Coordination neglect and connected planning
‘Connected planning’ is a hot topic for organizations looking to take their planning capabilities to the next level and adopt the latest technologies. I have been part of my fair share of both successes and failures in the quest for this elusive state of high performance in planning and execution.
Academic research does not always apply neatly to the real world, but while reflecting on some of the challenges that I have seen organizations face in pursuit of the above, the concept of
Following are their two primary conclusions, how they can manifest in the context of planning, and a couple ideas for mitigating the associated risk.
1) Organizations tend to focus more on dividing labor (“partition focus”) and building individual specialized components (“component focus”) than on the interconnections between them.
The default approach for most planning implementations encourages this tendency. Divide and conquer to complete the work in the most efficient manner possible. This usually involves concurrent workstreams running against hard planning deadlines.
This method looks great in a project plan, but when the functions are broken up and tackled by separate resources without ample consideration for how they will weave together, the result may be faster but will still be disconnected, and even more entrenched than it was before.
One tip to avoid this fate is to gather requirements at the top, even if the plan is to start small with one use case (which is a perfectly fine approach). Team members must understand how the company is viewed at the highest levels by the executive team, board, and external investors, in addition to day-to-day operations. Some questions to ask include the following:
- What are the metrics and reporting used at the highest levels, GAAP and non-GAAP, internal and external?
- Are these the right metrics to measure the business and performance on?
- What are all the data, inputs, people, and processes needed to produce these metrics, both actuals and forecast?
- What would need to occur to make them real-time, however unrealistic it may initially seem?
- How can the metrics be reconciled with each other and across functions and data sources?
- What supporting data is required to explain the metrics in an actionable manner?
While these questions are broad and will not all be solved in the first project, the answers to them provide context, establish baseline requirements, and help to prioritize activities for the initial deployment and the long-term roadmap. It also emphasizes to all stakeholders that the end goal is more than just one software implementation, it’s an organizational mindset change.
2) Ongoing communication needed to maintain integration is often neglected.
In order for connected planning to have staying power and deliver its full value it must do more than automate mundane tasks and save time for individuals. These are just the low-hanging technical benefits. Significant long-term value lies in changing the ways in which people work together with their newfound free time.
One simple practice is to plan ahead for cross-functional touch-points at key intersections such as sales + marketing, finance + pricing, supply chain + sales, etc., to ensure that the system is built with collaboration in mind. If the nature and core agendas of these meetings are agreed upon in requirements gathering, standardized reporting can be used to structure them in a logical manner, setting the stage for (but not replacing!) more in-depth discussions on strategy and execution.
For example, in a monthly pipeline review with sales and marketing, if a dashboard shows that the lead-opportunity conversion rate is trending down, the meeting should enable targeted discussions supported with data:
- What are the possible drivers – lead quality, routing, sales productivity/attrition, new products or markets, etc.?
- What are the implications for the pipeline, operational and financial?
- What actions can be taken to reverse the trend – revised messaging, updated sales training, lead scoring changes, promotions, etc.
Connected planning is a constantly moving, evolving, and growing challenge for any organization, and there are no silver bullets for getting it 100% right. Being conscious of our natural human tendencies to create silos and making incremental steps early to break down barriers and establish working relationships for planning will create value and ultimately make your organization a better place to work.
Heath, Chip and Nancy Staudenmayer. "Coordination Neglect: How Lay Theories of Organizing Complicate Coordination in Organizations," Research in Organizational Behavior, 22, (2000): 155-193.
