Its time for the LAP Dance

It has been an amazing start to the year for me, I witnessed the pandemic multiply the speed of transformation in organisations. (one of the fastest being that of Financial services and FINTECH).

At pre-COVID, we already knew that to stay ahead of the curve, operations must be agile and predictive, embrace technology and expertly manage talent to keep them excited with structures like the 70-20-10 rule which states that individuals tend to learn 70% of their knowledge from challenging experiences and assignments, 20% from developmental relationships, and 10% from coursework and training. We witnessed the 70% at its best in 2020, one where creativity and the enthusiasm of employees created positive vibrations within the organisation and carried everyone on a positive shockwave on being safe, being ready and efficient multi-tasking.

In this new Norm, how do organisations decide on which direction(strategy) to steer? When there are so many out there claiming to help do the same at a cheaper subscription cost or outdo rivals with patches after patches of updates. Therein lies the tedious task of sieving the noise out and picking the correct Strategy.

Fun fact - Looking at the origin of the word strategy, I found that The term “strategy” is derived indirectly from the Classic and Byzantine (330 A.D.) Greek “strategos,” which means “general.” While the term is credited to the Greeks, no Greek ever used the word. ... Igor Ansoff (Corporate Strategy, 1965), could see the strategic element in their domains clearly enough to give it a name. (https://www.strategyskills.com/Articles/Documents/origin_strategy.pdf)

As 2021 rolled off, I have been fortunate to witness, three companies plan their strategies for 2021, pie chart diagrams, numbers off the roof, motivational boosters and one thing in common, leveraging on Technology. All sounds like 2021 is gonna be a speed train.Going back to the origin of strategy, while in the past when the “General” commands, the army marches and sheds the blood and sweat. Todays’ Generals best remind themselves the emphasis of servant leadership - that to lead is to serve, and while dreams and goals are always rosy and beautiful, the biggest hurdle is; the correct and effective implementation and “laser-sharp focus”.

This can be storified as the beam of sunlight that when passes thru a lens on a steady hand can impact a paper to burn. Whereas if the hand was not to remain in a place, the paper would likely be untouched.

How does this translate to us today? When an organisation has set its course to a strategy, it must be mindful of the factors around that may hinder a steady course or effective implementation. Queries and adjustments, the need for a well-managed knowledge schematic to help: ask the right person, ask at the right moment, understand where knowledge lies to be pulled or where it needs to be pushed is now more than ever deemed to be one of the most important critical factors in ensuring a strategy is successful.

For some in my field, we term this as having an efficient knowledge management framework. In the new norm, we are in today, this is the basic start point for any organisation.

In Jan 2020, employees could still afford to have the tech department or IT person, set up and prepare a video conference when required. State of the art tools and gadgets were best left in the care of the techies or the transformation office. Numerous town halls were conducted to convince the organisation to embrace the usage of new technology. However, in just a couple of months, the dire pandemic conditions accelerated the take-up and usage rates. Desktops were being removed from offices to be brought home, home wifi became a necessity not primarily for entertainment but for work and businesses. The term tech-savvy took new meaning, fixing no sound and no video became basic skillsets for all. The IT And Transformation departments were freed from doing non-economical work such as simple troubleshooting to now doing what they were meant to i.e. looking at ways to future-proofing organisations readiness.

The environment within an organisation became one where the uses were again in control of the helm, enhancing and bringing value to ensure that business decisions were effective and efficient and most importantly became one fighting force from multiple venues. While many organisations were worried that their staff had crawled into their home silos, technology connected them and brought forward new nodes of connectivity.

For years I have heard of the difficulty of getting users to contribute to the Knowledge repository, to build Subject Matter Expert directories, the difficulties to ensure the watercooler conversations could still take place but in the short 10 months of 2020, employees turned the table around to “we need more depth and better taxonomy in our repositories”, “we need more content”, expert directories were now at the fingertips and virtual coffee conversations happened in the comforts of one's homes.

The last ten months revived the managing of organisational Knowledge. Be in it different terms, what stood out was the need to know how, know when, know who, know why and the need to make difficult decisions leveraging on AI and Technology.

The focus now is on making organisations, knowledge and future-ready, The most important strategy an organisation need's is the ability to keep focused on leveraging emerging technologies like artificial intelligence to help make organizations smart, intelligent and knowledge-driven. The need to adopt a holistic approach to create a Knowledge enabled Smart Organization. And focus on interventions to enhance improvement across the key performance parameters and ensure sustenance to be a knowledge ready future organisation. ( more details here)