Recently the very famous and distinguished Astro Strategist cum Business Astrologer Hirav Shah shared his valuable thoughts on the phenomenon of crowdsourcing and its impact on the growth of a business which might enlighten the viewers more on this aspect and its prospects. Hirav Shah who believes that Astrology for Business is the combination of business principles with that of Astrology and the science of movement of planets, especially Mercury, Moon, and Jupiter guides us on how to strategize each step in business. He adds that this is a powerful tool providing a massive certainty of success.

Hirav Shah says, “The Internet has brought together resources from all over the world.”

“You can tap on the repository of resources contained by the Internet crowd to increase your productivity and business ten-fold. We call this crowdsourcing. You can do more with less by leveraging on the time and skills of a large number of people, paid or unpaid. Find out how you can make use of crowdsourcing to grow your business and be super productive in your work.”

One of the reasons why people would procrastinate is that they do not know how to do certain tasks.

Preparing for Crowdsourcing

Evaluate your business model

Hirav Shah explains, “Tapping the crowd is definitely the way forward if you want your business to scale. Before you start crowdsourcing, the first thing you need to do is to understand if your business has the ability to integrate the crowd resource with your internal processes and people. You also need to be sure that there is a win-win partnership for both your business and your crowd supporters. I would recommend that you test run your business process with internal resources as though they are being crowdsourced. This way, you can be assured of a smooth transition in the workforce transformation. Do not underestimate the challenges in crowdsourcing especially in the area of communication and people management.”

Promoting to the right crowd

Hirav Shah says, “Once you have identified what are the skills and effort you need to achieve your business goals, you can begin to promote your business intention to the right crowd. Find out where your ideal crowd usually hangs out. Observe and participate actively in their conversation.”

Onboarding the crowd

He adds, “You should never assume that once your crowdsourcing team is formed, they can automatically be integrated into your existing team and process. The effort is required to welcome the new team members so that they can get up to speed faster. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of onboarding. Poor onboarding will almost always result in frustration and disastrous deliverables.”

“For example, the new team member must know who are the people they are working with, what is the goal that the company is trying to achieve. Not only that, you will need to provide them the information and resources for them to do their job properly. It will definitely be helpful for the new folks to know what is your company’s overarching vision and mission.”

Provide training

Hirav Shah says, “The new team member may be good with what they are doing but they may not be able to apply what they know to achieve your goal. Therefore, you need to provide training that is specific to your business. Training can be delivered in the form of online courses, instructional manual, and offline classroom.

Ideally, you should have a robust business process and standard operating process that can be documented in the form of a pre-recorded video. This way, you can speed up your onboarding process and ensure consistency in the delivery of the training program.”

Working With The Crowd

Set the right expectation

“The crowd wants to contribute to your project because they believe in it and they want to be part of the success story. The different roles will require a different level of contribution. For example, you can crowdsource logo design for your latest product. Or it could be a marketing campaign that anyone who believes in your product will be out there making review videos. Whatever is the output, there are some dos and don’ts that cannot be circumvented.”

Integrate the new members into your company

“Fresh grads are going after the experience to enhance their resume. Others may want the opportunity to work with great minds that are respected in their fields. You have to ensure that they are comfortable and feel valued as part of the team. Take the time to introduce them to everyone in your company. Invite them to company events (online or offline) and encourage them to provide feedback. Let them know that they have direct access to relevant resources in your company like any full-time staff.”

Coordinate and communicate with the team

“You will need to have proper scheduling tools to coordinate all the tasks from different task owners. Having a good scheduling tool helps to delegate work and track the performance of each resource. The tool by itself will provide a form of communication channel for the team to align their work without constantly having to meet.”

Feedback Channel

“Having an open channel to receive and give feedback is critical. This is because things may not work out the way it was planned. You do not know what you don’t know. Therefore, it is critical that you always get feedback from the ground and adjust your plan accordingly.”

Give Recognition To The Crowd

Deliver stellar results

“Your crowd wants to be recognized as part of the winning team. You will need to make them feel valued so that they will be motivated to be your strongest advocate.”

Present a gift

“Once in a while, reward your crowd. It need not be monetary. A thoughtful gift like being able to participate in a closed beta group will make it feel like they are being honored for their great work done! Another form of rewards could be a limited edition T-shirt personalized with their name.”

Business Strategist Hirav Shah in conclusion says, “Crowdsourcing is a great business plan to scale your business. You can leverage skill diversity and the enormous number of talents globally. The crowd is an excellent resource for extending your company’s capacity to scale faster efficiently.”

“A business plan can work for a few and cannot work for others. But those for whom it worked, should ask themselves whether or not did the plan makes their business reach its full potential. If not, then a Business Astrologer can make it reach beyond its current status and to the height, it was meant to achieve.

In the past, Astro consultants were referred for a business to resolve critical or existing situations. But now the term AstroStrategist is being used during a corporate framework as a performance coach.”