Do you communicate appreciation for team members who have the unique ability to look across the company at business, technology, customer and employee outcomes and experiences? You should elect to do so. Why? Because these people often seem to just know how to look, to see and to share your unique story in the marketplace.
Invite their observations, points of view and critical thinking because it can provide a special competitive advantage for your business. Only if you ask for their insights and partnership. Do you? If not, why? Because without inquiring, and taking the time to listen, you’ll likely miss out on capturing these catalysts insights and knowledge about ideas on how to tinker, shift and adjust your organization’s products and services offerings in ways that deepen value.
Provide an opportunity to bring them to the table as advisors. Ask them to re-imagine a solution, based on their viewpoint. Then, you may find small shifts morphing into new areas for their growth as well as delivering additional value to the business.
Here are a few questions to ask your in-house “R&D” team members and intrapreneurs*…
- How well do you feel our team is sharing our organizational story?
- What parts of our story do we need to improve based on what you know?
- Who else can we bring to the table to help you leverage deeper insights? Partners? Team members? Leaders?
- If you could share one or two specific parts of our organization’s story, what would you choose and/or recommend? Why?
Opening up the dialogue, to the entire team, is also a great opportunity. Growing trust and encouraging authentic communication creates new ideas and shifts that can lead to much larger opportunities in customer experiences and outcomes.
How do you take action to invite partnership across your team and organization? As always, if you aren’t sure where to start the process in your organization or want to get an outside opinion on how to put your R&D team in to place, let’s set time to talk.
*Go here to learn more about essential traits of intrapreneurship.
