After a great amount reflection, I believe we are missing something. I am convinced that we don’t have a clear understanding of what creates and drives business success. And, in particular, what role systems play in the creation of business success.
Many years ago, I was working with a non-profit serving people with disabilities and mental health issues. They had been focused on the importance of accurate and timely documentation, but it was not making a difference. People were just not that concerned about sloppy or late documentation.
So, the head of the business office came and drew out the system for getting paid once the documentation has been completed. She explained it within the context of how much time it took to submit the paperwork for getting paid once the documentation was entered. She also explained how much they got paid per hour for services rendered. Next, she showed what happened if she submitted the documentation to get paid and it got rejected for being incomplete due to poor documentation. She explained it in regards to time and cost. In essence, she showed that when inaccurate documentation was submitted, the company actually lost time and money when it had to be resubmitted. The middle managers were stunned. They had no idea. It was a perfect example of spatial blindness.
Listening to this entire presentation and subsequent dialogue, it was clear that awareness was not understanding. It also was clear that spatial blindness is caused by an under communication problem. To build a resilient system requires quite a bit of thought and effort.
One other thing that was interesting about this whole experience was that the senior manager who sat in on this meeting was stunned that middle managers did not understand the interconnection between documentation and payment. He also was stunned with the lack of resilience within the system.
As I have explained before, resilience is a combination of keeping errors small and of improving workarounds that allow the system to keep functioning. In this particular situation, the work around was cumbersome and there were no quality checks before documentation was submitted. As for me, I found it interesting that no one was collecting the data on how many documentation errors were happening within the system. And no one was using the aforementioned data to make better decisions.
This week, reflect on this story and focus on eliminating spatial blindness. I also encourage you to use more data to make better decisions.
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