If you have been following us for a while (or even 5 minutes), you will know getting the upper hand with leverage is our thing.
We have all heard the well-versed notion, “technology increasing productivity”, however, what most don’t realise is that this is only half the opportunity.
Businesses (and individuals) are increasingly realising the potential technology has to enable creativity.
When you think about it, it makes sense. The accumulation of all the technological advances over the last century has lead us to a place where we have documentation of human knowledge, creations and discoveries just a few mouse clicks away, at any time.
Distances have been reduced (despite barriers of time and space). Sharing knowledge is easier. Making connections is at the tip of our fingers. All of these factors combined facilitate creativity.
When you break it down, leveraging technology to foster creativity in the workplace comes to two components: automation and experimentation
The first component, is leveraging your staff’s full capabilities, by streamlining their job through tech.
What we mean by this, is automating manual and repetitive process, to free them up to focus on the value they add. We’ve spoken on the specifics of recognising when it’s time to automate in a previous article, here.
But we know just talking high-level might not give you a real world example, so here's one of how we leverage technology to automate manual and repetitive processes, here, at Lancom.
Meet TimeSanity, an in-house built application that saves us countless hours a month in cross checking our engineer’s time entries. TimeSanity automatically checks entries against the custom rules we’ve created, with any discrepancies triggering an email to be sent to the person who logged the entry, to correct it.
This means we are:
a) Not leaving money on the table by missing on revenue
b) Avoiding manual checks at the end of each week and month
c) Billing with accuracy
d) Empowering our staff to correct mistakes in a proactive way.
I bet you are sitting there and thinking about that one recurring manual task that you would love automated. The reality is, every business is likely to have a case for a 'TimeSanity' application. Whether the solution is already in market or you could develop it to suit your business unique needs, the call to action is to start thinking about it now, not later (and if you haven't guessed yet, we can help).
The second component, is using technology to streamline your creative process, enabling you to brainstorm and experiment more efficiently, and effectively.
Creative ideas are a product of direction, domain knowledge, along with knowledge of areas outside of the relevant domain, brought together with a ‘Eureka’ moment. Creativity is about generating novel, useful ideas through making not-so-obvious connections between domains.
With the abundance of technology, access to a wealth of information, creativity is quickly becoming a very valuable asset in organisations.
In another words: we are living in a conflicting situation. At the same time that technology is making us more productive, it can be a blocker for creativity.
The World Economic Forum report has stated that, in times of digital transformation (or the 4th industrial revolution as some would say), 60% of CEO's will be looking to hire those who show creativity as a leadership trait.
But it is not all bad news for us technology lovers. There are many ways to use technology to facilitate creativity. To get your creative juices flowing, I have noted a few examples below:
- Leveraging technology to brainstorm
Whether you use LinkedIn groups, Microsoft Teams, Quora, or a more sophisticated tool like Popplet to brainstorm individually or as a group; the truth is: there are infinite ways to use tech to improve your creative thinking.
- Then there is virtual reality...
I could go on about the use of virtual reality to enable a more collaborative and creative process, but someone else already has!
Technology is opening access to experimentation like never before. Thanks to advancements like cloud computing the cost to iteration is lower than it has ever been, opening new possibilities for businesses and people.
Generating leverage comes from being able to understand what technology can and can’t do for your business unique needs.
Lancom has vast experience helping businesses find their own version of leverage. Whether leverage to you means migrating to cloud, experimenting with a new business app, automating a repetitive process, or simply making sure the day to day of technology runs smooth (so your people can be more creative); our tailored solutions are built with long partnerships and mutual value in mind.
