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April 15, 2007
Helicopter View
Last week, the Dutch office of Hyperion had a seminar, organized in one of the old traffic control towers of Schiphol airport. Quite an interesting location. Every attendee received a small token of appreciation, a very simple remote controlled helicopter, with the remote control only having one trigger: up and down. Changing direction is a question of playing with the trigger. The message, as intended by the local management, was clear: Hyperion would bring you a helicopterview.
I spent yesterday evening playing with the helicopter (would that count as working hours?), and it started to dawn on me there is another quite powerful parallel ,when we define the helicopter as the organization, the launching pad with the batteries to charge the helicopter as Hyperion System9 and the remote control as the discipline of performance management.
First of all, it requires a certain team. I decided to try it out together with a friend -- a very strong project manager with a background in application integration, need I say more.
Then there is the question of TCO. The helicopter set was for free (Ok, so the parallel with Hyperion software is not 100% accurate), but that doesnt mean the total cost of ownership is. I had to put for about 22 euro of batteries in it, 8 large ones in the launching pad, and 6 penlights in the remote control. So only after doing that, I started to have an idea of the overall cost.
The batteries had to be put in in a certain order, and I made a mistake doing that at first. So understanding how to install the system really is relevant, it takes some expertise (it helps to read the manual, blush blush).
So, Ok, after we had finished the technical part of the project, we were ready to start flying, to go live. We knew how to operate the system, having read the manual, but now it was time to move from theory to practice. Yes!! The helicopter went up in the air, it worked!! But did it mean we had it under control? Hardly... Like with an organization, pushing the buttons doesnt mean we fully steered it. The helicopter partly had its own path in mind, often in an unintended direction (Tree! Tree!). The buttons had impact, but it wasnt always entirely clear what impact exactly. We quickly found out that by letting go of the controls a bit, we increased our control. What a discovery!!
Also, the battery power isnt endless, the helicopter had to be recharged in the launching pad after about 2 minutes. It needed a break once in a while...
Bottom line: performance management is all about timing, about knowing when to push a button and when to let go, and about recharging the battery once in a while. And when you do a good job, people will stop and admire what you are doing...
Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at April 15, 2007 5:23 AM
