I had a recent experience at my house with my furnace. I was facing a crazy cold snap and a broken furnace, so the house was cold and the family was not happy. We had a local service company come out and replace the furnace. After three days, we could not get the temperature in the house to stay comfortable. After three service calls in five days to try to tune the furnace, we were provided some very interesting information.
The old furnace was rated at 70,000 BTUs, but based on new energy efficiencies, it was replaced with a 60,000 BTU furnace. Understandably, the old furnace was 7 years old, and being in tech, I absolutely understand that it only takes a little bit of time to deliver huge efficiency optimizations.
As we continued to talk, it came up that the blower fan is not as powerful. I am sure in most houses this would not cause the issues that it did in my house. We have a huge, vaulted ceiling over a large centralized great room, then all of the living spaces hang off of that room. Also, all our registers are in the ceiling. These are all design aspects that should have (in hindsight) guided us toward an 80,000 BTU system, which has a blower that can push the air with the same effectiveness as the old furnace.
So, the efficiencies gained in the ability to generate heat were hampered by the effectiveness of the blower motor in moving that air to living spaces.
That story resonated with me as I walked around the office, hopped from meeting to meeting and discussed solutions in my IT department. Very rarely do we ever look at the “blast radius” of an efficiency change to see if there are any systems that lose effectiveness.
Here were some examples that came to mind:
• Great, we have all-new servers with new power-saving features, but at the end of the day, we have to turn most, if not all, of those features off to get the power and performance out of the system that we require.
• This new automated process frees up 20% of the day for five FTEs that make $15 per hr. Too bad it took a team of 20 developers making $100,000 a year to build it.
This isn’t just an issue in technology discussions. How many processes do we “optimize” to be more efficient in one area of the business that create crazy amounts of work in another area, lowering the effectiveness of that other group’s work. And then, which team gets praise, and which gets in trouble? I think most of us have been on both teams (and if you’re in IT, you more often wind up on the latter).
Streamlining, automation and optimization are all buzz words that we use in IT to describe activities that make our systems and processes more efficient. I challenge everyone to start looking a little further out and making sure these solutions also make IT more effective. Are we really adding value to the business by making a process or system more efficient? Or are we adding efficiency and effectiveness to that process or system? Do we know the “blast radius” of our optimization, and have we done enough analysis to make sure that we don’t adversely affect the effectiveness or efficiency of another process?
These aren’t discussions that I have seen typically occurring at most meetings. This usually comes after something that isn’t going well somewhere. Why don’t we make this part of the discovery for any new initiative where efficiency is the guiding principle?
Having these conversations with the people involved in all affected processes before you make a decision to make something more efficient not only ensures that we maintain or increase the efficacy of the change, but it also goes a long way in building the necessary culture that fosters those conversations throughout the organization.
Here are some quick tips on how to introduce these discussions into your organization:
1. Look around and see who is not in the room. Those people not only represent possible stakeholders who are going to be affected by the decisions you make, but they are the “blast radius” that eventually can make or break the success of your efficiency initiative.
2. Make sure an actual value is stated for your project. That way, as you have your discussions and perform the necessary discovery, you can revisit and make sure the ROI to continue focusing on is still worth it.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask difficult questions and challenge the proposed process. If you are at the table, you are there for a reason, so make yourself valuable. They might not like the short-term dissent that you bring, but long-term success and commitment are what the company needs anyway.
4. Learn the new processes. Many times, changes are proposed to improve a process with one method. As we all know, there are several ways to solve problems. Learning the process at hand allows you to propose additional options that can be weighed and may have a greater overall impact.
This may be a huge or a small change for your organization’s work. Keep the eye on the long-term success of your organization — and good luck!
Originally posted on Forbes.com .
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