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dhtobey Tobey

Putting organizational complexity in its place - McKinsey Quarterly - Organization - St... - 0 views

www.mckinseyquarterly.com/...l_complexity_in_its_place_2580

complexity organizational-behavior research assessment LivingSurvey

shared by dhtobey Tobey on 10 May 10 - No Cached
  • The goal? To identify where institutional complexity is an issue, where complexity caused by factors such as a lack of role clarity or poor processes is a problem, and what’s responsible for the complexity in each area. Companies can then boost organizational effectiveness through a combination of two things: removing complexity that doesn’t add value and channeling what’s left to employees who can either handle it naturally or be trained to cope with it.
  • In this article, we review the experience of a multinational consumer goods manufacturer that applied this approach in several regions and functions and consequently halved the time it needed to make decisions in critical processes.
  • Armed with the survey data, the manufacturer constructed several “heat maps” to help senior managers pinpoint where, and why, complexity was causing trouble for employees. Each map showed a particular breakdown—a region or function, for example—and how much complexity of various kinds was occurring there, as well as the level of coping skills employees possessed.
    • dhtobey Tobey
      dhtobey Tobey on 10 May 10
       
      Heat maps would be a nice tool for the CD. We should begin to create a catalog of these visualizations that support decision analysis, as opposed to simple graphical displays in basic analytics applications that don't naturally lead to a transformation that provides insights.
    • dhtobey Tobey
      dhtobey Tobey on 10 May 10
       
      Additionally, each of these "temperatures" should have a gradient to indicate the degree of consensus associated with each map. The graphic below implies there is only one view that all share -- preposterous!
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • A regional map, reproduced here (Exhibit 1), highlighted confusion over accountability between the company’s headquarters and a country office in the same region. T
  • Another map showed how the manufacturer’s supply chain employees were struggling with duplication that stemmed from confusing sales forecasting and from ordering processes that required decisions to pass through multiple loops (including time-consuming iterations with regional offices) prior to approval.
  • Of course, managers must be mindful that not all complexity is equally manageable, and proceed accordingly (Exhibit 2). Exhibit 2: Types of complexity Imposed complexity includes laws, industry regulations, and interventions by nongovernmental organizations. It is not typically manageable by companies. Inherent complexity is intrinsic to the business, and can only be jettisoned by exiting a portion of the business. Designed complexity results from choices about where the business operates, what it sells, to whom, and how. Companies can remove it, but this could mean simplifying valuable wrinkles in their business model. Unnecessary complexity arises from growing misalignment between the needs of the organization and the processes supporting it. It is easily managed once identified.
  • Whenever companies tackle complexity, they will ultimately find some individuals who seem less troubled by it than others. This is not surprising. People are different: some freeze like deer in the headlights in the face of ambiguity, uncertainty, complex roles, and unclear accountabilities; others are able to get their work done regardless.
    • dhtobey Tobey
      dhtobey Tobey on 10 May 10
       
      Difference between the ability to handle complexity may be due to thinkLets and assessable using the Bivariate Emotion Indicator I developed in my dissertation. This could be an assessment of a "CIP CMM" that we offer NEPCO through Assante's new non-profit.
  • Steve King on 10 May 10
     
    wow great stuff.. fully concur.. IMO a catalog of visualizations is very much in line with our mantra of METHODOLOGY, not TECHNOLOGY :)
dhtobey Tobey

Amazon Stealing the Cloud « SmoothSpan Blog - 2 views

smoothspan.wordpress.com/...amazon-stealing-the-cloud

cloud-computing PAAS SAAS Amazon Google market-research

shared by dhtobey Tobey on 18 May 10 - Cached
  • A survey of 600 developers by Mashery reported that 69% of respondents said Amazon, Google, and Twitter were the most popular API’s they were using.
  • Amazon and Netflix jointly published a great case study and announced Netflix would move more infrastructure into Amazon’s Cloud.
  • A wonderful post on CNet talks about Goldman Sachs’ findings for the Cloud.  There were a ton of them including:           – A ranked list of apps moving into the Cloud.  Web Conferencing and Salesforce Automation were #1 and #2. 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The majority of SMB’s now have a “SaaS first” policy, they prefer it. 
  • Amazon.com is used by 67 percent of the survey respondents. It is clearly the out-in-front leader, despite being a “newcomer” to enterprise IT. For internal clouds, VMware’s leadership remains pronounced, with 83 percent of respondents using its virtualization technology.  Platform-as-a-service layers are gaining momentum, dominated by Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, service, with 77 percent of respondents choosing EC2 as a preferred partner, well ahead of Google.  These share numbers are why the title of this post is that Amazon is stealing the Cloud.  They represent remarkable share and momentum.
  • UK firm Netcraft finds that the Amazon Cloud hosts 365,000 web sites.  Evidently a number of firms have discovered that web hosting is a great commodity use for the Cloud. -  PC World asks why Amazon doesn’t charge more for its service.  They conclude that AWS is looking to build economies of scale and set low prices that act as a barrier to entry for new competitors.  Like I said, Amazon isn’t afraid of being commoditized for they are the commoditizers.
  • And they’re building barriers to entry of several kinds: -  Nobody but Amazon has the experience of running a Cloud service on this scale.  They can’t help but be learning important things about how to do it well that potential competitors have yet to discover. -  There is a growing community of developers whose Cloud education is all about Amazon. 
dhtobey Tobey

Rollett: The Web 2.0 way of learning with technologies - Google Scholar - 0 views

scholar.google.com/scholar

research VivoWorks eLearning software design social-learning web2.0

shared by dhtobey Tobey on 31 May 10 - Cached
  • dhtobey Tobey on 31 May 10
     
    Another seminal article feed for the library. This one on social learning systems design.
dhtobey Tobey

Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES) - 0 views

monochrome.com.au/oles.htm

research instructional-design online-learning survey

shared by dhtobey Tobey on 21 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES) is an online survey instrument for evaluating e-learning environments. The data collected and the resultant statistics depict the actual and preferred learning environment of individuals and groups of learners giving valuable feedback to educators working in these environments. Using the OLES educators can gather valuable pre-course and post-course data to evaluate the effectiveness of the e-learning environment. Adjustments can then be made accordingly to improve or adjust the learning environment.
  • dhtobey Tobey on 21 Feb 11
     
    Survey to use in the Critical Intelligence validation phase
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