Capturing the full opportunity

Extensive Data studies have found a link between the health of an organization and its performance.

Robust health is crucial to an organization's long term success.

Companies aligned with one of these four organizational recipes are more likely to be healthy and to deliver strong, sustained performance than those following random management styles:

• Leader Driven
• Market Focused
• Execution Expertise
• Talent and Knowledge-based

A thorough reassessment is required of how the company operates and how best to capture the impact of automation.

Companies who have just automated on the surface have had small and limited results that don't last. Companies that have understood and deployed the high-risk, high-reward proposition have completely transformed it's business offerings and have become market leaders. They have also redeployed the freed up workforce and provided additional services, even turning their competitors into customers.

A joint effort of commitment and communication is essential for a thorough approach to automation and has to be led by top management.

Apart from IT, all stakeholder groups like HR, Operations, Business Units have to be engaged, and communicate consistently.

The demand grows for a new learning ecosystem that offers cheaper and more accessible learning when compared to the traditional educational programs. 

Workers are demanding “plug and play” platforms that enable access to smaller bites of just-in-time education throughout their careers. 

The workplace is changing at an alarming pace, and so do the skills needed to keep up in most jobs. Also, the emergence of the gig economy is reshaping the traditional employer-employee relationship as more contractors fill roles once reserved for full-time workers.

It’s key for employees to get training and develop new skills throughout their work life in order to keep up with changes in the workplace.

Ask for feedback, learn from it and adjust your performance (or behavior) according to the areas of improvement that you get to know from others.

Example: After giving a presentation, talk about what went well and ask if there is something that you could have done better.

Keeping a journal with a record of your learnings and feedback (areas of improvement) can keep us on the right path, and speed up our progress, and learning too.

Listing out 5 or 10 areas of improvement and tracking the progress in weekly or monthly reviews is a great way to develop your career.

Formal employee programs and activities, such as rotational opportunities, innovation labs, reverse mentoring and milestone experiences, can help employees build deeper, more diverse relationships while promoting growth.

Deepening relationships is a key source of fulfillment.

Shared experiences help employees come together in ways that build meaningful connections and trust. Activities that provide a common purpose — such as an escape room game or a hackathon — are especially effective.

A good team player is not fearful of failure.

Head hunters are now actively seeking out those employees who can clearly recount what went wrong with a project and what lessons they learned.

A good team member doesn't regard other team members with suspicion, envy or resentment.

They understand that sharing information is vital to efficient problem solving.

Many training initiatives assume that the same group of skills or leadership styles are suitable without considering the strategy or organizational culture of a company.

An excellent leader in one situation does not necessarily perform well in another. Focusing on context means equipping leaders with two or three competencies that will make a distinction to performance, rather than a list of leadership standards that is of no specific benefit.

Companies face a challenge when it comes to planning the program's curriculum.  Adults typically retain only 10 percent of what they hear in classroom lectures, but nearly two-thirds when they learn by doing. 

The answer seems straightforward: tie leadership development to real on-the-job projects. While it is not easy to create opportunities that simultaneously address high-priority needs, companies should strive to make every major business project a leadership-development opportunity as well.

In this digital age, knowledge and expertise have been devalued.

What you know is now less relevant than what you can learn, and employers are less interested in hiring people with particular expertise than with the general ability to develop the right expertise in the future.

When we can all retrieve the same information, the key differentiator is not access to data, but the ability to make use of it, the capacity to translate the available information into useful knowledge.

• Epic meaning and calling to finish a mission.
• Development and accomplishment inspires us to finish the game.
• Empowerment of creativity to bring imagination to life.
• Ownership and possession of rewards.
• Social influence and relatedness or envy.
• Scarcity and impatience to have things we don't have.
• Undpredictability and curiosity of what the next challenges are.
• Loss coins and chances and avoidance of failure.

• Reward yourself for fulfilling one or several tasks

Use surprise rewards.

• Determine a reward by chance.

Engage in time-based challenges

Make a deal with your friend.

• Challenge and motivate each other to finish a task

• Recognize the Shift in Global Understanding of D&I.  Diverse thinkers come from a variety of different backgrounds.
• Build an Inclusive Environment. All people are encouraged to draw upon their unique experiences, perspectives and backgrounds to advance business goals.
• Use Multiple Practices and Measures.  Have solutions in place to monitor and retain a talented and diverse workforce.
• Ensure Leaders Model Diversity and Inclusion. It sets the tone for the rest of the organization to follow suit.

• Recognize the Connection Between Innovation and D&I. Diversity and inclusion increase innovation and reduce business risk.

The concept of cognitive diversity focuses on diversity of thinking and is composed of four dimensions:

• Perspectives. People represent situations in different ways
• Interpretations. Through diverse interpretations, teams can discover multiple resolutions.
• Heuristics. People resolve issues in different ways.
• Predictive models. Some analyze, and others look for a story. Both are useful for discovering workplace solutions.