simongterry

Be human

Posted on 02/11/2013 by simongterry in Uncategorized

Last week I attended the excellent Products are Hard conference. As excited as I was that a San Francisco event had chosen to run their first event in Melbourne, the day exceeded my expectations with the quality of the local and international speakers and the enthusiastic participation of the audience. After some reflection, here are lessons that I took away from the day:

Success is human: This was the biggest lesson of the day. We often lose the human factors in success in our focus on process, methodology, tools, organisation and technology. Again and again in the day, it was clear human factors are more important to product and startup success. Life is not as easy as a formula, because every team and group of customers differ. If products are hard, it is because people are unpredictable to satisfy, coordinate and influence.

Start with the team: Great products come from great teams. The first idea will be adapted by experimentation, feedback, competition and pivots. Only, a great team will embrace the chaos, have the agility and collaboration required.

CX+Engineering+Product: A great team has the best diverse skills that they can assemble- customer insight and design skills, technical skills to deliver and a broad business skill set to distribute and manage operations for the product. The team should be small (ideally start and stay at teams of 3), have great transparent open communication and not let their role define their contribution or structure of their collaboration.

Assign a customer problem: The best path to success is clarity and engagement. Give the team the autonomy to tackle a whole customer problem. Define value as widely as possible and allow your teams to focus on the whole of the customer problem

Ship, test and learn: Success can’t be predicted. Nobody has a perfect decision making track record. Great products are an evolution from test and learn experiments. You need to embrace this chaos and not cling to fixed ideas. Keep the tests small but gain the advantage of testing often with real customers. Real meaningful data from shipping to customers can focus decisions.

Don’t play safe: Amazing no-fail ideas fail. Tests fail. Teams fail. Businesses fail. The issue is not whether you fail; it is what you learn and how you do differently next time. Playing safe is slow. Protecting against failure builds overhead which slows delivery. The pace of attempts should be high.

Focus on value: Ideas don’t matter. Technology, tools & methodology don’t matter. Not all of the data matters. The best teams focus on results by focusing on the customer actions that create value. That means only doing things that drive value and not being confused by expectations or past patterns of success.

Most of all: If you have the passion of purpose and can share it with others, you don’t need to settle for a compromise existence or other proxies. It won’t become easy, but you will learn much and it will be fulfilling.

Ozymandias – Making Change Endure

Posted on 31/10/2013 by simongterry in Uncategorized

Change in large organisations is frustrating. Leaps forward are followed by periods when change is either gradually or dramatically undone. Here’s how to ensure you are making progress & stay sane.

I met a traveller from an antique land 
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
 Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown 
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
 The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
 And on the pedestal these words appear:
 `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: 
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
 Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, 
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.
 Ozymandias – Percy Bysse Shelley

A Story of Change Unwound

I know the feeling. No outcomes of change projects endure. The world moves too fast. There’s too much uncertainty. Iteration is required. Change overtakes change. Always.

Launch a product and it will be shuttered sooner or later. Put in a new process, policy or system and the need for further changes begins to rise. Change behaviours or culture and more change will be required.

I remember earlier in my career taking on a role with an agenda and personal purpose to create a specific set of changes in that organisation. For the first 18 months, great progress was made. Then things changed. I watched as most of the change we had created was unwound. Why it unwound matters little. It was eroded piece by piece.

The Slinky of Change

Not surprisingly, I was disappointed. It seemed so much progress had been lost. It had felt like we were close to the end. I did not relish starting again.

Change takes determination and commitment. I started pushing again for the needed changes. To my surprise, I discovered what I had seen as a rollback was actually a spiral. We rolled back, around and up. The new efforts to drive change began further back than we achieved. However we had made progress. We began again higher up as if we had ascended a spiral, a slinky of change.

Why were we higher? The stakeholders had now experienced the first change. Some things worked. Somethings didn’t. We all learned from the experience. New language and experiences had been created that were the basis for the next effort. Moving forward again built on the experience of the first change. We did better this time. We moved a little further forward. We lost a little less but we still circled up the slinky again.

From that moment on my expectations of change progress changed. A few times you will have the joy of a straight line. Most of the time you are circling up a slinky. Iteration is part of the process for sustainable change.

Keeping on the tension

So how do you maintain your sanity and keep spiralling up a slinky? Make sure you are stretching the slinky with tension.

