FM: the innovation imperative

Citation

Hinks, J. (2007), "FM: the innovation imperative", Facilities, Vol. 25 No. 11/12. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.2007.06925kaf.003

FM: the innovation imperative

I would like to start by thanking Edward Finch for his editorial leadership and vision with Facilities. A great achievement.

My comment is prompted by a serendipity, as I find is often the case. Whilst attending one of my son’s karting practice sessions, I happened upon a copy of Car magazine lying around in the cafe, and my comment now was catalysed by an article I found on the Ferrari FXX concept.

If you had been one of the 29 people offered the £1 million Ferrari FXX, then you would have already have been adjudged by Ferrari to have the right heritage and ability to become an official Ferrari client test driver helping with the further development of their cars and services.

All 29 FXX’s were sold prior to official confirmation of the project, and money was not enough to get hold of this car or their driver development services.

The 29 FXX client test drivers engaged in co-development with a team of factory test drivers, engineers, and technicians, supporting the drivers. Their participation in six bespoke Ferrari track events around the world were all with full Ferrari track support. And as one of the 29 owners, you would have received bespoke driver and car development over two years …

Ferrari – the supplier in this relationship – gets action research feedback × 29. The car’s telemetry system is designed to track 39 different dynamic parameters that interest them as constructors; the client test drivers each choose their own initial set-up, and the honing and development over two years starts from there.

So, 29 laboratories for Ferrari learning from 39 quantifiable comparators, plus (and this for me is the key part) access to 29 systemic views on the same car and its evolutionary inter-relationship with 29 different and evolving driving styles. A total of 29 bespoke and dynamic solutions honing towards 29 best values for each customer. Same leading edge start point, common test tracks. And with the supplier pre-qualifying the customer for their mutual service and product development!

Is there a genuine FM parallel involving the most capable and far-sighted of suppliers and users of world class workplaces? Not to my knowledge, if you consider the entire package for a direct analogy. But millions of workplaces and service combinations are being tuned by users and FMs continuously. Co-evolution is happening, but in a massive uncontrolled experiment, and the largely un-assessed laboratory of workplaces is a changing backdrop, too.

So, think of the potential of systematic real world research in all of this. And the criticality to pulling real useable meaning out of it.

Why bother?

The FM services sector is commoditising, much of it is already commoditised. Suppliers are looking to globalised models and fourth party outsourcing in a search for the professional value-add in a market where quite literally businesses can be bet on low-cost labour (consider hospital cleaning and infection as one thinking point). Reverse auctioning practices where objective costs substitute for subjective value – the consequence of an engineering and cost/risk paradigm underpinning the emergence of FM rather than, say, an HR paradigm?

Whatever, FM now needs to innovate to survive. The FXX package and concept is about a form of evolutionary shift that the FM industry, the FM profession – if the distinction is significant – and the FM client all need desperately. Scope for symbiosis, or to put less spin on it, a classic prisoners’ dilemma?

In contrast to needs, instead cost prevalence inhibits quality headroom in contemporary FM. Fragmentation in the industry and the client-base also tend to curtail deep innovation. Contractual approaches to measuring and managing workplace (and FM) performance still focus on avoiding failure and the compliance with specification as surrogates for value. The FM measurement paradigm still struggles to illuminate differential competitive advantage from FM in business value terms.

Perhaps I appear too impatient, but many colleagues at the leading edges of the FM industry and client FM body talk to me about their search for evidenced solutions to a becalmed service model and a market that behaves like the products and services have become commoditised. Often they still do not recognise the link about the role of research in this step change.

FM desperately needs disruptive innovation – which almost always requires three conditions: Pressure, starvation of resources, and perspective shift. We already have the first two, whether we sit on demand or supplier side. The challenge is perspective shift itself, and that requires a shift in overall theoretical stance as well as local practices. This requires leadership around a cooperative approach to what is a shared dilemma.

The key issue is what to focus on first, and whose innovation value is it that FM is looking at anyway?

Some ideas, some questions (mostly questions and reflections actually):

• •

  What and who are the drivers for business? What would be their equivalent in the FXX’s dynamic telemetry? (Go to the back of the class if you just say time, cost, quality). For example, how does FM support dynamic business change happen? Productivity is not the same narrow concept to business as it was prior to the “knowledge economy” shift in worldview.

• •

  What and who are the drivers for workplace/service value? – FM is usually a component in a cooperative system involving IT, HR, communications and logistics – the equivalent of the FXX support team. How effectively do they work as a system and where is the driver here? Are they learning from each other, is the industry learning from them, and how capable are they of change, individually or together?

