Thinking Culture

We are managers, leaders and experts in our own areas. We plan, strategise, give ideas and accomplish projects and tasks. When the projects accomplish, we receive all kind of feedbacks, positive and negative. We seldom bother with the praises for the excellent jobs done, what more important to us are the jobs done perfectly, and meet everyone’s expectations. It is difficult to fulfil everyone needs and expectations, but if we achieve their expectations, we will be distinguished in the eyes of our customers. In getting the jobs done, we sometimes forget to bring together our people in the thinking part. We rather do the planning, strategising and thinking ourselves, and leave the doing or implementation part to our people. Therefore when things didn’t turn as planned, people tend to put the blame on us, and as a result we felt upset and not appreciated. To establish an environment where organisation can provide customers more than what they expected, we must encourage a ‘thinking’ work culture in our system. We cannot afford to have people doing what they are asked to do without thinking, people who work like machines, people who do the same process they learned or heritage from others many years ago. We must develop environment where people are willing to change, willing to face challenges, and willing to use their intelligence to bring the best of their ability. Over years, we have simplified work flows, and developed programmes and systems to expedite processes, and these make some of the workers becoming complacent and less productivity, and to certain extent, some of them are reluctant to change. With all assistance provided around us, we should now focus on using our ‘brain’ to deliver our service in creative and innovative way. We should enhance our work environment with new way of doing things, to deliver service smartly, accurately, efficiently and timely. Creative and innovative thinking is not only related to developing IT system and shorten the work flow. It should be able to integrate the knowledge, technology, skills and experiences one have to produce a better solution for his or her jobs. To enhance thinking culture, you must encourage your people to explore and ask questions, give them time to formulate their thinking, allow them to take and defend their stands and connect to other people ideas, and encourage them to build on each other thinking so that the results become more outstanding. If all staff can think of brilliant action to take when they face problems in their workplace, then you do not have to put much of your time on the day to day supervision, therefore you can concentrate and commit on bigger agendas. Give your staff encouragement and trust to solve the problems, and allow them to rectify their mistakes if decisions or actions taken were not effective, and don’t forget to acknowledge them for their contribution. We must encourage our people to work independently with minimum supervision. We must let them deal with issues and experience the ‘critical moment’ and be responsible to their deeds and decisions. Our people should know how to cater customers demand rather than expecting customers to fit to the processes set in the organisation. We are responsible to promote good perception about the organisation to the customers and the public, i.e. through excellent service, and presentable, well-versed and profesional staff in all aspects related to customer service. For this to happen, all staff in the organisation must engage themselves in the thinking culture. Managing the way we think will develop a better system and determines our performance.