Is your organization powered by small teams?
Research from Deloitte shows that a small team-based model is the most effective way for people to get things done. Small teams communicate more effectively and more transparently, and have fewer barriers to finishing tasks.
But how can you build the best small team in a big organization? How can you find the experience, skills, and education you need for specific projects among your thousands of people? Too many organizations these days still silo their employees and require them to navigate a layer of approvals just to speak with someone in another department — if they can even figure out who it is they want to speak to.
At Sift we think it’s time for a new kind of technology that helps build the small teams that are already powering many of the world’s biggest organizations.
Why is picking teams so difficult?
Think about the NFL Draft. Over three days, pro football teams select college players to join their organizations from a pool of thousands.
Let’s say your favorite team desperately needs a quarterback. More specifically, your team needs a quarterback who is at least 6’5” to see over the very large men who will be protecting him, and has proven himself to have amazing accuracy and a rocket arm that results in huge gains per throw because your team has speedy wide receivers.
Great! Your scouting team is now able to quickly narrow down the choices that fit the very specific criteria you have for your next quarterback.
But how would your team pick this very specific type of quarterback if all they knew about candidates was their name and position?
Now imagine trying to build the ultimate team for a new project at the 10,0000-person organization where you work. How do you know who has the very specific skills, experience, and education you need on the project?
Or, let’s say you’re out in the field and you need to contact an expert in another department. Would you be able to quickly do that on your phone? The answer, I’m going to bet, is no.
There’s a lot of amazing enterprise software out there, but it’s simply not optimized for rapidly evolving organizations and new competitive realities. It’s no longer an option to know nothing more than a person’s name, job title, and maybe contact information. Each of your people is so much more, and can be driving innovation and growth at previously unimagined levels. The larger an organization, the more powerful it should be, but that’s rarely the case today.
This is a problem we think a lot about and are addressing here at Sift.