The Vanguard Method with Ibrar Hussain

Ah, woo, my head’s just exploded. 

All right, so taken manufacturing patterns and you’ve applied them and that thinking to service companies.

So that’s What you do and you’re breaking it down to this idea of systems thinking and intervention theory, and you talked about the service, the efficiency, the revenue and the morale. And one or many of those will tend to be broken and somebody put their hand up and say, We’ve got a problem and you go in and say, let’s have a look and see which of those is the problem.

And the way you break it down is you think about this relationship between performance, system and thinking. So it’s the thinking, which builds the system and that system is not giving the performance that they want. And you then looked at the lens of the work, those that do the work and the way the work is done. And you’re trying to then make a change that is a sustainable change. So I get all that. What I don’t get then is a visual model of how it all works. I think it’s one of these things that , you’d have to learn by doing to get the experience on how to apply all those patterns .

Then you talk about value demands and failure demands. And so failure demands is obviously the focus and it’s where the system generates the demand because there’s something broken in the system. So fix the system and then that demand will disappear and then you’re only left with demand from the customers where that demand has value to them.

And then you talk about visualizing the flow. And then you said three causes of failure, standardization, specialization, centralization, which if you look over the last 10 years is what everybody’s doing. We’re hyper specializing our roles. We’re standardizing the work and trying to factorize that work, and we’re trying to centralize work in places to make it cheaper. And then you talked about focus on system economics, not transactional cost. So I have to do some more research around that. 

I love the principles of your company. Self sufficiency, change based on knowledge and no change without leadership. And you clearly articulated the journey that your customers go on when they’re working with you. 

You talked about walking the flow yourself, so situational awareness, understand where you are, what’s happening, get a sense of where the problems may be, then walk the leader through it so they can visualize it themselves and see what you see or disagree. And then try and quantify it. Try to benchmark it. 

I love the idea of give up and replace, not add to, cause we’re constantly just adding shit onto the pile, hoping it’s going to make things better. Then you and Murray went down a whole philosophical discussion around coercion, rational thinking, normative design, re educate.

But then you almost had a gate. Which was okay. So you’ve seen the flow. You’ve understand the problem, you’ve agreed that there is a problem, and now you’re either going to decide to fix it or you’re not. Depending on that decision, I’m going home or I’m coming back tomorrow, which is great. And then you talked about some stuff around how to get teams to fix that problem in short amounts of time.

So then if I think about that whole flow of work what I got to is a bunch of patterns that we’ve had from lots of other guests. So you’re visualizing the flow. You’re getting data to benchmark the flow, and identify with data where the problems may be. You’re using that to identify and confirm the issues and get buy in. Once you’ve got buy in you’re building cross functional self sufficient teams. And you’re removing all the legacy constraints from them, so you’re removing all the baggage that would make them fail.

Then I heard a whole lot of product thinking. Understand the customer job to be done. engage with the customers early, understand their problem and solve it, deliver value early, test the value and iterate. And then the last one you closed out with is to get you out of there have somebody in the organization learn by doing so that they can learn this method and carry on without you.

I’m with Murray in that I think there is a whole lot of experience that you would need to be able to do this well in a new organization or a new domain . But I can see how it it is methodic in the way you’re doing it. 

So anyway, about on this one, definitely not read a quick book and have a go.

Read along you will

Shane: Welcome to the No Nonsense Agile podcast. I’m Shane Gibson.

Murray: And I’m Murray Robinson.

Ibby: And I’m Ibrar Hussain, Ibi for short.

Murray: Hi, Ibi. Thanks for coming on.

Ibby: You’re most welcome.

Murray: So we want to talk to you about the Vanguard Method today. Why don’t we start by getting you to give a bit of an introduction about who you are and what your background is.

Ibby: So my name’s Ibi. I’m an engineer by training. I started off doing a bachelor’s engineering degree in Liverpool. And then I went to work for Ford Motor Company. And then after that, I went to work for Jaguar motor cars subsidiaries called Venture Pressings. And we produced 20 percent of the body panels for Jaguar cars. Had a falling out with the production director at the time and quit. I was interested in quality and statistical process control. So wanted to learn more about that. So went off and did a master’s at Cranfield. And as I was doing the Masters, I came across some work that Vanguard were doing and after my masters, I joined Vanguard. That was circa 1992 and since then I’ve been working with John and the guys at Vanguard. And I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that I would be one of the founding architects of this thing we call the Vanguard Method.

Murray: What is the Vanguard Method?

Ibby: So the Vanguard method is a proprietary method that we’ve developed where the two key influences for us were W. Edwards Demming and Taiichi Ono. And although my background is manufacturing, probably 95 plus percent of the work that we do is based in service organizations and service systems. So we’ve taken those ideas and translated them in terms of how you operate them in service systems. So the Vanguard method brings together two key disciplines. The first is what we call systems theory also known as systems thinking. Which is how do you look at and understand organizations in terms of how they operate? And then we have occupational psychology, which brings in the second discipline, which is intervention theory. And intervention theory is all about how do you intervene in a system such that you can make a sustainable change within that system. And those two disciplines brought together is what constitutes this thing called the Vanguard method. 

