Organizational Complexity

I had a chance to catch up on some reading this weekend. McKinsey Quarterly published “Putting Organizational Complexity in It’s Place”. It starts, “Despite widespread agreement that organizational complexity creates big problems by making it hard to get things done, few executives have a realistic understanding of how complexity actually affects their own companies.” We help business leaders gain this understanding with our Enterprise Analysis approach that follows the steps proposed in this article. 

Survey the Scene. We interview employees about their activities considering business value, performance and risk. Think of risk as something that can get in the way of reaching business value. Complexity is a often a significant risk.

Draw a map of what’s really going on. We map the Value Stream using business capabilities and heat map the capabilities (presented in a soon to be published white paper, Taming the Agile Enterprise: Value Stream Mapping for Knowledge Work).

Reduce – and Redirect –  Complexity. We deliver technology that makes a difference to the business. The capability approach helps us consider how technology can support personnel to simplify and improve processes. We often use A3 problem solving and Lean principles to develop and implement solutions including training.