New business models and technologies are changing the faces of industries worldwide – including yours. The rules about how to run a succesful business are not the same as they were yesterday.
Is your organisation ready to face the future?
Below are five challenges shared by Gaylin Jee, founder of 33 Emeralds, who spoke about positive digital disruption at Resolve Immix’s annual event on 17 October 2017.
1. Know Your WHY
What is your purpose, as an organisation?
Leadership guru Simon Sinek, in his best-seller ‘Start with WHY,’ that said people do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
Your WHY reflects your ultimate vision, the burning reason why your business exists.
How do you define it? A massive transformative purpose (MTPs), as referred to by author and strategist Salim Ismail in ‘Exponential Organisations:’
- Must be audaciously big and inspirational
- Can cause significant transformation to industry, community or the planet
- Has a clear purpose behind the work, one that unites and inspires action.
Examples of MTPs include Tesla “our mission is to accelerate transition to sustainable transport” and Google “to organise the worlds information”. A MTP alilgns your business, focuses your efforts, helps to drive exponential performance from your employees, and goes some way to winning over client trust and attention. This kind of big, aspirational thinking, combined with a passion to deliver on it, releases agility and competitive advantage.
2. Give Power to the People
In today’s sharing economy, influence is the new currency.
Businesses are no longer the sole creator of a brand, but rather co-creators in the digital space.
Your organisation must be actively involved in conversations that advance influence and establish credibility in the marketplace.
Also, with the rise of machine learning capabilities and artificial intelligence, companies need to harness advancing technology as well as human creativity. All will push us to rethink basic assumptions about our sense of self, revise what we think about consciousness, and learn how to be better humans.
Harness power and influence in the marketplace with these ideas:
- Shift marketing from organisational clout to consumers and peer influence
- Employ social media as a platform to leverage interaction and understand customers
- Advance your brand through shared online experiences and conversations
- Rethink assumptions about technology advancement
- Focus on the human creative advantage
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3. Look beyond Game Changers to Game Changing Teams
Game changers upend markets and rewrite history. They bring the radical innovation we need. But they don’t fit into our traditional corporate boxes, nor do they necessarily want to climb our corporate ladders.
Talent is not singular. Business’ needs to rethink its talent framework and go beyond the usual experience, qualifications and competencies mapped out.
How do organisations create game-changing teams and propel innovation where it matters?
Here are a few ideas:
- Switch from an elitist view of talent to an inclusive, collaborative view
- Focus on original idea-thinking and how it can be translated into action
- Recognize multiple contributions to game-changing outputs. There are five roles that make up an innovative aligned team, and you can lead from any one of these five roles.
- Align everyone in the organisation to the process of innovation by understanding the five roles, and how they work together
- Use tools like the GC Index to identify game-changing and other types of talent, and to form the teams you need for innovation. You can find out more about the GC Index here.
4. Build Innovative DNA in Your Business
Innovative ventures use techniques that leverage exponential technologies and create new products and revenue streams in months or weeks.
As a result, more linear-thinking companies and industries go out of business, says author and strategist Salim Ismail of “Exponential Organisations.”
Decide to build innovative DNA in your organisation:
- Define your massive transformative purpose
- Build a healthy desire to out-innovate in your industry
- Think exponential, not linear
- Question, observe, network and experiment on a regular basis
- Shift focus from cut-throat competitiveness to collaborative and creative approach.
5. Work towards FLOW
Enable innovative outputs at work by thinking about how you enable moments of FLOW at work.
A flow state is a psychological state of full immersion. Flow state is described as being ‘wired in’, ‘in the zone’, in hack mode, where time disappears.
Enable FLOW in your organisation through:
- Defining and actively working towards fulfilling your massive transformative purpose
- Embracing innovation as a voluntary effort, not a reactive after-thought
- Thinking open market innovation, and of creating not just competing
- Setting teams up for success by appreciating how different individuals contribute to innovation, and supporting them to deliver according to their preferred manner of contribution.
“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
33 Emeralds stretches minds and comfort zones with new and sometimes radical thinking, to build the careers and organisations of tomorrow.
Drawing on the work of latest global influencers, as well as very practical techniques and tools such as Lego Serious Play and the innovation index – The GC Index, they consult, coach, speak, write, and design and run programmes and workshops that shift the digital dial to the future.
Find out more at thirtythreeemeralds.com.
Follow Gaylin Jee on Twitter @gaylinjee
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