Murray: what problems are you trying to solve or able to solve?

Ibby: Invariably, the reason why we get asked to come in is we have an issue with performance be it service, efficiency, revenue, or morale. And performance is the way that it is because of the system. And when I talk about system, I don’t mean IT system. I mean, the way we design and manage the organization. And the system is the way that it is because of how the senior leaders think about the work, those who do the work, and the way the work should be done. Because of how we think about those three things, that leads us to create a system, which then allows performance to happen. So what we do when we go into an organization is we explore that relationship between performance system and thinking and help people understand why performance is the way that it is. And we expose what is the current thinking that is driving the system and therefore that performance.

The equation is very simple. If we want to improve performance, we have to change thinking. So what we’ve done over the last 30 years is develop methods by which we help organizations to change how they think about the work, those who do the work and the way the work should be done.

Murray: All right. 

So can you give us any specific stories of the organizations you’ve worked with? 

Ibby: I can do that, but let me start with something a little simpler. So one of the things that we’ve put on the table is this concept of failure demand. So I was working with one of the major banks in the uk and in the mid nineties this thing called call centers was born because of telephony and IT coming together and in the UK banks spend a lot of money on brick and mortar branches. And what the analysts discovered was broadly speaking, there’s two types of work. We have, physical work of customers walking into a branch and then we have telephony work where customers are calling the branch and that’s not a good use of resource. So if we understand the telephone work we would be able to strip the telephone work out of the branches and put it into a place where we can drive economy of scale. So one of the major banks did the maths and what they needed was four call centers with about a thousand seats in each call center. And that would allow them to strip a load of people out of the branches and hire people in the dregs of the UK where the government would give them tax breaks for creating new jobs and build these call centers. So I joined the story when four call centers have been built and I get called in because as we stripped the people from the branches we find demand is still rising. 

So I walk into this board meeting where we’ve got the program director saying, ah, boss, it’s a bit like the M25 which is meant to be an expeditious way of getting around London, but it’s just a big car park because it’s so popular. So that’s the phenomena. What you have is, you know, customers didn’t know they needed them. Now that we’ve put them in, more customers are using them. So that’s why we’re now building call center number five which is another thousand people. And actually the forecast is that we may need call center number six as well. And the chief exec is now thumping the table saying I thought we were doing this to reduce costs Although it’s always been positioned as this is about improving service. Anyway I listen to this board meeting.

I have a conversation with the chief executive and the director of retail who owned all of the call centers , and I said, okay, no problem. Let’s the three of us spend a day in each of the three call centers that were closest to them. And then we can have a conversation.

So they agree because this is a massive investment for them. Although it’s three days of their time, it’s worth them spending that time because at the rate that they’re going they’ll be building at least two more. So I spend a day with them and the first day I give them an exercise. So I say all we’re going to do is we’re going to plug in and we’re going to sit with the frontline agents that are taking demands from customers. And what I want you to do is just pay attention to why are customers calling from their point of view? Okay, and put yourself in the customer’s shoes. I’m sure both of you have relationships with your bank and if you think about that relationship If you were ever to phone your bank, what would be the sorts of things that you would phone your bank for?

Murray: Can I negotiate my mortgage interest rate? Or, what is this payment on my credit card? 

Shane? 

Shane: Can I open an account? Why charging me so many fees? Where’s my statement? 

Ibby: So what we’ve got in that simple illustration is broadly speaking, two types of demands. We have the demands that we want, which is, can I have a new account? Can I have a credit card? Can I have an overdraft? I’d like a mortgage. All of those are demands that we would want. They relate to our reason for being as a bank. And then we have the demands that we don’t want. I don’t understand this transaction. The statement hasn’t arrived. You’ve charged me too much on my credit card. So we have demands that we want. We call those value demands. Value demands are demands that relate to your reason for being from a customer’s point of view. And then we have failure demands. The definition of a failure demand is a demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right from a customer’s point of view. So entirely within the control of the system. So when we did that exercise with the chief exec and the director of retail in this bank, what do you suppose the percentage of value stroke failure was?

It was actually 30 value 70 failure. So we have just built 4, 000 seats and we’re now building another thousand and we’re planning another thousand. So the summary is yes, we do have a problem. The problem that we’ve got Is that we’ve got too many people whereas the current problem that was being perceived was we do not have enough people.

Murray: But Ibi, this failure demand that we’re talking about, was it more in the call center than it was in the banks or was it the same? 

Ibby: That’s something you will never know

Shane: You could assume that the barrier to entry to complain had been reduced. Much easier to make a phone call than it is to go into a branch. Therefore you’ve identified latent failure that’s always been happening, but people didn’t care enough to go to the effort to disclose it, and as soon as you gave them that easy channel, all the problems appeared.

Ibby: Potentially but I think what you need to do is understand why do we have the failure in the first place? So when you start to explore that What you find is that you’ve got two types of banks. You had banks that were conventional. They started off the way all banks did it was bricks and mortar And then we took that organization and we started to have it operate in a new world where telephony is the channel of choice. But when we did that, when we made that change, especially in this bank the way that the organization was originally designed, who do you suppose owned the customers?

