Does every work unit in your organization fully understand the purpose and goals of all other work units in your company? It is common to find a major disconnect between different work areas within an organization. To foster a more comprehensive understanding of the total organization, a strategy called "Learning Lunches" can be utilized.
On a weekly or monthly basis, a box or brown bag lunch event can be held in the company cafeteria, or in a large conference room, that features the staff of one of the organization's work units or departments. The featured team will give the group a 15-20 minute presentation explaining the purpose, goals and operations of their work area during lunch.
Presentations given might include a video of the group performing their daily tasks, a PowerPoint presentation of the workflow of the group, or a hard copy handout of the group's purpose and goals statements. The presenting group will describe how it is progressing towards goal accomplish, and explain what it needs from others in the organization to achieve its' purpose.
All employees are invited to attend the lunch event, and select groups may even be mandated to attend if they are highly relevant to the success of the presenting group.
Following the learning lunch all employees in attendance will be sent a "pop quiz" via email to complete based on the learning they acquired at the luncheon. Employees who score highly on the quiz will be awarded a prize.
If the left hand doesn't seem to know what the right hand is doing in your organization, a series of learning lunches will serve to fill these knowledge gaps, inspire higher levels of cooperation between work teams, and allow teams across the organization to collaborate more effectively. The most successful organizations are those who pull together to achieve desired organizational outcomes. Understanding every team's contribution to the organization's results will encourage the interdependence needed to fuel corporate success.
