A combined article by:
Dr. Rajab (MD) and Lorretta Barbours (Associate)
Of recent, Resonance Consulting has had several requests to assist organisations interested in developing their own in-house academies to offer training to both employees and new entrants. Companies see the benefit of changing and keeping up with the digital age whilst developing their staff. But, where do they start?
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The Challenge
Business today has become a multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted endeavour. Whether you provide customers with products or services you are expected to deliver an exceptional experience anticipating their needs and desires before they are clear about what they are.
This means that your products and services need to be:
- Engineered – addressing challenges and solving problems,
- Managed – to ensure you meet the market window timeously,
- Designed – to provide an intuitive interaction.
When learning and work are integrated, organisations naturally evolve to compete more effectively as business conditions change. So, how do you start, without getting overwhelmed?
Borrowing the approach used to develop games, it is possible to reframe a RESEARCH PROCESS that leads us from INTEREST to ACTION.
Step 1: Be Inspired
Running a company, developing a product, launching a new service or developing your passion are long-term commitments. The magic of the connected world we live in is that opportunities which would not have made it in a local market can now be sold internationally to a geographically diverse customer base. So with discipline and perseverance more is always possible.
We encourage you to take heart and pursue your interests and passions. Not haphazardly, but by systematically extending elements that fascinate you into an engaging experience for your customers both internal and external.
To do this effectively it is important to explore the overlap by balancing CURIOSITY with JUDGMENT. Letting yourself be led by a natural curiosity allows you to:
- Develop an understanding that incorporates different perspectives and knowledge competencies,
- Discover new possibilities,
- Give in to finding what you can do, and take action to creating an impact.
Challenging yourself to move beyond default conclusions, you can use your sense of judgment to break down assumptions and norms that are standing in your way.
Any research project thus starts by BEING INSPIRED BY YOU – looking for the answers to questions that preoccupy your mind.
Step 2: The Research Framework
But, how are you to trust the answers you get? In an age of information overload and a proliferation of misinformation the ability to develop an effective research framework is a critical success factor.
Requiring us to embrace the complexity in which your business operates to find the underlying SIMPLEXITY – those adaptable factors that have the potential so make a big difference. More importantly resisting the urge to filter out that which jars our initial assessments – rather looking for ways that the system:
- Increases autonomy and collaboration,
- Maintains accountability,
- Uses feedback to learn, and
- Harnessing diffusion to share information and learning.
Suspending the need to DO SOMETHING momentarily to look for alternative system configurations. Starting a systemic network analysis to identify how goals, actors, impacts and deliverables are linked and on which assumptions these understandings are built.
This introduces variety in interpretation and an openness to new possibilities to pursue.
Step 3: Testing
Having developed a research framework we can more formally construct questions that explore the RULES, the associated predictions and expectations, which summarise the system dynamics. These are tested using the appropriate TOOLS including questionnaires, interviews, surveys, schedules, observation, inventories and other data sources.
The IMPLEMENTATION of the research project concentrates on collecting the data and ANALYSING it to develop new UNDERSTANDING and INSIGHT.
Step 4: Synthesis and Sequencing
Once the data has been collected it is important to make sense of what it shows us.
This includes extending the value NETWORKS into MODELS. Using SIMULATIONS to uncover dynamics, otherwise attributed coincidence or unforeseen impacts. Adding TRIALS to confirm our initial conclusions.
But the biggest benefit comes from an ongoing DIALOGUE – in which we are able to identify KEY LEARNING together.
Step 5: Presentation, Dissemination and Support Structure
Finally, to complete the transition from INTEREST to ACTION it is important to share what we have learnt with others who share our interest. Those who will cooperate with us to CREATE the CHANGE we envisaged.
Bridging Uncertainty with Possibility
The approach above makes it possible to bridge UNCERTAINTY with POSSIBILITY in a systematic and systemic way. Opening the door for an ever more engaging FUTURE. A true learning organisation is an organisation that is more resilient. Using our research methodologies, we can assist you in getting you started to achieve any new initiatives.
For more information, contact us at: rrajab@resonance.net.za OR (+27) 083 602 5698.