Page 36 - Inquisitive Employee Engagement Guide v22

Bike and Frog Thinking

Thanks to organisation charts Business Streams have This is the difference between a frog – a
historically been seen as silos (within silos) and living, breathing, connected, joined up
hierarchies – C Suite, regions, production, finance, being versus a bike – a collection of
operations, retail, distribution, marketing, sales, HR, separate elements/ parts that connect
transformation, customer service, compliance, sequentially and can be easily adapted,
strategic planning. Within HR you may have strategy added to and moved around.
and planning, policy, recruitment, business partners,
performance, reward, engagement plus learning and To create great experiences for
development. Communication often sits within HR or employees (or customers) it helps to
Marketing, with the CEO or less regularly as a grasp the whole system, within its
standalone team. The potential for lots of silos. context for each touchpoint or
moment of truth. Where you consider
Yet now employees (and Customers) see their the holistic interconnectedness of things
Work^Life more as a journey. It would be easy to – seeing them as a living breathing entity
simply replace the silos with a linear lifecycle – they (frog) with their own distinct personality.
are a good starting point, but not the experience.
People go on linear journeys but lots of
To gain a good understanding on how to develop things impact that journey from the
great experiences it pays to ditch the traditional individual and businesses perspective.
silos and linear thinking that goes with them. For Navigate it this way and you will capture
each audience or employee think in terms of ONE heads, hearts, hands and voices. Whilst
experience - this requires a different approach – one you may end up with something that
that embraces a systems thinking approach and calls looks and feels quiet linear – if you
for continuous collaboration. have embraced the messy middle that
systems thinking captures you will
Systems thinking is a holistic approach to analysis probably have a more innovative
that focuses on the way a systems constituent parts engaging solution.
interrelate, how systems work over time and how they
.
work within the context of larger systems A great Seek to get better at it and make the
starter for a better understanding of this is Peter holistic thinking that supports joined up
Senge’s Fifth Discipline Fieldbook on learning experiences your way of approaching
organizations. employee services.

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