Routines and management information
What do people need to see, and when?
Most of the work is in the routines: what people see, how often, and who follows up. I like making the small changes there that make a big difference.
A note on this piece
This is part of my day-to-day work rather than a single project, so I’ve written about how I approach it. Specific examples are best talked through in person, so they aren’t published here.
01Where it starts
The situation
In big organisations, a lot of getting things done is held together by routines: the reviews, forums and reports through which people see what’s happening and decide what to do about it.
02What makes it hard
Why it’s tricky
Every function reports a little differently. Information gets assembled by hand, arrives late and is reshaped on the way up. Meetings multiply, who’s responsible gets blurry across the matrix, and people spend their time reconciling numbers instead of deciding things.
A meeting that exists to find out the facts can’t also make the decision.
03My remit
My part
My teams look after the planning and performance information that feeds decision-making: what gets measured, how it’s put together, and how often it’s reviewed.
04How it gets handled
How I go about it
I work backwards from the decision someone needs to make. One version of each number, with a named owner. A predictable cadence, so people can prepare for it, and enough clarity about responsibility that a gap has a name against it.
05The lesson
What I’ve taken from it
Changing a routine is one of the cheapest ways to change how an organisation works. It doesn’t need a restructure, a new system or a new strategy.
Where this sits in the sketch
- Execution
- Performance
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Analytics and automation