Author: simongterry

What Interests My Community Fascinates Me

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Leadership

Living and working in a hierarchy can shape your attention to the world. We all need to be fascinated less by power inside our organisations. We need to be fascinated more by customers and the community outside the organisation.

A common piece of advice in large organisations is expressed this way:

‘What interests my boss, fascinates me.’

The advice highlights that your boss often has a major role in perceptions of your performance and career opportunities. The suggestion is that the path of success is to be ever more conscientious on what matters to your boss. Managing their interests will deliver rewards from their greater hierarchical power.

Except that is terrible advice in almost all circumstances:

  • your boss does not determine real value: value is determined by the network of customers and the community
  • your boss does not determine change: change is driven by collaboration across silos internally and decisions of customers and community externally
  • unless you are great at working aloud, your boss rarely has your better context of what is going on in your role and lacks your networks 
  • many bosses are reactive worrying about the last big issue or the last thing their boss mentioned
  • many bosses are fickle changing their mind on what matters -some even in your performance appraisal
  • the most enduring factor in your performance and careers is the outcomes you deliver not to what or to whom you paid attention. 
  • ‘But you told us to…’ never saves anyone

Being fascinated by every whim of your boss might build a great relationship between you two. (Warning: It might be counterproductive too) However, it will not drive real business performance.

So next time someone asks you to worry about what your boss thinks, don’t. Look outside the organisation in your networks to find what matters. Make your mantra:

‘What interests my customers and community, fascinates me’

Your boss is just one voice in your network and probably the least valuable one.

Change Starts One Step Forward

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Every journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step – Lao Tsu

The vision of the future is dazzling. It arrives from on high as if delivered by parcel delivery drones, endorsed by gurus and acclaimed by cheerleaders of the future.

Everyone is captivated by the insight of the strategy, the incredible new technology, the uplifting rhetoric of the new corporate behaviours and the breathtaking audacity of the new organisational structure.

Then you stop. Reality hits. The vision needs to be executed.

You turn around. Oddly all the drones, the gurus and the cheerleaders have disappeared.  The new plan still needs to be implemented. You turn over a few rocks and it appears nobody has done what you need to do before. You need new capabilities that nobody has. A grumbling begins that people never believed in the high flown vision in the first place. Senior management are disappointed at the progress made on the ideas that they only just dreamed up.

The greatest breakdown in management is between thought and action.

You could start action for action’s sake. Announce a radical transformation, a wrenching restructure or a bold acquisition if you have that kind of power. Even if radical changes were possible, those kinds of change fail more often than not.  All that boldness might just be a distraction from real action to create change.

If you are somewhere in the middle, there is only one choice:

Take one step forward.  

Pick the step that makes most sense to move closer to the vision.  Something you can do. Something practical and possible. Something that builds capability to do more. There is always something. Do it.

After that step you do another.  You gain momentum.  Might not be exciting at first, but it is progress.  Eventually you will meet the drones, the cheerleaders and the gurus down the path.  They might just be surprised to see you because they understand the difference between thought and action.

Take the advice of an ancient Chinese master. Move forward into change one step at a time.

The best first step is the one right in front of you.

Susan Scrupski, Harold Jarche and I will be discussing the practical steps to move forward with collaboration in the first Change Agents Worldwide webinar, in partnership with Socialcast VMware

Circles of Control and Influence Revisited

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

The only knowledge we can manage is our own – Harold Jarche

If you are a middle manager in a large corporate, the concept of circles of control and circles of influence is sold as the concept that keeps you sane.  There are only some things you can change yourself.  There are some things you can play a role in shaping.  Everything else is beyond you.  

If you follow this model, you will keep calm and stay in your box.

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However, even this narrowing of accountability doesn’t seem to work in practice.  

Why does this view of circles of control and influence break down? Discussion of these circles is usually framed in terms of the organisational hierarchy.  

Control is defined your role, your resources and your people.  Influence is those parts of the organisation you relate to directly up the hierarchy or as partners in the work.  Every other person or silo is a mystery and will remain so. Relationships outside the organisation are excluded.

