New Car Feel
The Bridges Project was built to better small medium businesses that possess a wealth of strategic advantages in the battle for business growth and economic stability.
The foundation of all sustainable organizations is competitive advantage. The loss of that competitive advantage is often the result of mental stagnation. By not being able to adapt quickly and effectively risks your relationships with customers, your market share, ultimately the sale, divestiture or close of your organization.
Think for a moment that thrill you get when you drive a new car, and the feeling of learning how it drives, corners and feels. Then after some time it just starts feeling mundane and you start seeking that thrill anew.
This kind of slow crawl to monotony is a constant force at work in your organization. The question is how best to fight off stagnation in your organization and maintain competitive advantage.
First, you must maintain clear lines of communication within your organization. This allows for the information to be effectively transmitted. This enables your organization to act with agility ensuring that the people with the right skills at the right time are able to address the necessary problems or take advantage of new opportunities. How do you know if you have the right people at the right time? Create and maintain detailed skills inventories that guide your ability to choose the skilled individuals or misled skilled teams that are best suited to responding to the organization’s needs focused on the future.
Secondly, we must encourage our internal and external partners to be honest and contribute openly their views on how to better the organization. By incorporating all of your organization’s skills and insights you will ensure you are responding quickly and effectively to environmental demands. An effective way to create this organization dynamic is with weekly or monthly progress meetings. These meetings are designed to be open to all employees to discuss the current market situation and your plans on how to best proceed. The value of these meetings is they allow your employees to grasp the situation, provide their input, and apply their skills to help solve the organization’s problems.
Thirdly, we must ensure that the people who contribute their views feel valued and rewarded for their contributions. To ensure all of your employees are engaged in performing their tasks to their best degree you must understand what your employees really want out of the organization and tailor your culture to provide what these employees crave. Some examples are:
tailored benefits packages
covering the cost of online courses to help them climb the organization ladder
financial bonuses for exceptional performance
time away for family considerations
or other more specific means of rewarding them for their contributions
The new car feel is in your hands. Get ready to take the wheel.
Next week we will look at stagnations effect on the human brain.