• •

  If the FXX model is too wild for one leap, think about the BMW FIZ equivalent – a three year co-location of 200+ staff for new car projects, involving advanced cross-divisional links; time pressure and perspective shift within alien, neutral space – involving staff, suppliers, and customers. FM as a stagehand of radical thinking if not a participant. Or Lockheed Martin, using a similar model for a long time – the Skunkworks concept – perhaps with a broader brief, less structured approach; but also involving scarcity of resources (usually time). What are the possibilities for 1:1 arrangements with far-sighted clients and suppliers, and how does the research body figure in achieving or not achieving this?

• •

  How much (more to the point, how pertinently) does the industry and the client base invest in R&D? And for what purpose, and what result? And how does it use it, value it? Or embed it? What research, what evidence, what new concepts are really needed? And what do we have already in place that the industry consistently relies upon now? Indeed, does FM satisfy all the tests of a learning industry anyway?

• •

  How would FM achieve the equivalent of the FXX laboratory? Think about the equivalent of large scale medical trials involving massive datasets and looking for significances in inter-relationships contributing to a medical analyses based on grounded theory? Or Las Vegas hotels using data mining and customer preference trending to predict behaviour, and thereby to tailor services precisely based on trends and typologies in customer preference profiles. The FM industry could combine both approaches – a sector-wide pooling of mined data combined with grounded theory, and the equivalent of telemetric trend analysis from massive anonymised trials plus some bespoke customer engagements. This would need a shift in cooperative perspective through … oh, and being sure to measure the right things (many of which are not easily quantified) using the same approaches and assumptions …

• •

  At the root of all of this, there is a chronic need for meaningful demonstrators and independently developed analyses of FM value. Think about it this way – with whom and on what basis would you benchmark the Ferrari FXX? Does FM have a Ferrari FXX suppliers (independently audited, universally agreed, that is), or competitors for that status, and any form of common race track and meaningful telemetrics to do comparisons on and to design refinement exercises around? Are any of these issues and limitations realistically reflected in approaches to FM performance. One of the problems is the dis-enamour with benchmarking, brought on in part by the rush to apply it without thinking through the implications and limitations. On a more positive note, what about ways forward? Many in the industry recognise the need to move from a one-size-fits-all thinking needs to evolve into mass customisation, but are we really getting any nearer to asking the right questions? A lot of research opportunities here.

• •

  First though, how do you change the thinking about the ROI from FM? – clearly FM is part of a complex social behavioural and cultural business system, but it is usually modelled and measures its worth as if it were a stand-alone operating in a static business setting (how many case studies describe the business context, its dynamics and changes in, say, the staff view over the duration of a case?). Meanwhile, with the industry still debating what to measure – in effect designing the aeroplane whilst in flight – I know of research on the soft service side of FM that indicates that cognitive dissonance can have a profound impact on performance measurement reliability. Do we take these issues into account in our assessments of satisfaction, or quality, or value or performance level?

There is a need for a systemic approach, better learning and an emphasis on know-how and behavioural development as part of FM practice. The Germans used this first in what they called Aufstragtaktik as an WWII innovation enabler. The definition of Aufstragtaktik was “mission-oriented orders” (Murray and Millett, 1996), in practice it was “an approach that encouraged lower-echelon commanders to exploit local opportunities to the maximum extent” (Murray and Millett, 1996). This was supported by excellent feedback mechanisms and a learning organisation approach facilitated by agile communications. An attitude of innovativeness was central to this, and research and development underpinned these. Rupert Smith went on to develop it for the British army in the 1980s as a military doctrine (Smith, 2006) – a core behavioural and professional way that could be relied upon to produce bespoke solutions – but undertaken to a consistent working code.

To close by returning to the FXX thinking – where are our Ferrari-equivalent suppliers to lead this, and our Ferrari-equivalent clients to benefit from it (and ready to be pre-selected by an FM supplier and research combine?!); or even the invitation for an integral Ferrari-equivalent research team?

Perhaps even before we can address the root issues of demonstrating FM value and return on investment, FM needs a doctrine, a researched theory. In view of how the FM remit and the culture of building use in the consumer society has and continues to evolve, it would be worth considering a service delivery doctrine – a doctrinal debate which could help invoke a step change in perspectives about FM theory, research and its valuation by all associated with the industry. It might take some time – ultimately innovation and innovativeness depends on mindset, and as Stephen Rosen concluded when looking at the dynamics of military innovation and innovativeness:

Peacetime innovation has been possible when senior military officers with traditional credentials, reacting not to intelligence about the enemy but to a structural change in the security environment, have acted to create a new promotion pathway for junior officers practicing a new way of war (Rosen, 1994).

If this perspective on FM strikes a chord with you and you would like to participate in a debate on innovation, FM doctrine, and the role of research in the evolution of FM, then contact me. I will try to convene interest in sufficient leading edge suppliers and clients to commence a strategic conversation – jhi@gcal.ac.uk

John Hinks