Here is food for thought. When you combine individual and team flows, you can induce business flow for the entire company – and better live up to your promises.

We have run a series of articles on flow and gone from the individual aspect to how a team at work can experience flow too. What is interesting is how an entire company, with multiple teams, can experience business flow. And that is good for – well, business.

Stay competitive with business flow

In any competitive environment, you need to act quickly to be the preferred choice. What business flow ensures is not only speed, but the right velocity—i.e. an ability to quickly move in the right direction without cutting corners when it comes to quality and, not the least in our industry, scientific backing.

Business flow is an obvious synergy of individual and team flows. When you are able to enter flow, you influence your team and help create team flow. When this happens in several teams, the combined outcome is a better overall business flow.

This is not done overnight and takes effort from everyone, but it helps you retain and attract talent, increase engagement and commitment, and ultimately perform better.

The main benefits of business flow

1. Faster-paced innovation. Flow helps people handle information better. This enables them to think differently and unleash their creativity, which fuels innovation.
2. More skilled workforce. To enter a state of flow requires concentration. Once there, people are more receptive to learn, improve and remember new skills.
3. Happier employees. Flow requires challenging tasks. As this requires more skills and hands us intrinsic rewards, staff members become more engaged and feel better.
4. Bigger picture takes over. A state of flow allows people to focus on the big picture without constraints. They shut out distractions and focus on one goal at a time.
5. Higher productivity. Flow requires meaningful tasks (deep work), i.e. we will not spend time on chores that just steal time and hamper efficiency (busy work).
6. Competitive advantage. Your business can meet demands and act on trends better than rivals. This is thanks to well-functioning teams focusing on fewer tasks at a time instead of trying to fix everything at once.
7. Improved processes. With a shared, clear understanding of your mutual goals, you act as one entity, instead of pursuing silo thinking.
8. Higher product and service quality. A great by-product of flow is higher quality. In this state, your staff perform at their best, which naturally is reflected in the final output.

So, what is the business upside of all this? Well, we leave you with this quote. It speaks volumes.

“A study conducted by McKinsey found that the average person spends about 5% of working hours in flow. But if you could increase that to 20%, they estimate that overall workplace productivity would double. That’s incredible. That’s a crazy statistic.”
– Steven Kotler, writer and founder of Flow Research Collective

More on business flow can be found here and here.

Read more about flow, and how to find it, in our series of articles

What is flow?

10 characteristics of flow

How to find your flow

Flow fun facts

Build a bigger and better we – and you will be a winner

5 steps to achieve team flow

A tiny screw with a huge impact on flow

Flow book tip

Making your work flow in implant dentistry