate the work to those responsible.  They must give the final approval of the project before it is submitted.
+* Consulted (or Consultant): This is usually an expert whose opinion is sought in relation to a project. There is two-way communication between them and the rest of the people for the task.
+* Informed (and Informee): This is someone who is kept up-to-date on the project, often only on its completion. Communication is usually only one-way.
+* Support: This is someone who offers support with some specific process or concept on the task.
+== Benefits of using RACI ==
+# 1. Increases productivity - separating our employees into the right RACI categories reduces the amount of confusion in their tasks. This helps them feel less stress and be more relaxed in their roles, as they know exactly what they are responsible for, and what they don’t have to worry about.
+# 2. Makes employee training easier – once we separate employees in the right part of the RACI model, we can ensure they get the right type of training.
+# 3. Decreases frustration with management – when there is an issue with a project and an employee does not know who to turn to for help, they feel frustration. By referring to the RACI matrix, a person immediately knows who to contact, which saves time.
+# 4. Removes unnecessary meetings – we know who needs an invitation to a meeting based on their role in the project, which saves time for people who are not necessary for the meeting.
+# 5. It aids alignment with organizational strategy – at Secure Group we value accountability. The matrix takes our organizational strategy down to the individual level, which allows our team members to be aware of what they need to be doing to ensure the company’s success. If we need to change our strategy we simply adjust the RACI model and everyone is refocused and moving in the same direction.
+# 6. It enables performance – you will have a much higher chance of being a high performer if you know exactly what you need to be doing.
+You can see how the RACI matrix works in practice when it comes to our Development in the Communications team.
-[[File:202012-RACI.png|center|1294px]]
+== Our People ==
+The key to the success of the matrix is our people. We aim to minimize the frustrations and extra steps for our processes in order to make room for superior performance.
+Our system is dynamic, and big changes can happen overnight. What a person is assigned to today may be different from what they are doing tomorrow. This is why we value our employees’ adaptability and flexibility. It takes a mature person to take responsibility for their tasks and remains concentrated. We realize that may not be easy for everyone, but we strive to attract the highest performers who will be able to adapt quickly and be responsible for their input.

Operations and Roles: Difference between revisions