Is talent a scarce resource in your organization? By listening to your employees, you may find you have a lot more talent in-house than you thought.
Talent will have great answers if we trust them
In a Washington Post article, CEO of Rolls-Royce North America Tom Bell says "Suspend your disbelief just a little bit, and ask your people how they could be best productive. Our people will have great answers for us if we just trust them.”
As a result, the employees of this multinational aerospace and defense supplier were able to help Bell and his team with an $8 million redesign of the company’s Indianapolis office. And while working remotely, another team of skilled workers showed how the Rolls-Royce engine would integrate into the U.S. Air Force B-52 aircraft. The model ultimately landed the company a $2.6 billion contract.
It did require a change in the way Rolls-Royce thinks about work: "It’s no longer a place, but an activity".
This mind shift of thinking about work as an activity instead of a place to work is very powerful and it can work in any setting. When thinking of work as an activity, it makes it easier for employees to step forward and make changes. A place is hard to change, but work as an activity is malleable.
And by offering the opportunity to make changes, you will find more and new top talent. Top talent will step forward with top ideas!
Top talent with top ideas
Take Mayna Felix, a lawyer with RMS Advogados. She realized that she needed better ways to communicate with her team, because the old ways of working proved unsustainable when the pandemic forced everyone to work from home.
In the ILTA podcast below, Mayna Felix highlights how she, as a practicing attorney, was convinced to get involved in an innovation project, what support was provided to help her succeed, and what she did to solve her own problem – to the benefit of the entire firm – within the time span of 4 months.
Resulting in a win for Mayna and a win for RMS Advogados. She learned about the business of law and solved the communication challenge in her team, which led to the firm-wide adoption of Microsoft Teams.
In other words, it pays off to trust your employees and give them the opportunity to make change happen. And in the process, you will find out how much top talent you have in your organization!
Goldilocks: Not too much and not too little, but just right
We do advise that you put some structure around this process, as you don't want employees to embark on an innovation journey for every idea they come up with. At the same time, you also don't want to put too many hurdles and challenges that stand in the way of solving problems and exploring novel ideas. As such, you need a bit of a Goldilocks approach, you need the right structure to challenge these employees and the right level of support to encourage employees to step forward and work on their ideas.
In absence of such a structure, Mayna used the T4 program to provide her with guidance, so that she could focus all her time and energy on solving the problem and could trust the process that she would get to a tangible result within 6 months. In her case, she got the results she was looking for within 4 months.
Do you want to put trust in your employees too? Do you want to solve challenging issues, identify novel opportunities, and in the process bring more talent to the top?
If so, you may want to look into our program. and learn how it offers a Goldilocks approach that is just right in terms of structure and support, so your employees get challenged and can act upon ideas with confidence.
Do it right and get it done!
Success!
For more about the T4 program:
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