| By :
Martin Hofschroer
Using systems thinking instead of command and control can help your organisation work more efficiently. During the last century, organisations developed a method of evaluating design and management of work called 'command and control' thinking, which is now growing increasingly obsolete. The purpose of an organisation should be to acquire and keep new customers and systems thinking investigates how effective an organisation is at doing this. Using 'systems thinking' is preferable to command and control because it is clearer to see how current methods of acquiring and keeping customers can be inefficient and counterproductive. It is advisable to analyse customer acquisition in order to improve the process and treating customer acquisition in this way will help an organisation find evidence to prove that marketing is learning and working. Measuring marketing activity can be costly and inefficient so it is important to evaluate how an organisation measures sales, which can be done by using an overall systems picture. It is important to develop a system picture in order to understand the current performance of your organisation because this will enable you to find areas of potential improvement from a fresh perspective. Put yourself in the position of a customer and walk through a process in relation to their demands and then ask yourself what is the view from the customer's perspective and does the process help improve customer service? If parts of the original process are inefficient, then it is important to concentrate on researching ways to change the methods used. This can be done by consulting relevant employees involved in the process to investigate whether the new process is agreeable and discover whether changes can be implemented appropriately. Talking over issues with employees avoids the pitfalls of management thinking which is based on a manager's assumptions regarding all aspects of an organisation. Such management assumptions about structural issues, decision making and working with suppliers will influence the organisation's performance. One key aspect of systems thinking is that customer-facing employees are crucial to an organisation's performance and any future changes are dependent on their valuable input. It is important to ask yourself whether managers in your organisation act like customer-facing employees are the most important and do they take the time to talk to people doing the work and to customers? Improvement is traditionally seen as 'extra work' but systems thinking treats it is an integral part of the evolution of an organisation.
|
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.articlesbacklink.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
