Impact of Immediacy on organizational behavior

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Impact of Immediacy on organizational behavior

• Bangkok University
• Organizational Behavior
• Second Semester, 2002
• Immediacy on OB
• pkopcsan_at_prasena.com

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During the 12 seconds you will need to read this
slide at least

• 40 humans will be born !
• 700 million ants will be born !
• 30 humans will die !
• 500 million ants will die !
• The secret book of the ants Bernard Werber

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20 years of PCs
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April 20, 2002

• Structure of todays lecture
• What is Immediacy?
• How does it impact your life?
• How does it impact an employees life?
• How does it impact a managers work?
• What should you look at in your case study?

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What is Immediacy?
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Definition

• This characteristic of the Cybernetic Revolution
  qualifies the tendency of any entity/activity/tech
  nology to function on real-time basis, which
  entails the immediate response to queries as well
  as the capacity to react fast to any event.
• Short-term impact Queries are responded to
  within a few hours
• Long-term impact Organizations/individuals are
  prepared to respond fast to any change

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Impact on Individuals
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Business trip to Switzerland, Dec 20, 2001
Flight
Car
Hotel
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I need a Flight
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I need a Hotel
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I need a Car
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Where to go?
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John Powers says

• "Because we have achieved instant communication,
  we expect instant response, whether or not it's
  merited. The form and content of the response
  scarcely matter. What we're after is not so much
  communication as acknowledgment. To not carry a
  cell phone or a pager, to not have voice mail, to
  not be on line, is to all but declare yourself a
  hermit."
• (in The Boston Globe magazine)

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What tech tools are YOU using?

• Mobile phone
• PDA
• Internet
• Mobile computers

Do you perceive they help you live faster?
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Are you Ready?

• Tic toc, tic toc...Time is running!
• a. I do in one hour today what I used to do in
  double the time
• b. Whatever happens, an hour is still made of 60
  minutes
• c. I don't want to do things fast. Good work
  needs time.
• d. I know... How stressful!

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Impact on Employees
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Organizations are Immediacy-oriented when

• The organization is managed and operates on a
  real-time basis, and the top management
  integrates the principle of immediacy in the
  organization's ergostructure.
• The way the organization (by itself and within
  the network of its business partners) generates
  and distributes it economic added value can be
  monitored on a real-time basis, hence enabling
  the organization to respond immediately when the
  greater community asks for financial help.
• Technologies are structured and used to enable
  real-time processes and communications. This
  includes the flexibility to integrate newest
  technologies without loss of time.
• All employees strive to eliminate delays at all
  levels, whether in their response to queries, in
  their deliverables, or in their readiness for the
  future .
• All delays in the design/production/
  promotion/distribution of the organization's
  products/services are minimized, including in
  pre-sales and after-sales service. The
  products/services' nature itself can be adapted
  to a real-time situation, in which case their
  life cycle is extremely short (down to a few
  minutes).

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Real-time Processes
Fedexs real time tracking
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Employees Changing Role

• Processes are restructured and automated for
  real-time outputs
• Employees role shifts from executing
  time-consuming tasks to thinking, innovating,
  creating, designing, developing, solving problems
  and taking decisions as fast as possible
• What employees are above all required to be, is
  ready for change, eager to change and pro-active
  in front of change

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Ned Desmond says

• There is no forgiveness out there. It is not the
  time when my dad came back home every day at
  5.00pm with the train because things were so slow
  that to understand how things could change might
  take a year or so. Today, it all happens so fast
  that if you don't innovate, if you are not ready
  to change, you are really in trouble.
• (Business 2.0 Magazine 2001)

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Tom Peters says

• "To meet the demands of the fast changing
  competitive scene, we must simply learn to love
  change as much as we have hated it in the past."

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Jeff Bezos says

• "I'm often encouraging people to go faster, even
  if it means a worse initial product. I want us to
  start learning. The cost of trying to avoid
  mistakes is huge in terms of speed."

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Geoff Yang says

• "It used to be that the big ate the small. Now
  the fast eat the slow."
• (Institutional Venture Partners)

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Don Tapscott says

• "Better never than late"

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Mario Andretti says

• "If things seem under control, you're just not
  going fast enough."
• (2000)

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Examples of Questions to Ask
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Some Limits Advertising

• The Internet is allowing you in real-time to
  personally connect with the consumer. What it's
  not doing is creating an emotional bond with the
  consumer. Advertising on the Internet stinks.
  It's not emotional.
• Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi Saatchi, April
  17, 2001 SAM magazine

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Some Limits Finance

• Recent analysis done at Credit Suisse/First
  Boston indicates that the prevailing practice in
  the UK markets of demanding immediate fills for
  trades may not result in trade executions being
  done at the best available pricesmany fills
  for large buy trades were close to the high price
  of the day, while the fills for many large sell
  trades were done close to the low price of the
  dayWe think that both parts of our analysis
  show that for large trades better fills can be
  obtained if a patient trading strategy is
  followed.
• The Cost of Immediacy Principal versus Agency
  Trading
• Credit Suisse First Boston (Europe) 1999

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Some Limits Research

Immediacy is an important attribute of the
Internet. It allows for the exchange of letters
with a small enough lapse of time that real
conversation is facilitated. It also allows for
less delay in reviewing and publishing scientific
articles. These are important attributes that
allow on-line journals to bring pertinent
information to the reader with more dispatch.
Unfortunately immediacy has a downside Arthur
C. Huntley, M.D. of Dermatology Online
Journal.Dec. 1997 on a published case report by
C.E. Crutchfield et.al. on the use of zinc
pyrithione (Skin CapTM) for the treatment of
psoriasis which had to be withdrawn.
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Impact on Managers
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Thomas Homer-Dixon says