Rethink your Circles for a Networked World

However, a networked world enables us to see control and influence differently:

  • Control: yourself and the physical resources you can allocate without the participation of others. YOU
  • Influence: everyone else with whom you are connected by some form of interaction. YOUR NETWORK

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Our networked circle of control is much smaller than hierarchy suggests.

Other people are not under our control as much as we might like to pretend or the systems of our organisations might suggest. When networks enable us to listen, to engage and to learn together, this becomes very clear. Employees, suppliers and other partners don’t act the way we want from orders. They are motivated by an alignment of interests.  We need to influence their actions to get results and to win engagement.

If our resources or decisions require interactions with others then those interactions come with influence.

We control our personal states, our learning and the things we personally can move around, little else.

Our networked circle of influence is much larger than hierarchy suggests.  

This circle runs wherever our communication reaches. The more you network and the more you act the more influential you are.

In an organisation with an enterprise social network, your influence is potentially everyone. Influence doesn’t stop at the boundaries of the organisation.  There will be times to achieve a goal you might need to work outside the organisation to influence back in.  This much wider influence removes our ability to absolve ourselves from bad things in our organisations, our customers or our community.  We have the ability to influence their change.  For example:

  • if there is a bad customer experience in your organisation, find someone to help you change it. You can do it even it is outside your job, because it is an important role.
  • if your business is having an adverse or could have a more positive social impact, go find others to discuss and act on improving it.

Circles of influence are just as powerful as circles of control. They require different actions but the impacts can be as great.  

Keep Calm. Use influence to have impact. Just don’t define yourself and your circles in terms of a hierarchy

Susan Scrupski, Harold Jarche and I will be discussing the role of networks in organisations in the first Change Agents Worldwide webinar, in partnership with Socialcast VMware

Middle Managers need to use their Networks and Authority

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Middle managers like to complain about being squeezed by pressures from above and below. Their organisations love to blame them for all the ills in the place.

Middle managers have two great advantages that they can use to drive change:

  • They can place themselves in the heart of the network of their organisations.
  • They have authority to make things happen.

Without use, these opportunities whither. Middle managers need to take advantage of them when they can.

Networking in the middle

Frontline employees have very full lives juggling customer expectations. In my experience, they have limited opportunities to engage in networking across the organisation. Enterprise social networks do assist to connect frontline people with the rest of the organisation but the pressures of direct customer engagement often means time is limited and is often focused on better meeting customer needs.

Senior management are often removed from the day-to-day interactions in the organisation because of the scale of their jobs and the greater exposure to external stakeholders. Nobody wants a hierarchy where messages need to go to the top to spread because it is a terribly inefficient way to share information.

If middle management is to have any meaningful role, middle managers needs to play a role networking the organisation across the middle.  Middle manager jobs should give them enough perspective and exposure to their peers to seek and share information widely across the silos and beyond. As nodes in the network of the organisation, managers can dramatically increase their influence sharing information, connecting people, reducing duplication and guiding action. Build a reputation as a generous middle manager who is happy to collaborate, share information and advise and you will find people beating a path to your door.  Your authority increases when you want to act.

Authority to act

When everyone around you assumes authority depends on hierarchical position, having any hierarchical power is an advantage to action. You don’t need to be at the top, you just need the respect of others. Yet many middle managers wait assuming further endorsement is required.

What middle managemers needs to do is leverage their network position and their hierarchical opportunity. Organisations often give way to people who have hierarchical power who are prepared to act, especially where the activity is beneficial and well aligned to strategy and purpose.

When I was a mid-level manager in NAB, a group of graduates came to me wanting to know whose authority they needed to set up a TEDX style speaking program in NAB.  I told them they needed no authority.  It was a great idea, there was a demand and there was no obvious sponsor in the organisational hierarchy.  Finding one would be more work than organising the first event.

