چرخه حیات سازمان ( مقاله انگلیسی )

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چرخه حیات، سازمان، رشد

 

Organizational Life Cycle Management                           

 Optimizing Your Product Management Organization Through “Continuous Evolution”

 

 April 2015 !

We have all heard the term “continuous improvement” applied to any number of business disciplines

from manufacturing processes, to quality principles, to entire organizations. But what do these words

really mean? The general idea is that you should never be satisfied with where you are at any given

moment. If you set a goal and reach it, than set it higher and go for it again because, if you don’t,

someone else will. What makes this phrase slightly more clever than obvious is the use of the word

“continuous”. Still, I have to say that something about the semantics just doesn’t sit right with me in

every situation. In particular, I’m just not sure it’s the right phrase to use with respect to business teams or organizations. You can improve a result – that much I’ll concede. But can you really improve an organization? And, more importantly, do you have to? !

That seems an awfully controversial way to start a discussion. So why even ponder this question at all?

Well, in searching for future topics of interests for our clients and readers, we inquired as to what things were weighing heavy on your minds. One of the top answers was for us to feature an article on how to “continuously improve” Product Management organizations. Believe it or not, this is that article! But I didn’t want to just take the request at face value. Asking how to improve an organization

automatically implies that there is actually something that needs improving and, although that might

be the case in some companies (because, for example, the organization is not achieving the desired

result), in many other cases, organizations are already over-performing to their goals. So in these

situations, “improvement” may be the wrong word to use. Instead, the phrase we might be looking for

is “continuous evolution”. !

At the Product Management Leadership Summit in May 2012, I gave a talk on “Managing the Vitality

of The Product Management Organization.” In short, the theory is that we can think about managing

organizations the same way that we manage products. After all, isn’t an organization providing a

service? And isn’t that service a product that is consumed and utilized, just like any other product?

So if we look at a product’s life cycle, we have 4 distinct phases, as shown below:

 

 

Life

Of course, not every life cycle curve will look exactly the same, but the general principle is that you will

have a phase of growth, followed by a tailing off period, a leveling period, and then a decline period

until the product finally reaches the end of its life. The second part of the theory is that a product is

“most alive” during the growth and maturity phases – meaning that it is producing maximum output in

terms of revenue and profitability. Of course, there are always exceptions to this rule, but we generally

find that this theory holds true for most products or services. !

When we talk about the concept of product or portfolio “vitality”, we are saying that a company

should pay attention to how many products they have in their respective portfolios that are in the

growth phases of their life cycles. The more products a company has that are in the growth phase, the

more “vital” or “alive” that company’s portfolio will be and, hopefully, the result will be stronger

revenues and higher profitability. Some companies measure this with what is commonly referred to as

a “new product vitality index” – that is, measuring the revenues of new products (released within x

amount of years) as a percentage of their overall company revenues. The variable “x”, by the way,

should be chosen (although this is often overlooked) based on the typical time period that a product

stays in the growth phase for the given served market. In any case, the theory is generally true that the

higher the “new product vitality index”, the better the long-term health of a given company’s

performance will be. !

So is this about “improvement” or “evolution”? Perhaps it’s a little of both. But rather than talk about

every metric showing improvement, I like to say that we are targeting big-picture improvement by

evolving the overall portfolio. So if we continuously added new products into our portfolio, the resulting curve(s) might look something like this:

 

 

And so, by managing the overall vitality of their portfolios, companies could ensure that they always

have positive growth engines to help balance products that are going into the maturity, decline or exit

phases of their respective lives. !

If we agree on this basic principle for portfolio management, we can ask ourselves if we see any

parallels to the way products behave throughout their lives, and the way organizations behave. I know

that when I first enter a new job, I go into it with vigor, excitement, and a fresh perspective. This is a new adventure – one that I have never embarked upon before and, as such, I am much more likely to take every step with more passion and more enthusiasm than if I had “been there and done that” all

before.

Learn. Apply. Succeed.

Monthly Tips on Product Management,

We’ve all heard the expression that “the journey is more exciting than the destination”. Well, in my

experience, the same can be said of a job. That’s not to say that we won’t be effective after doing

something for a number of years. But I truly believe that we all need a fresh set of perspectives and a

renewed sense of energy to help keep us as sharp and motivated as possible. What I am describing, in

so many words, is an organizational life cycle curve. !

