Today’s workplace is constantly changing with new technologies, ways of working and heavy competition for the best talent.
Complexity is going up, and the ability to control and predict it, down.
So what can we do (as individuals, leaders or business owners) to succeed and enable our teams to prosper?
At a recent talk “Running Cloud Service Teams” at the Service Desk Forum in Mainz, I shared three areas we look at when working with businesses. If you trust your teams, allow them to collaborate and provide skills in clear thinking, you might just be prepared for tomorrow.
Focus 1: Be agile in your structure
Employees provide faster and higher quality support (to Customers & each other) when expertise and knowledge are open and accessible.
- Use meaningful, unifying measures that orient teams
- Analyse, strengthen and organise around networks
- Encourage and develop communities
- Reward sharing and collaboration
Focus 2: Clear Thinking
Structured, visible data, early on, pays back immensely. Help your people spend time on creativity, decisions or actions, NOT interpretation of vague information.
- Use structured thinking methods from Kepner Tregoe for better visibility, easier collaboration, troubleshooting and decision making
- Make information visible and open within the company. Default to Open.
- Use common terms (that are easy to understand) for basic interactions between teams
- Encourage and celebrate quality data that allows collaboration and rapid progress
Focus 3: Enabling Leadership
A focus on enablement, not permission, allows creativity, with the most effective leaders cultivating commitment and shared purpose.
- Relentlessly share purpose, context and strategic guidance
- Give away control. More than you are comfortable with! (and then a bit more)
- Coach, mentor, provide tools and remove impediments
We’ll share some more detailed posts about these areas soon – if there’s a particular subject you want to know more about, drop us a line!
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