Read a selection of your colleagues postings.
Respond by Day 5 to two or more of your colleagues in one or more of the following ways:
POST1
Ten Questions that challenge the status quo at my current workplace:
1. What if we allowed customers 24/7 access to our model homes would this increase our sales?
2. What if started a program that allowed customers to stay for one night in our model homes so that they could get a feel for the home (see if its a good match)?
3. What if home loans were easier to get and builders covered more costs for the customers?
4. What if my organization stopped focusing intensively on the sale and more on the actual customers needs as a homeowner?
5. What if all employees tried to help one another versus helping themselves? What affect would this type of partnership have on the company and its customers?
6. What if we built more than the traditional clubhouse pool house and common areas in our communities? What if we offered something that isnt common such as a community go-kart track or skating rink?
7. What if we decorated the exterior of our central office including our showroom in themes each week to excite and attract customers attention? Imagine the word-of-mouth advertising we would generate.
8. What if we built a home for the local homeless people to stay in and take up donations for them to get back on their feet?
9. What if we gave one house a year away to someone in need? This type of generosity may attract customers who can appreciate us giving back to the community.
10. What if washed people cars cut their grass take out their trash etc. in exchange for a donation to a local charity?
The one question I chose is #5: What if all employees tried to help one another versus helping themselves? What affect would this type of partnership have on the company and its customers?
This question is important because there is more strength in numbers meaning the more people collaborate the greater the chances of success. Our team is currently divided and we all have different agendas. This type of division poses a barrier to innovation because it lacks the essential ingredient needed to foster innovation which is teamwork. If we could master working together as a whole it would challenge the status quo by helping us to learn to share our ideas. Exchanging ideas with one another could lead to the production of creative strategies that will propel the company forward.
In one of our resources this week we see that there are five discovery skills: associating questioning observing experimenting and networking (Dyer Gregersen & Christensen (2009). The skill that will enable my organization to encourage innovation and overcome creativity barriers is networking. Networking and sharing information amongst each other occurs simultaneously. Therefore it is imperative we work on developing this skill. Devoting time and energy to finding and testing ideas through a network of diverse individuals gives innovators a radically different perspective (Dyer et al. 2009). The status quo challenge question I chose is important because it is imperative to focus the teams efforts towards collectively testing solutions for our current problems. If we do not join forces this poses as a barrier because there will be a lack of diversity during the creative thinking process. Networking and sharing will challenge the status quo of my organization by taking a bunch of different viewpoints and applying them towards obstacles.
POST2
I will take my current employer which is one of the largest consulting organization.I noticed that it is pretty difficult to challenge status quo of the organization where your duty for the past years is to challenge your own and clients status quo.
I came up with the following list of questions:
My question.
Im a big fan of open sourcing my experience with this started with Linux and Unix operating systems back in the early 2000s. I was fascinated how flexible it is you can assemble anything you want and make it work the way you want. I played a lot with it and got really excited by the amount of support information and diversity of the communities available for this. After some enterprise IT experience I realized that things get resolved much faster with open platforms than through best-in-class enterprise agreements of Microsoft. I like how week reading describes open-source innovation as ability to tap the passion and ingenuity of thinkers (Amabile Khaire 2008p.4).
When I look into the modern research techniques and the amount of reading that we do there is a clear pattern in it. The author shall base all his thinking on previous scientifically accepted researchers and information. This is all open and often public data. What about corporations and consulting firms? There is an enormous amount of information and breakthrough generated and proven by such firms. Imagine if everyone had access to this information and/or could contribute? In my view this would help to mature methods of the organization solicit cool and interesting work from potential clients who came to your knowledge base. Certainly this also presents a challenge of losing the sense of exclusivity in the area. This also forces you to beef up your other value proposition area. From the other side imagine how many more minds will open up to improvise on what you previously considered to be your intellectual property. Things will just further polish and emerge at no cost. In fact you can even get money out of it just like everyone does it on the internet through an online advertisement maybe some of your partners. What if I offer you vendor technology solution that can perfectly fit into the framework that you are exploring on my website. At the back-end I can have a commission from the vendor. Wikipedia is a good example of successful open source status quo challenge (Amabile Khaire 2008p.4). Another example that Im aware of is Facebooks Data Center and IT Infrastructure open source project called Open Compute Project. This has started as an open library of the reference architectures and design drawings sponsored by Facebook. Today there are thousands of the enthusiast working on this. What is the benefit for the Facebook? They simply innovate at no cost for design.
Discovery Skill.
Questioning discovery skills suite me very well. This is probably because I do it every day with my clients colleagues family. I like to challenge assumptions or what is considered usual this is part of my personality. This often opens up a large number of possibilities that people might not have explored and creates an opportunity for ideas to pitch and be heard. Just what I want to secure my next meeting with potential client or prospect. I want to get him/her excited about it as well. I like how Marc Benioff described his breakthrough by questioning entire software upgrade lifecycle (Dyer et al 2009 p.4). Look what happened shortly after. Entire IT industry got disrupted by the concept of Cloud computing. As you may see this works for me and for the industry. I actually like all of the skills described in the reading material and they all make sense to me. I picked questioning as a very effective way to break the ice with people I meet this presents a greater opportunity to me to achieve desired outcomes.