I suggested that they could do it themselves and start straight away.  For safety’s sake, I told them that if they were challenged on their authority they should say I approved it.  When they did get a challenge, that answer was more than enough because the people who worry about permission rarely have the courage to check its source. A TEDX style event sat well with the culture that NAB was building and the strategy of being more open and aligned to customers and the community. The first TEDX event had over 200 internal attendees and the events which were run by volunteer graduates for 2 more years were huge successes.

Network and Use Authority

If you are a middle manager and want that role to continue in your organisation, don’t fall for the blame game.  Network yourself to increase your authority and use whatever authority you have to add value in line with the organisation’s purpose and strategy.

Susan Scrupski, Harold Jarche and I will be discussing the role of networks in organisations in the first Change Agents Worldwide webinar, in partnership with Socialcast VMware

Obstacles are the work

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Leadership, Learning, Life & Career

Is it really December?  Businesses and schools are winding down for the summer break. The cricket has started. Christmas is rapidly approaching.  With that comes a quick close to 2013.

2013 has been a year of adventures, obstacles and challenges. More than anything else it has been a year of new momentum. I could not be more excited by the incredible opportunities that have arisen this year:

Embrace the Chaos and all its Obstacles

I was reflecting on all that has happened this year when Dany DeGrave tweeted yesterday about the need to maintain momentum in the face of obstacles:

Obstacles are the work. They show you have chosen to have an impact. They help us see our purpose. They provide the challenge and interest.

Obstacles are proof that your work matters to others. These challenges remind us that change is human and social. They encourage us to share knowledge with our networks, to work aloud and to pay attention to the knowledge moving around us.

Obstacles help us reflect on what matters. Pushback make us ask new or obvious questions.  An orderly progression of success can be quite tedious and generate its own doubts.  If success is that easy, are we missing something?

If there weren’t obstacles, our talents would not be required, we would not learn and not grow in the work. If there weren’t obstacles, we would not get the rewards of overcoming them.  If there weren’t obstacles, we would not have the joys of collaborating with others to move forward around over, under or through.

Your Obstacles. Your Momentum. Your Year.

So next time you are considering a year of obstacles, remember the hard work proves that you are on the right track. Obstacles are proof of your momentum.

I bought this poster at the midpoint of this year. It has been a reminder ever since that every year is my year.

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Every year is your year too. Move past challenges. Reflect on the successes.

Maintain momentum in doing whatever you need to do to make it your year. Your impact is up to you.

If you would like your own or other great posters, the source is The Poster List. 

Assigned. Chosen. Earned. Part 2 – 2 Stories and a Challenge

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

We shape our impact with our choices of how we respond to our circumstances and the influence we earn in our networks.  Our jobs and the hierarchy do not determine our ability to influence.

That concise message was prompted by The Australian Leadership Paradox, a book on improving leadership in Australia by tackling issues like roles and authority. Geoff Aigner, one of the co-authors, asked me for stories that brought a richer context to my last post. Here are two examples:

A Job. Limited Power.

At the launch of the Academy in NAB, I was asked to become the inaugural Dean of Customer Experience.  The job was tasked with building customer experience capability enterprise wide across a large financial services group.  As a direct report of the Australian CEO, the job was a high profile one in an important initiative.  

However, that description was where the hierarchical power stopped.  The role had no direct reports.  Everyone in learning reported to other leaders in a central learning function or across the many businesses.  There was no reporting on how much learning work was actually going on. The activity and budgets sat in these widely distributed teams. Everyone already had too much work. The Academy was being created because there was a need for better collaboration across businesses on learning. Nobody had seen a Dean before and there was no idea yet what they did.

I had to choose the role that I would play. I could have seen the situation as impossible and quickly failed. I could have chosen to influence the CEO and leverage his power to direct action. However, the giddy sensation of power would be temporary and the businesses would have quickly locked me out. The CEO would have rightly questioned the value I added. My authority would erode if it did not come from my relationships.

I chose instead to share my passion for learning, to advocate for the Academy and to help facilitate a community of the learning professionals across the organisation.  I chose to engage the business by demonstrating new ways for learning to lead change, to solve problems and to demonstrate the value of collaboration. Over time, my authority and my influence increased because of the impact the Academy team delivered.  People began to ask the Deans and the Academy to help solve tricky issues well beyond learning. That influence continued when I left the job.  After all, nobody had told me what role to play, so nobody could tell me to stop just because a job went away.

