I got back last night having spent 24 hours with the ASPIRE Leaders’ Summit in Krakow, Poland with Business Services, Transformation, Technology and Innovation leaders from across industries.
This cauldron of energy, experience and humility was themed “Beyond the Bubble – Looking Beyond the Everyday“.
It was organised by the ASPIRE team led by Andrew Hallam and was held in the idyllic country manor house, Dwor w Tomaszowicach (I recommend a visit!).
I was asked to participate in a panel to discuss “Is the Global Business Services (GBS) model still relevant?”.
It got me thinking. Thank you Gerard and Sylwester!
We talk a lot about “transformation”, “innovation” and “value” but what do those words really mean and how do we deliver meaningful results in each of thse dimensions?
In this context, I listened to some deeply experienced leaders at ASPIRE talking about accountability.
Accountability even for things you can’t control, only influence.
The truth is that “control” is a mirage. You can’t “control” your customers and revenues, or your people, or your suppliers, but we talk about “ownership” and “control” as if these are critical enablers to success.
They are clearly not.
Philippe De Brouwer of HSBC gave an inspiring, and humble, talk on “Leadership and Management” which once again resonated with this idea that “control is an illusion”.
We (especially me!) talk a lot of about “end to end” processes and solutions to drive genuine business outcomes and success.
Unfortunately, the “end to end” value stream discussion often gets conflated with ideas of “control” and “ownership”.
Let’s be clear, NO-ONE “owns” an end-to-end value stream (process), not even the CEO!
Consider your company’s revenue cycle, even the CEO doesn’t “own” the customers . . . .
Even without the illusion of “ownership” and “control”, we CAN take accountability for our contribution to outcomes, and the outcomes themselves.
The challenge, in GBS specifically, on “end to end” processes is that GBS delivers specific “services” into global “end to-end” processes. But these services are NOT the same as the “end to end” processes they serve. They (hopefully) contribute to them.
Think of “Credit and Collections” as a business service that supports the Customer to Cash / Revenue cycle. They are related but are not the same thing.
The services are important and need to be delivered efficiently and continuously improved. But meeting these KPIs and SLAs alone does equal success.
We need to think “Outside In” as well as “Inside Out”.
A “Dual Operating System”.
- “Inside Out” – we need to focus on our service delivery and ensure we are meeting expectations. This is our efficiency, “are we doing things right?”.
- “Outside In” – we need to focus on overall business value-streams, outcomes and stakeholders to ensure we are doing the best we can to support the achievement of the overall business objectives. This is our effectiveness, “are we doing the right things?”.
To my mind this adds to the, now famous, “Trust Equation” of Charles H. Green where he states that TRUST is the combination of CREDIBILITY (demonstrable understanding), RELIABILITY (do what you say and say what you do) and INTIMACY (rapport), divided by SELF INTEREST (“my stuff” over “your stuff”).
So, interestingly, however high your NPS or other customer satisfaction scores, a myopic service delivery focus tends to feel like “my stuff” and runs the risk of losing senior stakeholder “hearts and minds”.
Conversations about “your stuff” are “Outside In” conversations, in that they eventually lead to “what can I do to help?” . . .
Business Value is defined by “Outside In”.
GBS plays a central role in the “Enterprise Digital Agenda,” with 83% supporting their enterprise’s digital transformation efforts, and a whopping 27% in the driver’s seat.
Which brings me nicely to a timely, and very comprehensive, survey just launched by Naomi Secor, Barbara Hodge and the venerable Tom Bangemann at SSON Research & Analytics (who also provided the stats above!).
As well as the contextual questions that frame business services organisations and the GBS model as a whole, the survey includes a great focus on “Outside In” and “Business Value” with such questions as “ How often do you think about your impact on processes that happen outside the SSO/GBS and, vice versa, their impact on your operations?”.
Let’s commit to spend as much time thinking and communicating “Outside In” as we do “Inside Out”.
Thanks for reading . . .