How to Empower Your Whole Organization in Problem Solving

Marshall Kirkpatrick

April 28, 2020

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2 min read

The future of work, for all of us, is sure to be touched by a lot of automation. Machines are getting better and better at doing a lot of work that humans have traditionally done, especially routine physical and routine cognitive labor.

What’s left for us? Non-routine work, problem solving, value creation. That’s the perspective of John Hagel, a key thought leader at consulting firm Deloitte, who was a recent guest on our show The Sprinklr Coffee Club.

In this two minute clip, John shares how he thinks about empowering everyone in an organization to change the nature of our jobs.

This perspective resonates with what we’re seeing happen every day. Not that the world has gotten there yet, but we’re headed that direction. At Sprinklr, we work with most of the largest organizations in the world. To varying degrees, they are all thinking about how to make the work of their front-line, customer-facing teams a source of greater insight and strategic value.

One of the biggest challenges can be cultural. This analysis from the publication TechTarget of Customer Care teams shifting towards working from home due to COVID-19 resonated with what we’re seeing.

“Contact centers that didn’t regularly allow remote work — and on top of that, use agent monitoring and performance metrics resembling a factory environment — are struggling the most, according to Brad Cleveland, co-founder of the International Customer Management Institute. (ICMI) ‘That just doesn’t work in this kind of crisis. It doesn’t work very well in the normal routine, either. Having engaged employees that have the flexibility, autonomy and empowerment is what’s working the best right now.’”

There are people, process, and technology considerations in making the shift to a culture of empowered problem solving. That’s a shift we are all going to want to make.