• The competitive economic system that we have is
  one of the principal engines behind the world
  getting faster. Because there is competition
  among them, they are all trying to survive by
  doing better than the next guy. And that means
  they want the best technologies, they want to do
  things a little bit faster, a little more
  efficiently. And the result is, the whole system
  gets faster and faster. So it is the competitive
  marketplace that is in part creating the rapid
  increase in our need for ingenuity.
• (University of Toronto 2001)

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Bill Gates says

• "If the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s
  were about re-engineering, then the 2000s will be
  about velocity."
• (Business _at_ the Speed of Thought)

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The speed of the IT Revolution

• 1995 Computerworld survey of CEOs
• 28 only of respondents believed that IT could be
  a potential source of competitive advantage for
  their companies
• EIU and IBM Global Services Cross-industry
  worldwide survey of CEOs 1999
• 33 of firms had yet to move beyond a simple
  website offering basic company information
• 24 of firms did not even have a Web presence
• Butler Group survey on the uptake of portal
  technology among blue chip companies Spring 2001
• 70 of participants had a portal or planned to
  implement one within 2001
• Chris Blaik (Divine UK), in Virtual Business Sept
  2001
• It is estimated that 100 of the Fortune 500 will
  have an enterprise portal deployed by 2004.

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Frank Shrontz says

• "Clearly, the world is changing and we must
  change with it ... Information moves too quickly,
  and valued technologies are too perishable for
  Boeing -- or any other company -- to assume that
  its past is a guarantee of its future.
• Former Chairman of Boing

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Peter Lewis says

• "We don't sell insurance anymore. We sell speed."
  
• (Progressive 2000)

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Time has been promoted!

• Cycle time changes. Cycle time reduction has
  become the basis of an approach to streamlining
  business operations that management consultant G.
  Stalk calls time-based competition

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But does it have the same meaning? 1

• In the Cybernetic Era, time optimization is
  measured at macro-level (organization), not
  micro-level (individual)
• Computers handle tasks, while human think,
  create, decide
• Time-sheets become irrelevant
• Presence in the office may be irrelevant
• Working hours monitoring may be irrelevant
• To monitor time in the traditional way is a loss
  of time!

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But does it have the same meaning? 2

• In the Cybernetic Era, individual time is spent
  not on processing, but on analysis
• Computers handle procedures and transactions,
  while human must interact, find and analyze
  information
• Long chats with somebody at the other end of the
  world (in chat-rooms or by telephone) are OK
• Huge amounts of e-mails require time to go
  through and respond
• Surfing Internet is work
• To prevent employees from chatting often goes
  against immediacy!

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But does it have the same meaning? 3

• The Cybernetic Era is just unfolding. The biggest
  time spent must be on learning.
• Computers as well as humans must learn, about
  everything
• The use of internal resources contributes to the
  development of the intellectual capital Experts
  dont do their juniors work, they train them
• The use of external resources is essential But
  they are often best identified by the employees
  themselves
• E-Learning saves time
• Learning in all its forms is no more a
  nice-to-have benefit It is a vital condition
  to survive in a real-time world

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Peter Drucker says

• "Knowledge becomes obsolete incredibly fast. The
  continuing professional education of adults is
  the No. 1 industry in the next 30 years ...
  mostly on line."
• (Business 2.0 22 August 2000)

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Managers should 1

• Push the organization to move from
  discipline-based time management to
  knowledge-based time management
• More respect in return for better results
• Employees should be pressurized to deliver better
  and faster outputs How and when they do it, is
  their business
• Move from punch cards and time sheets to
  performance management systems
• More freedom in return for better margins
• Employees should be free to use e-mails, Internet
  and other new technologies as and when they wish
  As long as final financial results are positive
• Move employees objectives from task-based
  targets to contribution to corporate goals

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Managers should 2

• Push the organization to move from
  discipline-based time management to
  knowledge-based time management (contd)
• More responsibilities in return for more
  responsibilities (!)
• Experts should train and empower their juniors
  instead of doing the job for them
• Include training in experts objectives, demand
  identifiable results from juniors
• More recognition in return for more efficiency
• The market, not internal time calculations,
  should dictate deadlines
• Move employees incentives from time saving and
  presence to response to market and client
  satisfaction

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Examples of Measures to Optimize Time

• Reach real-time purchasing
• How to reduce the number of physical forms to
  Zero and the number of approvals to One
• Eliminate time spent on redundant explanations to
  clients
• How to digitalize and virtualize services
• Eliminate time spent on redundant design of
  documents
• How to create easy-to-access common digital
  library and virtual workspace

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Read in Wired

• "As the pace of innovation increases, the useful
  lifespan of a new product or service decreases --
  and so does that of a company. Startups are still
  good business, but fewer and fewer are built to
  last."
• (April 2000)

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Read in Fast Company

• "Increasingly, successful businesses will be
  ephemeral. They will be built to yield something
  of value - and once that value has been
  exhausted, they will vanish."
• (March 2000)

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Tip!
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For your reference

• "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but
  in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must
  be feasible."
• A Yale University management professor in
  response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing
  reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went
  on to found Federal Express Corp.)