The Frozen Middle
Paul Chapman, CIO of Box, helps us understand how some companies boil the ocean, yet still end up with a frozen middle.
As Silicon Valley’s finest started claiming top talent, the rest were left scrambling to identify and recreate whatever made the startup gigs so enticing. Well those nap pods, fully-stocked break rooms, and standing desks were hard to ignore. Granted, installing nap pods might be far-fetched, but free lunch and standing desks are easy-to-duplicate, albeit costly, for most organizations.
But here’s the thing: those superfluous perks weren’t the golden ticket to Silicon Valley startups’ power of recruitment and retention. Instead, the most forward thinking of these companies built their operational core (the physical spaces, digital platforms, and technology used to facilitate operations) with intention. They knew that when a company’s operational core is fundamentally inefficient and ineffective, free food and even bespoke desks only placate the symptoms of a poor workplace experience.
Companies of any size—from venture-backed unicorns to scrappy startups—can suffer from problems with their operational core. However, large enterprises tend to experience these ailments more frequently because of their size and the bureaucracy inherent to some organization structures. To succeed — heck, even survive — in the organization, employees adapt to their environment, regardless of the efficacy of the spaces and technologies themselves.
When there’s no process for booking conference rooms, employees improvise with Post-It notes to stake their claim. If the conference room phones are outdated with frustrating sound quality, employees simply use their smartphones instead. Over time, the concessions and adaptations made by employees to compensate for a broken operational core become standard procedure. The adaptations are now processes ingrained in every employee. As a result, even though the core is fundamentally flawed — and certainly not employee-friendly — employees have become so accustomed to the workarounds that changing their approach is difficult.
Paul Chapman, CIO at Box, explains this phenomenon as the “Frozen Middle”. “The Frozen Middle is the center part of an organization that’s become entrenched in the way it operates and behaves,” Chapman explains. “The entrenched inertia contained in the middle of an organization is very resistant to change — hence the term the Frozen Middle.”
Why the hard-lined resistance to change? We’d be wise to remember that at one point, their now outdated technology stack was once exactly what the organization needed. In fact, it was (and likely still is) supporting generating revenue. Unfortunately, the problem only becomes more entrenched and harder to unravel as more time elapses.
Consider the outdated technology that continues to cause vulnerabilities in retail and ATMs. The payment systems currently utilized by the banking industry were largely set up in the 1980s, before the Internet as we know it even existed. Sure, there was a concerted effort during the initial onslaught of ecommerce to tighten up the security of online payments. But brick and mortar retailers still rely on a backbone of payment processing that remains largely unchanged.
“User behavior and user habits are hard to change — and technology alone only acts as an enabler,” Chapman explains. As the banking industry clearly displayed: technology doesn’t force change to occur. Real change requires a concerted, comprehensive operational approach. When companies neglect a comprehensive strategy for change, program failures occur with technology often baring the brunt of the blame.
In the case of banking, hackers continue to target and exploit the industry’s long-standing unaddressed vulnerabilities. Cyber criminals can continue to take advantage of points-of-weakness discovered years ago. This is not too dissimilar from what’s happening in organizations suffering from a “Frozen Middle.” Vulnerabilities that have existed and persisted for years continue to trap the company’s employees in poor situations. Employee productivity, happiness, retention, and recruitment all suffer as a consequence.
“… you really have to re-think your company from the ground up…”
Which is precisely why Chapman recommends that companies innovate deeper. “As organizations rethink their new style of operating to support a new style of employee, a new style of work, and a new style of IT, you really have to re-think your company from the ground up — everything from your operating model, to the technology, to the digital experiences you create for your customers, suppliers, partners, and employees,” concludes Chapman.
Companies still mimic the superficial, hard-to-ignore traits mistakenly linked to Silicon Valley’s recruitment and retention power. In reality, what really gave these startups that power was a modern, seamless operational core with spaces and technologies purposefully chosen to maximize productivity.
Until the heat is focused on frozen technologies, structures, and systems, companies will continue to be outpaced by modern workplaces.
