Throughout our history there have been many attempts to create a “super soldier”: faster, stronger, more intelligent, more resistant to injuries etc.
Attempts have been made using both technology and medical sciences.
Hollywood filmmakers like to make science fiction movies depicting both the successes and failures of such experiments. I’m sure each of us can think of several examples, like the
Universal Soldier series, the Bourne series to name a couple.
The basic premise is that we need to come up with better ways to fight in wars and conflicts, how to make our troops better than those of the enemy. No -one actually stops to think
that our serving soldiers are all uniquely super in their own way.
Certainly, they may not be the fastest, or the strongest, or the most impervious, they each have both strengths and weaknesses.
But in each of them beats the heart of someone willing to serve, to put their very lives on the line for the country -or cause- they believe in.
Now as little as I agree with any type of war, it is a good lesson in business. Organizations are constantly doing the same thing, seeking ways to improve efficiency, how to get more out
of their employees, greater productivity in shorter timescales, and ideally at a lower cost.
What’s often forgotten is that each and every employee or contact you have is a “super soldier”, they have strengths and weaknesses, and to get the best out of
them you actually simply have to understand them better.
The same principal applies to your suppliers, if you understand each of the links in your supply chain, you can play to each one’s strengths. You can achieve superiority throughout your whole endeavor.
To do it all you need to do is understand the people you work with that little bit better.
Look around yourself right now, who are the people you work with every day? How well do you actually know them?
What skills and strengths might they have that could help you move further forward that you aren’t making use of or may not even know about? Be they employees or suppliers, chances are they have ideas and skills that could help if you took the time to
listen to them.
Engage them not as employees but as members of your company family.
