Leadership | Avantcio

Building the enterprise and the Employee Experience

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is a sentimental post, a point, and an homage to ideas that have inspired us since we were very young.

Star Trek. Yes, it has inspired many people in many fields. From astronauts to engineers to civil rights leaders. We became especially passionate fans when Star Trek: The Next Generation started. We were immediately drawn to the notion of a future where humanity, along with cultures from across the galaxy, worked together for the betterment of all. To this day, we credit STNG with our love of technology, our curiosity and love of learning, oh… AND, one of our core beliefs when it comes to building a successful enterprise.

Happy Employees Make Happy Customers

There is a considerable amount of writing on the value of having excited, motivated employees. Author and Speaker Simon Sinek is one of the more prolific proponents of the idea that happy employees make happy customers. In Sooner Safer Happier by Jonathan Smart, a key concept of delivering with outcomes that align to agile principles and values is psychological safety. So, what does this have to do with Star Trek? And what is our core belief?

The Employee Experience Should Feel Like Walking onto the Bridge of the Enterprise

With the tools and technology available today, every organization should aspire to make every employee experience feel amazing. In fact, it’s foundational to showing that the organization is committed to living its Mission, Vision, and Values. Another way to think about it is, the employee experience is the actions backing up the words put on the wall.

Onboarding

You only get one chance to make a first impression. We’d like to take you through a short envisioning exercise:

Imagine, you work at a large company. Great benefits, comfortable salary, great manager, great colleagues. But something is missing. You want to be part of something new, something exciting. You decide to join an up-and-coming startup.

They have a promising product, impressive customer base. They offer you a decent salary and a nice chunk of equity to make the leap. You decide to take the leap. You sign the offer, you give in your 30 days notice, and then…

…You wait 4 weeks and hear nothing.
The day before you are supposed to start, you get a phone call from the receptionist. She asks for your employment information. She instructs you to show up at 9:00 am the next day at the office.
You show up at 9:00 am, the office is in a nondescript industrial building. You finally find the door to the company’s office area. There is nobody there yet.
At 9:15 someone finally arrives. They ask who you’re waiting for, you reply, “It’s my first day… I’m the new head of customer success.” The person looks at you with a blank stare, shrugs, and lets you in the door.
At 10:00 the HR director rushes in. Hands you what looks like a hand-me-down laptop with a set of printed instructions. She apologizes and says the CEO is running late today. She suggests getting your computer set up while you wait.
You sit down at the conference room table, you open up the laptop, notice there are crumbs in the keyboard. The laptop screen springs out of sleep mode. The screen indicates that the last user, who looks to have been the admin, has locked the computer.
You attempt to enter in the password off the paper you’re provided. It’s rejected.
After several more failed attempts, the battery low message appears briefly, and the laptop shuts down.
You notice water dripping from a pipe onto the floor across the conference room.

How are you feeling about your big leap?

Today, the technology exists to turn an employee’s first days with any sized company into an experience that evokes confidence, excitement, and even joy. That feeling of walking into something that minimizes friction and creates the feeling of connectedness and purpose, or as we like to think about it… our goal as IT leaders in an organization is for that person to feel like they just walked onto the bridge of the enterprise.

Consider this alternative scenario:

