Bill Gates’ Automation Rules Support The Healthy Company Framework, and How to Automate Correctly
This article is about the dark side of automation, why better technology isn’t the solution, how to automate correctly, and how The Healthy Company Framework helps you achieve company-wide adoption.
If you want to speed up the technology buying process, reduce risk, and increase the chances of adoption, this article is for you.
The Dark Side of Automation
A summary of the dark side of automation:
Automating a bad process gets bad (or worse) results faster.
To quote my favorite of Bill Gates’ rules:
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.
The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
J.D. Meier summarizes this as, “Don’t automate inefficiency.” If you want garbage faster, automate it.
I’ve watched too many people and too many businesses automate a bad process and produce more garbage at a higher rate—only to blame the tool. Whether it was their choice of CRM, scheduling tools, employee monitoring software, or hurried adoption of AI, Gates’ rule continues to prove true. Automating a bad process gets you bad results faster.
People fall into this trap because they search for plug-and-play point solutions that treat symptoms, not problems. Those point solutions often come in the form of technology, be they the faded craze of blockchain, the current hype of AI, or whatever the next iteration will be.
Applying any solution without first understanding the problem without doing the work to understand why the problem exists sets up a perpetual loop of victimhood.
“The tool/automation/salesperson/etc. didn’t live up to their promise. Let’s try a different solution!”
Better Technology Isn’t the Solution
Better technology without understanding what you’re trying to fix is why better technology isn’t (always) the right solution.
Let’s look at the example of employee monitoring software.
The onslaught of forced remote work due to Covid-19 spurred a new problem that, for many, was mostly theoretical up until that point: what would happen if our entire workforce was remote?
Depending on your confirmation bias, personal experience, and leadership style, you can find articles that say working remote was positive or negative for the employee and for the business.
Whatever side of the fence you land on, it’s tough to ignore how the circumstances around this forced upheaval of social norms brought on the appeal and growth of software programs that track everything the employee does—at least on the computer.
Whether you’re familiar with the likes of Teramind, ActivTrak, Controlio, or InterGuard, they all, roughly, do the same thing: monitor a variety of computer usage statistics and provide the data to the higher ups. And, because many higher ups lost the ability to manage by walking around as workers went remote, they lost the ability to feel like they knew whether their people were working.
What, exactly, was the cause of the lost revenue or profit? Was there any lost revenue or profit? Does it really improve morale and productivity to monitor when people log on and do work? Questions like this often went unanswered because businesses just wanted to implement employee tracking software. They wanted to feel like they knew whether their people were working. They wanted their comfort.
They were assured by the software companies that things could be tailored and adjusted after implementation occurred. Gather data first, then determine how to best use the data.
Except.
Many companies never did anything past the initial implementations. Sure, they could see whether people were logging on or not, but that was it.
If you’re using technology as a replacement for understanding what’s going on in your business, you’re using it wrong. If you understand what’s going on in your business and then need software to track it, you’re doing it correctly.
But how do you get there?
How to Automate Correctly
To automate correctly, you must:
Understand the process
Identify the measurable actions that lead to the desired outcome
Apply technology to measure inputs—not just the outputs.
Understanding the process is a prerequisite. You cannot make informed buying decisions if you’re not informed. You can’t just know what outcome you want—you must understand the required inputs that produce what you want. To automate something, the inputs must be measured. Then, and only then, can you constructively apply technology and get something that is more efficient.
This is where it shows that Bill Gates supports the methodology of The Healthy Company Framework. As he says, don’t automate inefficiency. Automating any process you don’t understand will exponentially increase the likelihood it will fail. Automate something efficient and get much more.
Most methodologies skip past whether your business has a firm foundation that connects the people that work there. Most methodologies just pitch to the C-Suite, “You’re doing everything right, it’s just those pesky employees who are the problem.” But this cannot be 100% factual.
So, I’ve convinced you automating a bad process isn’t the way to go. What next?
