Micronisation:
The process by which a material is reduced in size, often to micrometer proportions.
What we are discussing here is the way in which organisations are having to deal with micronisation of transactions, communications and timeframes.
Micronisation of companies is exacerbating the requirements to manage projects and work in a completely different way than we have ever had to in the past.
Operations all the way through supply chains are becoming smaller and more transient, enabling more complicated ephemeral scenarios that are evolving dynamically based on what is needed now.
Accepting and leveraging that tiny unstructured actions and communications are at the core of every business. As people become more empowered to work wherever, whenever using whatever they want, the natural impact is to make more smaller things happen at more random intervals frequently more transient in nature. This changes the focus from the big structured areas into the smaller, less structured more frequent interactions and organisations are having to learn how to leverage these to best effect.
Developing an ethos, approach and systems that support breaking apart of everything in an organisation into their smallest possible particles and optimising the actions and communications to support them is critical to maintaining an engaged organisation. Focussed effort into these areas is critical to overall success as the controls, processes and associated structures that have been historically used are easily subverted in a micronised world. Frequently people will not even realise that they are doing this and it will not be intentional, it’s just that the systems and processes that previously captured all facets no longer are applicable/work.
It’s not about ignoring the big stuff, but in understanding that it’s the small stuff that allows the big stuff to be delivered. What we are saying is that if you can develop an approach, ethos and systems that support constant micro improvements across the organisation you will see massive improvements in your ability to deliver the big stuff. It’s about focussing on the lowest common denominators and having simple focussed solutions that release latent power across the enterprise.
Obviously this approach works for any size organisation, however, the bigger the organisation the bigger the benefits purely due to scale.
Why bother?
While it may seem like it’s not going to have a massive impact on your organisation if you take this approach the reality is that it will fundamentally change your organisation forever.
- Provide an environment of ambient support
- Improve your ability to react to circumstance
- Empower entrepreneurs within
- Reduce wastage and optimise the entire organisation
- Allow everyone to support everyone else
- Have only the processes you need
- Allow you to focus on the big stuff knowing you are optimised to deliver it
What does this mean practically?
- Encouraging smaller free flowing unstructured communications
- A reduction in heavily structured processes
- A focus on reducing unnecessary overheads
- A bias towards immediate small actions to move things forward
- Build simplicity and transparency into the organisation
- An overarching structure that enables it all to happen
Social Examples :
- Snapchat
- Vine
Why is it happening?
- The way people live has fundamentally changed, now they expect to be able to work anywhere, anytime on any device
- The knowledge of systems and computing devices the average worker now have has made huge leaps forward over the last few years
- We have seen the massive changes now being introduced in law with flexible working being mandated in law
- Nearly all organisations now insist that new applications and systems support a variety of devices
- Lots of people now are involved in a number of different ventures with a number of different organisations
We will be publishing more of our thinking in this area over the comings weeks, stay tuned.
