Three questions to ponder during your holidays this August
You’re over halfway through 2020 – well done you! It’s certainly an understatement to say that this year has been challenging – the world as we know it has essentially been turned on its head. With the economy and unemployment in crisis, and redundancies and furloughs ever looming, it’s hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Now more than ever, we need to take some time off to recuperate and to reflect.
At Tenshi, we’ve found ourselves reflecting during our staycations, looking back at this crazy new normal that we now find ourselves in. As a team, we’ve revived our processes, brought in changes to our company culture, prioritised our innovation practices and have found our relationships with partners and clients alike deepening through this crisis. Re-evaluating our process, culture and partners has meant we are more in sync and productive as a team and as a company. We wanted to share this with you as food for thought, maybe it’s worth asking your teams these questions when you return to the office, after your well-earned break, wherever it may be.
1. How would you rate your company culture today?
A fruitful company culture should promote and facilitate new ideas, sparking and harnessing innovation within the team. A culture that breeds creative confidence will deliver effective innovation and a whole lot more through times of crisis including improved productivity; reduced costs; increased competitiveness; improved brand recognition; new partnerships and relationships; increased turnover and improved profitability, to name a few.
Innovative processes, such as Design Thinking for example, demonstrate high effectiveness in improving innovativeness, however, it’s not yet reached the majority of businesses, or individuals. Whilst limited training exists, these are usually directed at high-performing, design-orientated organisations, looking to improve profitability. According to the Harvard Business Review, organisations need a social technology that addresses behavioural obstacles and the counterproductive biases of human beings; and Design Thinking meets that need.
2. Is your organisation prepared to think differently?
The effects of Covid 19 will likely be long lasting, and will have many psychological impacts on the population, affecting our ability to cope. In times like these, we need to make sure our teams are resilient, and that they’re comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Businesses should promote abductive thinking and encourage their employees to embrace risk. After this crisis, we want our teams to have developed the correct behaviours to effectively tackle new challenges, while remaining optimistic about an uncertain future.
Now more than ever, we need to nurture innovativeness and develop problem-solving, to support our teams through any crisis, empowering everyone with the confidence and will to think differently and solve challenges in new ways. It has been said that resiliency and creativity are key to the wellbeing and economic recovery of individuals and organisations.
Design Thinking can build this strength and optimism. It can also help create the right environment for a real and much broader understanding of the voice of the customer, a voice that will likely have morphed into something entirely new since the Covid crisis began. We truly believe that businesses the world over will benefit from developing their innovativeness, and upskilling through Design Thinking. By building experiences and up skilling, the right culture enables a ground swell of ideas to come forward.
3. Are your partners and processes still effective in this new world?
Everything about the way we work has changed. Companies the world over have been forced to work from home, uprooting us from our steady office routines to a new world of Zoom meetings and makeshift home offices. A global crisis can force us to re-evaluate current processes whether we want to or not, ensuring we can come out stronger the other side, whilst simultaneously continuing to support the germination and flow of ideas. Consistent redevelopment of processes and effective crisis management mean that both challenges and new ideas are managed and prioritised in a timely way.
At the other side of this pandemic, we will all be asking ourselves what we have learned from this, how have we adapted and what are we doing better, do we have the right partners? The right partners extend the reach of the organisation, helping us to innovate and become altogether more resilient. Effective partners help each other to become curious, to be inspired, and to better articulate innovation challenges and meaningful and original solutions flow easily between the two.
So, whether you’re sitting on a sun lounger, or taking a well-earned break in your garden, think about your partners, processes and culture during your time off. Getting these three things right can ensure that our teams are resilient, effective problem solvers that can survive and flourish through any challenge, no matter how big.