Murray: The branch, I would think.

Ibby: Correct. So when we built the call centers, who do you suppose owned the customer?

Shane: Still the branch.

Ibby: Right now you start to understand this issue of the thinking. It’s how we think about the work, those who do the work and the way the work should be done. So let’s unpack that in this instance. So I ring up and say, hello, I’d like to increase my overdraft. What do you suppose my overdraft increase does to the organization? And where does it do it?

Murray: I suppose it’d get allocated to the branch

Ibby: Correct. So, the P& L still operated at a branch level. So, who do you suppose needs to make the decision about whether Ibi should or should not get an overdraft?

Murray: The branch

Ibby: So I ring the call center, I say, Hello, I’d like to increase my overdraft, please. And depending on my context and situation, they may be able to make that decision there and then. And they did that 35 percent of the time. 65 percent of the time, they had to refer to the Branch.

Murray: Hmm. Seems like a big waste of everybody’s time.

Ibby: But that’s how we had set it up because the P&L still sits at the branch. So 65 percent of the time our response is Thank you. Mr. Hussain. No problem. We’ll look into that for you. And we’ll get back to you and if I need any more information I’ll come back to you and get that information from you. I put the phone down. Call center person now creates a piece of work for the branch, back office, that says Ibi would like an overdraft, here’s his context and situation. And this is why he wants it, how long he wants it. And this is how much he wants. But the system says, I can’t make that decision. That has to be referred to you.

That goes from back office to the branch. The branch then review that information. based on their operating procedures they make a decision. They then put that back to me. I then can call the customer or I can write to the customer depending on what their preferences are in terms of how they want, us to communicate with them. Now, how long do you suppose that process of authorization is going to take?

Murray: It’s going to take a few days. 

Ibby: Yes. Well, we tracked it and measured it. And the answer was no less than three, sometimes up to 12.

Murray: And also the branch whose making a decision is relying on the information they’ve got from the call centre person and that they may be missing something important.

Ibby: Exactly. So how often do you suppose the branch said, we need more information?

Half the time. 

Shane: Also we’ve downsized the branch because we’ve moved all the work to the contact centre so now there’s less people in the branch to do this heavy lifting and then we’ve introduced a new channel for the branch, which is no longer the customer walking in the door. It’s now somebody sending a ton of emails to the branch saying there’s some more work to be done. So we’ve completely changed their system without looking at their system. 

Ibby: Exactly. Now you start to understand. So when I talk about failure demand It’s a demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right from a customer’s point of view The causes of failure demand are things like Standardization, specialization and centralization. When you unpick that, where you get to is of all the people that say, hello, I want an overdraft, how many get the decision there and then the answer is 35%. The other 65 go through this loop. And in that loop, how often do customers have to call back unnecessarily? The answer was at least three times,

Now having called back three times, how many eventually get a yes?

Ibby: 95%. Now you start to understand the stupidity of this design.

Murray: So one call turns into four contacts from the customer’s point of view and from the call center, plus an additional contact into the branch, maybe two and a couple of contacts from the call center, the branch. So one discussion becomes six. 

Ibby: Well, when we worked out with them, it was one to eight was the ratio. Now you can understand why work was going through the roof.

And that was just one example.

Murray: The common response to this that i’ve seen executives take is to say it’s costing too much we’ll put it all in the Philippines or in India.

Ibby: Exactly. So what you’re doing is you’re starting to focus on transactional cost. And what I’m trying to put on the table is systemic cost or systemic economics. 

So you said, what are the problems that we help people solve? All of the problems are what I call thinking problems. The thing that we have, become obsessed about, in the last 20 years is this notion of efficiency. It’s a disease. Organizations are clambering over their selves to chase efficiency. And we have lost all sight of effectiveness.

Murray: But this is also a bad experience for the customer as well. You’ve gone from having one conversation, which maybe you’re going to have in a branch which is two way and they can ask you any follow up questions they need to. Occasionally, you might need to bring back some extra paperwork or something. Gone from that to having the customer have to talk to the call center four times and presumably taking a lot longer. So they’re not going to be very happy with their bank and they might even start to look at another bank.

Ibby: Exactly. So, all of these things are like pulling a thread, but what we’re trying to do is expose this relationship of thinking, system, performance.

Murray: So the method you use there was to get the decision makers to engage with the work, go to the Gemba, and you ask them to categorize the calls, from the point of view of value or failure demand, and if failure demand, then categorize it further. 

Ibby: So there’s three principles that govern how Vanguard work with clients and they are self sufficiency, change based on knowledge and no change without leadership.

Self sufficiency. Any client we work with, our job is to build their knowledge and competence of application of the thinking that I’m describing, such that they can do this for themselves without us. So my job from day one is how can I, as optimally and as quickly as possible, design myself out.

