Ran Charan, who I wrote about a few days ago, made another excellent contribution to my thinking (and hopefully yours), the concept of "social operating mechanisms." He defines them as mechanisms that synchronise individual contributors' efforts.
A step back
Individualism vs. collectivism represent two personality-types. There are the managers, who are integrators and bring both groups together and (are supposed to) identify with the greater purpose of the organisation: maximisation of profit, etc. And there are individual contributors, who through their own efforts bring forth new data and growth, etc. These types are not always suited for management, as they need that freedom to be creative.
Social operating mechanisms fit within the framework of execution, in the sense that that is one of the last stages in a multi-stage process. As the leader/problem-solver of an organisation, you start by identifying a problem; you come up with a set number of fundamental priorities to solve the problem; and you (design social operating mechanisms to) spread that solution throughout your organisation.
An example
Mr. Charan mentions a number of examples, but (for obvious reasons perhaps), I like the Wal-Mart one the best.
- In the early 90s, every Monday to Wednesday, ca. 30 regional managers visited 9 Wal-Mart stores and 6 competitor-ones, to check if Wal-Mart's strategy of offering lower prices than the competition was being implemented correctly.
- Every Thursday-morning, Sam Walton conducted a 4-hour session with a group of 50 people, including those regional managers, buyers, logistics- and advertising people to discuss the status quo, what was going right and wrong, and the future.
Making it relevant?
If this seems like a big-company problem, maybe so. But even on a smaller scale, you could see a similar process happening in the week of a franchise-owner, I discussed a few weeks ago.
As soon as an organisation grows beyond a few people, the barriers between your customers and the leadership of an organisation increase. The politics can be frustrating and are one of the main reasons why original founders leave. The Amazon-story, which I wrote about a while ago, and which also discusses of how Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon tries to keep in touch with the core-principles of Amazon, is also an example of a social operating mechanism.
Naturally, today's reality is somewhat different from the time (2000) that the book was published. We have "the internet" now, which should make creating social mechanisms a much easier to solve. I say 'should' as opposed to 'will,' because it still requires the necessary cohesion, which many technological solutions (in my opinion) are still lacking.
It still comes down to designing people-processes which help you implement core-priorities, and having the tolerance for, let's call them, idiotic decisions that sometimes come from the type of group-think often prevalent in organisations.
The picture is courtesy of infed.org
5 links—retail-saturation, RFID's costs, elements of fun, tricking shoppers, & home-cinemas
0 comments Posted by Unknown at 10:41 AMIt is time for those links again! This time, we'll be discussing the economics of Apple's physical stores, how Walmart is enforcing RFID, how retailers are trying to trick people to buy more expensive things, how people perceive fun in games, and 10 ultra-geeky home-cinemas.
As usual, my bookmarks can be found here, and the previously covered links, here. Enjoy!
Link 1: Why is Apple saturating (US) cities with retail stores? is a question that Choire Sicha asks on Kottke.org, and lead me to this profit & cost breakdown of Apple's retail stores at Seeking Alpha (see pic below). It does appear it's all about the money, though hard it remains to read Apple's mind 100%. In related news, OObject lists all the items needed to build an Apple store.
Link 2: Is RFID economically feasible? I'm planning to dedicate at least 1-2 posts on RFID on this blog in the future, as I've essentially been following its development since the early coverage on Slashdot. This story on InformationWeek discusses the pressure that Walmart, certainly the biggest champion for RFID in the retail-arena, is putting on its suppliers to finally add RFID into their logistics-chain. As far as I remember, the latter have been complaining about the unfair balance of cost that RFID causes, shifting most of them onto suppliers. I assume, however, that these chips and pallets are reusable.
Link 3: What makes games fun? Lightspeed Venture Partners has an interesting blog, which mostly discusses the business and principles behind digital games. I follow it because games are fun, and if you can understand the source-code of fun, you can replicate it elsewhere. In that spirit, then, it links to an interesting white paper trying to map out what exactly goes on in gamers' heads while playing games. Part 1 is also very much worth a read.
Link 4: A buyer's christmas? The New Yorker digs into consumers' buying behaviour. Interesting is, that people use the net most often to find info, not to buy, but can use that info inside stores (we'll still need ubiquitous internet for it to be shoppers' utopia, however). Equally interesting is, that if a store has two microwaves, consumers will usually buy the cheaper one. With three products, however, they will usually by the mid-priced one. There's still room for trickery, I guess…
Link 5: 10 stunning ultra-geeky home cinemas. In the spirit of my previous post on cinemas & luxury, I thought that this link would be fitting. The Star Trek-themed one is a little too geeky for me, but the Titanic one (no. 6) looks awesome. I'm still doubtful about whether it's about the design or about the movie, but I can't deny that people put a lot of work into designing these.
Metaphor: I am the bunny or rather my thesis is. Everything is progressing well, but of course it's a lot of work. More when I'm done.
(via Kottke)
5 links to let people know I'm not dead:
- How to choose a name for your product / service / business by Scott Trimble - not much to say about it, except it rocks.
- The 8 challenges innovations face by Scott Berkun - there's so much talk about how cool innovation is (flying cars, anyone?), and very little about how hard it is to actually bring it to the market. Exactly the topic of my thesis, btw., mostly focussed on Scott's point 3: "Find a sponsor and funding".
- The 2007 Esquire 100 has some awesome food-related stuff. Namely on Luxardo, Sechuan buttons, New Texas Cuisine, Rum, shrinking cocktails, The Best Breakfast in America (mmmh looks good!), Washington Wine, and other cool stuff.
- Understanding Web Design by Jeffrey Zeldman - "Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity." Kind of applies to designing other kinds of interactive environments as well (don't shoot me Jeff).
- Wal-Mart’s Environmental Report Card (NYTimes) - the point is that Walmart is continuously increasing its competitive advantage in the area of green tech, which is sure to affect businesses bottom-line in the future. So get busy!
The 
