Incoherence

 We live in a mixed world full of order and chaos, information and emotion; we need to reach a stage to assess the logic of everything: thoughts, words, actions for dealing with complex problems.

Organizations rise and fall, not on the quantum of plans and resources, but on the capabilities to lead and manage, change and innovate, yet most important to execute. The most obvious symptom of business distress is the widespread problem of incoherence, illogic, and ineffectiveness. 

The degree of planning has a positive correlation with the degree of uncertainty and unpredictability. Do not fix the symptom only, but dig through the root cause of business issues, deal with them in a structured way and make continuous improvement.

Information incoherence: Information and knowledge do not stand still! It flows into the company, it flows out of it, and it flows outwardly in terms of products and services deliveries. The scarcity of information, misinformation or overspecialization make people get stuck in their comfort zone, lacking agility to create momentum or misleading business to make wrong decisions. Information is one of the most invaluable corporate assets, also a great liability. Information incoherence is perhaps one of the biggest pitfalls for business management if it is not handled properly or interpreted accurately. Information management effectiveness directly impacts the maturity level of the entire business.

Every company has a significant amount of information with mixed quality; it does not live alone but permeates everywhere in the businesses. Information abundance brings both opportunities and risks. Important bits and bytes of quality information can help to connect the cross domain dots for generating fresh ideas. It helps to forecast a new market, an emerging technology trend, or business growth opportunities. But there are also inherent dangers of too much information/knowledge particularly because of the inconsistencies and incoherence in the body of information/knowledge that surrounds us. Information incoherence causes miscommunication, poor judgment, or ineffective decisions, and even causes demise of their business, etc. Thus, information management effectiveness directly impacts the agility and maturity of their organization.

Logic incoherence: We live in a mixed world full of order and chaos, information and emotion; we need to reach a stage to assess logic of everything: thoughts, words, actions for dealing with complex problems or rewriting the rules of the competitive game to overcome the common challenge. In reality, we observe highly technical and rational people acting on impulses/gut feelings or so-called “irrational mind” in spur of moments to become part of problems rather than solutions. The negative emotions release negative energy, not helping to adopt the right course of actions. .

Trying to leverage linear logic to solve today’s complex problems could only have "irrational thoughts," or come up with illogical solutions. To dig into the root cause, if there are such illogical problems,” it’s because people do not want to take a rational step towards learning and adapting to the changing new normal. As a matter of fact, irrational thoughts cause illogical actions; and logic incoherence enlarges the multitude of gaps; confuses cause and effect; ignores the sequence and consequence, etc. Incoherent management further causes culture friction and decelerates performance.

Process incoherence: Besides irrational thoughts, process incoherence could become a serious problem that significantly decreases business performance or stifles innovation. Businesses have processes before flow-graphing was invented and before computers existed. The process is "what are you trying to do, what result are you trying to achieve." Incoherent processes cause delays, waste resources, disengage employees, and dissatisfied customers. Incoherent process management is often caused by a lack of policies and governance procedures that define processes; lack of commitment of resources and time to education & communication cross silos; or failure to introduce cultural change or change management initiatives.

The goal of process optimization is to eliminate unnecessary complications, to reduce the burden on the company. The simplified, end to end processes clarify business logic, enable speed of execution and allow the organization to act in a coherent manner. Processes underpin capabilities, and capabilities underpin strategy execution, Process improvement should happen at the business’s daily life, there must be some governance to manage process changes, improve process intelligence and enhance process coherence.

The world is becoming smaller every day and as a consequence, every successful business has to sooner or later step into the uncharted waters and blurred business territories. Logic is often nonlinear and multidimensional in today’s “VUCA” world. Traditional organizational management often causes bureaucracy which is criticized for its inflexibility, inefficiency, silo, unresponsiveness, or lack of innovation, etc. To untangle unprecedented complexity, not only surviving from daily busyness but also thriving in the hyper-connected, always-on business environment, business management needs to clarify the logic at every critical step, glue up all important hard and soft business elements into differentiated business competency to reach the next level of organizational maturity.

Posted in: Digital Pitfalls,GAPs