Form follows function is an architectural artifact coined in the early 20th century to describe the design principles of Louis Sullivan. That same concept is employed in well-run organizations.
Functional consists of those skills an employee receives during his/her first six months on a job. A new computer, the associated software, and the requisite training to perform the basic purpose of the job. The next step in the functional level is to gain expertise in the generation of work flows. How to extract data and build models.
Unfortunately, in many organizations, those functional skills and models are misinterpreted to mean strategic abilities. Managers turn to their team, who spout off all sorts of workflow knowledge in response to a question. The managers often look dumbfounded, and say, “Gosh, I should know that, but I don’t.” The proud employee will say, “That’s what you got me here for.” What a mistake. What that means is your employee has failed you.
A managing partner at a large consulting firm I worked for wanted to meet every Monday morning to prep for his weekly conference call with all of his office leaders. I would present a high-level, executive summary with each of the regional stats. I worked all weekend, prepared dozens of pages and excel spreadsheets with all sorts of supporting detail. But what he wanted was the summary. As he would tell me, “If you can’t present it to me, and make me understand it in 15 minutes, it’s useless to me.”
Which brings us to the next iteration of a true skillset, the ability to evolve from the pure functional abilities, to the operational.
I learned that the most important piece of my presentation to executive leadership was to take the large data sets and distill it into a tab or two or a chart or brief table. Something I could speak to and explain easily to my manager. As an example, once, I was charged with the CFO of a non-profit to look at all of the data presented by a large real estate consulting firm to our non-profit’s Board of Directors.
The Board consisted of several very bright people. But, all of the real estate technical data and legalize, was not within an understanding that they could grasp and use to make an important strategic decision. To take the oblique and formulate strategic decisions.
I worked on this project for a couple months. Developed all the payback schedules, the amortization tables, NPV, and scenarios around, lease, purchase, a mix of both and several others. However, that was the functional piece of the project. Next, I distilled all the data into two tabs in front of the workbook, with some bar charts to describe scenarios and paybacks. In other words, into an operational report format.
When the CFO presented to the Board later that month, he was able to speak to those two tabs. After the presentation, the Board unanimously stated, “Now that we understand.” Consequently, they took the operational format of the data and made a very important strategic decision. The result was the construction of a new headquarters building. A $100M investment.
I apply this type of format in any work I prepare. Take the functional, transform that into the operational, which is then utilized by executive leadership to drive strategic decisions.
It seems like a simple format, but too often, executives waste their time in meetings trying to sort through all the myriad functional details and workflows, getting into endless loops of conversation and disagreement, and in the end, not able to make any sort of strategic decision.
So, in my experience at least, take the functional, turn it into the operational, and in the end executive leadership will be grateful as they make the important strategic decisions that drive growth and prosperity for their organizations.
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