WHAT can WE DO?

By Cees W.M. Nieboer - Strategic Lumina Learning Partner

In times like these where bigger organisations are laying people off and everybody is cautious about spending money the best solution seems to be making better use of our existing resources.

It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. What I have learned from this is that sometimes changes are required in order to improve the current situation.

Limited availability of money and lower capacity of production lines are examples of factors hindering our ability to make a leap forwards. This combined with the bad news about the economy presented to us on a daily basis by the media doesn’t create a particularly motivating environment.

However, the advantage of being human and having the ability to apply certain filters and our own views on the world and the way we see other people (including our employees and co-workers), creates a huge opportunity! By making a shift that leads to putting objectivity and a scientifically solid approach as the basis for evaluating our untapped potential within the organisation we unleash forces that can transform our position.

Maybe this could be the breakthrough you and your shareholders have been desperately waiting for.

The question “How well do we know people around us?” is easily answered: We don’t know what they are really capable of because we only see a limited selection of their skills and traits when we are dealing with them.

If we could provide you with 24 – listed qualities and asked you to rate people around you …… how accurate would you be? If we added some more complexity to it and asked you also to indicate how the behaviour related to those qualities would change given changes in circumstances…. The outcome of that assessment would become even less accurate.

As a result organisations are often utilising the “known” qualities of people and neglecting the “hidden potential” of the cumulative Human Resource potential available to them.

Solutions are not always as complex as we think. The Lumina Spark Portrait discloses those qualities and even more traits and attributes we can deploy to restructure business processes and harness “under-utilised qualities” for our benefit and improvement of our bottom line results.

One of the nice side effects is that when individuals are allowed to use their strengths more freely, the motivation levels and the working atmosphere in organisation improves, with little additional effort.

Try it and take control of your own destiny in a way that isn’t dependant on changes in the world outside of you.

Good luck!