Preparing for the Upswing & a Change in Direction
From an organisational perspective it is pretty common for senior managers to spend significant energy considering when to upgrade plant and equipment, be it machinery, vehicles or IT infrastructure. The upgrades can occur on the run (in response to a surge in demand for instance), as a result of necessity (say as a result of a breakdown or unexpected damage) or as a planned development. The farming sector are very good at upgrading equipment in response to expected demand whilst also having a great handle on plant servicing and repairs. The current manufacturing sector is more cautious and most will upgrade as needed, holding off for as long as possible until confident a surge in demand is emerging. But what about your people? How many organisations ‘upgrade’ their people talent in time?
The interesting thing for me is that whilst new machinery can be up and running quickly or new IT can roll out with an incumbent system in place, the people elements can take a little longer. Which poses the question, at what point do you prepare your people for a change or an upswing?
Training and people development ought to be an ongoing thing. Sadly, it’s not. Formal and informal training elements can be developed and programmed. In much the same way as you maintain plant and equipment, maintenance and upgrading of the capabilities of your staff ought to occur consistently. There are THREE core areas that you can focus on: Strategic capability; Operational capability; and Execution capability. You’ll note that for most organisations, the belief is that ‘execution’ is the role of ‘Operation’. NOTHING can be further from the truth. The Organisational Evolution Model highlights the flaws in thinking that ‘Ops’ is where things get executed.
So the time to prepare for the upswing and changes in direction, is NOW. And tomorrow, and the day after that. Training is not a cost centre, its a development centre. If you put it off you’ll constantly be playing catch up to competitors who are already ‘ready’. Significantly, by the time an opportunity is spotted it’ll have likely sailed by before you can respond effectively. So be smart – Strategic, Operational, and Execution training ought to be a constant area of development.
The MP3 file below captures part two of our chat looking at the Future of Sex. Picking up on the theme of new technology that popped up towards the end of our first discussion in week one, here we move onto haptics and holographics and the extension of that technology from beyond the bedroom and…
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Read More >I join Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Darwin radio where we continue our discussion about the future of sex. We consider three main areas in this session – smart phone applications; remote relationships and the combination of haptics and holographics as one the emerging means by which we’ll maintain physical contact. You can download the…
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Read More >Vicki Kerrigan and I finished off our discussion about the Future of Clothing on ABC Darwin yesterday. We discussed invisibility style cloaks, singlets that monitor your heart rate and stress levels, runners that capture electricity to power your wearable electronics and a few philosophical questions regarding our ability to deal with stress. The file…
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