Why Are You Doing This Again?

The experience of being Dean led to my role in helping sponsor and grow NAB’s Yammer community.  When Yammer began at NAB, it was unofficial with no budget or sponsorship.  There was no place for it in the hierarchy. For the Yammer community to grow, it needed many leaders to choose play the roles of sponsors, advocates and community leaders, because these roles were not in anyone’s job description.  

Over and over again, as we did this, we were each asked a variant of the question:

Why are you doing this again?

Our answer was simple.  The roles were needed and the community added great value to NAB.  It was not our job but somebody had to do it.  We could play the roles and so we chose to do so.

For five years, I worked with other leaders in that Yammer community.  Everyone’s time was volunteered above delivery of the expectations their day jobs which ranged from Graduate to Executive General Manager. We did what was required to build a successful and vibrant community. The roles we played grew the benefits for NAB and the engagement of the community until we ultimately prepared a business case for sponsorship and formal adoption by the company.  

In this process, each of those leaders built their unique position of authority in the community. Many of the leaders got new roles as a result of demonstrating their ability to play different roles and their growing authority. In addition, the community was stronger because its leadership came from within.

Over to you: A challenge – your new role

  1. What problem or opportunity can you see that doesn’t fit in somebody’s job?
  2. What role could you play to draw attention to or solve for that problem or opportunity?
  3. Whose authority & support do you need to make the change happen?

Assigned. Chosen. Earned.

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized
  • Job = what you need to do. May come with rank in a hierarchy. Assigned
  • Role = how you manage yourself in response to a constantly changing environment. Chosen
  • Authority = your leadership influence. Earned

Your job does not define how you behave in a situation or determine your leadership influence. Job, role and authority each come from a different source and respond to different circumstances. They will never perfectly align.

Your job may provide authority over some of your network. The impact you have in one interaction may give you authority in another part of your network. Frustratingly, it is equally likely that they both will not.  

When we see hierarchies, we confuse these three distinct concepts.  We think the hierarchy determines, and more commonly limits, our actions and our influence. 

The role you play is your choice. The influence you have can only be earned from others.

Hierarchies might give you a job. Hierarchies rarely help you do it. Let the poor hierarchy be. Stripped of roles and authority, a hierarchy is harmless enough.

You determine your actions in each context. Your network gives you the power.

Choose to have influence.

PS: For a richer discussion of these concepts and tools to help, read The Australian Leadership Paradox by Liz Skelton and Geoff Aigner

Your value is your network

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Most of us will never get to manage a large hierarchy. Many of those who do complain about their lack of power.

We assume our power and value comes from position in hierarchies. We are trained by our social structures to see these pyramids as sources of power and value. Our hierarchical status influences our health and happiness.  Hierarchical instincts may well run back to our ape brain. There is a very good chance that hierarchy is solving for problems that don’t reflect our current challenges.

I was reflecting on the new maps feature of Linkedin and what struck me was that the hierarchies of my past life were hard to see in the network diagram. In fact, what I saw prompted this:

Hierarchy is the smallest and least valuable part of my network. The relationships formed in hierarchy have disappeared into a much more valuable & diverse mesh of relationships.

If my relationships were created by hierarchies, what created value was direct connection and a net of common relationships that lasted long after the hierarchies changed. Little value came from connections mediated through the hierarchies.

In addition, when I look beyond the hierarchies, I saw a much richer and more valuable network of relationships.  

There were the networks of support. So many people gave me the skills and experiences that helped make me who I am. So many people sustained me and were my sources of advice and counsel. Then there were the hundreds of collaborators. 

There were networks of value too. Customers and community determine the value that I create in the world. Creating change and making things happen has always been more about ability to influence and collaborate in this wider network than the power to order anything.

In a networked world, it might be time to think differently about influence and value. Stop looking at the hierarchy and look to the network that surrounds it. We may all be more effective, healthier and happier as a result.