IDEAS

IDEAS is the acronym for the five internal ExO attributes that help you to manage the abundance your Exponential Organization will reach by implementing the SCALE attributes. The five ExO attributes that focus within the organization are Interfaces, Dashboards, Experimentation, Autonomy, and Social Technologies. Understanding the particular nature of each type of abundance you seek helps you determine which IDEAS attributes best support your business operations.

Where have you tapped into abundance with the SCALE attributes you've selected?

What corresponding IDEAS attributes will manage this abundance, thus enabling agility and adaptability?

IDEAS

INTERFACES

DASHBOARDS

EXPERIMENTATION

AUTONOMY

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES

Interfaces

There is an explosion of information happening, yet people demand quick access to relevant content that cuts through the clutter.

- Anne M. Mulcahy, former chairperson and CEO, Xerox Corporation

How will your users-your customers, partners, staff and others-interact with your company? How will data be effectively exchanged? External abundance needs to be filtered and managed to be useful. Interfaces allow this to be done in an effective, targeted, and seamless manner.

Interfaces are an automation of one or more SCALE attributes. They are the matching and filtering processes-using algorithms and automated workflows-that allow an organization to translate an abundance of data into meaningful information that can be acted upon. They are the bridge between the drivers of exponential growth (external) and the drivers for stabilization (internal).

Interfaces automatically direct actionable chunks of input to the appropriate internal departments for action. Automatic routing eliminates the limitations and errors common to manual processing and is essential in positioning your business for scaling.

Interfaces can either be what your users interact with or what other systems interact with. For users, the user interface (UI) is the visual part of the software application that they interact with. To be effective, the UI must be built with a good understanding of user experience (UX) needs to ensure it provides a delightful and easy way to engage with your product or service. For systems, application programing interfaces (APIs) are the code-based connections your systems will have with external (or internal) systems in order to gather and exchange data and functionality.

Tips and considerations

• Interfaces work in conjunction with one or more of the SCALE attributes.
• Use human-centered design thinking in the development of interfaces.
• Can your interfaces eventually become self-provisioning?
• How are you implementing the Algorithms attribute in conjunction with your interfaces?
• Your API can facilitate value exchange by filtering and integrating external data to create internal value, and by providing internal data to create external value.
• What user experience currently occurring in the physical realm could move to the digital realm with the use of emerging technologies?

HOW TO IMPLEMENT

1. IDENTIFY THE SOURCES OF ABUNDANCE YOU ARE ACCESSING

   You need an abundance of outputs from your environment to create an abundance of inputs to your business.

2. HUMANIZE THE INTERACTION TO DEFINE THE RIGHT UX OR AUTOMATE THE INTERACTION TO DEFINE THE RIGHT API

   What is an effective way to engage with your external sources? Experiment with manual interactions and mockups to test your hypothesis for how this will work. What you learn from these experiments will help you optimize the interactions.

3. CREATE STANDARDIZED PROCESSES

   Define the flow of information and which actions are performed at each step. Experiment with manual processes to test your hypothesis for how this will work. Again, what you learn from your experiments will help you optimize the processes.

4. APPLY ALGORITHMS TO AUTOMATE PROCESSES

   Interfaces need to become self-provisioning platforms to achieve scale. Creating effective algorithms to enable this is a core competency of your business.

5. TEST INTERFACES WITH PILOT POPULATIONS

   Interfaces need to be effective before you scale globally. Create smaller-scale experiments in order to learn and optimize.

6. UPDATE INTERFACES REGULARLY

   Continually monitor the effectiveness of your interfaces to build upon what you've learned.

SAMPLE USE

CarePay is a Kenyan company with the MTP "Connecting Everyone, Everywhere to Better Healthcare." By linking funders, patients, and healthcare providers through mobile technology, the company aims to transform the healthcare sector, first in Kenya and then out to the rest of the world.

Its M-TIBA platform is a "health wallet" (the interface), which is accessed by mobile phone and channels funds from public and private funders for health services directly to recipients. Use of these funds is restricted to conditional spending at selected healthcare providers across Kenya. With every transaction, a digital payment is combined with real-time medical and financial data collection to help make healthcare safer and more transparent for both patients and healthcare providers. To date, CarePay has contracted with more than 2,000 healthcare facilities across Kenya and is driving healthcare inclusion for millions of Kenyans.

EXPLORE!

Have a look at these companies from an Interfaces perspective. What are they doing that makes connection engaging for the user and valuable for the company?

Dashboards

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.

- Galileo Galilei

Traditional annual or quarterly reporting cannot keep pace with the changes taking place in the current business environment. The hypergrowth that characterizes ExOs requires tight control frameworks and the ability to quickly course-correct. Information that influences your decision-making now needs to be available as close to instantly as possible.

Dashboards provide the real-time information you need to run your business. They reflect essential company and employee metrics, and allow short feedback loops to be implemented. The popular saying, "What gets measured gets managed," applies here. In the case of ExOs, where growth is so rapid, dashboards are essential to allow management decision-making to keep up with the pace of change.

A dashboard is simply a screen that provides a visual representation of data that is important to the viewer. Dashboards are designed in a variety of formats to suit their particular purpose, but their function is to consolidate critical performance metrics all in one place, making it easy for users to stay updated on the information most relevant to their business.

Making dashboards accessible and transparent to everyone in the organization enables learning and motivation and can support a collaborative and open atmosphere.

Tips and considerations

• What metrics are valuable for you to know in real time?
• Define actionable metrics, which provide insight into what you can improve, and avoid vanity metrics, which don't. Similarly, distinguish between leading indicators, which are easy to influence, and lagging indicators, which are not.
• ExOs should implement dashboards focused on measuring key ExO attributes, such as Experimentation, and making progress in achieving your MTP.
• Dashboards need to be adaptable. You are measuring critical growth drivers-both internal and external data-in real time.
• Dashboards can help support the Autonomy attribute.
• Use dashboards to openly communicate across the organization. Everyone in the organization should participate in setting goals and providing data and feedback.
• Use dashboards in conjunction with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) or real value Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Explore the many online and print resources available for an in-depth treatment of these methods.
• Building a dashboard into your user interface can support customer engagement with your product or service but is not an example of applying the Dashboards attribute, which instead focuses on employing dashboards internally within your organization to support day-to-day decision-making.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT

1. IDENTIFY THE KEY METRICS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

   Avoid traditional vanity metrics such as the number of registered users, number of downloads, or page views. Instead, decide what's fundamental to the success of your operation. What are the hypotheses, key learnings, and other elements for which you need data? What metrics give you information that you can act...