Comments on: Managing Intangibles

by: Four Groups’ Blog » The Value of Intangibles

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:16:32 +0000

[…] Building on the piece on Managing Intangibles, I’m planning on adding some further examples of the increasing significance of intangibles in management. The first comes via the Bradman Group and CIO Magazine and is titled “9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless“. Some select examples; 1. The CIO is a control nut. 2. The CIO is aloof. 6. The CIO thinks changes can happen overnight. 7. The CIO doesn’t know the difference between resources and talent. […]

by: Nick Jacobs

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:38:48 +0000

Very interesting article Bruce with lots of thought provoking content.

It is also very interesting reading other posted comments as clearly there can be much debate about the concept of managing, controlling or even measuring intangibles but more importantly I think is the notion that businesses should take into consideration the intangible impacts on the overall business operation.

Just being aware is a good place to start as it is always relatively easy to measure and make business decision on the tangibles.

So, no challenging remark from myself but just a complement for tackling this subject in the first place caiuing readers to both ponder and think.

by: Timothy Platt, Ph.D.

Fri, 02 May 2008 07:01:00 +0000

This is very interesting, though I have to add that I find myself orienting more to degree and quality of quantifiability, and ability to connect that into knowledge systems (as opposed to keeping it as that much more unqualified data), than I am with tangible versus intangible per se. As such I see a well crafted balanced score card analysis as a validly quantifiable tool insofar as it connects strongly into business plans and models, and into ongoing processes and governance and in ways that can be empirically, quantifiably validated. OK, I am also a mathematician by training with a background in math logic and topology etc so I may the wrong person to ask to identify the tangible candidates in a police lineup. I would probably just pick the tesseract (alias the 8-cell or octachoron). As you focus on making intangibles tangible I guess you would go after the one with two aliases too. Humor aside though I look to quantifiability. At the same time I look to see if it is a tool that when properly applied simply reinforces and optimizes ongoing processes and operations, or if it provides insight that can lead to new innovation and break-away understanding and new processes. Six Sigma falls squarely in the first of these two and has to be viewed as such or you might find yourself simply optimizing the rearrangements of the deck chairs on the Titanic, as your business seeks to do better and better for a shrinking market and market need. Think potential road kill from not preparing for the impact of disruptive technology as one point where this becomes important.

So tangible versus intangible is important but it is only one approach I see as valid and necessary, and as one tool (metatool?) in my (meta)tool chest.

by: Peter A Hunter

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:48:52 +0000

Bruce
The survey itself is tangible but that attitudes that it purports to represent are not.
I worry that we may confuse what is real, the piece of paper, with the intangibles it claims to represent. measuring either will not change what they are.
I agree that the greatest benefits are to be found in those aspects of an organisation that are hard to measure, but I suggest that measuring them will not generate a true picture, or create change.

Peter A Hunter

by: Bruce Lewin

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:20:54 +0000

@Peter,

I think its a case of semantics and philosophies…

Is the employee survey now ‘tangible’ because we’ve got some data? Is the business process now ‘tangible’ because it has been mapped?

Hopefully, all management tools go a long way to making things easier to work with and go some way to making things easier to manage.

That said, there’s still a lot of slippage around and regardless of one’s approach, it is my belief that the greatest benefits are to be found in ‘the gaps’ and those aspects of an organisation that are hard to measure, manage and work with!

by: Peter A Hunter

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:16:36 +0000

Bruce
“Trying to make tangible the apparently intangible” I have to agree with Motty, is an intangible process.
Try to substitute the word unknowable for intangible and it becomes more apparent how crazy this aspiration really is.

The solution lies around the difference between working with the intangibles and trying to manage them.
“Managing” something that you cannot measure is a logical impossibility.

“Working with” something you can’t measure is something that everybody does every day whenever they interact with another human being.

Trying to make relationships and concepts such as trust, honesty, pride, commitment, engagement, tangible is a futile waste of energy when all we have to do is create the environment that is conducive to their development.

This differs significantly from the normal environment created by managers of suspicion, divisive competition, blame and target setting

by: Bruce Lewin

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:20:16 +0000

@Peter

>I don’t quite agree with your proposition that intangibles can be managed

Hmm… fair enough… as I alluded to in the article, many management tools attempt to make tangible the apparently intangible, 360 feedback and BPR being just two examples…

>We can work with intangibles but not manage them.

This is an interesting idea - what is the difference between ‘working with’ and ‘managing’?

>Human interactions are on another level of complexity and while not completely intangible do frequently defy prediction or logic

Sure, they aren’t the easiest things to work with. That said, our own work with 4G and particularly around the relationships would suggest its easier than first impressions would suggest!

by: Motty Perel

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:52:36 +0000

The problem is that turning the intangibles into tangibles is, well, an intangible process. Things are simpler at the workplace, and still employers do not get it. If you want to find out why employees hate to produce at their top capacity, why they strike, why they care little about quality, go to my website www.ProfitOnJob.com and read my book Smiling for Profit. It is on all Amazon sites and more. There is a TANGIBLE solution there for all these employee problems. Do leave your Review on Amazon.com, please.

by: Denis Barnard

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:19:39 +0000

I have to say that the section of Human Capital as postulated by Hewitt does not chime with our own methodology in The Newbury Index. Like many other methodologies, such as Saratoga, there is insufficient emphasis on causality…e.g. do Employee Satisfaction surveys actually reflect a true picture of motivation? Many of them also take no account of organisational structure and its impact on how things work from the top downwards.

by: Bruce Lewin

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:53:24 +0000

@Ed Daniel

>What I felt you could elaborate further on would be the types of metrics we can collect that help us understand the intangibles better.

You might want to take a look at the page below where we talk about Human Capital and introduce the Relationship Friction metric

>In my current studies I’ve been researching methods to deploy a concept I nicknamed CI^4

Sounds interesting… let’s get together some time…