Doing More With Less: How to Build a Quietly Amazing Support Function

What I mean by that is digital is, is wonderful.

We, we, we have a lot of advantages in making something, uh, digital, but you should do digital where it makes sense.

Don't do digital for the sake of being digital.

It's, it's a tool in the toolbox.

It does not mean that you need to apply it to everything.

I think the classic example that we're all struggling with right now is what happened in the auto industry.

You know, uh, I now have a, a car as well that it's all flat screens in front of me, and I have to take my eye off the road to do anything and go through menus.

Whereas when you have a tactile button, even if behind it is a, um, you know, fly by wire or, or, uh, you know, not a manual analog cable, but at least I have a tact- I-- by touch, I know where I am.

Whereas now it's all visual.

Y- you-- That I think is a classic example of where we have gone too far.

Or understanding that digital stuff doesn't last as long.

It can go obsolete.

What do you do when it goes obsolete and you don't have the tool that reads the CD or the old 3.5 or five-and-a-quarter floppy disk? You know, these are the things that you need to analyze.

So don't do digital for the sake of covering a buzzword or theater.

You need to do it where it makes sense and it adds value to the organization and makes your life easier.

All right.

What would be a key, a few key areas you'd want to dive into and kind of get a baseline and take a look at with respect to specifically what you want to look at so we're not getting into the theater?

Well, is the data foundation actually usable? Do you have enough data, and is it in a usable format that you can grab? Life has come a little bit easier in that, in that world because of cloud technology and things like that, but you need the data in some sort of usable format.

I- if it's inaccessible, then it's not really helping you, and it's gonna make your life, you know, that much difficult, uh, to, to really use.

Uh, also, does the process, by its nature, create evidence? Do you have a log that's, you know, as you're processing through things, are you leaving the artifacts and logs that you need? Don't just create, you know, and move something from paper to digital without leaving an underlying foundation.

Then that's not mature, and you don't have enough to provide the evidence that you would require to, you know, some...

You know, we all have to deal with auditors.

We all have to sometimes prove ourselves.

Sometimes we want to leave a legacy that shows why did you make this decision? What was the basis for it? Three years from now, somebody's gonna ask a question, and either you or your successor, you would like to have them the ability to answer that question.

And then-

What I mean by that is digital is, is wonderful.

We, we, we have a lot of advantages in making something, uh, digital, but you should do digital where it makes sense.

Don't do digital for the sake of being digital.

It's, it's a tool in the toolbox.

It does not mean that you need to apply it to everything.

I think the classic example that we're all struggling with right now is what happened in the auto industry.

You know, uh, I now have a, a car as well that it's all flat screens in front of me, and I have to take my eye off the road to do anything and go through menus.

Whereas when you have a tactile button, even if behind it is a, um, you know, fly by wire or, or, uh, you know, not a manual analog cable, but at least I have a tact- I-- by touch, I know where I am.

Whereas now it's all visual.

Y- you-- That I think is a classic example of where we have gone too far.

Or understanding that digital stuff doesn't last as long.

It can go obsolete.

What do you do when it goes obsolete and you don't have the tool that reads the CD or the old 3.5 or five-and-a-quarter floppy disk? You know, these are the things that you need to analyze.

So don't do digital for the sake of covering a buzzword or theater.

You need to do it where it makes sense and it adds value to the organization and makes your life easier.

All right.

What would be a key, a few key areas you'd want to dive into and kind of get a baseline and take a look at with respect to specifically what you want to look at so we're not getting into the theater?

Well, is the data foundation actually usable? Do you have enough data, and is it in a usable format that you can grab? Life has come a little bit easier in that, in that world because of cloud technology and things like that, but you need the data in some sort of usable format.

I- if it's inaccessible, then it's not really helping you, and it's gonna make your life, you know, that much difficult, uh, to, to really use.

Uh, also, does the process, by its nature, create evidence? Do you have a log that's, you know, as you're processing through things, are you leaving the artifacts and logs that you need? Don't just create, you know, and move something from paper to digital without leaving an underlying foundation.

Then that's not mature, and you don't have enough to provide the evidence that you would require to, you know, some...

You know, we all have to deal with auditors.

We all have to sometimes prove ourselves.

Sometimes we want to leave a legacy that shows why did you make this decision? What was the basis for it? Three years from now, somebody's gonna ask a question, and either you or your successor, you would like to have them the ability to answer that question.

And then-