Holacracy a New Way of Work can it Apply in Industrial Operational Space

I have spent the weekend listening a reading more on Holacracy, (http://www.holacracy.org/) and attended a training two weeks ago. While the concepts are familiar to me in that it follows the AGILE Software thinking and approach to putting a framework in place that enable :

·         Agility through understanding where you are and what you have to do so you can make changes

·         That enables empowerment of the team, individuals

·         The distribution of authority to enable empowerment to execute

The whole approach makes total sense to the new operational transformation environment, and I believe could be applied to manufacturing. Providing a framework for the more efficient execution, planning of work across an organization.

If you look at the Agile case studies from John Deere where they applied agile , top to bottom the results speak for them selves:

While agile is applied in the software work, what we seeing in industrial operations, is not a transformation in technology (yes it is being enable by technology) but it really is a transformation in the way companies plan, execute, work. This work could be planned work from a business side, to work generated on the plant that needs to followed up a resolved, shifting workers from an average of 35% planned work in a day to greater than 70%.

Holacracy and Agile are systems that transform the way in which work is planned, and executed, with constant empowerment of people to change and evolve the system.

As I look into both frameworks and try to apply them in my own life, I cannot see why they would be a possibility for transformation of culture to achieve better work in the industrial work space.

It is important to note both systems are aligned and they are a framework, they require discipline and execution within the framework to enable the agility. Too often in manufacturing and the industrial space people put technology and systems in as “silver bullets” and expect them to solve everything. But they are only tools, there needs to be an operational cultural transformation as well and combined you gain real change.

If you have not heard about Holacracy and are looking at a transformation in the way your company works have a look at it.  http://www.holacracy.org/, there are many You tubes and discussions on it!

On the Road Discovering and Listening: Again Operational Work Transformation Leads the change

Sorry, I have not been home for a month, and need to just listen to what people are trying to do, explore new opportunities.
While I found many new thought leaders, and opportunities, when you investigated the core goal, outcome of the project or theme of the people it was a "CHANGE IN WORK EXECUTION".

Much of what I have written about over the last year came up over and over again. Very few people articulated the project as a transformation in the way they work, but when you applied "Outcome Driven Innovation techniques" it was clear two things where happening:

• They wanted to execute a "functional job" faster and more consistently now moving to that job decision and action been taken by a community / circle of people.
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• They expected more jobs to executed by the same team, and in the same period, this aligned with the increased responsibility that operational teams where taking on.

Again the driving strategies and challengers people where seeing are:

•  Transparency with trust to see/ understand the current situation of the operational landscape across sites as if one operational plain. Note the word trust, this particularly was on data and information, moving away from local excel, or reports to trusted data that is in context and validated.
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• Embedded Experience/ knowledge to enable faster decisions but more importantly consistent actions across a changing demographic of workforce.

But an interesting point came up a couple of weeks ago in discussion or capturing knowledge, one group made clear that "embedding experience and knowledge into the system was the ultimate goal" but that this was not reality, and that Augmented Experience will come from a combination :

• Embedded knowledge and experience, but it was clear that this was not just a system, but the culture of workers contributing in context regularly is a major step in the knowledge journey for companies.
• But also a "community of experts, contributors" who can be tapped into in real time. They are able to see the situation in real-time, in context and with trust on what they seeing, and can then apply their own experience to enabling the decision. This again needs new thinking in how to enable, and culture to work in teams.

While this is not new to this blog it was good to continue to validate as I traveled, driving the energy needed to create potential solutions for this space.  
  

A Different Approach to Design Operational Systems is Needed!!!

I have had the opportunity to review some new strategies of some companies are taking to designing their systems for operations in 2020 to 2030, and I am pleased to see they have taken not just a technology approach. But really turn around and looked at “who they will execute work across their value supply chain” focusing on how they will have operate in this period then how they will be executing their work to achieve this.

Now technology is key as it will enable vision to be achieved in “agile “ world, while making it a sustainable evolution.

The diagram below illustrates our current summary of change in thinking needed in approach the bigger picture programs.

Traditional world of application to application (project) approach and technologies, and effectively technology lead vs operational lead. This does lead to different implementations, a focus on features vs operational experience and efficiency. Many of these projects are focused on improving the process efficiency, vs the product.

