Knowing Varying Causes of Business Deficiencies

By knowing the varying causes of business deficiencies, a digital organization can bring greater awareness of the intricacies and the systemic value. 

With rapid changes and exponential growth of information, businesses today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work, predict the emerging opportunities and risks, know the varying causes of business deficiencies, to drive progress changes, with the goal to build an ever-evolving, hyperconnected and highly energetic digital organization.





Information deficiency: Besides people, information is one of the most valuable assets in the organization today. Companies with information management deficiency do not have all the information needed, they do not have all the mechanisms & authority to collect that information and they do not have all the skills necessary to evaluate the information, so they cannot provide the right information to the right people for making the right decisions timely. Information deficiency causes decision ineffectiveness and decelerates business speed. If information management is done properly; it can turn the most invaluable personally-owned information and knowledge assets into corporately owned assets.

We are experiencing a paradigm shift from information scarcity in the industrial age to information exponentiality in the digital era. From chaos to order, the business management needs to streamline information flow, identify how information is associated with the valued tangibles of businesses, products and resources, refine and reuse information to generate invaluable knowledge, and manage their information cycle effectively. . Information management should be managed holistically as the corporate asset; if done properly; it can turn the most invaluable personally-owned information and knowledge assets into corporately owned assets.

Prioritization inappropriateness: Most businesses today get stuck on “keeping the light on” state of busyness without moving forward with solid speed. The problem is that often the top managers haven’t done enough to set the right priority and communicate the strategic goals thoroughly with employees. Without effective prioritization skills, the gaps only enlarge, the business performance suffers, and further leads to the management incoherence. Prioritization is critical, as the alternative is a land grab for resources. It is usually suboptimal and damaging, especially when legitimate top priorities are delayed.

Technically, there is no way to create a definitive prioritized list without more business context. Prioritization is a sort of “balance” skill, to know when to take the gas pedal to accelerate speed and when to take the brake to control the risks. Running business is an iterative and progressive business continuum. Effective change management should dig through the real issues which need to be addressed, or the real causes of changes, and prepare the change following the logical steps “look, listen, question, understand, plan, prioritization, implementation, test and collaboration, adjustment & improvement.”

Process inefficiency: The reality in most organizations though is the process which is forcibly jammed within an existing organizational design. Traditional organizational management with siloed processes often causes bureaucracy which is criticized for its inflexibility, inefficiency, silo, stagnation, unresponsiveness, or lack of innovation. Bureaucracy = Process Inefficiency. No Bureaucracy ≠ No Rules. The goal-driven business process is primarily defined prior to process implementation. The goal of process management is to eliminate unnecessary complications, optimize processes to reduce the burden on the company while trying to stay current with ever-changing technologies and dynamic business environments.

To dig into the root causes to business deficiencies, inefficient or inconsistent process management is often caused by a lack of policies and governance procedures that define processes. Strong business processes have a better chance to deliver a better result. The emerging technologies and platforms, efficient apps, and tools, help to lubricate processes, flatter business hierarchies, allow people across the business ecosystem to share knowledge for solving common business problems and improving business flexibility.

Talent disengagement: Although every organization declares people are the most invaluable asset. Statistically, about 70% of employees are not engaged in their work either because they cannot unleash their potential, strengthen their natural strength or because of the bureaucratic management style. In specific, there are external factors and internal factors that influence the engagement level of an employee. A few disengagement reasons include: The employee does not feel connected. The employee does not feel like they have an opportunity to contribute, or their work gets recognized. The employee desires to have more visibility in the organization, On the authority/responsibility matrix, low authority, and low responsibility leads to apathetic employees. On the satisfaction/contribution matrix, low satisfaction, and low contribution lead to disengaged employees.

So management needs to value engagement over empire-building. The best way to get people engaged is for the business to have a well thought out strategy that is communicated throughout the organization. Then, managers should help employees find ways to link their activities or long term career goals to that strategy. By doing that, every individual should be able to see what they do in their job makes a difference to the company. The bottoms-up engagement of personnel should be part of your annual strategy review. Whichever strategy mapping tool you use (such as the balanced scorecard), this creates an annual opportunity to ensure personnel is not only being engaged but their focus on energy aligned with the organizational strategy.

Resource limitation: Digital organizations are always on and ever-evolving, there are emerging issues coming out on a daily basis. The organization has limited resources, time, and talent, they can’t chase all emerging opportunities or capture everything that looks shiny. The really important thing is to understand the core business of your enterprise and the problem to solve, apply finite resources to get the best yield possible to meet stakeholders’ expectations. When resource management becomes a bottleneck for organizational learning and digital transformation success, no wonder companies across the vertical sectors get stuck going nowhere. To address the resource competition issue, the 'benefit' must often be articulated in user-specific currency. Resource allocation scenario needs to be transparent, so how the resource allocation is determined should be understood by all. Resource allocation scenario helps to take advantage of resources effectively.

There are all sorts of resources including technological, financial, reputational, market structure and institutional assets. Organizations have limited resources, it’s critical to mind the resource and investment gap of corporate learning to enforce a holistic resource management discipline to unlock the organizational performance, potential, and competency. It is important to have resources aligned with the business strategies/objectives for doing the right things; refined to the point that they are nimble, can adapt to changing business demands in a timely fashion, can be reapplied to altering business priorities and be effective with little down curve. Technically, the firm’s processes use resources, specifically the processes to integrate, reconfigure, gain and release resources to match and even create market change. The unprecedented digital convenience brings significant opportunities for accelerating the business speed and shifting from resource deficiency to business efficiency to digital proficiency.

GRC ineffectiveness: The company’s GRC discipline helps the business running in the right direction. Besides identifying risks, spotting opportunities as well. Without an effective GRC approach, organizations could miss the opportunity if they solely focus on quantifiable benefits or short-term business profit. Therefore, from risk control to risk intelligence, the right dose of risk appetite and attitude are critical to the long-term success of the business. Business management needs to define organizational risk appetite and risk attitude so they know the business tolerance of their enterprise for the resulting downsides risks.

Either preventing or mitigating risks, it requires business insight and strong GRC disciplines to predict the upcoming risks and help the business prevent potential problems. There is possibly a different scenario in which the identification of negative risks unearths an opportunity. This is all a matter of perspective. It requires the stakeholders to open their perspectives or framing on what they are observing and develop a set of GRC practice to improve business maturity. GRC practices need to be converged into cohesive management disciplines, and well integrated into the key components of business strategy.

Digital business is a system that increases in adaptability, flexibility, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, disruptions, or faults. By knowing the varying causes of business deficiencies, a digital organization can bring greater awareness of the intricacies and the systemic value of organizational systems, business process, people dynamics, resource alignment, information abundance, and technological touches, be adaptive to rapid change, and be innovative to create unique business value.

Posted in: Digital Pitfalls,Lessons from Failures