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Human Resources Magazine, January 2012 Issue
Time To Change How We Think
The pace of change in business innovation in recent years has outstripped the rate of change in the way we work. Here are some ways to address this issue.
Technology may have enabled us to be more efficient and effective in our work, but we are still stuck in old patterns, routines and habits in the workplace. The business environment has been rapidly transformed by innovative changes but we have yet to re-define the way we work to embrace these changes to bring forth an equally rapid rise in the productivity of our work.
In the “cheaper, faster and better” paradigm of the business environment today, innovation-driven productivity is identified as the key driver for business and economic success.
What are the attitudes, skills and knowledge required to thrive in the rising complexity and uncertainty of the business environment?
This new business environment favours workers who are creative, insightful, intuitive, responsive to changes, adept at spotting opportunities and acting on them swiftly as they emerge.
Most importantly, it favours workers who are productive. To manifest these behaviours, the way we work must change.
To change the way we work, we need new ideas and to think better so we can re-define the way we work. We need to change the way we think about work to be more efficient and effective to increase productivity.
Productivity is not about routine. It is a discipline that needs to be fostered and embraced with an attitude change towards the way we think about work and the way we work. We need to create the change and to deal with it. The key questions are:
• How can we think differently about work and change the way we work to raise productivity?
• How can we drive productivity with effective thinking skills?
We need to foster design-thinking (this term refers to the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analysing knowledge and positing solutions) and interpret the multiple possibilities and perspectives of design-thinking to drive productivity.
This includes embracing the following characteristic design-thinking behaviours to increase productivity in the workplace:
1. Foster changes to the way we think about work, the way we work and the work process.
2. Think differently so that it matters less what we know and more how we think.
3. Look at problems and convert them into opportunities.
4. Generate ideas and solve problems effectively.
5. Think creatively and apply critical thinking skills.
6. Do less and achieve more.
Design-thinking plays a pivotal role in increasing productivity because it re- defines the future of work by creating meaningful work experiences.
It enables us to generate new ideas and effect changes for innovative breakthroughs. It gears us to meet the challenges of change. It breeds creativity and thrives best in environments that need change. In business, design thinking is applied to achieve growth through envisioning and developing new products and services to meet the challenges of the fast changing marketplaces.
New business processes are created because design-thinking enables businesses to see the business world from broad and different perspectives.
These are changes that come from new ideas that result from a better way of thinking.
The ideas also bring changes to the way we think about business, the way we think about work, and the way we work.
Workers in the new business environment must develop the essential thinking skills of creativity and critical evaluation that enable them to question assumptions, challenge conventions, ask good questions, think critically and intuitively, generate ideas, solve problems, seek alternative ways of doing things and create new possibilities to get work done in a productive way.
To address these needs, workers need appropriate training to gain a competitive advantage for employment, in particular training courses that equip them with the following competencies:
1. Able to develop personal strategies and approaches to use thinking skills effectively to increase productivity.
2. Respond to situations with purposeful and reflective judgment to determine course of action to drive productivity.
3. Break down complex problems into simpler parts and resolve them rationally.
4. Generate new ideas and concepts for effective resolution of issues and problems.
5. Develop a personal framework for design-thinking strategies for their professional roles and functions in an organisation.
The future of work can only be created if we imagine. The future of work should be a meaningful experience that we create to sustain innovation-driven productivity.
This can only come forth from our mind when it embraces design-thinking to think better and create meaningful work.