The approach we are recommending and leading is a more holistic approach that is “operational” lead so how companies will need to run / execute their business on a longer term, and day to day basis. Focusing now on product delivery band the correct time, at location, at the correct quality and margin. But then instead of focusing on the how, the recommendation is to look at the required work activities that need to be executed these could be automated or human intervention. Understand the end to end process/ procedures and work required to efficiently deliver the product at the correct time, location , quality and margin. 

Eventually it come back to technology and systems, but now driven with an operational focus, and it will be implemented in a way that enables sustained evolution / innovation of those operational procedures as the business changes.

It is important to understand that the world is not about short term solutions, (yes they want quick wins but sustainable solutions) we accept that operational procedures must change with the business, and the systems/ platforms must accommodate this change. This has not been the case in the past, and the other accommodation must be dynamically changing user base, where experience cannot be assumed.

Next week I will continue this thought pattern as this aligns with what we seeing in the IT/OT convergence where the leading companies are putting strong operational leadership over IT and the convergence so all programs (made up aligned smaller projects) deliver aligned operational value in a shorter time frame. 

The Perfect Storm in Industrial Operations = New Paradigm in Operational Landscape

I decided to revisit a blog that I have enhanced from over a year as preparation for a discussion I have been having with many people in the last 2 weeks around "realtime Information Platform" vs "Historian" which I enter that discussion in the next blog. Too many people are looking at one aspect.

The most significant disruption in industrial operational strategy is happening in this post GFC (global financial crisis) era.  This is focused on determining an operational execution environment which enables timely contributions by the operational team for sustained high-performance plant execution.  The focus is currently on operational processes, but this will shift quickly to driving a new operational experience which enables a new operational execution plan. Traditional user interfaces will not “cut it” both in products, or the way they have been implemented.

A common thread around the world is the operational personnel challenge, especially the finding of people to replace the existing “baby boomer generation” and lack of experience available in the market.

This is only part of the most significant disruption in operational strategy in the last 20 years, even since the introduction of the PC.  There is a perfect storm happening, with these vectors:

•        Ageing workforce: the significant number of highly experienced operations, maintenance, process workers who will retire in the next 5 to 10 years.  Some mangers in “oil and gas upstream” talk about the fact that 80% of their current team will be gone in 5 years.
•          Operational Agility means Decision NOW: to be competitive, decisions must be made now, this has caused a change in thinking that workers need to be empowered to make more decisions, through more information, higher knowledge and access to experience, and a transition from “worker” to “knowledge worker”.  This also means that they have much more responsibility.  As one customer recently stated, traditionally they had an operator cover 5 to 10 wells; this was fine when you have 100 wells which lasted 20 years, but in the next 5 years he stated “we will have 20,000 + wells, but we will not have 2,000 operators”.
•          The rotating operational person means “time to experience” is shorter than ever:the experienced generation is retiring and transitioning to an age group 20 years their junior, and there is a new factor that people are not staying in their role or location longer than a year.  One company stated 10 years ago that people were in a role approximately 5 years, but now they are seeing rotations of 8 months.
•         Transition to digital native worker, with very different expectations, causes challenges with worker retention: The new generation is “digitally native”; they expect access to knowledge, they expect “touch experience”, they expect collaboration from anywhere, and they expect to learn on the fly.

Stepping back and looking at all of these vectors; we have significant disruptions for those in charge of industrial / manufacturing operational execution strategies.

Addressing that significant disruption will require a combination of techniques:

•          A new generation of user interface products with more than interface capability, but embedded knowledge access, experience access, actionable procedures and natural intelligence, really empower the operational workers in all roles.
•          A new operational experience design.  Notice that the traditional enabler -HMI (Human Machine Interface) does not express this new design: as it is a true “operational experience” that goes through the “day in the life” of the new generation of operational knowledge workers.
•          New alignment across the different systems, plant applications and sites to align context, actions. Keeping the sites, applications and systems “loosely coupled but tightly aligned”.

Why?  Because today is not about Control Rooms; it is about agility and timely decisions, and this requires the “Flexible Operational Team” that works naturally together to leverage their experience, in the NOW to have decisions of all sorts made in a timely manner (often earlier than “now” to prevent instead of react).

