The Next Evolution for Management — Executive Learning Services
Beyond Reports, Beyond Insights, It Is All About Learning
Acronyms come and go but business needs and capabilities continue to evolve. New concepts and technologies occasionally crop up along the way and draw other concepts to them like whirlpools or black holes. Ideas bounce and build across industries depending on their resources and needs.
As an example, today MIS — Management Information Systems are more popular than ever around the world and even within the United States. The phrase is all but dead in the industries that first introduced MIS some two decades ago. First, it was replaced by EIS — Executive Information Systems and the recognition that users were drowning in too much information. EIS emphasized Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and focused on a companies top executives (the folks with the least time to use a system).
Soon MIS, EIS, and the ever-present reporting were sucked into the vortex of Business Intelligence. Like all gravitas concepts, Business Intelligence began to encompass anything adjacent; models and tools, expert systems and communications channels. While executives had more time for intelligence, the concept was becoming big, expensive, and confusing. It also lacked clear outcomes and ROI — recently Actionable Intelligence and Measures of Success have been coined as an attempt to rectify and clarify, the success of that evolution is yet to be written.
Artificial Intelligence burst on the scene in the same industries and at the same time as MIS. It was more obscure, more expensive, and more of an experiment. It began with terms like Neural Networks and Machine Learning, but soon AI was a gravitas concept all its own. It enveloped Expert Systems, pulled in Heuristics, and spawned a concept called Deep Learning. The latter is a rebrand, if also a refocus and refinement of analytics in general.
AI’s path forward was slower than BI, but suffers all the same obstacles. As more and more adjacent concepts are pulled (or pushed) into the AI vortex, the space becomes confusing and expensive. While AI is branded as the technology you have time for because it does the work for you, it is a poor teacher. What executive trusts their company to a machine programmed by an individual (or team of individuals) that can’t speak to the business and often sounds like a machine or robot themselves?
I could list more. If this were an article for Circa Navigate, I likely would. Data Science, Big Data, Decision Support, Decision Management, CRM, Marketing Attribution the list goes on. It is an ever evolving and complex tangle of technology and concepts that would surely make Aristotle smile — after all, he started all of it. The emotion behind the smile would be more difficult to fathom. While he was the first Analyst, he was also the first Teacher. And that concept has been lost in the vortex for quite some time.
Executives don’t need more data, information, or even insight. They are inundated with too much of it already. They need to learn…
Executives need to learn how to execute, how to be a better executive. This is about prioritization, learning, decision-making, delegation, and culture building. The systems they need are ones that teach, not inform (and not even act… there are already plenty of untrained actors in business). They need analytics but in the form of an Executive Learning System, better still a Service.
Every executive has the need for better service and to learn to make better decisions.
Whether Executive Learning Systems/Services will become a gravitas concept or be sucked into one is a bit irrelevant. The concept is transformational. Beyond data, beyond information, and beyond insight; executives need help make better decisions and learning more about their business. That simple concept and difficult reality promises outcome, action, and ROI. It’s simplicity is part of its charm. It is all about learning, teaching, and executing.
Adjacent concepts abound; from Deep Learning to Systems Thinking, just to name two. It is the science of Aristotle, the decision-making of Franklin, the execution of Drucker & Demming, and the computing models of Amazon & Google. It starts as a map. It grows as a framework. But it comes as a service, though I doubt we will ever see ELSaaS…
If you need help getting started, we are happy to assist you.
