It is important to understand how organisations are adapting. The changing habits of buyers in a B2B and B2C environment are impacting the profitability curve of many businesses around the globe. For medium to large companies it is vital to continue investing in the research and development of new products. Those who cut spending on R&D as well as marketing and sales eventually will drop out of the market.
You just need to wander along the busy streets and talk with your clients. You can not miss seeing how organisations are adapting to a global economic crisis. Their customers are going out of business or reorganizing their business procedures. If they do not adapt they will be depleting their financial resources and market share.
Don’t miss this episode of Fasttrack: Get insights how organisations are adapting their R&D activities
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Transcript of this episode on organisational change
[00:00:01] So we’re going to look at the following year, which is getting insights into how organizations are adapting the R&D activities.
[00:00:14] In the research and development of products or services we can see massive changes coming ahead. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking now about the new full introduction of Home Office for many areas. This has a significant change not only for the employees, but as well for the organization’s ability to modify the infrastructure. They’re actually have to be capable to continue operating. It means not only just customer service, sales or product development has to work.
Exchanging ideas is now limited
[00:00:51] You don’t have the ability necessarily to do the same things that you used to do. You no longer meet at the coffee machine and discuss ideas or other issues that you’re battling with. Try to bounce it off other colleagues who might have an idea or a suggestion that leads you to solving the problem. That’s all missing. So you need areas where you can actually exchange. Where can you have a discussion area so you can actively meet up? Virtually have your coffee or tea to help you. Discuss different topics without physically having be in the same room. And that’s something that you can do.
[00:01:35] Another thing some organizations are going driven by out scaling the concept of single office space, which means one person in one office room. That’s usually something, for instance, in the audit business, usually you’d have the partners and maybe the managers maybe having a single room to themselves. But that doesn’t work in the long term, especially when we’re talking about, for instance, the programing departments and so on. They need peace and need to be able to do that. And if somebody is working from home and just has a small flat, it doesn’t have to really the space and maybe that kid says. Thats a lot of distraction. This is a big challenge for them.
Learn new skills based on how organisations are adapting
[00:02:23] They will learn new skills and maybe the families will adapt themselves at their own approach towards each other. How can they really change? How can it affect our businesses and the way we are doing business in a more positive way?
[00:02:43] Research and development has to change. It doesn’t matter even if you are developing products. Let’s say you are producing drones. There are so many startups that are doing drones or companies, big corporations that are developing new models of cars or new software, new clothing. That’s often stuff that’s done in a team. If you’re producing some kind of textile and you’ve got people who know about the textiles, others who know about design, and then you have to test it out and look how it really looks. That’s quite a lot of work and work that really you really needs a team.
Reduce the infection risk in organizations
[00:03:34] But now with social distancing and then necessity to actually reduce the infection risk in organizations, we have to find ways to still be effective, productive and happiest with what we’re doing. We are much more passionate about what we’re doing because we are focusing much more on what we’re doing instead of being all the time in meetings. Instead of being distracted by people going in and looking for somebody.
[00:04:04] By being more focused and closed in, our focused time greatly improves our performance. Having the ability to meet up in a chat room on a Zoom room, we can exchange ideas, get news, what’s happening and so on. He says something, maybe I need to consider anything. That’s something that we really need indeed. Businesses are changing. We are using more platforms, like slack and other team platforms to exchange, to organize, to plan things. They are massively going his way towards cloud. At the same time as well seeing where can we test this stuff?
Home Office works
[00:04:51] Where can we try stuff out without having big issues and big risks? You have to think of it when actually many businesses are going to open again their offices. When are they going to get everybody back in? I don’t know. I mean, just maybe 10 percent or 20 percent of the staff. But actually everybody? That’s going to take at least two years. That is a realistic perspective on this situation because things have massively changed. We are going to see how we are actively learning and developing new skills. Organizations are showing us that actually Home Office works.
[00:05:35] It is usable and it’s got a great advantage, especially as well for the environment. Just think of how many people are not commuting now to their offices in the cities! What about those who are not driving from outside, from small villages into the city to their workplaces, actually working from home? They actually are gaining a lot of life time because they’re not sitting two hours in traffic every morning and two hours in the evening.
Developing their own skills
[00:06:04] They actually can invest the time in developing their own skills, investing more time for family as well, and getting a much greater balance out of it. They are even doing some extra sports that they usually wouldn’t be able to do. The positive effect for businesses is that the productivity of people is increasing. They’re not losing contact because we actually have everybody in the home office. Putting everybody together to exchange, whether we are using WhatsApp or telegram or slack or other kind of tools, you can do that.
[00:06:40] We are now moving out of WhatsApp. We’ve been using other platforms. We’re moving out and moving more into integrated systems. So we’ve got our own chat system that we use that’s integrated with our smartphones. So we’ve got our company phones so I can call a client on my smartphone. It actually uses our company phone system.