The above diagram shows the concept of Flexible Operational Team, where at the bottom the traditional User Interfaces (UI’s) would have been permanently manned.  These UI’s are becoming transiently manned, but all functions relative to the zone of responsibility are available.  The more central operational centers (increasingly remote) will have a “quarterback” operational controller who is calling the shots, with a transient in-plant team of different skill sets, and a virtual team of experts usually external to the plant.  The in plant team executes activities that must be done locally, e.g. Inspections, maintenance, and certain manual operations, and the virtual team are experts across the world who can be tapped on for experience and knowledge to work with the controller or the in-plant team.

The above requirements is driving customers to look at the concept of “Enterprise Control”, providing the unification, and evolution of existing systems to achieve the alignment required to enable the concept of “agility thru Operational alignment and decisions in the NOW”.

The Invensys Enterprise Control Vision is to provide a set of capabilities that enables customers to achieve "Operational Excellence” through three strategies:

•          Empowerment of Operational People

Operational personnel (e.g. Operators, process engineers, process experts, maintenance, quality, production management) are empowered real-time decisions through operational awareness, access to experience, collaboration, and best practices in a proactive system, to perform multiple tasks, in flexible roles, in multiple locations.

•          Unification through Federation across assets, applications and systems

Align the different assets and processes across the operational management layer (of the traditional automation levels) so that the industrial operations are more agile (can change equipment configuration and use of the equipment much faster and much tighter coordination).  These assets that reside within a plant, within a process and across multiple sites are aligned to business and operational processes and require consistent measures and information.  Each of the existing applications/ controls continue to run, but their information and visualisation models are aligned, and communication happens with orchestration execution, in order for the Operational Process to execute in the most timely and effective manner.

•          Built on a Sustainable platform of capability so that the system has longevity to evolve.

Enterprise Control will be implemented in stages and evolve in scope, breadth and functionality through its lifetime at each customer installation, which could be 20 years.  The system has been engineered and architected in a way that enables this evolution to occur in a sustainable way and caters to changing engineering teams and technologies.

New technology products will enable the above operational/automation paradigms, satisfying the changes in the market and workforce, compelling all of us to think and engineer differently as we evolve our operational systems.

I am hoping this refresh and discussion answers many of the questions people have asked me lately, as it is not just about the ageing workforce, the transition, the whole workforce culture and approach to work will be different in 5 to 10 years, and it really is a transformation to "smart work" in the industrial operational space. 

Can you have Smart Cities without Smart Citizens?

For the last couple of weeks I have been engaged in smart cities investigation, interviews and understanding the landscape. While I keep abreast of this developing and over crowded market, we have a focused team in this area that requested my input on investigations and defined strategies.

Enjoyment in these exercises is the interviewing and learning. It was clear that many of the initiatives we seen in the industrial sector apply to here but differently in smart cities. So in a visit to Singapore I had the opportunity spend time with a number of “city authorities” involved in their smart city vision.

The head of the Urban Planning   made some very interesting comments, around what a Smart City is! Too often we read about the efficiencies of smart devices, and management of energy across a city, the transparency across a city to systems.

But he raised the point that a “smart city requires smart citizens, and smart service workers”, this took my interest as the concept aligned with my thoughts on empowerment. On digging deeper he broke up his thoughts into:

• Workers: Workers being the people who work in different jobs in the city, but use the services of the city to get to and from work, and to execute their job each day.

• Service Workers: These are the people who provide the services to keep the city running, from bus drivers, to city clerks, to maintenance electricians, to firemen, and the other 1000s of job roles in the city.
• Citizens These are the above and everyone else enjoying and living in the city, no matter if they in the park, at a concert, at a football game, shopping, or out to dinner, or just living at home. All the time they using services of the city.

In my discussions with the planning authority, and then with one of the universities, and others it became clear that they faced a similar problem we have in Industry, but on different scale and angle with the empowerment of people, and processes. In order to change the culture for them to use the services of the city in a more efficient way, and allow people more enjoyment time.  Remembering that the average age in most cities is going up, and we do not have transition of population, but yet we require an “operational change in culture” in the way they use their city services.

When discussing this concept I was reminded of a concept of the modern wealthy: “today’s wealthy been wealthy in enjoyment time, not necessary money.”   A reflection on our current times where we are always connected, always working, and not disconnecting and really enjoying. The modern wealthy have learnt how to execute work effectively while maximizing their time to enjoy.