The way we do that is by helping the organization to understand that any change has to be based on knowledge and data and has to be empirical. And all of the knowledge that we need exists in the current system. It may not be collated and built the way that we need it to, but it is there. We just need to be given the perspective and method to go and explore it, understand it. Having got that knowledge, you’ve then got an empirical basis from which to change. So you always build a baseline. So that example, 70 percent failure demand, 30 percent value demand. That’s a baseline. You can then work to understand how to make the situation better. The only way we can do that is by having leaders recognize and understand that the current situation is 100 percent down to them and what they’ve got between their ears.

My first conversation with the senior most person that I’m working with is; you do understand that if there is a problem in performance, service, efficiency, revenue, morale, that’s your fault. That’s why we have to start with the leader getting connected with the work first. Seeing this first hand. So those three principles govern how we work. 

Clearly each organization is unique, but I’ll give you a typical route map of a Vanguard intervention in terms of how it works end to end. So it starts with someone saying I need help come and have a look. So we would go in and do some familiarization. This is where I go into the organization and I walk the flow I understand the system and how it works. And I build a picture in my mind of the fundamental relationship between thinking system and performance. I then have a conversation with the senior leader that took me in and talk to them about what I need from them. Which starts with scoping. So I need them to give me their time to walk the system with me. When I do that, they start to build their own picture of performance system and thinking. And then they can make their first informed choice. Which is the reason why we are in this mess. I am obsessed with and focused on driving activity and that is why I’ve got the problems that I’ve got. I need to move away from activity and start focusing on value. And worrying about value end to end and systemically. That’s a significant shift for a leader. It requires what I call give up and replace. Vanguard typically go in and help leaders see most of what they’ve got currently is a pile of crap and needs to be thrown away. And what we need to do is give that up and replace it with something completely different. 

Murray: That’s pretty revolutionary, particularly if they’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars implementing SAP or something.

Ibby: Exactly. And not only that, but the people you’re talking to are the people that are exemplary at those things that I’m poo pooing, because that is why they’ve got to the senior position they have.

Murray: So how do you deal with that? 

Ibby: I do not go in and say what you’re doing is a pile of shit. My job is to design something for them to see that and discover that for themselves. Which is where the re-educative normative design comes in. 

So let’s now get into some of the technical detail of how we do what we do. 

So you said what is the principal problem to solve? And I would say there is only one. All we are seeking to do is help leaders change how they think. 

Murray: Because the organization’s process and structure is a reflection of the way the leaders think.

Ibby: Exactly So, how do you get people to change their thinking? Well, there are only three approaches to changing human systems. First is coercion, do this or else, which can work as a tactic but never as a strategy. Because as soon as you take the punishment or reward away people will revert. 

We have what I’m doing right now. Which is rational. Let me implore to your good sense. So if you are sitting there and you know how your organization operates today is fundamentally wrong, I will say some things that resonate with you and you’ll say, yeah, yeah, actually that, makes sense. I can see that. But if you are in a place where you think targets are the route for improving performance. And I’m talking about targets being an anathema to quality and improvement and productivity. That’s not going to resonate with you. So what rational approaches do is they tend to polarize people. You reinforce whatever is in the current frame. So rational approaches are talking, training, educating. All of those are, let me implore to your good sense. They do nothing to convert people. They do nothing to change people’s view of the world. They just reinforce the current view of the world. 

Which then leaves the third approach, which is what we call normative. I use a slightly different term and the term is re-educative. People do what they do because it makes sense to them. If I want someone to do something different, then I have to help them see for themselves what they thought made sense does not make as much sense as they thought it did. When I do that, I create disturbance. I create cognitive dissonance. As a consequence, they’re now open to an alternative. You can then start to help them see an alternative. When they start to see that alternative in concrete terms, they are now confident to give up this thing that they held dearly. And replace it with an alternative that is concretely better. So normative design, re-educative, requires valid data in order to allow people to make a free and informed choice. 

Murray: I feel that there’s something else though and that is leaders often get into positions of power because they are good at creating a story which supports their agenda and their desire for increased resources. To some extent, it doesn’t matter whether the story is true or not, only whether it’s effective in getting them higher up the hierarchy.

Ibby: Yes.

Murray: And If you’re creating cognitive dissonance about whether their story is true, they might just shoot the messenger.

Ibby: Yes. And from my point of view, if they choose to do that what I have to reflect on is the experience or the design that I took them through because in order to change thinking what we’re saying is the only effective method is normative re-educative design.

What it means in practice is for a given leader and a given system what I have to work out Is what do I need to get this leader to see and connect with for themselves? Such that they have what I call empirical counter intuitive truths That cognitive dissonance empirically and viscerally. And then what you’re relying on is them making a free and informed choice. They have to decide whether they want to continue as they are, or whether they want to aspire to better.

Murray: Okay, so I guess what you’re trying to do is trying to understand what motivates them by asking them. And then going in, doing your research and investigations, finding out something which is counter to that, and then saying, that’s very interesting. Come and have a look at this. Come and listen to these calls or see these people doing the work.

Ibby: Yes.

Murray: Out of all of the things that could be going wrong. You’ve picked out something that you feel will be important to them and to a change in thinking.

