Aesop’s Fable, IBM Cognos TM1, & IBM Cognos BI for Collaboration

Aesop’s Fable: Rooster & the Pearl

A rooster was once strutting up and down the farmyard among the hens when suddenly he spied something shining amid the straw.

There’s something else in this story that I think is worth calling out.  What will this Master Rooster choose to do with this precious pearl???  The assumption is that he’ll toss it back amongst the farmyard’s hay and rubble.

We know this much: he certainly could have known that the jewel could fetch much more than the “barley-corn” he was in search of.  We could argue that, because he lacked access to basic facilitators from which to collectively contemplate what to do with this discovery, not much, if anything, was to be gained from its being found. Yes, “one man’s treasure is another man’s trash.”

Imagine if the Rooster had collaborative access to his peers across the prairies he might have been able to extract greater value out of this discovery.  Workgroups could have been quickly setup to weigh options and determine how best to use this newfound resource.  One might learn through this group involvement that the pearl should be invested for a later date when times are not as prosperous.  Perhaps, if it turns out to be valuable to the ever-predatory fox community, it even could be used in smaller bits to slowly payoff these foxes to keep them at bay from invading the sanctity of their beloved henhouse?

Enabling Organizational ‘Pearls’ to Flourish Enterprise-Wide

This scenario is obviously entirely made up but there’s a great degree of truth in it, especially how collaboration and workgroup enablement can impact a business enterprise.

‘Pearls’ exist in every organization.  Are we leaving it up to the workforce to find a way for these discoveries to make their way to those who need to be involved?

Let me ask you this: How often do we see product-focused workgroups, those that typically involve a matrix-style team with people from marketing, sales, product development, and product management to name a few dotted-lined into a specific product or product category with all of these workers inefficiently presenting their respective plans to each other without really collaborating with each other through each product lifecycle or initiative that support this particular product team. 

We know the workforce is filled not only with great ideas that can assist the over-arching company strategy as typically dictated from the executive suite but the workforce also has important front-line information that can benefit their specific departments or cross-functional teams.  Enabling this type of communication and collaboration is the key to building a ‘connected’ organization.

McDonald’s Big Mac Sandwich, 3M’s Post-It Notes, Sony’s Walkman, and Dunkin’ Donuts’ Munchkins are just some big-bang examples. All over the organization there’s cost savings and process efficiencies (streamlining order-to-cash), growth opportunities (expanding into new markets and product lines), and a risk awareness (unforeseen commodity/raw material price changes) that front-line employees, middle management, and even back-office workers have visibility into that necessitate a feedback loop so they are captured and acted upon – intra-department or cross-company.