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Limitations of models

IT is at the heart of an organisation, enabling and supporting everything the organisation does from HR, to product development to customer service. In many areas of industry and public service, IT no longer simply supports other parts of the organisation to develop products and serve customers, IT is integral to the product and the way customers interact with the business.

The challenge for IT professionals is to find effective ways of realising the full potential of technology-intensive business systems. Considerable know-how and experience has been accumulated over IT’s 50-year business history, and much has been invested in devising quality models and standards. However, a great many myths also abound, frequently created or promoted by parties with a vested interest in a particular model. Quality standards show you where to improve – but not how or why.

An evidence-driven approach should be taken to the adoption of standards and frameworks, as with every other business decision:

• Understand the model-maker’s purpose, and use the guidance provided in appropriate ways. It is guidance; not a rulebook.
• Focus on the outcome not the certificate. Compliance, or the attainment of certificates and interim targets, all too often becomes confused with true business goals. This is dysfunctional; meaning it is behaviour which detracts from overall business performance.
• There should always be a sound business case for adopting an improvement programme, defining clear business benefits and measurable outcomes.
• Measure progress and business results – not compliance to the model. If it matters, measure it. And if it doesn’t, don’t. It is possible to be effective and compliant, but only if effectiveness is the focus. A focus on compliance will not deliver improved effectiveness – or the associated business benefits of improved effectiveness.
• Communication is key to successful and sustainable improvement. Good measurement practices and short feedback loops are vital.

There are many bear-traps into which numerous well-intentioned improvement initiatives have disappeared without trace. Integrated team-working, responsibility-based performance management, and many other behaviours which support value focus, continuous flow, and pull, are often counter-intuitive, especially to staff used to operating in a compliance culture. Because 75-80% of organisations are ‘average’, achieving typically poor levels of performance, few people ever experience ‘high performance’ and do not realise there are better ways of doing things than those they are used to. To achieve real changes in effectiveness, most organisations will need a specialist guide whose experience goes beyond knowledge of the models themselves.

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