Ibby: Correct. Very simple. Not complicated at all. 

Murray: It feels like one of those things that can be hard to do in practice. 

The other thing is that my sponsor may actually not be the person in control of everything to do with the situation. My sponsor might be in charge of the call center, but this isn’t going to require a lot of IT changes. And the CIO is not in the picture and doesn’t want you to throw away his SAP system. 

Ibby: You know, when people talk about the Vanguard method what you’ll see lots of people talking about is the systems theory side, the systems thinking part. What you’ve just described is I think the more important, which is the intervention theory side. Which is in any given system unless you’re working with the board and the chief executive at the start of the process, which I would say in 33 years of doing this, I’ve been lucky enough to do that probably 60 percent of the time.

So 40 percent of the time I am not there. I’m starting at a level below which means what you have to do with the leader that you’re working with, you get them to understand the big picture. And understand where this work and where this thinking could take them. Now, for some leaders, that is just too much. It’s a bridge too far. And those leaders make a choice that says, that’s great but can we just focus on this? And invariably, as long as that thing is a material betterment for the customers of this system, I will say yes.

But if that choice that’s being made is a choice that I believe, based on the data and the insights that we’ve got at that point, that’s something that is not going to be meaningful or valuable for the end customer and therefore the system. I would at that point say, we’re not the best people to help you.

Murray: I wonder how this might apply for something more complex like people developing software for a new product or service because call center, front office, back office is simple and obvious compared to software development. 

It can be really hard to even see the work or where the work is going or where it’s up to, or where the blockers are. You can set up a Kanban board and you can have retrospectives and report things back. But it can actually be quite confusing in that domain .

Ibby: Well, only if we choose to operate it in isolation. So I was working with at that time, the UK’s biggest mortgage provider in their projects department. And the retail director had asked us to go in and help them with the way they were doing their software development projects. I’d worked with this guy previously, so he knew how we operated. And he said, look, I need to do something quite quickly because I want to transform the whole thing, but I need a proof of concept that’s going to give me the story to be able to take to the board, to tell them that this is the way that we want to do this.

So I said, okay, no problem. Where do you want me to start? He said, well, we’re going to start in software development. I said, okay, cool. You mind if I go look at the work first and then I’ll tell you what it is that we are going to work on. And then you can tell me who the people are that I’m going to be working with from the various disciplines.

So I go in, do my familiarization, and what I discover is that 35 percent of all of the failure demand coming into mortgage operations is from what they describe as the amount owing letter. What that means is Customers are phoning up and saying can you please tell me how much is outstanding on my mortgage? Dead simple question. Why do you suppose customers are asking that question? 

One driver is my mortgage rate is coming to an end. There’s a place over there that has a good deal going on. What I need to know is what’s my mortgage outstanding such that I can potentially make a move. It might be that I want to understand how much equity do I have in my house because I might need some funds for renovation or for something else So there’s lots of reasons why but those reasons are typically nothing to do with the question that i’m asking.

Few people want to know how much is outstanding just because they want to know how much is outstanding. How much is outstanding is a precursor to something else that’s going on in my life That was the demand that was coming in and the way in which we were dealing with that today was creating 35 percent of all failure demand into mortgage operations.

Mortgage operations was about 550 people. 

So that’s the bit that we’re going to now work on so I said, okay I need these disciplines people who can work on these IT systems full stack Because that’s the group of people that I need to be working alongside. So I’ve got that team of people. That team worked with me to understand the problem and understood what I understood. That took them about two weeks. Having understood it they then worked on building a solution and the first step of building a solution is do not touch the IT. So for me the first step of software development is do not touch the software. What you do is you can turn it off or you can work around it or you can do it on paper. So when we started how many people? Got the answer this is how much is outstanding on your mortgage there and then on the phone Before we started, zero. After three weeks of having this team operate differently, what was the number? Ninety five percent. 

So the number was there, but it just wasn’t visible. So, typically in the current system, because it was not visible, they were not allowed to give it, that was a task for back office. So we had front office back office so when a customer wanted the outstanding amount on their mortgage because there are a number of interdependencies and there may be historic missed payments and other things that might be not visible to the front line person and the front end system, you could not give the customer the number that was on the screen because invariably that number was wrong.

So you had to give that task to a back office person who would have the time to go investigate and then effectively give the number in writing or whatever method the customer wanted. 

So what we did in that three week experiment that we ran is we allowed those frontline people not to be governed by, you will take three minutes to answer this call. So we removed that arbitrary target. And we said, you will take as long as you need. What you need to do is understand what matters to the customer and solve their problem. So if what mattered to the customer was I need that number before I put the phone down, you got that number there and then. For some customers that meant 10 minutes of waiting but after those 10 minutes they got the number. So for them it was valuable. They didn’t mind waiting the 10 minutes. 

Murray: Yeah. So what? The call center people had to look it up on different systems. 

