Nine Systemic Business Symptoms

Background of the Conclusions

This article, nine systemic business symptoms, is excerpted from data captured by our parent business Benninghofen Company's Leadership Mentoring Practice (Footnote 1).

The data spans the most recent 15 years. The article is not a scholarly analysis, rather an accumulation of pointed observations taken from various software implementations, leadership mentoring, training, and facilitation projects with primarily small business owners (SBO’s) and a smattering of enterprise companies

““All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.””

— Esther Derby, Agile Alliance Conference Speaker

A Framework for B2B Marketing

 A Framework for B2B Content Marketing from Kapost is a pictorial example of the relationship between process and content. The colored squares lend themselves as chaos, which some might consider typical, especially during the diagnosis and analysis phases. Even though Kapost's business concentration is enterprise-based and ours is small business focused, we thought it a good illustration for both complexity and business processes - it also drives home the Esther Derby's point "everything in relation to everything”.

9 Typical Symptoms

Cultural Influences

The symptoms we have identified touch on many topics: company culture, the language used to articulate what the company believes, visual displays used throughout the business that support the beliefs, the process used to support result-based activities of the firm, and the people and actions that they take inside their companies. Outward-facing materials (i.e., public imagery, news releases, publications, etc.) may not match what occurs inside the business.

Providing Awareness

The following items are not an exhaustive list, yet those identified highlight many of the most egregious occurrences that do exist with much small business today. As a preamble, keep in mind that this review is a thought-provoking activity designed to cause and release discovery, insight, and awareness.

1. Clear Purpose/Existence statements are either absent and under articulated throughout the business, units, departments, and teams. When they are defined, there is little current reliance upon them because they no longer apply in real-business or real-life situations. The business and individual (e.g., wall sticker statements, performance plans, and evaluations are ineffective substitutes while becoming bankrupt over time (Footnote 2).

2. Current beliefs and choices system supporting purpose/existence statements are unaligned (Footnote 3) with an uneven commitment of people resulting in loss of high enrollment participation and contributions.

3. Processes are unaligned and ineffectively executed against the belief system. There is a focus on critical and highly visible methods, yet many interrelated ones remain disconnected (i.e., formal vs. informal, automated vs. manual, etc.).

4. There are inconsistencies prevalent throughout essential business processes from planning through implementation and execution.

5. Faulty communications occur within/among internal and external stakeholders. The language supporting the stakeholder choices system does not match the overall company beliefs and choices system: individual beliefs and choices prevail and override, especially during perceived stress and crisis conditions when challenges/issues/problems arise.

6. Problem resolutions and process adaptations don't connect to systemic beliefs and choices, remaining disconnected.

7. Unpredictable outcomes prevail with inconsistent measures for tracking and reporting excellence, quality, and performance.

8. Team and Individual heroics characterize success and are not scalable because of the subsequent problems - refer to (Footnote 4).

9. Singular unaligned language and behaviors undermine productivity, demoralize people, and thwart success.

Our Intention is to bring meaning for you

Circle Back

Now go back and read the symptoms, while asking yourself if any of these conditions occur within your organization? How were you able to notice it happening? How many people in your group recognize these conditions beside you? Have they ever brought them to your attention? What does it mean to your productivity, the morale of your people and your customers and clients? What would your vendors say about you?

(Wisdom Sidebar) We further recommend you spend time reading the "Rise of the Caring Industry" to ponder what has occurred in our society these past fifty to sixty years. We think that you will notice similarities in how people communicate or don't inside your stakeholder groups - disconnection may be occurring for some of the reasons identified in the paper. Citing the examples of pain and unhappiness, we realized that empathy (i.e., listening coupled with understanding) and integrity have also suffered. With insight, one must recognize what's occurring for people, and with integrity, ensure that one's words and actions must match.

If you believe people are the primary assets of your business, consider this. What kinds of actions, words, and processes would need to be put into place to allow your people and other stakeholders to communicate, become aware, understand, prosper and contribute at high levels of participation?

Make the Symptom A Question

You may take the systemic symptoms and place the word "What," "Which," or "How come Our" to begin the sentence, and it now becomes a question you can ask yourself, your employees, and other stakeholders.

Be prepared to be open for new ideas with their feedback - you may be pleasantly surprised with what shows up for you.

Footnotes

1. Leadership Mentoring Practice operates under the brand name of  Choice Awareness Management where we utilize our Beliefs and Choices Methodology (BCM) for businesses, teams and individuals implement virtuous and character belief and choices practices. Our blogs on Benninghofen Company and Choice Awareness Management contain articles about beliefs and choices systems and related topics targeted toward leadership teams and individuals.

2. All things become bankrupt (i.e. degrade) over time: practices, processes, performance, quality, etc., especially when there is limited or no monitoring or adaptation to changes. We loosely refer to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics which describes basic principles familiar in everyday life as support for our statement. It is partially a universal law of decay; the ultimate cause of why everything ultimately falls apart and disintegrates over time. Material things are not eternal. Everything appears to change eventually, and chaos increases.

3. We have used the "unaligned" as an example of our BCM Methodology with the CAM Alignment Ladder, which demonstrates how one can measure the effectiveness of beliefs and choices systems.  A free eBook download describes the importance of measuring using a scale which contains a definition for neutral, plus and minus rankings of beliefs.

4. This reference is about a business which would be considered  Level 1 in a maturity context, which is commonly characterized where processes are unpredictable, poorly controlled and reactive. We refer here to a good example of the Balanced Scorecard Institute's ideas about this and invite you to explore their Strategic Management Maturity Model (SMMM). We perceive their model as a later outgrowth of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) promoted by the Software Engineering Institute, which was created during the early days of software development projects for Department of Defense (DoD). Also see, the Strategic Management Institute (SMI) main website for additional modeling insights. Benninghofen Company has deep experience in software development projects for level 1, 2 and 3 businesses.