HOW THE TEAM AT INQUISITION IMPROVES ITS CAPACITY FOR CHANGE

SMALL AND MIGHTY

Many organisations begin their business ventures with the intention to be the best in the market and ultimately become sustainable. With growth comes more responsibilities and a team that is not resourcefully prepared can cause a business to forfeit many opportunities. Here, at Inquisition, we have a small team that tackles big projects with the aim of creating great work for our clients. It is not easy, but we have adopted techniques that assist in making our team better at their work.

Our learning culture has enabled us to discover these productive techniques of improving our team capacity.

LEARNING SESSIONS

It is quite obvious that the world in which we live in is unpredictable and success towards solving problems is not guaranteed. In order to ensure that we are always ahead in acquiring knowledge, we have team learning sessions every week. These learning sessions are not meant to be meetings, where one person gives everyone a lesson and everyone passively listens. However, their purpose is to share and collaborate on knowledge.

Each each individual has to facilitate a session based on an interesting learning material that can be applied to projects. The learning material is shared with everyone prior to the session so that the whole team can discuss various insights that appealed to them. This approach enables the team to engage in knowledge-creation and get ideas on how to solve problems related to their current projects.

TEAM HUDDLE

As your organisation quickens in scale, it is vital that everyone knows where it is headed. Team huddle meetings are a platform where the team addresses issues pertaining from the day to day operations of future plans. It is basically where the purpose and vision of the organisation is reiterated. A metaphor that can be attributed to team huddles is that of an ant colony. Everyone works together to carry out the vision of the organisation. Project objectives are outlined and project statuses are updated. Each member is assigned their tasks which are guided by team objectives. In doing so, projects can be completed without frequent monitoring.

SET GOALS WITH OKRS

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), originally created by Google’s John Doerr, are used to try to set ambitious goals and track progress. Change is rapid and it brings new horizons that can and have to be challenged. In setting semi-outrageous goals, the team is able to stretch themselves beyond what they already know and are capable of. New skills and expertise are crafted in obtaining high results.

OKRs can be both personal and team-based. We use both because personal OKRs allow each individual to focus in areas of interest that appeal to their unique talents. This is beneficial as it broadens the team’s knowledge framework which can be poured into individual and organisational pursuits. Team OKRs are set out to achieve a common goal from business development to other resources that will equip the organisation to be flexible towards unprecedented business challenges.

COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

A fluid communication channel is essential to keep track of projects and collaborating team efforts. We use multiple channels such as Slack, Telegram and Email. Slack is probably the most useful because it puts all projects under different and specific channels, filtering conversation clutter. It gives an overview of all the projects that an organisation is working on, making work transparent and removing communication silos. Communication channels will vary from organisation to organisation, but they make people, responses and transparency easily accessible.

CONTENT STRATEGY SESSIONS

Consistency is key. In our content strategy sessions, we dissect different writing techniques that can improve client work. Since we interact with diverse audiences, constant research into content experiments is useful. Great content sustains a platform and builds a loyal following as well as a return on relationships.

We use tools such as the Content Strategy Canvas which maps out what we need to create great and effective content strategy resources, key audiences, audience relationships, key partners, channels, expenditure for content production and income sources from content.

As we continue look for other, better ways to improve our team, we hope that the above methods will help you reach organisational goals. Let us know if they worked for you.