Ibby: Yes, and do some calculations and add some stuff together and take some stuff off and then produce the number. It took us about three weeks to get to 95 could be done there and then. Then the other 5 percent were the ones where there were some complications. There were some mortgages that were orphaned and then remortgaged a number of times. And therefore, because of the inherent complexity in that case, you’re talking about an hour or two hours rather than 10 minutes. But you can still work out the number. 

So if that request had gone through the current system to say I need a new application that allows the frontline people to be able to provide settlement figures on mortgages. How long do you suppose in their current IT development space it would take to build that application?

Murray: Two years? It’s a bank.

Ibby: They were in the 18 to 36, depending on whether you wanted a hundred percent solution. So we built out paper version word and Excel stitched together, cobbled together thing in three weeks. So how long do you think it took that team of full stack developers and the frontline people that have the expertise to do this working together in tandem. They’ve worked together for two weeks to understand the problem. Three weeks, they’ve had a blank sheet and be given the latitude to work outside of the current system, but solve the customer’s problem in that three weeks, they’ve hit 95 percent there and then. So we now have everything we need to build an alternative systemically from a development point of view. So how long do you think it took them to build and deploy that solution

Murray: Probably only a few weeks, I would have thought,

Ibby: Two. 

Murray: Because they’ve already spent three weeks watching people, working out where the data was, working out they were doing and what they had to do. And so they were probably doing lots of drawings on whiteboards and saying, Oh, we could do this and we could do that. We’re just going to get this from there.

Ibby: But all of that was happening on the shop floor in a live environment.

Murray: The problem there would be whether they’re allowed to do it. Cause typically there’s lots of people whose job is to say, No, you didn’t pass the gate. You didn’t fill in the right form you’re not allowed to deploy anything. 

Ibby: Exactly, and that’s why when we had that team, we had everybody that we needed from the full stack and we had the governance people in observation mode only.

So effectively they took two weeks to understand it three weeks to solve it, and then two weeks to build it. In five weeks, they’d iterated their application eight. times. What do you suppose happened to the 35 percent failure demand? 

Murray: Would have gone to nearly zero, I assume.

Ibby: It, went to zero. And that was a eight, nine week cycle, end to end.

Murray: The interesting thing about that is that you could then say to people on the call, Why do you want to know this and what can we do to help you?

Ibby: Solved the real problem. Absolutely. Because you answered their question there and then you could move on to what is going on?

Oh well, actually i’ve seen this better deal. Well, actually i’m thinking of moving home. Well, actually i’m thinking of doing an extension. So you could start to get into those conversations to really understand what’s going on in the customer’s life and how can we better help them.

So If we just use this example to illustrate the end to end flow for a typical intervention. So I go do familiarization. Having done familiarization. I have conversation with a leader that says you think you had this problem. You actually have this problem. Come and have a look with me. They look, understand for themselves. They make an informed choice that they do want to do something about it. We then get a team of people. They understand. And the purpose of understanding is to identify what is the actual problem to be solved from a customer’s point of view.

What is the value work? What is that work which is directly required to be done in order to solve the customer’s problem? What actually matters to the customer about how they want that problem solved? Because they’re the two things that you need in order to build an effective design. Having understood that, We then give the team the opportunity to improve that and establish a better way.

Having established that, what we then do is pause. We then involve everybody that we need to involve in the organization to say, is that something that we want to make systemic? Because if we want to make that systemic, we must give up XYZ and we must replace it with ABC. Are we happy do that? 

Murray: Yeah. Well, We’ll need a five year project to do that though. 

Ibby: You’ve just demonstrated to them this is a days and weeks thing, not a months and years thing. 

Murray: But you haven’t done it properly though. It’ll never support the load that we’re gonna put on it and the security people haven’t even looked at it yet. 

Ibby: But all of that is why you need to pull those other people in to truly kick the tires of this thing and see whether it is viable. If passes that box, then what you do is you say, okay, how can I now take this and rather than just five people doing it, how do I get 550 people to work this way?

Murray: So this team that you’ve done this work with these technical people, these software developers, and these call center people, then become your champions, don’t they? 

Ibby: Yes, exactly. So, what then happens is you go from familiarization, understand to identify, improve to establish your POC, Pull in order to solidify. Having solidified, then we grow. And when we grow, you want to grow it to sufficient size that we can compare the economics. So when you’ve got five people doing something different to 550 people, it’s not comparable.

When you’ve got 250 people doing it, Versus 300 people doing it Those things you can compare. So you grow it such that you can do that organizational comparison. Once you’ve done that, then you push the button that says, now we wanna make this normal and sustainable. And then we move to what we call roll in. So most change that you will have heard about and experienced in your lives will have been rolled out. Which means we build the better thing. That better thing is the answer. Now we take that answer and we push it out everywhere else. That’s a stupid idea. 

With roll in, you’re saying, well, actually this group of people have gone out, understood, and built a the better thing. So they’ve given up and replaced. So they are the microcosm of the organization we wish to become. So they are in the right place. Everybody else is in the wrong place. So how do we bring everybody else to where they are, which is roll in. So you then build a route map of pulling the organization into this thing until it deals with all the problems that customers need solving.

Murray: So you’re inviting people into the change.

