What is Organisational Scar Tissue?
One of my favourite phrases of the last few years is ‘organisation scar tissue’. I like the phrase as it perfectly describes the issue it portrays. This includes the historical context of the issue, the current situation, and also, the feelings around the subject.
So what is it? We will explore more in this blog and equip you with the tools to avoid it and suggestions for treating it.
But first, some definitions to give some context:
Jargonism.com defines organisation scar tissue as:
“Negative consequences of a company's past decisions and actions that can slow down a company's ability to adapt and grow. This includes rigid policies, procedures, and bureaucratic decision-making that can discourage innovation and creativity at a company.”
So, in this definition, the past decisions of a company are like an injury, and the resulting consequences faced by it are the scar tissue that forms around it.
This is a great definition, but I believe there should also be an emphasis on the one-off nature of these past traumas. The definition I find myself saying when describing it to others is:
“The buildup of processes in a company due to historical pain. This pain is often unlikely to be replicated but the processes reduce the efficiency of the company, sometimes critically."
At this point, you may be thinking of examples from your own experience. Some examples I have seen include:
A 37-point (yes, really!) approval process. This included three people checking the same things, some very senior.
A CEO being required to sign off all contracts after signature (30+ a week). It was hard to see the reasoning at that point in the sales process, let alone whether they were the right person to do it! This process was due to mistakes made during hyper-growth.
In one company, the Legal team checked every contract even thought they were automatically generated. This was a ‘just-in-case’ legacy process from when one contract was changed in Word after sign-off 8 years prior!
In these examples, after very little digging, it became clear that all had my four traits of organisation scar tissue. These traits are:
A justification for existing. Something has happened historically that has led to this process existing.
The process led to an increase in manual steps, delaying receiving the desired output.
The opportunity to streamline and gain large advantages was present.
People cannot state why the process exists now with anything other than “That's how we have always done it”. This reminds me of the 5 monkeys experiment shown below.
So, how do you identify organisational scar tissue in your context?
Start by making a list of potential processes. You will find most of these by listening to the complaints of employees. This is the classic ‘water cooler’ chat. In fact, in the Salesforce World, there’s an entire Slack Channel devoted to these frustrations, called, amusingly, ‘Why Admins Drink’! In your context, you can make this more formal via an employee or customer/partner survey. They will quickly tell you what holds them up the most and where their frustrations lie as long as you have the right culture for this openness. Consider making it anonymous if you’re unsure how honest your stakeholders might be. You can also check your intersecting processes, for example, a Sales Team and an Approval process managed from elsewhere, meaning that this can be a great project for a RevOps team.
Once you have your list, check them against the four traits to reduce it and determine the effort and value involved. To determine effort, it is worth remapping each process using the mentalities you would use to plan an approval flow. If you use Salesforce, I would also recommend checking the current automation behind each area. This may include the following areas:
Approvals
Advanced Approvals
Flow
Process Builder
Workflow Rules
Assignment Rules
You can now plot them on a Value vs. Effort Matrix chart like the one below from Savio:
I have always been surprised at how many organisational scar tissue tasks fall into the Quick Wins category. Once you’ve prioritised, you will then just need to group tasks into Sprints, fire up a sandbox, and build some MVPs! Now you have the ammo you need to get internal sign-off for deployment and make your company a better place to work, do business with, and be more profitable.
Carrying out this process can be painful for an organisation, but it is exactly the sort of area that allows Admins, RevOps, and/or consultants to show how much value they can provide.
If it would help to discuss this process, please don’t hesitate to reach out; we would be happy to help.