After accepting the offer, you receive a communication to your personal email that provides a secure link to complete the necessary HR and Direct Deposit forms.
Upon completing the online forms, you receive a communication that lets you know the HR information was received, and that your company login and email will be activated 2 weeks before your first day.
2 weeks before your first day, you receive an invitation to connect to your new email. A wizard walks you through setting your password and configuring multi-factor authentication.
You successfully log in to your new email.
1 week before your first day, you receive a laptop shipped directly from a tier-one computer vendor. You open the box, remove the new laptop from the packaging, plug it in, and turn it on.
The laptop startup experience asks for your home Wi-Fi information. After you enter it, the laptop works for a few moments and then displays “Welcome to your new company.” It also displays your name and a prompt for your password.
You enter the password that you set up the week before, along with confirming an MFA prompt. The laptop works for a few minutes letting you know it’s setting up initial settings and installing applications.
After about 20 minutes, you are presented with a desktop, the company logo is displayed on the background, the key business applications that you need are installed. You can open your email and you see a message from HR with instructions for your first day.
The email explains where to park and then how to find the reception area of the office with a map.
Since you opted to set up a company mobile number on your personal phone, you receive a QR code via email. You scan the QR code and your company mobile SIM is installed automatically in seconds.
You receive instructions on how to set up email on your phone a few minutes later.
On your first day, you arrive at 9:00 am, you park, and quickly find the office. You’re greeted in reception by the HR director. They welcome you and let you know that you should set up in a conference room.
You receive a communication from the CEO… it says, “Apologies for running late on your first day, I just got pulled into an important client call, I’ll brief you all about it when I’m done in about 20 minutes. I’m happy you’re here as this is exactly the stuff I need you to handle soon.”
You situate yourself in the conference room, open your laptop, and log on. You see a meeting invite pop up in your email that was just forwarded from the CEO. The subject: “I know you just started, but I’d love to get you into this call to meet this customer.”
You click the link, the meeting software opens, and you pop into the customer meeting. You’re introduced as the new head of customer success, the CEO announces how happy he is to have you join the team.
You notice water dripping from a pipe onto the floor across the conference room.

Now, how do you feel about your big leap?

A good onboarding experience can make the difference between someone spending the first weeks of their new job processing feelings of regret and anxiety as they struggle to gain context and understanding, or being focused on learning about the real challenges the company needs to solve and feeling welcome, connected, and motivated.

The experience must create a sense of enablement; it should flow from creating accounts to unboxing a new computer to having applications become available as they are needed, to training requirements being clear and easy to complete.

The Ongoing Experience

First impressions are critical, but the ongoing experience is also going to play an important role in keeping an organization motivated and productive. Concepts like making sure you have single sign-on and automated application provisioning isn’t just important for security, it reduces IT administration overhead, helps with licensing cost control, and creates a coherent user experience that makes your applications feel more like a fabric and less like a fragmented collection of tools.

A Well Executed Technology Strategy Can Make It Feel Like You’re Walking into the Future…

No organization is perfect, and all will have their challenges as they grow, adapt to new business realities, and figure out where they fit in the market. Making it frictionless for people in the organization to get value out of the IT infrastructure will empower people to focus on the real business challenges and not be blocked by what feels like trivial IT problems. There is no bigger frustration than a minor IT issue blocking a critical business success. If this post resonates with you, or you just want to talk about how cool it was to see the old Enterprise Bridge in Picard Season 3, don’t hesitate to schedule time with us!

If you’re a Star Trek fan, here is a great behind the scenes moment with our favorite acting ensign ©️ notice¹

The copyright of this image belongs to CBS Corporation and/or Paramount Pictures. Its use is contended to be consistent with “fair use” rules. ↩︎

Mission... Vision... Values... With Great words comes great responsibility

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Mission… Vision… Values… With Great words comes great responsibility!

Mission… Vision… Values… These are big topics big words and yet they are often forgotten when it’s time to make important decisions.

Organizations of all sizes struggle with these concepts, and our point of view on this is that it’s hard to capture the essence of what these words are in the context of a modern organization. This is made even more challenging when you consider that most organizations even bootstrapping Startup’s can be made of up people from different cultures across multiple countries.

Trying to get these right can lead to overly generic and hard to apply words that loose meaning to most people.

Do the right thing or the old thing…

A common value we have seen in more than one organization is “Do the right thing” … This one might seem obvious, but in the context of an organization with over 10 000 employees doing the right thing can quickly become subjective. Further the right thing for one team is often the wrong thing for another. When that happens one team must be righter than the other … shouldn’t it?