Ibby: Yes, and that process of rolling in needs to be a normative re-educative experience. So those people that are in the current system need to be given the opportunity to see the current system from a different point of view. Having seen it from a different point of view They then need to be given the choice, that says, you see all this shit that you’ve just identified, that’s always been there, but you could never see before, but now you can see.

Do you actually want to do something about it? Yes, I do. Brilliant. Let’s come and share with you some of the things that we’ve learned. And actually, we’re not going to give you answers, we’re just going to share with you some principles and frameworks, and we want you to work out your own answers. Because you might think of things that we’ve never thought of. So what you’ll do is you will either end up with methods that we’ve already got or you will come up with better and different methods. Either way, it’s a win win. That’s how you create self sufficiency.

Murray: There’s a lot of skills required to do what you’ve done. How do you teach those?

Ibby: Well, we have people work alongside us. So what we have is a mentoring program for all leaders that work with us And it’s a learn by doing thing. So as you start to build the new system, you start to acquire the new skills, the new perspective, the new methods, the new tactics,

and it’s not about, we have the answers. We do not. We often say to ourselves that the greatest limitation on what is possible in a client system is me. So what I’ve got to do is I’ve got to make sure that, once I’ve set them up, I get out the way and allow them to evolve it and develop it in a way in which is right for them. It’s not about me having the right answers. It’s about me giving them the right perspective and the right grounding in terms of how they look at and understand what they’re there to do for their organization their customers

Murray: So by taking them on the journey, you’re also building their capability.

Ibby: Absolutely. That’s what I mean about self sufficiency. It’s designed in

Murray: And have you found that they’re actually able to successfully continue with this sort of thing once you’ve left? 

Ibby: Absolutely. Yes. 

Murray: I could ask you a lot more questions, but i’m aware of the time. Shane, what do you think? What do you got?

Shane: Ah, woo, my head’s just exploded. 

All right, so taken manufacturing patterns and you’ve applied them and that thinking to service companies.

So that’s What you do and you’re breaking it down to this idea of systems thinking and intervention theory, and you talked about the service, the efficiency, the revenue and the morale. And one or many of those will tend to be broken and somebody put their hand up and say, We’ve got a problem and you go in and say, let’s have a look and see which of those is the problem.

And the way you break it down is you think about this relationship between performance, system and thinking. So it’s the thinking, which builds the system and that system is not giving the performance that they want. And you then looked at the lens of the work, those that do the work and the way the work is done. And you’re trying to then make a change that is a sustainable change. So I get all that. What I don’t get then is a visual model of how it all works. I think it’s one of these things that , you’d have to learn by doing to get the experience on how to apply all those patterns .

Then you talk about value demands and failure demands. And so failure demands is obviously the focus and it’s where the system generates the demand because there’s something broken in the system. So fix the system and then that demand will disappear and then you’re only left with demand from the customers where that demand has value to them.

Ibby: Yeah, I think what’s really important to recognize is failure demand only occurs when we screw up a value demand. If we do value perfectly you eradicate failure demands. So if you take the amount owing letter, I did not focus on the 35 percent failure demand. I just focused on understanding and solving the customer’s problem in a way in which mattered to them. As a consequence of just focusing on doing the value perfectly against what matters to the customer, you eradicate the failure demand, a lot of people start to take action on the failure demand, which is creating symptoms.

Shane: Okay. And then you talk about visualizing the flow. And then you said three causes of failure, standardization, specialization, centralization, which if you look over the last 10 years is what everybody’s doing. We’re hyper specializing our roles. We’re standardizing the work and trying to factorize that work, and we’re trying to centralize work in places to make it cheaper. And then you talked about focus on system economics, not transactional cost. So I have to do some more research around that. 

I love the principles of your company. Self sufficiency, change based on knowledge and no change without leadership. And you clearly articulated the journey that your customers go on when they’re working with you. 

You talked about walking the flow yourself, so situational awareness, understand where you are, what’s happening, get a sense of where the problems may be, then walk the leader through it so they can visualize it themselves and see what you see or disagree. And then try and quantify it. Try to benchmark it. 

I love the idea of give up and replace, not add to, cause we’re constantly just adding shit onto the pile, hoping it’s going to make things better. Then you and Murray went down a whole philosophical discussion around coercion, rational thinking, normative design, re educate.

But then you almost had a gate. Which was okay. So you’ve seen the flow. You’ve understand the problem, you’ve agreed that there is a problem, and now you’re either going to decide to fix it or you’re not. Depending on that decision, I’m going home or I’m coming back tomorrow, which is great. And then you talked about some stuff around how to get teams to fix that problem in short amounts of time.

So then if I think about that whole flow of work what I got to is a bunch of patterns that we’ve had from lots of other guests. So you’re visualizing the flow. You’re getting data to benchmark the flow, and identify with data where the problems may be. You’re using that to identify and confirm the issues and get buy in. Once you’ve got buy in you’re building cross functional self sufficient teams. And you’re removing all the legacy constraints from them, so you’re removing all the baggage that would make them fail.