Keep tension with purpose: Give up your determination to drive change and you are going to go round and round on the spot. Keep your purpose clear and use that to push on with change. The effort ensures you go higher and forward.

Keep tension with new conversations: The signal you have gone higher is that you are having new conversations and new ideas are in play. Complacency and been here before are the enemies. When you are pushing into new issues and better ideas of progress, then learning is taking place. The tension of that learning is the platform for your next progress. If this tension is not in your conversations, then you need to bring it.

Keep tension with speed: The faster you go around the cycle the higher you will rise. Accept some iteration. Learning is part of the process and you don’t know all the answers. Accelerating the cycle, speeds your learning and that of your stakeholders.

Keep tension by stretching for more: Continuous improvement has to be the goal. There is no summit. When you get close to your goal, stretch it further forward again. Your stakeholders will now be more ready to go further. If you started trying for customer focus, make your next play for customer experience management, then holistic design thinking, then…learn and move up. You might be surprised how far this leads in time.

Keep tension by sharing work and lessons: The more people are paying attention as the change and rollback happens, the more learning occurs. If sharing creates a little conflict or discussion it helps. You will get attention. The more people watching the bigger the potential movement for the next change. Work out loud and spread any new ideas and lessons as widely as possible. You are seeding the tension that will help create the next lift.

If you are lucky enough to have a straight line of continuous progress to your goal that is great. If you despair at the process of rollback and iteration, look at it differently. The only enduring changes are the ideas and human potential created by the change process. Every thing else is going to be thrown away someday anyway.

Scripture. Traditions. Reason. Experience

Posted on 30/10/2013 by simongterry in Uncategorized

At the Products are Hard conference yesterday, Abie Hadjitarkhani, a founder of the conference and a Partner of the Hotel Delta team, presented lessons from his experience consulting teams working on project management.

Abie introduced the Methodist Quadrilateral of John Wesley as a framework that teams needed to jointly consider as they do their work:

Scripture: what we believe and follow
Traditions: the way we have done things
Reason: our thinking
Experience: what happens to us

Abie’s message was that there are few universal right answers in each of these elements for teams. Each team needs to apply its own balance and assess each of these elements. Abie argued for flexibility of dogmas and methods, avoidance of over reliance on data and more consideration of human experience in the application of approaches.

What struck me as I considered these elements was an image

Across many contexts of how organisations operate, we are seeing a shift from a heavy reliance on dogma and traditional approaches to a more reality-driven, flexible, iterative test and learn approach as disruptive technology gives us new tools and approaches. Scripture and tradition do not go away. The weighting they hold in team culture simply changes and they are more lean and focused on value rather than extensive prescription.

This language is appearing in all sorts of veins of discussion such as product management, lean startups, efficiency, organisational design, testing, customer experience design, change management, leadership and culture.

This concept of a more networked, iterative, agile and fact-based approach, like that argued for in The Responsive Organisation Manifesto, is one we all need to consider as we take forward our challenges. There seem to be big benefits in a shift of thinking to a far more human and grounded approach.

Conventional wisdom is not so wise

Posted on 28/10/2013 by simongterry in Uncategorized

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. – John Kenneth Galbraith

In life we are given lots of advice by well meaning friends and colleagues. Rarely is this advice formed from reflection, experience or debate. This common advice is the conventional wisdom passed on to us.

Conventional wisdom is usually a distillation of the way things used to be or how people think it should be. Conventional wisdom tells us how the system wants us to behave. Advice like this is full of platitudes and an implicit message not to rock the boat:

Look after yourself first
Do what your boss wants
Don’t draw attention to yourself
Knowledge is power
Make sure you don’t fail
Make things perfect before you share them
Take the credit
You only get one shot
Never admit you don’t know
Appear strong. Always grow your power

Conventional wisdom is rarely wise. Here’s why:

Don’t Judge the Future on the Past: Change is happening faster than ever. Look around. There is extensive discussion of how rules are changing and the future requires different behaviours. Basing your behaviour on advice from the last century may not be much value.

Great Advice is Tested by Conflict, Reflection and Experience: Ask people why they are giving you the advice. If the answer is ‘I heard it somewhere’ or ‘everyone knows’ then take it with a grain of salt. Conventional opinions rarely get challenged. They live long beyond their expiry date. Great advice is the result of personal experience and insight, usually where it has been tested against opposing views in conflict. Conflict, reflection and experience keeps advice relevant. Make sure you are not someone else’s guinea pig.

