Big picture thinking

Big picture thinking

At the risk of banging on a bit too much about this Daniel Pink book, he has had my head cogs working overtime, and I can't resist another A Whole New Mind post. I have had one of those wonderful "eureka" moments that he talks about in his book, when seemingly disparate ideas and/or experiences work together and you come to a realisation. Hopefully that realisation will be the solution to what you thought was an intractable problem, or perhaps it will be some incredible business idea. This time around my "aha!" moment is simply an answer to a niggling question I had about another book I read recently, which I will give some attention to here as I quite enjoyed it.

The book is another business paperback that my husband ordered through Amazon, John Seddon's Systems Thinking in the Public Sector, which provides what I think is a fascinating insight into how systems thinking can benefit these service organisations. While this sounds dry, his style is very plain speaking, and even quite emotive at times. His approach to improving systems is so simple, elegant, and brimming with common sense that, for me, it borders on genius.

Even I find it a little odd that a full time mum reads and finds a book of this title interesting, but bear with me. When I lived in Sydney, I worked in a large call centre for a financial services company. They had a new fandangled call management system based around targets for productivity and quality. The quality aspect was really just about ticking the boxes with each call you received. Did you answer the call in the proscribed manner? Did you ask all the right questions? Were you efficient at retrieving information? Did you sign off in the correct manner? The productivity measures were where I felt something had gone really wrong for the business. Eighty five percent of all calls needed to be answered within 15 seconds, and to achieve "job mastery" a call centre worker needed to field 80 or more calls a shift. Some customer service representatives answered upwards of 100 calls daily.

(PS: if you have made it this far and are bored out of your brain, read the post under this one - it is all touchy feely and lovely)

An important part of our role was follow up work from calls - checking on requests to the redemptions team, passing on complaints, finding documents, faxing out information that and been requested, etc. However, we were not and could not be measured on this work. Those, like myself, who cared about the customer (I am not immune to a bit of self-aggrandisement from time to time ;-)) would make sure this work was completed, but it took us away from answering calls and we struggled to meet the productivity targets. Others in the call centre met their productivity and quality targets consistently every fortnight, which I think had something to do with them not spending much time on follow up work. Another trick mastered by the crafty was to hang up on a call the moment it beeped through - of course all that meant was that the poor sod who had been waiting in the call queue had to call back again, but at least the call centre rep was one call closer to his or her daily target. Unsurprisingly, a lot of calls I fielded pertained to work that should have been, but didn't get done, and I spent a lot of the day dealing with angry and frustrated financial advisors and their assistants. Fed up with the mutual exclusivity of providing good customer service and meeting targets, I quit the job after nine months. Looking back, it always bothered me.

Seddon, in his book, brought home to me the reasons why this system didn't work - it was because we were there to serve the targets, not the customer. The first question that Seddon would ask is - What is the purpose of the organisation? If the purpose is to provide financial instruments through which people can invest, grow their assets and then redeem their investment when the time is right, then we need to ask whether or not this purpose is being achieved by the current system. If I were to just look at the redemption aspect of the system, I would say it was not a satisfactory service. There were long delays in redeeming funds and anxious customers would make several calls to follow up on progress. The problem, according to systems thinkers like Seddon, is that targets institutionalise waste - ie they create massive amounts of rework. Many of the calls put through the centre would not have been made if a request (such as for a redemption) had been resolved at first point of contact. In effect calls like these are the waste of service industry. And every unnecessary call brings with a load of follow up work - more waste. If we had focused on achieving purpose with our system instead of achieving targets, the waste could have been stripped out, and a more efficient system could have emerged.


Another aspect of the Systems Thinking approach that hit the mark with me was the idea that customer service and administration did not necessarily need to be separated. Why not give service reps the power to complete the most common admin tasks and resolve as many requests as possible at first point of contact? Infrequent and very complex requests can still be passed on to specialists.

I am probably delving into it a bit too much now - if you find this vaguely intriguing, I recommend reading the book. I am no specialist, yet found it a great read, and honked with laughter at some of the ridiculous aspects of public sector services provision in the UK (which I am sure you can find carbon copies of here in NZ).

But there was one thing about this book that niggled and niggled at me - it all seemed so bloody obvious - why didn't managers in the organisations he spoke of see where they were going wrong and right the course? (Actually, as Seddon points out, it is usually the underlings that have a firmer grasp on system failings). The other niggle I had was why could I not define purpose for each of the projects he spoke of so succinctly as he could.

This brings me back to Pink's book. As I have mentioned in a previous post, people who are good right brain thinkers can contextualise well and see the "big picture". Big picture thinkers don't get mired in the detail. They are like giraffes, poking their heads over the tree canopy, looking out for landmarks, and getting a good understanding of where they are heading. I think Seddon is one of those very good big picture thinkers. I would hazard to guess that with his years of experience, identifying purpose, and what is needed to achieve purpose has become second nature to him. I also think that his ability to write a book that makes his solutions seem so blindingly obvious is a testament to his superior grasp of the big picture - he just makes it seem so simple.

To contrast with this, I was reading a post today by a technology guy who was essentially arguing a similar point to Seddon - that good solutions require systems thinking. Good solutions are elegant, purposeful and not necessarily about complex document and content management systems that can impede a worker's ability to "join the dots". But, my God! His blog was opaque and mired in detail. It barely communicated his point. He is smart and has a lot of information in his head - but he doesn't see the big picture clearly, and I suspect he believes the important stuff is tied up somewhere in the mess of extraneous information he provides (I can't believe that she of the rambling post dares to charge another with such a crime!).

My husband lies somewhere on the continuum between the blogger and Seddon (closer to Seddon). I have noticed that over the years he has developed into a good big picture thinker. His thinking has changed to the extent that he has become frustrated with the constraints of his organisation, which is very traditional in its approach - apply technology to a problem, stir, and simmer for 12-24 months. I sincerely hope that this does not dispirit him too much - he does a great job! Love you darling :-)

Righto - my next blog will be less dry.