Do you use all the available talent of colleagues or does it remain hidden? This article is for anyone who has doubts about whether all the brilliant ideas are being brought in. After all, it is a shame if you do not use the available knowledge and expertise that is already in-house to the full 100%. What is needed to utilize talents, which tools help with this and what does it yield you?
Talents must be able to find each other equally
It’s about the way talents work together. An example from practice to make this clear. A technology-driven company has two product design departments in two continents, Europe and America. In the old situation there was talk of ‘delayed cooperation’. Colleagues from the two design departments traveled back and forth, sending emails and waiting for replies. The solution now is live video conferencing in combination with collaboration tools and being able to brainstorm place and time independently with many more other talents who can also contribute their ideas. The result? Much faster product design, an accelerated go-to-market, more intensive collaborations and of course a huge savings on travel costs.
Ideas must be easy to bring in
Not everyone automatically comes to the fore. Sometimes there are personal reasons for people not to actively participate in a discussion, elaboration or meeting. For example because it takes too much time. What helps is something that seems simple, namely chat (or instant messaging). Chat offers every colleague an opportunity to make themselves heard. Experience shows that chat is so accessible and fast that brilliant suggestions are suddenly made from unexpected angles. It simply takes less effort to put in something short and sweet than participating in an hour-long meeting. You can also think of setting up internal discussion forums where people are challenged to make a positive contribution to business operations.
Breaking through traditional work structures
Talent thrives best when there is no hierarchical structure. It is not without reason that agile methodologies are popular and there are organizations that opt for a holacratic management model. This model departs from traditional top-down management and distributes authority on the basis of knowledge level among the employees in the organization. Breaking through traditional work structures also means new collaborations and contacts between departments that were previously unaware of each other’s existence. Which tools are then needed? These include collaboration tools in the field of online meetings, tools for secure digital collaboration in one document and tools for being available to each other anytime and anywhere.
Using the cleverness of talents?
Using the creativity of internal talents ensures that the organization becomes more productive, efficient and, above all, smarter. This is mainly achieved by facilitating modern tools to collaborate (even) better with each other. We can all combine these tools under one common denominator: Unified Communications!
This was my message. Let top talent flourish? I’d be happy to help.
Wiecher Akkerman – Managing Partner.