Hack:
H.C. Competitive Identification

By Hacker

December 10, 2010 at 2:53am

Human Capital Competitive Identification

Strategic Vision

Company Cohesiveness

Corporate Evolution

Moonshots

Capture the advantages of diversity

Retool management for an open and borderless world

Rethink the philosophical foundations of management

Summary

Human Capital Competitive Identification is a system where a business entity can subscribe to its human capital the task of identifying new products and trends outside of the subscribing organization. This program would allow a top to bottum multi-level participation throughout the organization, in congruence with individual capabilities.

Problem

Office contests and the like that are used to increase productivity tend to be marked with an initial excitement then a plateau then a evaporating enthusiasm as the best get better and the worse get worser. This system is fine if it were grade school art contest. The problem with these systems is that the initial reaction of excitement and enthusiasm is matched with an equal and opposite effect of discontent and a lowered morale, until the next shiny new hijink emerges. This cyclical process does nothing to maximize true H.C. potential and over the long term does more harm than good. Of course this is all we know, until someone opens the door to a whole new world.

Solution

H.C. Competitve Identification will facilitate the following. It is the task of the participants whether it be company wide or a certain managerial level to identify their companies competitors. After this is established participants will commit themselves to recognize what their competitors are up to, and try to realize the direction or attitude of their competitors by way of new products, acquisitions, marketing plans, and growth stratagies. They may accomplish this, for the most part however they choose, be it searching the net, reading up on magazines, customer trends and utilizing higher inquisitiveness about their industry.

Practical Impact

Impact is multi dimensional at the least and profound as a product of the system. On one level, prompting your H.C. to participate has the effect of making them more aware of their industry, so it follows that on occasion an employee may report back an interesting finding about a competitor, whether it be that they saw an ad in a certain magazine, which would mean that their competition is courting a distinct market, therefore your company can then take approprite action and not be disadvantaged. Or that they made an odd hire, like an animation guy, insight to which your company can utilize. As mentioned earlier, all capabilities will be utilized from an entry level person right out of high school with immature business sense to the seasoned manager. In either case competitve findings will be usefull and on occasion that entry level guy may just report an incredible finding that he discovered while bussing tables at his second job. Personnel capabilities will mend well with individual behaviors and this system maximizes off the clock effectiveness whereas some employees will hit the ground running with the program and deliver great quantities of information and some may prefer a steady high quality delivery of information. On another level this system promotes system wide cohesiveness and unification of vision. Competitve identification effectively harbors positive behavior for the direct benefit of the company and employee morale.

First Steps

The ideal framework for this program would be an intra-company web page, supplemented by program representatives or facilitators. A flow of this would go something like this: Jenny sees a competitors ad in a magazine, she logs onto the company site and lists the essentials about the ad. Next day she gets a personal follow up from a manager and presents the ad, and gets a thank you. Pleased, she takes initiative and decides to be on the look out regarding their competition. Some time later she reports that her realtor friend told her that one of her competitors signed a lease for a location across town, seeing this information management decides to make a trip across town and do some cold canvassing of new clients, they land a few new clients and meet a few prospective ones effectively eclipsing their competition. Management then gives her a raise and makes her a competitive identification facilitator. This program can be built for long term with many variables built in. It is entirely up to management. This is the system of the future and is an out of the box mechanism to retool any company. Its lustre is that it is usable, workable, and effective, while its potential is such that if allowed to be perfected, Human Capital Competitive Identification will elevate its proprietor to tremendous and breathtaking business success.

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December 10, 2010 at 6:00pm

Jeremy Clark

Alika, great Hack, thanks for sharing it. It seems like a framework for mobilizing the full organization in ongoing, panoptic competitive scanning, as both a force multiplier (more eyes scanning the competition) and as a means of engaging employee in the success of the enterprise.

I found myself wondering about the incentives required to motivate active participation - do you have any thoughts on that? In other words, why would everyone play?

A couple of suggestions, in the spirit of constructive criticism:
1. Connect your Hack to one or more of the "Moonshot" challenges. This helps others find your story, which will bring you more feedback and ratings. I suggest starting with the "Unleash Capability" category.
2. Consider any alternative - or perhaps downstream - applications of your "engage everyone" framework, for example in generating insights for innovation work, for proposing new product ideas...

Thanks.

December 14, 2010 at 4:02am

Hacker

Thanks Jeremy, the end result is a form of open innovation. everyone would play as it takes advantage of the tidal forces inherent in all of us. People have moments throughout the year where they are motivated and focused while at other times they just want to clock in and clock out. This is where management can come in and survey the response and if not adequate can implement measures. Such as there will be a 6 man team to be formalized in the next 6 months, and those that bring in good info will be part of this new team. Certainly the end result of this system is innovation towards new products and services for the companies benefit. Down line, the business entity will be able to see a different structural characteristic of the company take shape, and will therefore be able to foster its continuing organic and optimized growth.