Just like products, organizations will follow the phases of growth, maturity, decline and exit. It isn’t that employees become stale or complacent in their roles but, rather, that the roles do not always evolve and, so, employees don’t always have any other choices. If someone is doing the same thing over and over for years on end, they will inevitably follow the life cycle curve. But if companies can find ways to infuse new energy and life into their organizations then, with all other things being equal, long-time employees will continue to deliver exceptional performance because their knowledge and skills will evolve with every new challenge that is presented. And, just as in the new product example, this will help to keep that organization vital. !

So, one might be inclined to conclude from all of this that turning personnel over on a regular basis

could be a potential solution to the problem of organizational complacency. In fact, I am suggesting

just the opposite. It is far too easy to blame employees for stagnant performance when, instead, the

accountability usually rests with the company itself. Turnover costs companies time, money, and

valuable knowledge that is often difficult to replace. New recruits might bring fresh perspectives, but, in too large a quantity, this benefit will most certainly be lost in the task of having to constantly retrain

new employees. So new energy is gained, but overall momentum is lost. The key, then, is to maintain

organizational balance - just as you would for a product portfolio. And the measurement is not in how

many years an employee has been there but, rather, on what new adventures those employees are

embarking on. !

 

To achieve this balance, I propose that companies focus on three areas for organizational growth:

Strategic Initiatives, Skills, and Processes. Rather than mapping the life cycle of an employee,

companies should map the life cycle of these three areas of organizational development. With this in

mind, companies should ask themselves the following basic questions: !

1. Is our strategy evolving along with market trends and customer needs?

2. Are we requiring that people develop new skills that are aligned with that evolving strategy, and

are we providing adequate training for those skills?

3. Are we developing processes and providing tools to enable employees to fully utilize those skills in order to execute on our evolving strategy?

Learn. Apply. Succeed.

Monthly Tips on Product Management,

So we have three basic organizational areas to map, each with its own life cycle curve:

 

 

 

 

If companies can find a way to measure each of these three things, they can, in theory, also measure

the vitality of their respective organizations. And, just as with product lines, greater vitality should

equate to higher performing organizations. Further, by focusing on strategic, skill, and process

development rather than years of experience, organizations should be able to achieve that vitality

with minimum, or at least positive and planned, personnel turnover. !

But how do we measure these potentially ambiguous developmental areas? Much like trying to

determine the “x” variable in the product vitality index (where “x” is how many years a product is in its

growth phase), companies must decide what the right measurements are for their own particular

organizations. This will certainly vary from company to company, but it must be related to how often

strategies, skills, and processes need to evolve in order to serve market and customer needs and to

stay ahead of the competition. To determine this, companies will have to factor in market trends,

technological trends, and industry trends – just as they would when they are developing product and

business strategies.

Learn. Apply. Succeed.

Monthly Tips on Product Management,

Once determined, some typical measurements might look something like this:

 

 

Total # of New Strategic Initiatives / Total # of Strategic Initiatives = Strategic Vitality

Total # of Newly Trained Product Managers / Total # of Product Managers = Skill Vitality

Total # of New or Updated Process / Total # of Processes = Process Vitality

Learn

In this example, each respective “vitality index” would be calculated by dividing the “new” by the

“total”, just as you would for a new product vitality index. Whatever the decided metrics, what is

important is that each of these areas are quantifiably measured, and that the company maintains the

required balance to evolve their organizations along with their product portfolios. !

So, to answer more directly the question of how companies can “continuously improve” their Product

Management organizations, my response would be that improvement must be looked at on a macro,

not micro, level, and that macro-level improvement can only be achieved by “evolving” your

organization along with your product portfolio. But true evolution does not come in the form of

changing large numbers of people around. Instead, you evolve your people by evolving the

environments that they work within. Focusing on strategies, skills, and processes is one way to achieve

this without drastic or ineffective turnover that can leave employees feeling inadequate and deflated,

and will inevitably drain valuable time and resources from the organization. Instead, companies can

“continuously improve” their organizations by allowing those organizations to continuously learn,

continuously grow, and continuously evolve. Give people new adventures, and the organization will

stay forever vital. And, with that, your company will continue to prosper.

 

 

 

About the Author: Bob Caporale is the President of The Product Management Executive Board and

Sequent Learning Networks. Bob has over 20 years of experience leading marketing, R&D, and Product

Management functions for several large international corporations, and is also an accomplished

keyboardist and composer, having written, produced, and marketed several independently released

musical albums and projects - a feat that he proudly adds to his portfolio of product management

experience! Bob can be reached at [e-mail].

 

222 East 46th Street • Suite 501 • New York, NY 10017 • [phone] • sequentlearning.com

. Apply. Succeed.