BusinessForward

By Ryan Mulvaney, Solutions Architect and Client Executive

There’s a role for everyone to get the job done. In times of crisis, we depend on the special talents of team members to band together to serve the greater good. Together, we want them to focus on winning whatever battle confronts the day, in the most efficient manner possible.

But if the right people are working on the wrong problems, a lot of power is being wasted.

As a service organization, your IT department is responsible for enabling the success of the business. This likely means you are constantly asking for superhuman solutions from your team. The heart of those solutions is providing services that add value.

The problem a lot of IT leaders have, is that they look at value from only one perspective. They only assess it based on the benefit that they create. But value is a measure of utility compared to the cost to create that utility. Failing to recognize this distinction will result in a less than optimal organization, impeding your department’s full potential. A team with prioritized tasks is certainly more productive.

How can you tell if your team is stunting their own efficacy?

• A lack of prioritization.
• A reactive environment leaving little time for proactive activity.
• A cost-heavy organization.

The process to ensure that your organization does not fall into this trap is twofold. Start by conducting a task stratification exercise and then apply the outcome to focus on ongoing operations.

Task Stratification

Six steps include:

1. Creating a task inventory.
2. Measuring the value of each task (utility vs. cost).
3. Assigning the task to the most appropriate cost level of the organization.
4. Developing escalation policies and procedures.
5. Creating a roadmap and rollout plan.
6. Implementing that plan.

The single most important step and the spirit behind this entire effort is making sure that each task is being performed by the most appropriate person. Misallocating the time of senior-level leaders is not only a driver of high costs, but it also takes away some of your most important assets by focusing them on low value-added activity.

Ongoing Operational Focus

The ongoing operational piece is equally important. As new services are introduced, as new projects are formed and as you are asked to get involved in more activity, you must assess the skills needed for each task and assign them to the most appropriate person. Why waste the time doing the task stratification exercise if you do not have a focus on sustaining an optimal process?

I recently played a role in helping an IT organization streamline their entire operations through task stratification. By following the six steps, we were able to limit the time senior leadership focused on service delivery to less than 25%, leaving them to focus more on strategic projects.

From their most senior leaders to their help desk and outsourced tier 1 support, our effort had three goals.

1. Free up as much time as possible for senior leaders to make sure they can be more proactive about serving their customer base.
2. Decrease the cost of each service provided by making sure the complexity of the work being done matches the cost of the person performing the activity.
3. Off-load as much work as possible to a low cost third party tier 1 support company.

They are now being more proactive about how they serve their customers as well as assigning triple the amount of work to the low cost, third party support provider. Senior leadership is happy, the internal customer experience is greatly enhanced and the team has a sense of victory, incenting them to perform even better.

By simply making sure that the right people are performing in the right roles you can bring a lot of stability to your IT organization. Your costs will be low and your department will be well organized.

Start appropriately harnessing the superpowers of your team and you’re sure to deliver a happily ever-after to your customers.

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