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Trapping Customer Value Leveraging the Symmetry of Matrix Management To sustain consistent revenue growth a company must constantly increase the value it offers to its customers. Finding that next bit of customer value, year-after-year, is really hard. To some it’s like trying to find water in the desert. People called dowsers used to be able to follow twitching forked sticks to new sources of water. Wouldn’t be great if there were dowsers today who could help companies find new sources of customer value? Dowsing for customer value seems like a long shot, but with that next incremental revenue stream so hard to find, chances are forked sticks have made it into more than one boardroom. In spite of the difficulty of searching out new customer value, some companies are constantly able to fuel predictable growth. Ruling out dowsing, tarot cards, luck, etc., what’s their secret? Successful companies don’t have to search for ways to increase customer value. Instead they are great at trapping the customer value when it hits them. The Spider's Web Fall is the season when spiders are busy weaving their webs. Spider webs are works of symmetrical beauty. The morning dew briefly exposes them as jeweled galaxies orbiting a bush or tree. Then the dew dries and they become all business. Spiders cannot know the trajectory, size, speed, or shape of their next opportunity. So they design a web that maximizes the odds of trapping whatever comes their way. Successful companies follow the spider’s approach to trapping customer value. They build organizations with the same symmetrical beauty as a spider’s web. A spider’s web has radial links spreading out from its center and spiral links that run nearly perpendicular to them. These two types of links can be compared to the two sides of an enterprise’s matrix organization. The links radiating out from the center of the web represent the functional side of a matrix organization. They establish the web’s overall strategy and provide the underlying infrastructure. When an issue or opportunity presents itself, the radial links of the web enable the command center to quickly react when additional resources are needed. The spiral links of a web represent the work flow side of a matrix. In a symmetrical web or enterprise, the spiral (work flow) links connect each radial (functional) link to the next, with a minimal amount of duplication or complexity. The spider knows to not cross spiral links randomly and uses a standardized approach to insure completeness of purpose. Achieving Symmetry It’s not a trivial exercise to achieve symmetry in a web or enterprise. Yet most organizations don’t give sufficient attention to the symmetry of the matrix formed by their business functions and work flows. Imagine a spider that carefully developed the radial (functional) links of its web, but allowed the spiral (work flow) links to form and reform without any clear direction. Some sections of the web would consume too many resources, while others would have gaping holes. Our spider would have difficulty managing current opportunities, let alone adapting to new ones. For an organization to consistently trap new sources of customer value when they hit, it must first achieve the symmetry of a spider’s web:
An organization that matches the symmetry of a spider’s web will be a thing of beauty in its own right. But when a new customer value opportunity comes along it will be all business. That organization will be able to wrap-up new opportunities with an agility measured in spider web time. AGILEAN Corporation shows organizations how to use Agile Program Management and Lean Office Implementation to produce greater customer value in less time with fewer errors. For additional information, please contact us or visit www.agilean.com.
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