It all started with a simple question

Hey there, Remember me?

After, I got off the meeting with my boss, I knew that we needed a change in the way we operated.

I started off with the very first thing that came to my mind - listing down the dimensions to look at - policies, processes, team structures and more. Just then, I wondered, how will I gather all this information without the team's help, especially when no one's really got the time for it?

Oh... Then it hit me! The easiest way - one simple question - How does an average day look like for each one of them?

This question, turned the tables around. I gained umpteen insights on various contexts - the team, their attitude and where their time is invested in a typical day.

I realised there is a diversity in the employees, some were go-getters, some were laid back and some were just doing their job. However, almost all of them were so used to the way things happened around here that they failed to realize what went wrong.

I consolidate all of their responses, into a simple matrix listing down the tasks, their skill set and mapping to the time spent. This matrix and the conversations with them, helped me draw some key conclusions,

• Everyone is doing everything with no clear segregation of tasks
• Diversified employees led to diversified expectations
• Manually dependent processes - WFH demand is an added difficulty
• Skills versus work mismatch
• Work executed was not always of value
• Technology was not as enabling or empowering as we expected it to be

I wondered if this was something that was happening across the organization, but I thought let's fix this in my department first.

With all my conclusions in place I discuss with my senior team, my overall findings and ask for their feedback and support, for starting with something that is within our control. And that is to restructure ourselves first - the Mini Moneyball strategy. We jointly came up with a model just based on principles

• To have the "work executed where it makes more sense"
• To Define that work around "customer encounters and demands"
• To provide Flexibility for the team - based on need

So, seniors do not end up taking the load of juniors and like-wise, juniors have the operational freedom - with overall accountability defined and implemented for measurement.

I am going back to the Boss now, with my plan in place & commitment from team for today and plan for tomorrow. That plan for tomorrow has to be all encompassing - People, Processes and Technology, with focus on continuous empowerment and improvement, open mic platform, automated processes, empowered customers and easy to use technology.

I am hoping our motivated quick wins are going to pave the way for long term changes!

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