Total Flow Blog

In part I revealed that the 4Cs are Capability, Compatibility, Connectivity And Creativity.
In part 3 today I will explore the first C of capability.

Capability

“Skills, knowledge and talents are distinct elements of a person’s performance. The distinction being, that skills and knowledge can be taught whereas talents cannot… Talents are recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behaviour that can be productively applied… They are a person’s mental filters.”

This has implications when recruiting and developing people for any part of your organisation where customer advocacy is required; and of course you could say that that should be everyone!

Let’s face it construction gets a pretty bad press from many quarters; so why are Total Flow putting such an emphasis on the sector?  What do we know about the built environment?Well, what we do know is that in this £100bn+ turnover industry there are some mammoth opportunities to improve and create wealth for organisations which want to play.

• More than a third of all construction
  projects are completed late
• Less than half come in on budget
• The industry as a whole makes on
  average only 1% margin

On the positive side:

The strategies that enable a company to gain and maintain customers are only as effective as the people that implement them; so recruiting, training, developing and rewarding those people effectively, is crucial. A phrase commonly used is the war on talent; but should it be a battle?

What if a company’s talent strategy was such that the right people were attracted to rather than fought for?

At the frontline of any company is its salesforce. The salesforce of the future will need to reconsider the way it “sells”.

This morning I read The State of Lean in 2007 an article by Jim Womack. The article gave a brief history of lean, what has worked, what hasn’t and in Womack’s view why lean has more often than not been seen and applied as a series of tools rather than a whole system or total management system.

Many of you have probably been victims of initiative overload or on the receiving end of your executive teams need for “the next big thing to transform our business!”