Company-Wide Adoption
The Healthy Company Framework is built on three sequential principles. These principles are:
I. The Foundation
II. Two-Part Epoxy
III. Know What You’re Doing
These three principles must be built, in numeric order, to begin to heal your business and have hope for high adoption of change.
First, build The Foundation. You have a viable product. You have a sales team getting the message out. You have a delivery team that makes it happen and keeps customers happy. You have company level metrics and dashboards. You even have a vision to be the best in your market. But, do you have a purpose for everyone there? Have you really thought it out and physically written down why every person’s job matters? Do they know it and understand, “This is why I’m supposed to make these decisions, follow these checklists, and enter this information”? Because if employees don’t know this, they won’t care about your metrics, your products, or even your customers. The Foundation uses three key components to make sure people connect with your company’s vision, understand why their work matters, and have clear quantitative objectives that put everyone on the same team.
Second, create a Two-Part Epoxy of Documentation and Self Healing. To state it without the terms, you must build a culture where people document what they do in such a way that others can learn, build, and avoid the same pitfalls. This includes instilling a two-step problem solving approach of putting out fires and finding ways to prevent them from happening again.
Third, expand your idea of Know What You’re Doing. It’s not enough to just do one’s job. That’s only 60% of the work (The Middle 60%). You must communicate with those who hand you work (The First 20%) and with those you hand your work to (The Last 20%). When you combine this, you create a 20-60-20 approach that ensures everyone understands the answers to, “Where does my work come from, how do I do it, and who do I give my work to?” This creates a continuous chain of connectivity throughout your organization horizontally as the work gets done and vertically as people communicate up and down the org chart.
A Good Example
We’ve covered the negatives of the ‘adjusting as we go’ approach. Now let’s see how a company who leverages The Healthy Company Framework could implement better an employee monitoring tool.
Take a company who took the time to determine the purpose of each department and created measurements for each of their departments. When the managers were approached with how they might use an employee monitoring software tool, they didn’t have to get back to anyone with ideas or just passively say, “Yes!” They already had quantitative measures that tell them whether someone is doing their job. But, due to their current system limitations, did not have real-time insight. That is, they had targets (this task should take 60 minutes) and people generally fell into the 45- to 75-minute range, but it was based on the honor system. People just put the time in manually.
“If we had a monitoring tool, we could measure whether these tasks actually take the time people say they do. But, we’d have to make sure it could account for software delays like the time it takes for the query to run, for the installers to finish, or the code to compile.”
Wow! Now, instead of just tracking keyboard strokes or mouse movement, instead of tracking whether the computer when idle, etc., they are immediately equipping the higher ups with system requirements—before the tool was purchased!
Then, because the process was understood and the measurements were known, the system wasn’t a generic implementation. It was tailored to the specific jobs and areas where insights could be gained.
For this company, the buying process was weeks shorter, the risk was drastically reduced, and the adoption was a lasting success. They were able to gain insights into which processes were taking longer (or shorter!) than expected, finding room for other work to get done.
Have you ever been stuck, delaying a buying decision because you couldn’t get everyone on board? Have you ever sat around a table to knew everyone was lying when the boss asked, “Is this new, expensive tool helping?” “Perfect!” everyone cries, cringing at the thought of having to use the tool that was forced upon them.
What would it mean to your company if you could avoid these negative feelings? What if you could be the one to help the company reduce the buying time? What would it mean if you were able to reduce the risk of disruption? What would it mean for you if your team adopted the new tools and started leading the way of innovation at your company?
This can be you, and The Healthy Company Framework and Company Connections can show you how. I specialize in helping C-suites and mangers navigate the tough task of bringing departments together, especially through process improvement. If you’re looking for help, contact Company Connections.
If all else fails, try this:
Automate an efficient process.
It sounds counter-intuitive because you think the “low hanging fruit” comes from automating the things that are failing. But remember Gates’ rule: don’t automate a bad process!
Why automate a complicated process? Automate what’s efficient, and learn how to understand the complex before you create a Rube Goldberg machine!