Design Thinking and a decisive factor (talent)
Do you really know your employees, their motivations, their concerns, their expectations? Why the DT method can make the management of the human factor wiser and more efficient.
Let's think for a moment about the importance of talent. We can define it as that set of qualities that allows face daunting challenges, think big, overcome fear because it generates trust around you. In a team, for example a company, that talent can, and usually, make a competitive difference. Hence the competition to sign professionals with the best quality/price ratio, as happens among the big sports brands.
But talent is not an absolute value. It needs polishing, training, knowledge to define itself and develop. And then requires management, organization, so that it is really operational in the goals of the team. Few shows are sadder, not just in economics, than wasted talent.
How to treat him as he deserves, attract him, motivate him, retain him? The concept of incentive is not new, but a methodology has taken the cake in recent years: Design Thinking, the problem solving model in a design department (of a piece, a product, a software...). More or less, I would apply this sequence: empathize with the client and deeply understand their interests and expectations, sift through that information to extract the most relevant information, generate as many innovative ideas as possible from it, design prototypes to meet those expectations and put them to the test. in a process of improvement based on results.
All the steps are crucial, but the first one sets the tone for the others: start by truly understanding not only what the customer expects, but why they expect that and not something else. If we change customer for employee, there we have the key to why the SD is applied more and more intensively in the management of Human Resources. It is about putting the focus on people, on the team as the embodiment of the company.
No more reasons would be needed to apply a method than its own effectiveness. But the DT adds another quality: effectiveness in scenarios of uncertainty, from the effects of the economic crisis of 2008 to the accelerated technological transformation and the management of permanent change. And what about the current scenario of collective uncertainty. As the CEO-philosopher would say, in economics only change is permanent.
The DT -an agile methodology, after all- proposes to thoroughly understand that uncertainty in employees, what worries them, what frustrates them, how to alleviate it, what would make them add optimism to his interpretation of the career prospects, yours and your company. Based on this often latent information, Human Resources can knowingly design a work environment, a corporate culture, a system of incentives and family reconciliation options that are much closer to reality.
It also implies the ability to adapt to constant changes in those expectations because it understands talent management as a flexible, constant process, like one's own personal perceptions depending on the circumstances.
Accumulated knowledge about people's behavior based on their expectations can be as strategic as the key information about the client. Or about talent management in competition.
