Durban, South Africa, 22 April 2020 – Summit, leaders in developing peak performance for businesses across the country have laid out their plans to address the changing needs of businesses and the impact that the future will have on learning and development.
The rapid spread of COVID-19 reminds us how our wellbeing is interconnected, and the flurry of heart-warming responses people have exhibited in the face of this crisis reveals our tremendous willingness and ability to help one another. These truths will persist even when life goes back to normal.
Forward-thinking leaders can run more efficient organisations by creating conditions that allow their customers to be more helpful. When service provision is a true partnership and customers are pitching in, employees are more productive, service outcomes are improved, and experiences are enhanced for everyone involved.
It’s one thing for companies to recognise that they need to redefine the way that they conduct business in order to succeed in this age of disruption, but it’s an entirely different thing to understand how to achieve that.
How do companies get started on their transformation journeys?
According to Matthew Lambert, Summit’s Managing Director, first-hand experience has demonstrated that organisations need two integral components in order to be truly successful. The first being a future-ready business model capable of nimbly addressing the business’s evolving needs with a refocusing on differentiating products/services to meet the changing needs of customers. Secondly, organisational culture that fosters an environment that’s working, innovating, and continuously learning is equally imperative.
“Transforming into this type of future-ready organisation isn’t an easy feat since both the business model and cultural change occur simultaneously. I apply four timeless pillars (stolen from the Gazelles framework) to be able to address the business’ needs for the future, namely:
- People
- Strategy
- Execution
- Cash
I will be dealing with the four pillars in a series of articles over the coming weeks, however, the first aspect – people – is possibly the most important in order to really transform your business model.”
Ensuring that your people understand what it will take to drastically shorten your product-creation lifecycle and what steps can be cut out of the process in order to make this as efficient as possible.
“In our own business, creating a face-to-face training programme takes around a month. I give the team eight working days to develop a blended solution and ensure that it can be accredited. What the team is then able to do is chunk each process of product development and have it run simultaneously. Normally, we have a sequential development cycle with each component split up and brought together two days prior to the deadline date. Why? It allows for these teams to work together on various refinement, branding areas, and QA processes in order to produce the final product.”
He further adds that providing a space where staff can provide ideas that can be actioned quickly and able to prototype/create a minimum viable product is also an important aspect. In order to achieve this, you need to provide people with the frameworks to develop ideas and understand the importance of putting them into action.
“In Summit we provide people with the frameworks to develop ideas and understand how to put them into action. We have developed a Level-1 Innovation course that teaches our team the fundamentals of innovation, idea creation, problem-solving and the fundamentals of creating an MVP. While this is a relatively new process for us, there are two excellent ideas that we’re already putting into action that came from our own team.”