On the Firstline of a New Economy
Bringing those that work at the edge of the business into closer alignment to gain greater innovation and agility
I am launching an evolving series about the challenges and opportunities for businesses as they grapple with many converging trends: digital transformation, new and faster communications with clients and across the company, greater needs for agility and innovation. Just as pressing is the closer integration with the company’s Firstline workforce, the workers who are, as I state below,
the first point of contact with customer, the first touch point with the supply chain, those who have first hand experience with products they build or the services they deliver.
These are the retail clerks, construction workers, and the teams on the factory floor. Employees who may spend their shifts standing, talking with customers in a shoe store, assembling an electric car, or turning wrenches on a building site.
Here’s the first provocation for this series, a brief exposition and questions that I am sending out to a short list of thinkers and practitioners. As their responses come back to me, I’ll formulate a series of posts incorporating their observations, questions, and conclusions.
We live and work in an accelerating, interconnected, and hyper-competitive world, where it’s increasingly hard to know what’s over the horizon, and where innovation, agility, and vision are more essential than ever. For business leadership this means it’s essential to develop and communicate a clear understanding of the company’s trajectory in the world as the basis for concerted action, moving from the boardroom and C suite across the company, and out to the firstline workforce: those who are the first point of contact with customer, the first touch point with the supply chain, those who have first hand experience with products they build or the services they deliver. How can leadership make that vision an organizing force, bringing the firstline into greater alignment with the company as a whole, and to help the firstline workforce to adapt to a new, rapidly changing business economy?
Companies must become more agile than ever before to respond to constantly changing business realities, and that requires increased innovation not only at headquarters, but out at the firstline, where the company meets its customers, competitors, and greatest challenges. So the firstline workforce must be able and empowered to experiment, to innovate, try out new ideas, and to learn from those attempts to better fit the changing marketplace. What are the barriers that might block this from happening?
The key to success, even in this sped-up economy, is still the productivity of the workforce. Getting more with less and achieving better outcomes means a workforce more connected and more efficient than ever before, maximizing everyone’s contributions. This requires a digital transformation of the business, one that reaches to all operations of the business. How will the transformed firstline workforce — in manufacturing, retail, hospitality, construction, healthcare and other industries — operate in the near future, and what role will technology play in that transformation?
The shift to greater agility and efficiency requires a rethinking of the role of the firstline workforce, even as we rethink the business as a whole, to better engage and empower them. Their insights about what’s going on at the core of the business are often the best, and can be critical to company-wide innovation and improvement. What changes must be made to get the firstline workforce more engaged, to gain higher customer satisfaction, business performance, and workforce retention?
I’m looking forward to their answers with great anticipation.
The Firstline featured series is sponsored by Microsoft. While Microsoft is involved in the project, the views expressed are those of the contributors, and not necessarily Microsoft.
