When setting goals, we have all been taught to use the acronym SMART. Of course, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound, just in case you forgot. We run our products, programs, and even our companies by this acronym. On top of this or an adjacent thought is the linear thinking of “cause and effect” that pressures the entire organization into being accountable for specific solutions.
Now, I am not ready to jettison the entire thought process of “cause and effect” but I will challenge it as a “cure-all” method and one that should be as predominant as it is in most organizations. Just centering on Sales and Marketing, I believe that linear thinking is the primary hindrance to Lean being successful in this discipline. Experience tells us that sales and marketing is a complex process that takes place in areas where we are unable to control, let alone influence all of the factors within the environment. While we should attempt to simplify to carry our certain activity, we also need to understand and acknowledge other more complex effects.
In today’s sales and marketing, we are looking less at the transactional value of a customer and more at the lifetime value of a customer. Through Service-Dominant Logic thinking where value does not occur till our products/services is in use, we are now viewing customers in a way that allow us to co-create our futures together. Though, you may say all this thought is good for academia and consultants to banter about but in the real world we are still very transactional. However, the tide is changing and it has already changed in most of the digital world. And my follow-up question might be….”Who is not in the digital world anymore?”
Recently, my thoughts have drifted towards monitoring and evaluation. More specifically, the work of Michael Quinn Patton in Developmental Evaluation. This type of evaluation is designed to be more compatible with emergent, innovative and transformative processes. I started down this path since organizations are governed by what we can measure. I can probably find a hundred quotes that basically are a take-off to Peter Drucker’s saying, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” We are trained to believe that what we do as an organization must be measurable.
I have been wrestling with how do we go about measuring emergent, innovative and transformative processes or processes that happen in a complex environment? In the book, Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed, the authors created a table that I have paraphrased below that compare traditional thought to more of a Developmental Evaluation approach. The numbers correspond between the two lists. A tabulated version (PDF) of the outline might be easier, Evaluations.
TRADITIONAL EVALUATIONS/AUDITS
- Definite judgments of success or failure
- Predetermined Goals
- Outside evaluations/audits to assure independent and objectivity
- Measures based on cause and effect
- Based on generalizing findings across time and space
- Accountability focused on ROI
- Controlled to locate blame and failures
- Perspective driven by meeting standards or QC documentation
- Evaluations/Audits stimulate a fear of failure
COMPLEXITY-BASED, DEVELOPMENTAL EVALUATIONS…
- Provide feedback, generate learnings, support/affirm changes in direction
- Develop new measures and mechanisms as goals emerge and evolve
- Internal evaluation/self-audits integrated into work with ongoing interpretive processes
- Capture system dynamics, interdependencies, and emergent connections
- Produce context-specific understandings that inform ongoing innovation/processes
- Accountability focused on fundamental values and commitments
- Transparent Learnings responding to what is unfolding and responding strategically
- Collaboration to design a process that matches philosophically and organizationally.
- Evaluations support an appetite for learning.
This complex and emerging world is exciting. However, there will be a constant struggle in many organizations till a new method of evaluation and monitoring takes place. I see this as one of the first steps needed. I agree with what Peter Drucker said, ““If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it.” I just think that the “it” might need to be viewed or evaluated a little differently.