Then I heard a whole lot of product thinking. Understand the customer job to be done. engage with the customers early, understand their problem and solve it, deliver value early, test the value and iterate. And then the last one you closed out with is to get you out of there have somebody in the organization learn by doing so that they can learn this method and carry on without you.

I’m with Murray in that I think there is a whole lot of experience that you would need to be able to do this well in a new organization or a new domain . But I can see how it it is methodic in the way you’re doing it. 

So anyway, about on this one, definitely not read a quick book and have a go. Murray, what’ve you got?

Murray: I think shane summarized it well. I want to make some connections with other people we’ve had on. What you’re doing reminds me most of what Tom Gilb was talking about. He is very focused on objectives, metrics and really rapid change. And working with leaders to say, all right, things are going badly. What is it that you’re really trying to do? And then how are we going to measure it? Then let’s get this team like you’re talking about and take a step in the right direction. What’s the step that we can take now, tomorrow, by the end of the week, no longer than that. So he is equally radical from a different domain. A lot of what you’re talking about is jobs to be done. Tony Ulwick talks about that a lot. user story mapping, which Jeff Patton talks a lot about is quite similar to what you’re talking about, I think. Although there’s also some value stream mapping in there, which goes a bit beyond what Jeff’s talking about. 

There’s a whole lot of people in the user experience research and design community talking about customer journey. And I think they would absolutely love to do what you’re talking about, which is sit with the call center people, talk to the customers and design an approach that helps them achieve their goal, but they often really kept away from doing that because management wants to give them a very specific and narrow task to do just to make a couple more connections. Mary and Tom Popadik, who are in lean software development talk about quite a bit of this stuff and the whole thing about coercion. Daniel Mezic is very big on invitation versus coercion in change management and in Agile. And Esther Derby, who is a Agile Coaches coach talks about a lot of the things you’re talking about in intervention theory

Ibby: Right, I want to leave you with something. I just want to do a visual. So let me just do it and then we’ll talk about it. 

Murray: At this point Ibi stood up and wrote W O R K in capital letters on a white board. 

Ibby: So Adam Smith lived in a world where people did work and those people were called craftsmen. So if you take the process of making a pin you take a block of steel you extrude wire, you cut it to a certain length, you sharpen one end, put a head on the other end, polish it. The person that does all of that is a craftsman and they’re called a pin maker. What Adam Smith worked out was actually, if we took the process of making a pin and broke it into it’s constituent parts and gave each part to a different person, we could make more pins. Productivity goes up significantly. What happens to the work though?

Murray: Yeah, it becomes simple and dumbed down, automated as well. 

Ibby: Correct. Rather than doing work I now just do W’s. I just do O’s. I just do R’s. I just do K’s. And then some other bright spark came along and said, well, actually, you know, what you can do is standardization, specialization, centralization. Now you’ve got people that are just doing the straight edges. You’ve got people that are just doing angled edges. You’ve got people that are doing curves.

Murray: To illustrate the point Ibi drew all of the vertical lines from the letters, W O R K in a group underneath the word. Then he drew all the left-hand straight lines and put them together and then all of the right-hand straight lines and then all of the curved parts of the letters. When he did that, It didn’t look like the word W O R K at all. 

Ibby: So now the training costs for people just to do that are significantly reduced. The work is even more dumbed down, easier for us to ship to the ass end of nowhere and pay peanuts. But when you’ve got that view of the world What happens is, if you look at this thing now, that resembles no relationship to the original intent Work. Completely fucking lost. But that’s what we’ve done over the last 50 years.

Shane: But then what we also do is we introduce a whole lot of complexity between each of those layers.

Ibby: Correct. Which means we have to bring all these things that have been fragmented and specialized and bring them back together. But only those things that actually have anything to directly do with work from a customer’s point of view the trick is how do you actually get the customer’s voice visible and shouting. That’s what we do.

Murray: There’s so many connections here to what we’ve been talking about with a lot of other people and it brings it all together to meet the needs of the customer in a way that’s much more effective for the organization. 

Shane: And without all the buzzwords. 

Murray: So that brings us to the next point how can people contact you and get you to help them?

Ibby: Well my email is Ibi at vanguard consult Dot co dot uk. The website is www dot beyond command and control dot com. And that’s where you can find us.

What I do like to do with people if they don’t know us is have a conversation. Let me just come in, have a look do that familiarization piece. And that first step of you walk that flow with me. There’ll be a fee for that, and that fee will be a nominal fee. If at the end of that process, no value is created for you, there is no fee. And you are the arbiter of whether value is created. No preconditions. The only thing is, pay for my expenses. But there is no fee. The fee will be waived if you believe no value has been created for you. Because for me, people have to be able to make informed choices whether this is for them. This is not a add to thing. This is a give up and replace thing. So this really requires hearts and minds at the start.

Murray: Yeah. One of our listeners said, you got to get these guys on. They have made revolutionary changes in the organizations that I’ve talked to. 

Ibby: Thank you.

Murray: Alright. Thank you very much for coming on Ibi. That has been great. 

Ibby: You’re most welcome.