NOWinside

NOWinside℠: Automation of the NOW Management System℠

Where Best-Practice Management and Private Social Media Enable Instant Innovation

(Coming in the Summer of 2012)

Today, customers (defined as anyone inside or outside the company who receive work from others) want the right solutions to the right problems, and they want them NOW. Web 2.0 has created the expectation setting that YES is the only viable value proposition and NOW is the only acceptable timeframe. Making that happen requires a NOW Management System℠, one that enables every employee to jump on every opportunity every time.

Brandy, two years out of engineering school and a new recruit at software developer BEARPAWsoft, has just arrived at her Silicon Valley cube for a one-week stint on the graveyard shift as a technical support specialist. She’s volunteered for this assignment because she’s eager to see what happens on the frontlines with customers she would otherwise never meet.

Grabbing her Red Bull, she logs into NOWinside™, the game-changing management system her company has installed designed to satisfy customers at the speed of now.

Brandy barely settles in when her Skype rings. Onto the screen pops the clearly irate face of Amos O’Shea, the Chief Information Officer of TexTech, the huge account in Ireland that BEARPAW won just last week.

“Six of our production facilities are down,” bellows the CIO,” because your damned software crashed! We need this fixed, and we need it fixed NOW!” Brandy’s heart races. She knows that her actions during the next few minutes will determine whether the CIO decides to stick with the new software or dump it.

“I’ll get back to you in ten minutes,” Brandy promises.

Immediately she sends an internal distress tweet to the software team in Vietnam. In less than a minute she’s on Skype as the engineers in Saigon see Brandy’s tweet and start accessing relevant documents and data from the cloud. Their real-time conversation includes “tag” searches of blogs, video references, and other critical documents. The inference engine suggests the “best-fit” materials to review. They quickly spot the problem, a recently discovered bug that application maintenance team in Paris had fixed and validated hours earlier. The engineers immediately make the necessary change in their cloud application.

When Brandy Skypes the CIO, Amos has not only calmed down, he’s thrilled with the swift response. “I didn’t think you guys could solve the problem this fast. You’re amazing!”

As Brandy finishes the call with the customer, she picks up her Red Bull. “Still cold,” she marvels.  Her smart phone chimes with a text from her boss.

“Checking in. Everything OK?”

“No prob,” she texts back.

……………….

Brandy thrives in the business world with the very tools she uses and loves in her personal life. Possessing the New Millennial mindset, she loves working in a company where the NOWinside™℠ affords her access to “instant everything.”

Three Steps to NOWinside™℠

1.  Establish crystal clear ORDER in the organization, removing any doubt about who is accountable for managing what (both for the routine work of the business as well as for the initiatives) using best-practice management methods:

• Real-Time Scorecards (accountability transparency)
• Up/Down Line of Sight (clarity of role and connection)
• 7-Step Problem Solving (proven and shared method)
• Breakthrough Planning (structured planning logic and tools to drive initiatives at every level)
• Peer Accountability (motivation)
• Project Management (risk/obstacle transparency)

2.  Enable FREEDOM to act by mashing up Web 2.0 technology using the most common social media tools to fuel the instant exchange of knowledge and ideas:

• Yammer (instant communication)
• WordPress (common forum for discussion)
• LinkedIn (understanding of expertise and relationships)
• YouTube (repository for video and audio)
• Inference and Search Engines (instant knowledge access)

3.  Put employees and these tools to work in a secure private network using the Cloud.

What do you get? The perfect balance of ORDER and FREEDOM needed to enable effective, real-time action.

A cloud mash-up of internal private-network social-technology and best-management practices creates alignment and clarity (mission, vision, values, strategies, goals and measures), makes accessible the knowledge resources (social media) needed to mobilize people, ideas and information, and empowers action in the NOW Moment℠.