Compete by Creating a Well-Run Company

Building a work team that runs like a well-oiled machine is one of the most surefire ways to protect your company from competition today and in the future. Efficiency and productivity emerge in organizations that focus on making sure that teamwork is possible and that information sharing is routine across an organization. The tight-knit work teams in these companies share information freely and broadly across the organization and, therefore, tend to have happier customers, better employee retention and higher productivity.

Use the following tips to oil the gears of your machine and compete more effectively.

Evaluate information flow
Informed teams are competitive teams. With this in mind, create a system to ease the sharing and flow of information across your teams. Do you have an information “blockage” with one employee? Do you lack technology to make it easy for your team members to coordinate efforts? Weaknesses like these can prevent even the most satisfied and well-intentioned teams from collaborating in a way that is essential to retain and increase competitiveness.

Research and implement best practices
Give your team the opportunity to do their best work by educating them about how things are done best. Each industry and discipline has best practices. Management best practices are also readily available. Regularly gather and share information on best practices in order to give your team the information they need to build their skills.

Two implementation details can help with the success of this information sharing. One, determine if your team needs support in building the skills needed to attain the level of expertise required to do these best practices. Two, ensure that best practices are presented to your team as something to strive for as a means of improving their work experience. This is a better approach than holding up best practices as an example of team shortcomings.

Provide a flexible working environment
Well-run companies tend to have programs in place that provide training, career advancement and flexibility. Whether these programs are formal or not, employee satisfaction, improved morale and the associated productivity increases can be tied to how a workplace accommodates an employee’s needs and preferences. Staff members who have the opportunity for advancement or skill building are more likely to feel satisfied with their jobs and more likely to do their best work. Likewise, those who are allowed some flexibility — whether it is time off for personal responsibilities or occasional telecommuting to manage a long commute — are also likely to be happier.

A line can be drawn for many teams between satisfaction and the ability to focus, work hard and share information required for the company to do great work.

Create an environment that encourages mutual respect
Another way to describe this is to “limit the number of annoying people on your team.” One or two people who horde information, speak negatively or ignore deadlines or otherwise challenge team work can derail your productivity and diminish your competitiveness.

It’s quite easy to justify keeping these staffers in place if they contribute intellectually, creatively or otherwise. Their contribution equation though, needs to include the cost they extract from the team. One way to arrive at this cost is to determine how many incidents (missed deadlines, comments, etc.) occur over a given period of time. Arrive at a time or financial cost for each incident and do the math. Also keep in mind that each time this person “strikes,” other team members are affected and lose productivity because of frustration.

Focus on retention
Team strength builds over time and the stronger your team, the more competitive your company. Learn what is required to keep your teams intact and employed with you and then create a retention system. You can conduct research within your company to learn what changes can positively affect retention. Speaking with key team influencers in your organization to get an on-the-ground perspective may also help.

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Be Bold and Learn To Think Big

Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind
By Bernd H. Schmitt, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.

The goal of Big Think strategy is to leverage bold ideas and leave small thinking behind. Moreover, we must create the organizational structures and processes to support individual projects and keep the organization focused on Big Think.

The Big Think strategy process consists of six interrelated tasks. The first three tasks concern strategy formulation:
· Sourcing new ideas
· Evaluating the ideas
· Turning the ideas into a Big Think strategy

The following three tasks concern strategy implementation:
· Executing Big Think
· Leading Big Think
· Sustaining Big Think in the organization

While these strategy and implementation tasks may seem familiar, Big Think offers a unique approach, incorporating new methodologies and tools, for each of the six tasks. To remain focused on Big Think, we must employ this approach and not fall back into a Small Think mentality.

Sourcing New Ideas
Small Think strategic planning tries to source new ideas solely by analyzing a host of market and competitive factors. But for Big Think, sourcing really new ideas requires that we go far beyond this simple analytical toolbox. The creative tools used as part of Big Think idea sourcing are all about seeking new connections. We must find new associations by connecting seemingly unrelated concepts. We must benchmark outside our industry (not only within), question long-held assumptions (the sacred cows) of a business, and step out of the timeframe of the present. We must strip down our business strategy to its very core to get more radical ideas. Most important, we cannot source ideas only from within the organization; we must include customers in the idea-sourcing process.

Evaluating the ideas
Effective idea sourcing should generate multiple ideas, which then must be evaluated before we choose which to pursue. Small Think asks a number of decision makers within the organization to evaluate new ideas according to their familiarity and similarity to past initiatives but never asks whether the idea will radically impact the business. To remain focused on Big Think, we should cluster and evaluate new ideas first in terms of their potential for lasting impact and whether they will change markets. Only then should we ask whether new ideas are doable. Ideally, the evaluation process should be as broad as possible, not only including expert decision makers.

Turning the ideas into a Big Think strategy
Too often, a strategic brief gets bogged down in corporate mission-speak, irrelevant data, and linear strategy maps, until the core idea is diluted by Small Think. Instead, Big Think demands that you capture your bold ideas in a crisp image that you further develop using our Big Think strategy quadrants: organizational capabilities required, opportunities and challenges in the business networks, the customer value created by the strategy, and the role of the market ecosystem in bringing it to life. The strategy development process of Big Think resembles the score of a Mahler symphony: you are weaving your bold ideas into a dynamic whole that provides a clear plan for achieving your goals.

Executing Big Think
With Small Think, even the best new strategy can get bogged down in the execution: inertia slows the launch, the rollout is divided between silos (manufacturing, marketing, service) that never communicate, and the customer is nowhere to be found. Executing a Big Think strategy demands tremendous effort; it can feel as if you have to pull a ship over a mountain. Rather than getting buy-in from your employees, you must tap into their dreams. Rather than wasting time on aligning the entire organization perfectly around the strategy, you must organize flexibly. Finally, you must attract your customers’ attention through bold communications.

Leading Big Think
Big Think requires leadership. It cannot succeed with Small Think’s aversion to risk and focus on short-term results. Leaders at various levels of the organization must have the guts to take on the Big Think project, the passion to stand behind it, and the perseverance to see it through to ultimate success. Otherwise, you may just as well let robots do the work. Big Think leaders have a broad view of how to instill fundamental change. They do not just have a plan; they have an agenda. To stay motivated on the way, they consult a diverse group of experts and move in different circles in their professional and social lives.

Sustaining Big Think in the organization
The ultimate challenge of Big Think is not just to set up one successful Big Think project but to implant Big Think into the organizational tissue. For that to happen, we must break down Small Think’s organizational silos to assume an interdisciplinary mind-set. Moreover, employees must view work as play, and play as work, and be entrepreneurial. We need employees who are what I call “Big Thinky Heads.” These are people who radiate a childlike excitement about new ideas. To keep them excited, we constantly expose them to new information that is relevant to their projects and stimulates their thoughts.

Bernd H. Schmitt is Robert D. Calkin Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School. He advises business executives on strategy, creativity and innovation, and he is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences worldwide.

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Excerpted from Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking BehindBernd H. Schmitt; Harvard Business School Press, Boston.