Team work goes virtual
[00:07:08] I don’t have to expose my personal cell phone but only my desk phone number. At the same time, I can chat as well with colleagues. I can have a chat with customers and so on. Makes it much, much easier to do. At the same time, I can still use platforms like telegram are much, much safer, more reliable and more flexible.
[00:07:29] I don’t have all these issues that I’m seeing from other platforms that are a little bit outdated. They have too many restrictions. That just doesn’t work if we have this kind of restrictive thinking. It just doesn’t. That’s why it’s so beneficial and positive. Why would you get so efficient if you’re doing that? For research and development is so important because you have to bounce ideas with your colleagues. You’re trying out stuff in one area of product. Then you have to bounce it back with the other guy who is maybe doing some kind of other structural design.
Product design is changing
[00:08:17] It works so easily and so much better because you’re starting to use more technology. Virtual product design means you’re actually looking at the product in a 3D environment based on CAD that you’re using. It works really well connected with a 3D scanner. When you’ve got your prototype scanned in, then you’ve made some changes and can use that.
[00:08:56] So you actually start beginning to think, what is really useful and what’s just a garbage thing? I don’t want to have that. So you have to really filter out the stuff that’s just costing your money and that’s not helping you actually to improve or be more effective. At the same time, you have to invest massively in your staff as well to give them opportunities to educate themselves.
You are in the wrong place if your employer is not adapting
[00:09:22] If you are an engineer, develop a creative person, a designer, product designer, marketing person, product manager, and your boss isn’t really supporting you, supporting your ideas and just expecting you to do some kind of thing like a job. Then definitely maybe you are in the wrong place. That’s why we do it with a different approach. We want people to actually be coachable and be willing to learn to adapt and to contribute. If you have the same passion that we’ve got for what we are doing, you’ll enjoy your work much more. You will be able to learn more.
[00:10:07] Maybe sometimes you put a few hours more into it, but it doesn’t feel like work because it’s so much fun. Afterwards, you learn so many new things that the next project you’re doing, you need fewer hours because you’ve improved massive new skill. Your knowledge or your attitude, your skill set has gone way beyond what you usually could do.
Recognize how much you learned
[00:10:37] There will always be new products, whether it’s a new version of the product or it’s a different project or different start up that you’re moving into, or you’re being maybe placed in a different opportunity, or you are actively moving from home to different country to work on a different project.
[00:10:56] You will recognize how much you learned. You will enjoy working on this awesome thing. It’s so exciting. Maybe get trained on this and these things and say. You always dreamt of having that. Let’s say you are somebody who has always wanted to learn to fly and your company goes and says, hey, we’re having a project with this and this. And would you be willing actually to put in what is necessary to learn to fly a drone?
[00:11:31] You need to have a proper license for that job to learn about aerodynamics and safety. All these different things that takes us where sometimes it’s not like learning for a pilot license. That’s much more time consuming and now I am updating my knowledge on avionics. But if something like that is possible and a business is willing to invest in you, and that’s something you’ve always been passionate but didn’t have the money to know how to go about it.
Grow personally and grow your income
[00:12:03] Your employer actually offers you an opportunity? Wouldn’t that be awesome and say, “oh, I want to do that instead of a place where you were just always doing everyday the same boring thing”. You’re not really happy as there’s no real reason why to go into the office other than just to pay your bills? If you are able to grow personally you will eventually, in the long term as well, grow your income.
[00:12:35] You will grow your wealth, your ability to get better contacts. Maybe I should maybe be somewhere a supervisor, be a head of department, maybe even eventually be manager of a startup or a subsidiary, a spin off or anything. Well, you have so much development. Eventually, maybe even further development opportunities for your own children or anything. That doesn’t matter whether you are a woman or man, whatever race, color or other kind of directions in your life you’d like to focus on privately. That’s all your thing.
Connect with your passion
[00:13:16] Cool thing is how you connect with your passion. Maybe upon your humanity and all these different things that arereally necessarily because you have to be willing to sometimes listen to stuff that’s you don’t really like. I don’t mean in an insulting way. I mean it in a positive way. You notice the areas, you really need to change your approach and even learn new things. But actively, if I do that, I can do this and this. And I was wanting to do that. See, you can change your life with the right approach and the right environment. And there is no scarcity of opportunities. It’s just scarcity in your mindset.
[00:14:05] If you just keep riding the same old donkey, that’s not getting you anywhere because it’s already been tied to a wall. You’re just becoming unhappy. Do something that makes you really positive but in a sensible way. It’s not about doing something that you love, but actually doing something that matters has an impact and generates a long term income for you.
[00:14:34] Whether you as an employee or you as an entrepreneur, you have to find the right ways and it’s a journey. It’s a journey that takes some time. You’ll develop as one your own skills from being a young person to eventually being an adult with experience that you may eventually want to pass on to the next generation.
