A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. The image of the spiral Aloe Vera plant above shows it well. No matter whether you zoom in or zoom out, it is the same!

Whilst fractals in nature have always existed the first generated fractal was created by Benoit Mandelbrot and he created the Mandelbrot fractal whilst he was working at IBM in the 1960’s.

If you look at your organisation you may well find it operates in a fractal fashion. Zoom in to a team and how they operate will often be as their department operates, which will be as their directorate or division operates. They will often follow the same processes, whether correct or not, have the same issues, have the same delays and bureaucracy. Similarly when you adopt a new approach the teams can quickly allow that new model to spread and break the existing mould. A new fractal pattern will be established but this one will be more efficient.

We look at organisations as one may look at a production line. A team. any team, exists to do something, write software, support systems, answer calls, take payments, handle sales etc. It can be in any department. This team will have a raw material, a request, a phone call, an email, a ticket to be worked, and that will then flow through the production pipeline.

Some of the work done will be work that delivers new value to the business, value from sales, from new systems, new products, resolved customer issues, etc. This is Green work. Other work takes value away, its fixing things, dealing with a request that was not fully dealt with before, reworking a solution, bug fixing a system or software. This work takes away your capacity to bring business value. This is Red work.

The above diagram shows that if you push more Red work through the pipe then there is less capacity for Green, and yet Green is the one that brings the most value, saves the most money, increases the profit, serves the most customers or citizens. The pipe is finite and cannot take more through it than its size will allow so more Red means less capacity for Green and Red work always interrupts Green, never the other way around. So teams get their capacity diminished and their pipelines clogged!

We show teams how to understand what work they do that is in the Red category and how to reduce it to allow more of the value bringing Green work to flow. We have managed to increase productivity and quality and not had to increase headcount.

There is another aspect to the model above that you may have noticed. The Bandwidth, the size of the pipe. This is made from the number of staff in that team and the skills they bring to the table. A small multi skilled and highly motivated team can achieve a lot, whereas a large team of lesser skilled will achieve much less. A motivated team with a inefficient operating model will achieve less too therefore we assess the team and determine where it is lacking and help the team to develop.

This model is also Fractal, it could represent a team, a department, a directorate or the whole company or organisation.

What you do in one area, you probably do in all, which is why Alcedin Consulting will always look at the organisation as a whole. Incremental change which improves the whole.

Get in touch to find out how you can use this model to improve your organisation.