Two weeks ago I had a simple idea put in front of me from a member of our sales team, who didn’t really have much feel for how our orders are fulfilled.
“I reckon it would be great to spend a day just seeing how that part of the business works,” she said.
What a great idea. A week later I had put in place a structure whereby everybody spends half a day in another department every day for the next three months.
(I couldn’t do full days – just a bit too much disruption to the business.)
Now, that salesperson was genuinely curious, but I can tell you that inter-departmental rivalries are usually born from a bit of contempt – the sales team reckons the operations guys are slackers and the operations guys reckon the sales team has got it easy.
These mini job swaps are a great way to crush those feelings and to get everybody to understand that the giant wheel that is our business needs lots of little cogs.
Get it done – today!
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
