Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste
By way of Wednesday Words, I’d like to invite you to attend a webinar I will be moderating tomorrow; “Breaking Performance Barriers: Fueling Adaptability & Unlocking Talent Potential.” Wow, that’s quite a title! We’ve assembled an awesome panel of practitioners to discuss the latest advances organizations are making in this new world of work. What I find so interesting and hope will be discussed is how organizations have been forced to re-evaluate and scrutinize their internal business and personnel processes like never before. Some have called this “The Big Reset” but I would say it’s a long overdue house cleaning.
If you’re like me, the panel title could be a bit overwhelming so let’s break this down into a few parts. Let’s start with “Breaking Performance Barriers.’ With the first word “Breaking” in this sense, it’s clear that the environment we operate has changed and is now enabling, even promoting the chance to make changes. The next word, “Performance” to me indicates speed or accuracy. The last word “Barriers” is clearly referring to something that is blocking or preventing the performance.
I wanted to break this down because the three words together connotate an opportunity we have been presented within our organizations. The rare gift of being pushed out of our comfort zones to review many of our business and personnel processes with fresh eyes. Too often we assume that many of these processes are chiseled in stone. The reality may be quite different.
Often processes are born out of situations much like laws, put in place to deal with one event that was an issue one time. These processes often create the bureaucracy and overtime build up to something much larger than ever intended. The past year afforded us a chance to finally ask “Why?” Pushed out of our office environments and daily routines many of the processes that existed for years suddenly seemed bizarre.
Now, let’s look at the next part of the title; “Fueling Adaptability.” Well, it’s obvious over the past year that Learning has been a primary source of Fuel to our workforce. Easily demonstrated by the meteoric rise in online course consumption a little over a year ago, we’re seeing Learning as a key component to Adaptability. Articles abound in the past year showing how organizations that have invested into Learning for their employees have seen solid returns not only in the business, but in the employee engagement and performance.
Which brings us to the last part of the title, “Unlocking Talent Potential.” Beyond my personal affinity for cutting through red tape, the idea of setting talent free is as much, if not more appealing. I’m a big believer that getting people into new environments has a huge impact on how they perform. Much like the boundaries have been changed in regard to talent acquisition (no longer tied to relocation) talent is free to explore and expand in new ways.
The “Key” to unlocking the talent is having Managers embrace the very environmental factors that have contributed to this. Allowing Self-Direction and Self-Leadership for employees are new terms that will be finding their way into Management articles throughout the year I’m certain. Micro-managing Talent as a practice is terrible and attempting to do so remotely is even worse. The “Talent Potential” can only be discovered when both managers and employees recognize the opportunity in front of them to expand their thinking.
I titled this blog “Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste” which is exactly what I see happening when it comes to today’s workplace. The pandemic crisis has forced a new approach that otherwise might not have happened or not nearly as abruptly. The opportunities to revisit HOW we go about work, management and development are all winners in this strange new world. My hope is that we don’t slip back into stagnant thinking and processes when the crisis is past. So, now that you’ve been fully briefed on the premise of Thursday’s panel discussion, I hope you join us to hear more from the Experts joining me to share their insights.