This came up in a conversation in Singapore around “smart work” when asked the answer related to “worker” category of person above. To the way they need to change the way they work from being able to work anywhere, not a new concept called “activity based” work. He went on to talk about a worker not wasting time in travel, or in a train, but to use that time effectively, giving increased output, and giving back time to enjoyment.

The real area that caught my interest and debates were around the “changing of the culture” in all the citizens in the city to use services efficiently and turnoff lights, use less water, change habits. Like we have changed over the last 20 years to wear seat belts naturally in the car, how can we evolve the way people operate their house, their work environment, and their enjoyment environment.

I reflected on how my family’s culture had changed when we lived our yacht for ten years, both in California and travelling, as the boat is a small micro grid for power generation storage and usage, and we make our water from seawater or capture water. But we set the boat up with LED lights, and taps that force turn off, installed efficient shower heads, and on goes the list. My sons turnoff lights; they watch the power; it becomes a core part of daily KPIs, similar to weather.

When discussing this required cultural change the real concept of “smart Citizens” came into play. It was not just about the app on my phone to understand how to order taxi’s or understand the transport system. Tt was also about the applications that embed best living practices on how to operate the house, etc. So that through the natural use of these applications in the house, on the phone, etc. the user inherently executes the best-operational practice and increases efficiency. As that operational practice in tuned and improved, the embedded procedure is updated and effecting 1000s, to millions of people, without them realizing, but with significant impact to cities use of services and therefore improved efficiency.

This discussion does not take away from much of the focus today in smart cities around empowering the “service worker” and the associated services provided to citizens to attract them to live in the city. How a smart city will make these “service workers” situationally aware of conditions in the city not as they happen, but in the future detecting conditions from historical patterns bringing awareness of situations before they occur.

A “smart City” is about the city systems, services status, and capability being intelligent, and empowering right decisions faster to bring service satisfaction higher in the city. But all of this must happen while significantly reducing the impact on the environment, with goals of 50% reduction in energy usage and carbon footprint from cities by 2030, if not more, not counting waste and water usage. A lot more than just the systems must change, or the efficiency of the services and people are operating them. The way in which we as citizens go about daily life must change, so we enjoy more, but execute in the most efficient and natural way to increase the efficiency of the city.

It is certainly an interesting opportunity, but draws on many parallels whit the “operational Transformation” in the industrial space, and merging of concepts can only help accelerate the transformation in both landscapes.  

The Smart Plant Culture, What is it?

The concepts of an agile / smart plant, facility are not just in the assets, equipment, and systems, the key to the modern world is the efficiency in the work, and how people and expertise is used across the given tribes of people working and contributing to the business success. This article by Stan captures what is core to that culture.

 The Smart Plant is characterized by its behavior, which is a combination of technology enablers and the culture of the organization.  If the people don’t effectively use the technology, then the plant won’t behave in a “smart” way.

One of the most effective analyses of culture and culture change comes from Roger Connors and Tom Smith, who have written a book called Change the Culture, Change the Game.  They assert that actions and results only change when beliefs and experiences are changed.  When management attempt to change the results without changing beliefs and experiences, the organization doesn’t produce lasting change, and the amount of “disengagement” and rebellion increases.  These authors have also analyzed a key aspect of culture that they call “accountability”.  In this analysis, they recommend shifting an organization’s behaviors from what they call the “blame game” to a behavior of openness, ownership, teamwork and collective actions to solve the problems.

Dr. Stephen Covey has embraced these and he has written a book called Principle-Centered Leadership, which recommends a combination of changing the goals and measures, combined with a different approach to managing performance.

In the above diagram, the most important goals are called Wildly Important, and these are made clear and prominent.  The second step is to shift from the traditional “lagging” measures to “leading” measures, so that organizations can continually prevent problems and take full advantage of opportunities.  The third step is a “compelling” scoreboard, which requires all workers to have information with sufficient frequency and detail that affects their jobs.  This often requires hourly information focused on manufacturing or processing “cells” or “units”.  And the fourth step is a supervisor “cadence” or regular review and adjustment of targets.  In many industrial facilities, this might occur daily.

The Smart Plant culture reaches across organization silos, reaches across locations and reaches across time to share ownership of challenges and solve problems together.  The “blame game” is minimized and new employees are oriented into the shared beliefs and experience of problem-solving and sharing information, both good news and bad news.  Training shifts from isolated prevention of blame to team training which share performance.

Article authored by Stan DeVries Snr SOlution Architect at Schneider - Electric