Think Inside The Box
“Think outside the box” is what we shout in team meetings and from stages but… is that really what we want from our employees…?
Yes, sometimes.
And other times… we want our employees to take ownership of their role, their project, or their department. We want them to solve their own problems, to take initiative and action, and we want them to be constantly thinking about how to improve their own work.
And… we want them to be accountable and responsible towards our bottom lines, we want them to understand the constraints and limitations of our business and industry, and we want them to be respectful and responsive to our customers.
Sometimes we want them to think inside the box.
We want ALL of our employees to not only feel they can contribute, but we want them to actually contribute to the performance of the company, to the success of the team and to the engagement of our customers, members or clients.
We want them to feel ‘empowered’ to make decisions and encouraged to take action and… we don’t want to worry about it… we don’t want to worry about the potential negative impact of their decisions, we don’t want to micro-manage.. we want to allow them to be creative and try new things but… we cringe at the thought of giving them free rein…
We do want them to take risks but… it’s not about taking risks at any cost, we need to control for health, financial, reputational risk.
We want them to think inside the box. Inside the SANDBOX.
The edges of the sandbox represent the constraints, the boundaries, the standards or regulations that must be respected. The sandbox will be different for different jobs and for different individuals or for each project, however, can be easily established. Give them the goal, the objectives, the target and then… let them play.
Let them know that they are required to deliver a certain end result, let them know their solution cannot add costs or only acceptable minimal costs, it must adhere to the health and safety protocols, legislation or company values and then let them be creative. Let them determine how best to solve this problem, how best to delight the customer, or how best to improve a process.
Knowing the boundaries frees the employees to be creative without need for concern.
Give them the sandbox and let them play inside the box.
