Putting The PIECES! Together: Increase Flexibility

Putting the PIECES! Together is a philosophical approach to better manage the complexity of business, which focuses on Partnering, Increasing Flexibility, Expanding Your Sphere of Influence, Calculating Value Add, Enhancing Reputation, Sustaining Results, and ! (taking care of the people.) It is beneficial in any organization, but is imperative within Learning and Development and HR. This is the third blog of the series, discussing the need to Increase Flexibility within your organization.

Increasing flexibility includes innovation, creativity, ‘out of the box’ thinking, and other terms used to describe achieving major breakthroughs of product or service. But it goes well beyond just innovation; it is really about finding a way to make the life of your customer easier. And it goes beyond creativity; it is about providing practical, effective, real-life solutions to problems—with no excuses.

Increasing your flexibility can be achieved by:

• What you provide – finding the new product or service that the customer will not be able to live without (until you come up with the next one.) It can be operationally focused (ex. an experiential learning environment for couriers), it can be employee focused (ex. a Center for Employee Self-Development that allows employees to plot and attain their career), or it can be both (ex. People Plans developed as a result of employee satisfaction surveys or HR Advisors acting as coaches to newly trained managers/employees, rather than policy enforcement professionals.) It is finding and providing something they did not have that adds value to their life.
• How you provide it – finding new and better ways to do those things that must be done. It may be the use of technology (ex. simulation and/or gaming) or rethinking of current processes (ex. restructuring of performance reviews/management.) Innovation does not need to be an ‘aha’ moment; it can be gradual and constant improvement. Luggage and the wheel were invented many centuries ago, but when were wheels added to the suitcase for convenience? 1970. At FedEx Express, a 10-second improvement in the time a courier spends at each stop would result in over $1 million in savings each week.
• When you provide it – proactively finding solutions to problems that are not yet known. You must look forward to anticipate the needs of the customers (ex. succession planning/strategic workforce planning, or recent retirees supporting peak training needs.)

Change is inevitable; its speed and impact is greater than ever before and growing every day. Businesses must continue to change rapidly as well. There are three things one can do with change: (1) ignore it, in which case you will quickly become obsolete, (2) react to it, which will make you one of the ‘also-rans’, or (3) initiate it, becoming a proven leader. Initiating change can only be achieved by increasing flexibility, yours and your organization’s; it requires refusing to accept ‘we have always done it that way.’

Those that survive and thrive in business, as in nature, are not necessarily the strongest or the biggest, but those that can best anticipate and adapt to the changes around them.