Outsiders

As part of a discovery phase for a transformation programme at a highly-devolved university, I interviewed people about HR processes. One conversation got onto the subject of ‘external recruitment’. The person I was talking to was explaining how difficult it could be to onboard external applicants because of culture shock. About halfway through the chat, I realised that an ‘external’ applicant to this stakeholder meant someone outside her department, not the University.

Islands in the Stream

I kept seeing this mental image of the University as an archipelago –  a long string of islands, stretching out into the sea, splaying out from a mainland. Some islands bigger than others, some bunched closely together, some more remote, but  always some water between them. Occasionally, someone from one island might row over to another, share some ideas and row back. Sometimes they’d never return.

These stretches of water can be a barrier to career progression. When people see other departments as ‘external’, they’re less likely to feel able to move between departments to gain experience elsewhere in the University.

There’s even the phenomenon of silos within silos: islands within islands (recursive islands, for the true nerds). This was what we found on the HR transformation programme: teams within the HR division who knew their own part of a process inside-out, but had little knowledge of the ways of working of teams up and downstream in the same process.

The rough and the smooth

Anyone who’s experienced siloed working knows the downsides: the inefficiencies, the needless ‘starting from scratch’, the waste of time and money and the impact on morale that comes from it.

Siloing within a big University kind of makes sense, though, especially when you think about the importance of academic prerogative and the fact that departments teach and carry out research on different subjects. The unique ways of working that contribute to an institution standing out in teaching and research are worth the cost of administering and supporting them, because teaching and research are the core reasons Universities exist. 

Charting the Waters: Mapping and Bridging Silos

So, if we acknowledge that these islands exist, and sometimes for good reasons, we can move on to figuring out how to live with them.

Part of the approach, at the outset, needs to involve charting the islands: modelling and understanding the silos. By taking the time to map where the islands are and what makes them islands, we can start to set about reducing unnecessary fragmentation.

This isn’t about forcing everyone onto the same island or concreting over everything for the sake of uniformity. It’s about understanding divergence and agreeing where it adds value and contributes to the overall mission of a University. Is the divergence worth keeping or is it simply a product of isolation? It’s more about building bridges between the islands.

With a clear model of the existing silos, we have a better chance of successfully planning change activity to address and reduce the unnecessary divides. We can identify and map process variations between departments, discuss where the differences are beneficial and where they’re not. Then, where it’s possible, use these insights to design and implement simpler common processes. 

We can chart which tools are used to support activity and look for opportunities to reduce the unnecessary proliferation of those tools, reducing licence costs and cutting the training burden, not to mention the cybersecurity risk inherent in use of ‘Shadow IT’ (a phrase I use whenever I can because it just sounds so cool).

A Real-Life Example: Process Taxonomy

In my experience, this kind of approach needs a concerted effort. It needs resources and a mandate, either from the centre (the mainland?) or a coming together of several islands to create their own mandate. This is because the map needs to be consistent, change-controlled, curated and updated for the benefits to be fully realised.

In the work I did, the ‘island map’ that we built was a ‘taxonomy’ of HR and Payroll functions, processes and teams: a ‘big picture’ of what HR and Payroll did. The taxonomy showed the different functions within HR, then broke these down to show the process that made up those functions and the teams that owned those processes. As we went into more detail, we captured the steps of these processes in process maps which detailed the roles involved and the tools used to carry out each step of each process.

Island Paradise?

The taxonomy will continue to grow and become more mature and detailed. It has the potential to be used to inform process design, comms, change management and, with proper collaboration with the right teams, even service design and business architecture.

This kind of approach won’t get rid of the islands I’ve mentioned – I don’t think that could (or should) ever happen in a large and complex organisation. It will, though, help reduce the pain and cost of the kind of divergence that doesn’t make things better.

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🖊️ Authored by: Dan Ford, Senior Business Analysis Consultant

🎧 Most listened to podcast this year: The Rest is History (the Custer series is especially good!)

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