What happens when someone uses a value to shut down a line of inquiry? When a senior manager says… “that isn’t the right thing” in a group setting, it can stifle exploring an idea from a non-obvious perspective, often what’s happening is the “old thing” is being substituted for the “right thing”.

I think Gitlab has done it better than most!

One company that we admire, and we think has spent a lot of time working on what these words mean in a way that works across teams, geographies and cultures is Gitlab. If you’re starting from scratch the Gitlab handbook is pure gold. https://handbook.gitlab.com.

They have spent a lot of time making sure that these concepts aren’t just vague overly aspirational notions, they have clearly defined what these mean for the organization and those working in it. They give examples, and they have fleshed out nuanced details that reflect what is important for Gitlab’s culture and values. The best part is the handbook is it’s open source! https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/handbook-usage/#external-use-of-the-handbook

Ok So what does this have to do with being a CIO?!?

So in wrapping up this post, you might be wondering what any of this has to do with being a CIO, Well to answer that, it’s all about making information visible and enabling the mission, vision and values to be communicated to all members of an organization in a way that empowers the people to live and be motivated by them. When a technology choice is made it can have an impact on all of these concepts. It can emphasize and amplify them, or it can work to trivialize or minimize their relevance.

Understanding that there is a connection between the technology you choose and living your mission vision and values is critical to being making decision that will lead to future success and good organizational execution.

What is Value?

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In today’s IT and business landscape, ‘value’ is a term that’s frequently used but often overloaded with different meanings. Understanding the specific type of value we aim to deliver is crucial, as it helps in determining the appropriateness and timing of our focus. Delivering value is important, but it’s equally important to ensure that the value delivered aligns with the current needs and strategic goals of the organization.

Different Types of Value Explained

Let’s explore various forms of value and their implications:

Customer Value: This is the value created for those using your product or service. Focusing on customer value is typically a primary goal for organizations. However, labeling an activity as not contributing to customer value, and thus deeming it non-priority, can sometimes be detrimental. The challenge lies in balancing the pursuit of customer value without neglecting other vital aspects of the business.
Employee Value: Often overlooked and rarely measured objectively, the value provided to employees has far-reaching impacts. Employee value is closely tied to the employee experience – how they interact with their work environment and systems. For example, dealing with inefficient processes or poorly integrated systems can lead to significant productivity losses. Leaders who underestimate the importance of streamlined processes and a positive work environment risk diminishing employee focus and morale, inadvertently leaving substantial value unexplored.
Shareholder Value: A pivotal aspect of value creation, shareholder value, especially in legal terms, is paramount. However, in the context of startups, this concept often extends beyond immediate financial returns. In early stages, shareholder value might be more closely linked to user growth or engagement. An interesting dynamic occurs when the growth in customer engagement and company revenue shifts shareholder expectations towards more tangible returns or demands for operational optimizations to enhance profitability. It’s crucial for leaders to effectively communicate and balance long-term strategies with shareholder expectations.

The Broader Impact of Value Recognition

Recognizing value as a comprehensive, cross-functional stream is essential for organizational success. When departments focus solely on localized value creation without considering its impact on the organization’s overall objectives, the result can be counterproductive. For instance, implementing an intricate ERP system during a period of rapid growth might offer departmental benefits but could divert essential resources from critical business functions like sales and product delivery. Decision-makers must weigh the benefits of such initiatives against potential disruptions, especially during crucial growth phases.

The Founder’s Perspective on Value

For founders and leaders of growing businesses, quickly identifying and focusing on critical organizational components is vital. Leveraging fractional executive services, such as a fractional CTO or CIO, can be instrumental in ensuring strategic decisions align with the organization’s value creation objectives. These leaders play a crucial role in steering the company towards effective value generation across all fronts.

Of the forms of value above, employee value is the one most often left on the table — and it’s the one we focus on most. It lives in the digital employee experience: the devices, identity, applications, and workflows your people touch every day. Get that end-user computing environment right and productivity, morale, and retention follow. It’s some of the highest-leverage value a growing organization can unlock.