Tina Jennings suggests how you can find success and stay ahead of the curve.
The Cambridge dictionary describes staying ahead of the curve as ‘the first to change to a new idea or way of doing something that later becomes generally popular’. Perhaps this describes most of the world right now…. Our recent experience has catapulted many to working from home as a new way of operating that is generally popular.
When prepping to stay ahead of the curve, perhaps these questions can help:
- What tools are you using to understand your current landscape?
- How are you getting clear on the talent around you?
- Do you know how to leverage all their strengths?
- Are you tracking progress?
- Would you know if you are ahead of the curve?
We are halfway through the year, a perfect time for health checking your business and team against your ambition, vision, and strategy to sense check if you are on target. A time to consider what support you may need for the second half year that will enable you to feel confident that you are positioned at just the right place either on your curve or to position yourself to get ahead of it.
First, we need to understand precisely where we want the curve to go to ensure our organisational design, work, behaviours and leadership enable seamless movement along it as well as encouraging people to thrive. These fundamentals support not only reaching the curve but cultivating a future of work and an environment which supports staying ahead of it. No doubt, staying ahead is at the forefront of agendas at most ‘virtual’ leadership tables.
It is not only the organisational design and development that is at the heart of supporting businesses to thrive and stay ahead of the curve, understanding our biggest asset, our human capital is just as important. Not only in terms of our talent but also in terms of their health and wellbeing.
The five key elements of wellbeing:
Jim Harter, Gallup’s Chief Scientist of Workplace Management and Wellbeing, explored the five key elements of wellbeing that we should be tuned into. Based on more than 100 million Gallup global interviews, these are:
– Career
– Social
– Financial
– Physical and
– Community.
Five aspects that help employees use their innate talents and strengths to thrive. This research also introduces a metric to report peoples best possible life described as ‘Net Thriving’. This could also become the “other stock price” for organisations moving forward.
In a world where work and life are more blended than ever, this work emphasises that maximising employee wellbeing is taking on greater urgency. It is a key component to being ahead of the curve and creating thriving, resilient cultures.
Understanding your people, their full 360-degree technicolour provides an opportunity to take the whole human being and their innate power and focus it in places where they and your business can have the biggest impact enabling both to be and stay, ahead of the curve.
Discover your talent
Things like The Change Maker Profile provides a brilliant starting position for you to map your in-house talent and to understand your teams’ innate proclivities. It facilitates open, powerful conversations about strengths, careers, performance and what your people need to feel at their best. As well as for you to align your vision, strategy, goals and milestones to your human assets to have the best impact.
Having the right people in the right place at the right time to make your vision a reality is critical to your ahead of the curve strategy. Basing your workforce planning, work allocation and projects on leveraging natural energies should be paramount. Encouraging everyone to be in flow and thrive, is your competitive advantage coupled, as always, with challenging the status quo.
Working with a client recently has shone a light on several key ingredients to success in evolving at pace. They are:
- the setup
- being clear on roles responsibilities and strengths
- co-creating a team charter
- aligning values and tools and
- a clear cadence to keep the team informed of daily progress through the scrum events.
All these work in harmony to deliver the scrum goal. We all have the power to stay ahead of the curve by knowing our talent and how best to get the most out of each other to deliver with our strengths.
A six-step formula to find success FASTER!
This iterative approach to developing a technological solution can be applied to any project. American Express described six simple ways to innovate and Stay Ahead of the Curve in an article last year; reuse existing resources in new and novel ways, reposition yourself to better meet customers’ needs, rethink your core value proposition, embrace the wisdom of the crowd, take a more creative approach to execution and finally a six-step formula for finding success F. A. S. T. E. R !
F – Focus: Study an opportunity closely, learning everything you can about the challenge before you.
A – Analyse: Assess potential approaches you can take to rise to the occasion and the potential resources you will need to accomplish the task.
S – Strategise: Weigh possible risks and rewards associated with each angle of attack. Then determine which strategies for moving forward are most practical and favourable. Then develop an action plan and steps you need to take to achieve your goal.
T – Turbo-Charge: Seek out and apply time- and effort-saving tools, technologies and techniques that can help you streamline your strategies for getting ahead. Also minimise the costs (both in terms of finances and opportunity) required to deploy them.
E – Execute: Engage and put your strategic plan into action.
R – Revise: Review the results of your efforts and use the insights gained to quickly enhance and improve future tactics—or pivot to more effective approaches.
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