DOE OSTI2015
One definition of management in business and organizations is: 'the function that coordinates the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively'. Unfortunately, what it takes to coordinate (literally, to create order together) is beyond the scope of today's management tools. The top five management tools in the world, according to a Bain 2013 survey, are: Strategic Planning; Customer Relationship Management; Employee Engagement Surveys; Benchmarking; and Balanced Scorecard. These are useful tools in business and organizations, but do not help managers coordinate the complex performance networks of agreements with resource providers, team members, and internal and external user-customers and authorities required to accomplish group or organizational goals. How do we manage such a network? While coordination is increasingly necessary in today's world of work, it is also a much neglected area of serious study because it is, almost literally, an invisible phenomenon. We can observe people inside groups, as well as their activities and results, but coordination is a product of managing what is going on between groups, not inside them. The challenge is making that in-between visible and actionable, not just 'white space'. A solution: define a Team's performance as agreements - and deliveries on the agreements - for products, services, and communications - the things moving between a Team and its immediate circle of resource providers, customers, and authorities relevant to a goal. This approach has been shown to reduce operational costs while also increasing team members' recognition of their interdependent responsibilities. Managers and Team leaders can then turn any Team goal into an opportunity for accomplishment in three steps: 1. Define 'performance' in terms of deliverable products, services, and communications for every goal; 2. Keep performance status current and visible to all team members; and 3. Debrief and update performance status routinely. Teamwork and engagement in goal accomplishment require a focus on Sender-Receiver agreements, productive communication, and timely and accurate status-tracking and feedback. Sustaining the context for accomplishment is not about managing people - it requires supporting coordination for the network of agreements in which people operate. (authors)
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