Most organizations across the world talk in platitudes about the levergaing its human resources to create business value. In fact the efforts of the human resources function is either a "boil the ocean" approach with some learning interventions or in most cases "empty/hollow" like Mother Hubbard's cupboard.
The problem i want am researching is , how to create a framework that enables employees to "push thier envolope" , find creative solutions , challenge the holy grails to improve financial performance of an enterprise
The Solution component has two parts - Cognitive and affective. I will describe them in the same sequence
1. Cognitive - Encourage , teams to create "Value Maps" of their Business Units , Functions etc , depicting exactly how financial value is created in their respective areas. These value maps are interconnected "streams of value creation activities" which aligns organizational processes, jobs , KPI's to the ultimate financial outcome of an enterprise. The objective of this part of the solution is to drive clarity on how individuals and teams , but their actions enable/disable the enterprise to create value for its shareholders. At the end of the process it enables participants to attain a level of awareness on how thier actions impact busiess results postively or adversely
2. Affective - Using the cognitive tools , design and deploy an affective (soft) human process intervention which essentially challenges individuals and teams to confront the way they are currently operating and find ways and means to increasing their efficacy. The central point for individuals and teams is to take a pause , reflect , learn from each other and find newer (and often better) solutions to business issues
In my limited experiments (in 2 large scale change programs) using the cognitive part of the solution has unlocked (increased business performance ) value to the extent of 15%
While i have a hunch on the idea , the combined solution has not been deployed till now , however even the part deployment of the solution has enormous value. The biggest challenge of the process is in the form of people engagement , breaking down silos, cross functional collaboration et al.Even if you can get folks to collaborate for a period of time , there are no guarantees if that is a sustaining process and hence unsure of the fact that it will be a sustainable competitive advantage of the business
The answer probably lies in finding research based approaches on Leadership Styles and their impact on the climate. I am currently exploring McClleand's theory on Styles and climate to find a comprehensive soltution to the same
I think your answer could be found in implementing a talent management tool in the organization, where you could keep track of each of the company´s members, their skills and competences, manage training and knowledge processes, and give a space for collaboration (such as this network) where they can apply their individual talents for problem solving and creating proposals. The key factor would be that the peer approval, validation and rating of their involvement had a direct impact over their personal profile, and broaden the reach of their skills. Social validation and influence factors would give you an insight of the affective or soft skills and the level of engagement each person has for creating value for the company, and at the same time, their cognitive skills would be applied in finding creative solutions.
Intra-organizational social networks are an effective way to promote networking and collaboration, and if it becomes a way of validating skills and opening growth opportunities, it could become a very powerful way to create value.
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