You Have a Lot More Talent than you Think

by Michael Grove | Oct 17, 2018 | Whitepapers

CollabWorks began with a simple concept: Optimizing talent value works best when both the individual and the organization benefit. Since then we have sponsored workforce innovation as thought leaders, sponsors of events, and developers of technology that will allow organizations to shift from managing labor cost to managing labor value.

We are all familiar with the outside-in management models practiced for decades where the organization functions from top-down.  The workforce is defined by job descriptions and headcount. And, managers set objectives and manage individuals (you). The whole point of management is to keep the workforce focused on doing the most valuable work needed to meet the organization’s objectives. 

Outside-in organizations don’t scale well.  Outside-in is the root cause of inefficiency, waste, and inertia that ultimately dooms many organizations as they become too slow and inefficient to adapt. The outside-in model assumes that a “job” performed produces value when in reality there may be little correlation between the job and value. It is the actual work that produces value that drives business performance. Those doing the work are the sources of the value. This is obvious and yet while organizations are spending billions to manage talent better, the waste, disengagement, and turnover continue, while talent shortages are rising.   

After three years of research, executive interviews, and many workshops, CollabWorks has concluded that the answer to workforce inefficiency is to start with a focus on the source of value creation and work backwards. If it is the work that produces value, then create a management model that begins with the individual and optimizes their ability to create value. We call this approach an inside-out management model. The inside-out model works well co-existing with traditional outside-in management. Instead of the “job” being the means of allocating work, the work and its value become the basis for deciding what individuals do. Inside-out means that each individual at all levels of the organization clarifies and manages their own work to the mutual benefit of themselves and the organization. To enable this shift, CollabWorks has created a technology and SaaS process that starts with the individual and provides a simple yet very effective means of clarifying and improving the value of the work performed. This revolutionary inside-out management model is called the FrameWork™.

The FrameWork starts with each individual (you) regardless of organizational structure, job, or type of worker. You set your objectives, priorities, and measure your outcomes. You identify improvements and initiate actions to improve your capabilities, use of talent, and address your desires and needs. The key metric is value creation, and the FrameWork provides you quantitative data to assist you in optimizing the use of your talent.

How do we know work has value? If we think of simple market mechanisms, let’s say of a farmer selling tomatoes to customers in a market. Depending on the quality of the tomatoes and the customer needs a transaction occurs when both parties agree on a value exchange.  A premise of the FrameWork is that this kind of market value exchange applies to all forms of work. Value is attributed to the work when customer(s) (internal or external to the organization) confirm the work’s value. Another premise of the FrameWork is that all work can be described as services where each service is serving customer(s). The FrameWork provides you a simple means of defining your work as services and then to clarify the customers who attribute value to each service. Instead of your manager managing you, you manage your customer’s experience with your service. Your “job” is to ensure your work is addressing your customer’s current needs and to consider improvements to address future needs. 

In most cases, you serve several customers such as a your team, other functions, lab partners, managers, or the entire organization. The FrameWork makes it easy to identify your entire service profile. The sum of your services represents the use of your talent. The value received by your customers represents collectively the value of your services.

Managers continue to play an important role moderating outside-in strategy and direction with inside-out empowerment and coaching of individuals (you) to better serve customers. Individuals own their service profiles and the creation of valuable work on behalf of their customers. By continuing to adapt to changing customer needs, individuals at all levels of the organization are using lean-like management processes. Managers set direction and focus priorities on business strategy. However, managers no longer need to distribute and manage tasks, then provide reports to their superiors as frequently occurs when work flows through a job structure. The management of the work is 80% owned by those doing the work. This liberates both the manager and their team members to focus on optimizing their own value. The FrameWork provides a simple consistent process with clearly defined roles. Managers can be traditional line managers, team or project leaders, or temporary. The result is a lean and agile focus on best means of serving customers.

Continuous improvement of services is built into the CollabWorks management FrameWork thus producing a more agile and resilient organization. As ideas are captured, those most aligned with objectives and needs are selected as potential projects. Gamification and voting are used to promote and select opportunities. Those individuals with the most passion and commitment to creating an improvement form teams who in turn create clears ROI plans and seek approval. The projects can be strategic or simply changes to eliminate low-value work, waste, or address business/worker needs. 

The FrameWork maintains past, current, and future service profiles (work) for each individual and then rolls up the data for any team, group, function, and organization. Past profiles represent a history of services and changes which can demonstrate reduced talent waste, improved talent alignment, and capability growth (or not). Future profiles represent opportunities to better address customers, the organization, and the needs of the individual. The gaps between future and present are clearly identified and often include desired objectives, changes in services, and actions defined to satisfy the transformation. Trends and correlations can be seen providing insights and lessons to further optimize individual and team talent use and ultimately the whole workforce. The FrameWork supports all forms of change management such as design thinking, lean, and agile processes.  

The service profile changes at the group level are the sum of those service profile changes of the participants in the group. The FrameWork process is entirely transparent to the type of worker, group, or management structure. Thus, the FrameWork will blend into any existing organization and culture while providing an agile market-like process of responding to rapid changes in work demands and talent use.

Behind the FrameWork is a powerful mathematical model which produces customizable algorithms, metrics, and data to guide your decision making and to predict outcomes. The data model is rich with insights, benchmarking, and correlations – addressing issues such as service value versus compensation, the alignment of talent to services, relationship between personal growth and job satisfaction, applications for bots, and eliminating bias. 

The inside-out FrameWork allows you, your teams, and the whole organization to clarify and improve the use of talent and the value provided customers. Financial modeling of the organization can now include a correlation of top-down financial performance with the value of the services driven bubble up by sum of individual, group, and functions. The cumulative margin contribution of the workforce can now be analyzed, predicted, and benchmarked to aid management decision making in optimizing the workforce. Current outside-in models waste talent. Inside-out models compliment outside-in models and provide the insight, motivation, and data to leverage the most valuable use of talent. Automation and bots are not the enemies of talent, rather they are the opportunity for you to achieve more including your compensation.

When “You win, then we all win™” is a natural outcome.

Experiencing the FrameWork is easy. In less than an hour, you can create your first services profile. You will clarify the services (work) you perform and for whom (your customers). You will assess the relative value of your work. Once clear on your current services, you can consider changes that would increase your value. You then can set objectives and identify improvements you want to achieve on behalf of yourself and your organization.  The FrameWork makes it easy to quantify and track current and future service profiles and your outcomes of addressing objectives and improvement projects. Reviewing your progress takes minutes and is typically done monthly. The use of your talent is your biggest and most important asset. Spending 1-2 hours per month managing your talent will cause you to realize you a lot more talent then you think!

CollabWorks is working with individuals who want to self-manage and corporations who want to grow rapidly and scale efficiently. Anyone can discover ways to increase their services value – including CEOs who frequently discover unproductivity habits and within hours are able to shift their time and focus to higher value work. Engineers appreciate the quantification and correlations FrameWork provides and the ability to clarify and address wasted work. HR managers see the inside-out model and an effective way to motivate employees while providing them data to help them optimize the use of talent.

The Framework is free for individuals and your success is our primary goal. As you improve yourself you will earn points and our plan is to reward you a share of our profits. At CollabWorks we live our motto – You Win, then We All Win. We are looking for passionate early adopters who want to reinvent the outside-in model of running corporations. Help us build an inside-out community of awesome self-managing achievers and let’s create a movement!