Encouraging people to play the right games.

I've started my journey exploring how people management works within various?types?of business and am grateful to share the highlights of my conversations with a Regional Manager of RESONIKS , Aku Salminen .

For those of you who don't know them, SUPPLYZ is a start-up specializing in industrial?solutions to bring companies' physical?assets to the digital realm.?SUPPLYZ offers industrial solutions using Machine Learning and acoustic sensors to create Digital Twins for real-time monitoring of filling levels, quality and structural health of your assets. With this, you can digitalize your entire supply chain to increase your revenue and decrease costs that go to manual inspection, quality control and monitoring.

Aku's role in the team is handling?all matters related to Nordics:?bringing in new leads, building strategic partnerships, exploring collaboration opportunities and developing marketing strategies.?

- Aku, your company is quite technology-centric. How would you see the human factor being entwined with your business??

- The 'human factor' is what I strongly focus on. Every interaction, deal closed etc. is about talking to people. Without seeing customers as people you won't be able to identify their needs and come up with a win-win solution.?Especially in highly technology-oriented companies, the value of people increases. Without seeing customers as people, you cannot empathize with them and come up with a win-win solution. Quite often we get lost with siloing between sales, marketing, customer service and HR, when all of these are in many ways one thing – people. By having a more ”holistic” approach to interacting, you ensure that beneficial opportunities rising out of those interactions are not limited to just one area.?That also aligns with my principle of 'Making a difference together'.?

- Can you please tell me more about that principle??

- Certain degree of competition is healthy within a business world, yet existing solutions are never enough for the fast-paced environment we have nowadays. In order to sustain the small and big changes constantly occurring in the world, we need to be developing all the time, and it's possible to make happen only by collaboration and education. Even though understanding your competition and competitors is important, especially in disruptive technologies and building new solutions, it is very important to focus on a more collaborative and ”win-win” mindset. World is changing quickly, and those looking to contribute to a positive impact need to work and collaborate together to solve the big problems facing every large industry in the world currently. Let's do this together.

- Speaking of today's reality, do you think people actually matter in the era of Artificial?Intelligence (AI)??

-?Sure, even more than before. As AI can take over more repetitive tasks, people can focus much more on what really matters; creative solutions, wholesomeness and growing and developing both business and themselves. For example we at SUPPLYZ use AI to provide accurate data (DaaS – Data as a Service for your assets) so that the valuable human resources can be used where it matters the most. With real-time alerts and data on filling level measurement and inventory intelligence, employees can be used where they provide the most value, instead of focusing on checking, monitoring and ”putting down fires” all the time.

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- You represent a start-up.?What does it mean to actually care about people in a start-up environment??

- Such an environment should be even more concentrated on taking care of people than big corporations.?Start-ups don't have processes - they've got people.?The thing is, start-ups are about multifaceted roles, which require the right sets of skills and a great environment to use people's strong sides to their full potential. So, team members are the ones with the greatest extent of influence on how business grows, so you have to be extra careful of whom you bring to the team, what type of culture you foster and how you can help them grow, thus developing the business itself. To sum up, the idea should be to?train people so well that they can leave – but make them so happy that they don¨t want to.?

-?How can people catch-up with innovation and disruptive?technologies?

- I believe a network helps a lot to catch up with things, increase your own visibility and make sure you're not only aware of the new tendencies, but also to know how (or thanks to whom) you will be able to find innovative solutions. That can be done by following correct communities – whether they are Facebook groups, accelerators, university programs or support organizations.

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- Anything you can suggest business owners consider when it comes to people management?

- Happy employees - happy business. I presume it's essential to ensure a flat hierarchy - quite a useful strategy in start-ups where team members often are partners/co-founders, not supervisor-subordinate.?Radical problem ownership is what I find a key to this. Where large corporations often fail is that there is a need to always assign blame to someone. This keeps people focused on avoiding making mistakes instead of looking to utilize their full potential. Mistakes and failures happen to everyone – but if we don't look to assign blame but instead always ask the question from ourselves –?”What I could have done better?”?- and you can trust that everyone thinks like that – you can avoid assigning blame, creating more freedom and allowing everyone to try, test and find where they provide the most value. Thus increasing their potential above constraints of strict job description. This can only be achieved with high-level trust established within the team.

To sum up, Aku mentioned, people management is efficient when it's not about a pure and strict competition, but when people are 'playing the right games',?where goal is not just revenue or business oriented, but bettering the cohesion and development of both individual and team to work together towards a common goal.

Stay tuned to keep exploring the people management approaches current businesses take!

#peoplematter #hr #people #peopleandculture #supplyz #businessstrategy #leadership #radicalownership