Rearrange

My mother has many endearing traits. One of them is to regularly rearrange the furniture in her flat.

I asked her recently why she does this and she replied – “It makes me see things I’ve had for years in a new light. It makes my space more workable – each time I get it looking even better; and it’s a creative outlet.”

It made me think about the concept of rearranging.

Nature does a superb job of using rearrangement to shift things up, move things along and help things to evolve in a better way.

Author and expert on creative thinking, Roger Von Oech, points out – “The moving plates of the earth’s crust form new land masses and surface features. The shuffling of DNA genetic deck through sex produces new life forms.”

Organisations can also benefit from regularly ‘rearranging  the furniture’, metaphorically speaking.

How can you rearrange your existing resources to increase efficiency, improve creativity or merely do things better?

Try putting your ending in the middle.

Or the centre on the top.

Or the inside on the outside.

The left on the right.

One really effective way of rearranging is with cross-functional promotion.

Lion Nathan is an example of one organisation which has used this concept effectively. They often take key talent in one function and promote them into a different one.  A finance director into a sales director. A marketer into an operations role.

The benefits? Retention of talent. Growing bench strength for promotion. Knocking down of silos.

How can you use the concept of rearranging with your products? Innovations? Operations? Your teams?

Be like my mum and ask yourself today – “what can I rearrange?”