Inside Eliminate Downtime

What an exciting time in the journey of Eliminating Downtime! This month I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at our first x Downtime event in London, co-hosted by BAM Nuttall, who also believe in the adoption of digital technologies, which can be seen in their Beyond Zero program. The event reiterated the importance of collaboration and partnerships between everyone in the industry. It is not a path that should be travelled alone, rather it should be a journey that inspires all of us.

“Managing downtime is all about improving the customer experience,” is how Stephen Jarvis, from BAM Nuttall, spoke about eliminating downtime. The conversation of Eliminating Downtime is changing and we’re transitioning from a conversational ideology, to that of a conversation that is anchored in business strategy. This is great to see, as the goal is to create a community within the industry that believes in, and adopts the journey.

This event also marked the introduction of the Eliminate Downtime Model. This is our first attempt at creating a model that adresses and unfolds the concept, creating a language we can use when we refer to Eliminating Downtime. Any feedback or questions in regards to the model are welcome, you can join the conversation at the next x Downtime event in Chicago or contact me directly.

I have been receiving some great reads from many of you, keep it coming. This, along with the London x Downtime event, has led to this month’s key questions to consider for your organization:

How can we start to use analytics and other data sets for predictions and informed decisions?
What technologies can we adopt to attract new talent in the industry?
When is the last time you spoke to customers about their experiences with your company?

A COMPETITIVE NECESSITY

McKinsey: "The right digital platform strategy"

The adoption of a digital platform strategy has become a necessity. Without this adoption, companies are lagging their competitors and losing out on added value. This article outlines the importance of this adoption, and how companies can best tackle it. Through this article, we get an understanding of the importance of partnerships and collaboration. This is a favourable route to adopting a digital platform strategy, as building your own platform can be time consuming, and costly. There are also performance gains to be experienced when digitalizing. The time to adopt a digital platform strategy is now, if companies wait much longer, they will experience that the competition is immense and that they may have missed out on a great opportunity.

"TRY STORMING"

Harvard Business Review: "The Right Way to Lead Design Thinking"

Design thinking may be counterintuitive to the traditional style of thinking and problem solving, yet it has a more meaningful, longer lasting impact on both the customers and employees involved. The two authors, Bason and Austin, illustrate this in their article on design thinking leadership. They mention three elements that are important in the process of design thinking, these being; “leveraging empathy, encouraging divergence and navigating ambiguity, and rehearsing new futures.” Design thinking is all about the people involved, the employees and the end user, and the goal is not to find a solution as quickly as possible. Rather there is the opportunity to test out an array of different solutions, and failure is not seen as a step backwards, but rather a step towards the solution of a problem. Leaders need to recognize the process and how meaningful it can be, to truly adopt design thinking.