Tuesday was a warm winter, when I entered the training class of the company. My task was to try to teach something about the business plans for a team of apprentices, a social responsibility project aimed at providing training in business and technology for youth in the city. The three days before I had thought about what would be the best approach to talk business with a group of people that little, if any, knew about it, and quiet the doubts that I could read in the faces of the students showed me that in this case, talking was not going to help much. So I decided to reduce the theory to a minimum and go directly to the practice by proposing a case study. I told students that they would inherit a candy store where a curve of decrease in sales would cause the bankruptcy of the company in just over three months. Their mission was not only avoid this, but also increase profits. None of these people was able to solve this problem alone because all lacked expertise on the subject.
However, as soon as formed working groups, some interesting ideas emerged, and little by little, the initial difficulties were overcome. As a result, some good strategies are developed. Amazingly, many companies do not understand this remarkable feature is called synergy, nor their potential for development of the organization. They do not realize that the whole is more than just the sum of its parts, and that myopia, probably because their growth impacts. Much has been written about knowledge management, but few people really know what that means in practice, and what more can be found are companies that deal only to store the knowledge of its employees, fearing to become their hostages.
With this, they are simply gathering information incomplete until they can not cope with all that more mass. It's a real "indigestion" of knowledge. If, for its part, the organization must stop knowledge about your business, equally important is the dissemination of information and continued training of employees, and provide an environment of collaboration and trust. People need to feel recognized and valued. Once these needs are satisfied, they give the company a lot more of themselves. We must always bear in mind that people are the true foundation of any organization and we do not build buildings on a weak foundation, we try to support our business on solid contributors. The company should grow up doing with people to grow with it, or so their growth will always be limited by that person. In the case of trainees, even without the knowledge and experience to solve the problem posed, there were good business plans at the level of strategy. Working together, individuals exceeded the limits of their strength when alone and evolved ever more rapidly. Also companies learn the mechanism of this dynamic, probably will be able to overcome their most optimistic expectations.