Conventional Wisdom Conflicts: Should I ‘Not draw attention to myself’ or ‘Take the Credit’? Conventional wisdom reflects the complexity and conflicts of the system. This advice can be used to support any personal opinion. It has not been reconciled for your circumstances.

What Reflects the Average, Does not Reflect You: You circumstances are different to that of the average. You may well be trying to make yourself even more unique. Advice that reflects your unique purpose, strengths and opportunity will rarely be conventional wisdom.

Value the people who give you unconventional wisdom. Go gain some yourself in debate, reflection and experience.

Mahna Mahna

Posted on 27/10/2013 by simongterry in Uncategorized

I love the Muppets. As someone who has grown up with Jim Henson’s creations, from Sesame Street to today, I have seen this song performed many times. Every time it gets stuck in my head. Mahna Mahna has its own place in pop culture. Slate Magazine even profiled its origins, history and is influence.

The lesson…

The magic of the Muppets is the ability to capture moments of human nature and make us laugh.

There is a lesson in this little performance for any leader or person pushing change. When Mahna Mahna collaborates, others follow along. When Mahna Mahna becomes absorbed in his own scat singing, he gradually loses the interest of his followers. The Snowths stop singing and wait for him to finish. When he returns to the collaboration, they engage again.

We have all seen leaders pushing change who get overly excited by their message. They end up talking to themselves about change.

Never forget the goal is to take others along. This can require frustratingly small steps of collaboration and a focus on engagement, so that others don’t get lost or you don’t appear self absorbed.

And like Mahna Mahna, never give up and keep having fun!

Communications or Engagement

Posted on 27/10/2013 by simongterry in Uncategorized

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. – George Bernard Shaw

The traditional mindsets in corporate communications come from the historical use of traditional media. Without return channels, the focus of communication is around reach and frequency of the messages to influence an audience. There is little if any discussion in traditional media unless you make it happen. The speaker has control. The mindset focuses on perfecting a message and deploying it at the right time and channel with minimal distraction.

Increasingly, you see discussion of tips and tricks on how social media can be used in this broadcast way. The mindset of traditional media is being carried across to social. In a related point, we still see debate on whether individuals or organisations should use this channel for their outbound messages. Many senior executives see social as another optional channel for their outbound messages.

However, social media is not a one-way medium. It is more than a two-way medium too. Conversations move in all directions in the network at the choice of the recipient. That’s more than an extra or useful feature. It changes the game.

Suddenly real engagement of your audience matters. Social media is not just another way to get a message out. Your audience’s actions to reply comment and share are critical to how your message spreads in a network. Messages without engagement die quickly. Engagement can dramatically change the meaning of the message.

We need an engagement mindset in a social media communication strategy, internally or externally. Social media is most valuable as a way to connect, engage, collaborate and build on ideas with the feedback and input of others. Social media enables community building, advocacy and creating real movements. Asking for input shows respect, deepens relationships and builds connection.

Importantly, that engagement goes on whether you choose to participate or not. The network of customers, employees and community does not require your presence or your message to discuss you or what they want to discuss. They are in control and you need to respect that.

To get the most out of social media remember to focus on the engagement to create real communication between the members in your community.

Don’t Burn Platforms

Posted on 25/10/2013 by simongterry in Uncategorized

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle’s wreck

Shone round him o’er the dead.

– Casabianca by Felicia Dorothea Hermans

That boy didn’t jump ship. Never again use the phrase ‘burning platform’ to describe motivation for change.

A Bad Metaphor

Spend much time creating change and someone will ask ‘but is there a burning platform?’ This question is usually asked:

(a) to demonstrate their knowledge of change management jargon and

(b) to insinuate there is no compelling rationale for the change.

The burning platform metaphor comes from a story of oil workers in the North Sea who confronted with certain death by fire, jumped to a likely death by freezing water. It is often attributed to the fire on the Piper Alpha. That specific burning platform was made much worse by a belief that employees on another platform had that they were not allowed to stop the flow of oils and gas into a fire that was killing their colleagues. They lacked the discretion to do the obvious.

Need I go on. It is a really bad metaphor. Now never use it again.

The Wrong Mindset

The mindset behind the burning platform metaphor is no way to view real change. The assumption is nobody will change without something akin to threat to their life and the best anyone need offer is a slight improvement.

