“I am ambi­dex­trous. I can drink with both hands. It‘s a gift.”

How cool would it be to be tru­ly ambi­dex­trous? Admit­ted­ly, we’­re pret­ty good at going around with a drink in each hand. While this might give us a small advan­ta­ge when par­ty­ing, it does­n’t real­ly make us ambi­dex­trous. Real ambi­dex­teri­ty is very rare and, unfor­tu­n­a­te­ly, can­not be trai­ned. Bum­mer!

What we can­not achie­ve as humans is a major goal for us as a com­pa­ny: in the cor­po­ra­te con­text, the term ambi­dex­teri­ty descri­bes the abi­li­ty of orga­ni­sa­ti­ons to be effi­ci­ent and fle­xi­ble at the same time. Spe­ci­fi­cal­ly, this means we want to respond to our cus­to­mers’ short-term requests and opti­mi­se exis­ting pro­ces­ses through impro­ve­ments and a bet­ter effi­ci­en­cy, while at the same time having the poten­ti­al of adding new value in a radi­cal­ly inno­va­ti­ve way. Sounds easier than it is. Why? We can rare­ly break new ground in day-to-day busi­ness. So, we must crea­te the struc­tu­ral and cogni­ti­ve frame­work for this: the WORK@SAPERED.

Rea­ding tip on ​“Orga­ni­sa­tio­nal Ambi­dex­teri­ty”: The Ambi­dex­trous Orga­niz­a­ti­on (hbr​.org)

Get out of the day-to-day busi­ness

Once a mon­th we set our sta­tus to ​“Do Not Dis­turb” and are no lon­ger avail­ab­le. As a com­pa­ny, we then pick up the meta­pho­ri­cal second drink and make sure that we make an impact. In a first round, ever­yo­ne in the team can sug­gest topics. The col­leagues can then eit­her join a topic or advan­ce their own pro­jects. We then get to work in the groups that are for­med this way. We read, we tin­ker, we pro­to­ty­pe, we reject, we get angry, we make bre­akthroughs, cele­bra­te suc­cess and deve­lop our future. In short, once a mon­th we don’t do what we think is par­ti­cu­lar­ly important (often more urgent than important), but what we think is par­ti­cu­lar­ly valu­able. And we talk about it: we get tog­e­ther after work, pre­sent the results of the day to each other and toast to them. The meta­pho­ri­cal drink final­ly beco­mes real; the effect achie­ved will also be dif­fe­rent.

What do we expect from this?

• To be always com­pe­ti­ti­ve.
• To be fle­xi­ble. Chan­ge is not a chal­len­ge, but an oppor­tu­ni­ty.
• To streng­t­hen our cor­po­ra­te cul­tu­re: brea­king new ground and any set­backs are seen as oppor­tu­nities to learn and make room for crea­ti­vi­ty.
• To take on respon­si­bi­li­ty.
• To work to get results.

Feel free to con­ta­ct us at pascal@​sapered.​com if you would like to find out more about how we design WORK@SAPERED and how we use it.