Is there a language of business? There are certainly languages for many aspects of business. We have an entire vocabulary for modelling business processes, another for building the narrative around the IT architecture disciplines, another for building data models, and another for considering finances. Do these translate well into an over-arching, easily understood language of the business; one that communicates well with everyone? What does that even mean and is it important?
The language of business should be the vocabulary that we use to help one another understand what any of us do. It would be like the babel fish within the organisation. In face, we already use it every day without even thinking about it. We naturally modify the words we use to describe things based on who we are talking to. This helps everyone to understand despite differences in expertise or experience. This narration is interpreted back into our specific languages – and the source disregarded.
What if we were to record the source and interpret that in a way that everyone could understand and make use of? What if the simple conversations we have daily are of huge value to the overall understanding of what the organisation does and why it does it? What if this source of information is the key to breaking down silos and truly becoming cross-functional?
LINQs language is based on the relationship between people, systems, the work that gets done (actions) and the information required and created through that work. 4 entities – people, systems, actions and information. When we talk in general terms, this is the language we naturally use and yet we don’t realise the value of that utility.
Here’s an example – a documented conversation about part of the daily work for a coffee roaster:
Now let’s consider those 4 business entities – people (purple), systems (blue), actions (orange) and information (green), and highlight them using colour:
For this particular part of the process, everything you need to model the Digital Twin is contained with this narrative and can be used to create the Digital Twin:
Once you have the process modelled it can be shared with everyone as a digital record of the conversation held providing the evidence to support what happens next. This is valid for Board level discussion, project or programme management, transformation, business process improvement – anything where the record of what was said can be used as an asset to expedite the process of understanding.
This language can then be interpreted into any of the other languages needed by experts to perform their own task; that process is now a translation from the Language of Business into the other languages without losing the value of the whole.
Whether you are driving Data Literacy through Information as a Second Language, or struggling to include data & information in your business processes, or simply looking for a simple way to communicate the opportunity for change in your own area of the business, adopting the Language of Business through the Digital Twin of your Organisation may help.
If you’d like to know more, you can sign up for a free trial of LINQ below and we will be in touch to talk with you.