As part of delivering the Business Relationship Management Professional course in Shanghai for a Client, we did the ABC Cards of ICT during the lunch break. There were 3 teams of 5 split to pick up top Issues they encountered in the organization as part of Attitude, Behavior and Culture.
So how did we do it?
We used their lunch time to eat, think and share perspectives as a cross functional team. The total time duration was 1 hour.
So how was their experience playing ABC of ICT?
There was quite an animated discussion along with boisterous laughter and energy flowing as they did the group exercise. Each and every team adopted a different strategy for picking up the top 3 cards. Team A, made the cards wide spread in the table for each one of them to have first a glimpse of all cards before sorting out the priority ones. Team B, first removed all the cards that did not make sense and focused on selective cards for categorization. Team C divided 4 cards each and then used mechanism to rank the cards before vetting out as a team. Overall the team identified these cards.
Top 3 Cards of Attitude Issues:
Reasons:
a) This was the most common reason, why they were attending the BRM workshop. It was clear that IT was not seen adding value to business. The expectation from the 3 day BRM course was to understand the value BRM could play as a strategic partnership to Business.
b) With so many projects and initiatives on the radar, there was continuous struggle to ascertain the business priority and impact. On probing further, they cited that users wanted all issues to be fixed on top priority . This was because the definition of impact and urgency matrix was not communicated to business user.
c) They focused more on process while sometimes, following the process did not yield desired outcomes. So there was a need to rationalize that achieving the objectives of business was far more important than following ITIL
Top 3 Cards of Behavior Issues
a) Most of the times, IT`s perspective of solutions were different from what customer perceived to be value. This was attributed to absence of putting themselves in the shoes of the customer.
b) This again repeated as part of behavior that the users wanted all their issues to be resolved on highest priority. Lack of defined matrix and communication across cross functional teams prevented users to get a single unified view of the category and prioritization of issues.
c) IT`s view of KPIs did not align with the Business strategy and the metaphor of Water-Melon Syndrome was quite prevalent within the realm of IT and Business equation.
Top 3 Cards of Cultural Issues
a) With over 4000 + Employees and different layers of organization hierarchy and roles , it was difficult to nail down agreed RACI matrix . This created confusion regarding ownership and accountability leaving several tasks often
b) IT was vehemently basking on their expertise knowledge with lack of attention to what user had to communicate about the issues.
c) IT was too focused internally and that made IT lose the trust of the business. This was very evident during our conversations of BRM workshop to highlight how IT can prove the relevance and regain trust from the business.
Overall, this exercise, highlighted that you can have great business processes, sophisticated tools and brilliant business partners, but it boiled down to the people aspect to determine the performance related to consistent business outcomes.
The Strategy and Operating Model from BRMI was then mapped to the Attitude, Behavior and cultural issues reported that could stifle the organization by contextual barriers . It made a good experiential learning and made them quite active even after the sumptuous lunch break.