Burning platform is embedded in a view of the world where smart management needs to get dumb employees to do something they don’t want to do. Like the boy in the poem above, employees loyally await orders before acting (& need prodding even then). The same logic drives many performance management and incentive schemes.

Real Urgency Comes from Choice

A burning platform is often described as the first of Kotter’s 8 steps of change. It is not. The first step is ‘Create a sense of urgency’. A change imperative matters. However, there are far better and more constructive senses of urgency than a risk appetite bending fear of certain death. Constructive urgency comes from choice and requires an active and creative engagement. Examples of constructive imperatives include:

Fulfilling a personal purpose
Realising one’s potential
Benefiting others
Collaborating with others
Collectively agreeing a path forward as a group
Autonomy & Accountability for achieving personal or collective goals, and even
A well reasoned request from a colleague who respects them and whom they respect

Start with a Conversation

However, to advance a change using any of these motivations you will need to engage people in conversation, to address their views, questions and concerns and connect them personally & collectively to change. You need to respect that people agree to change. You don’t get to change them. That’s hard work and it respects their intelligence, effort and contribution. Unfortunately, that’s how change usually works.

Stop dreaming you can light a fire under your people. You can’t. They are smart enough to leave before you get the chance to play arsonist.

A simple conversation about change is far more powerful. People are fired by respect, accountability and opportunity.

Put down the matches.

Conserve Momentum

Posted on 23/10/2013 by simongterry in Uncategorized

Organisations are full of people who tell you to stop.

We are told to stop:

to wait for a meeting
to wait for clarity
to wait for approval
to wait for support
to wait for proof
to wait for another project
to wait for another business unit
to assess risks
to develop a better message, product, change, etc
to gain budget, resources, implementation windows, etc

Don’t stop. Momentum is a critical resource in a time of rapid change.

Change agents need to be more agile than their organisation. You can’t steer if you are not moving. Don’t let the organisational molasses slow you down. You can be sure that your opponents or competitors are not waiting for approval to proceed.

Momentum addresses support, proof and evidence. Momentum builds clarity, inevitability and alignment. Momentum surfaces and addresses risks. Momentum gets things done.

Waiting achieves none of these things.

Conserve momentum. Momentum will conserve you.

Career goals: A target or a compass

Posted on 22/10/2013 by simongterry in Uncategorized

Do you have a medium term career goal?

Many people I meet proudly declare that they don’t have medium term career goals. In some cases, they haven’t thought ahead. Others like to take their chances on the opportunities that come. Often the reluctance to set a goal because life is unpredictable and they are anxious that a five year goal might become irrelevant, a constraint or worse a measure of failure.

I believe in setting goals. Goals motivate. Goals can sustain you on the bumpy journey. Goals help you build a plan for the future. I know I am lost without a goal.

A Career is not Archery

My goals are not a target that I aim to hit exactly. My goals are specific enough to guide action and ensure I can be satisfied of achievement but open ended, like a John Hagel’s concept of a narrative.

Over a five year timeframe too much changes. Great opportunities arise in related areas. Digital disruption can easily wipe away a specific target.

Careers are hard enough to manage without feeling like a failure for missing some specific three to five-year away point.

A Career is Way Finding

However, a goal can still set a direction and sustain motivation for the journey. A medium term career goal acts as a compass you carry around to shape what you do now. The goal can describe a broad type of role you want to reach years ahead. The sense of direction helps you plan development and make career choices. This goal also helps you align your purpose and your work today.

No career path is a straight as an arrow’s flight. Careers ramble. There are setbacks. Opportunities arise quickly. Skills need to be built in a diverse range of roles and some times your needs and ambitions change.

A Career needs a Direction

My medium term career goals act as a compass that help me work out what skills, experiences and relationships that I need to build to get to my destination. The compass keeps me on course and shows how to return to the course when the path leads elsewhere.

The same compass also helps me decide what jobs to chase and which offers to decline. If something is not heading in the right general direction or contributing to the right development, I say no, no matter how much status or money is on offer.

If you don’t have career goals or they feel like a burden, swap the distant target for a compass that you use today.

You need something to help you get where you want to go.

Posted on 22/10/201317/08/2016 by simongterry in Change, Leadership, Life & Career

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming. –

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(via scpb)