How Tech Companies Can Hack Their Way To Developing Skills, Building Culture And Solving Problems

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CTO of Pipedrive with expertise in scaling technology and organizations. Experienced as an innovator, founder and C-level manager.

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One of the most vital assets to a business is the ability of employees to solve problems and think critically. The most effective problem-solving allows a company to identify issues, evaluate situations and solve challenges.

Encouraging problem-solving, however, is about much more than removing one hurdle on the way to efficiency. Its about bringing a team closer together to master the art of tackling every problemwhether part of the day job or not.

One way to encourage and teach problem-solving is the hackathon, a sprint-like event where multiple teams of developers, designers and other team members compete to achieve a specific business goal, such as carrying out research or creating a new product, and everything in between.

Hackathons offer employees the ability to engage in friendly competition. Teams of employees from different areas of the business can collaborate and compete with the goal of achieving a specific task. Not only is it a productive team-building exercise, but it can also lead to new products or smart new ideas for managing work.

Most importantly, the mere process of creating and collaborating becomes the biggest gain, irrespective of any ideas that may or may not change the business or the world.

The Importance Of Productive Team-Building

Team-building exercises are commonplace in most businesses, but they can often feel like a formality, which can stand in the way of achieving value. Hackathons, on the other hand, allow employees who usually never interact to come together. The very nature of a hackathon enables collaboration and teamwork, allowing staff members to truly innovate and form new, exciting relationships with like-minded, driven professionals. (A prize for the winners can also always boost morale.)

Note that hackathons tend to only deliver outstanding results, in my experience, within companies where employees believe in the companys mission and vision. The results will never be as strong as possible if employees are only showing up for a paycheck because of the weak connection between personal motivation and the companys mission.

Organization Is Vital

One of the biggest hackathon stumbling blocks can often be the organizational process. Undertaking a project of this magnitude involves various employees from multiple departments coming together. Everyone must work toward a singular goal. This can be challenging, but incorporating project management tools can help in developing an efficient workflow.

Aside from the workflow, there are a number of criteria you need to ensure are in place in order to carry out a successful hackathon:

1. Define your goals. Employees should know what theyre working toward, and so you must develop a target achievable within the designated time frame. But, as hackathons are about innovation, the challenge needs to be open-ended to encourage creativity.

2. Allow collaboration from all skill sets. Aside from creating solutions to a business problem, the other goal of a hackathon is to bring multiple innovators of different backgrounds together. This is vital as studies show that workplace isolation can derail productivity by up to 21%. The hackathon task needs to be solvable using different skill sets. This is what differentiates a hackathon goal from average daily work tasks that can be solved in one department.

3. Ensure expert guidance. Hackathons are a chance for employees to allow their creativity to roam. However, to ensure the greatest probability of success, hackathons need an expert that can assist with the process. The expert may not know the immediate answer to the issue at hand, but they can push the team in the right direction based on their industry knowledge. For example, during a hackathon put on by my company, a CTO who happened to have children led the hackathons education track and could combine his technical knowledge and parenting skills to find new means to support home schooling.

Boosting Morale And Innovation

A unified hackathon event, where teams come together to create projects, can generate the needed rapid change for a business, but you can also think beyond the walls of your company: There are opportunities to solve many bigger problems, such as the energy crisis.

The word hacking can often have negative connotations, but it can be a great way for businesses to engage employees and build a sense of cohesiveness that allows companies to innovate and thrive.

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