Author: simongterry

The Purpose is in the Work

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Leadership is work with others to fulfil a purpose. From where does purpose come?

The work.

Many people want to find their personal purpose to guide their leadership work. For some, purpose is quickly evident with a little reflection. Often reflection will only take you so far. For others drawing out any strong sense of purpose is more of a challenge.

Leadership is work, not a status. Purpose is a strong personal impetus to action, not an abstract & perfect idea. You don’t need purpose perfect to act. Just as leadership gets better with experience in the mess of the work, so does purpose evolving to a clearer expression through interaction with others.

The best guide is that purpose is what compels you to act, to lead and to have an impact on others. So ask these questions:

– What do I enjoy doing most in my work? What drives that?

– What work do I keep coming back to do? What drives that?

– What kind of impact do I have? What kind of impact do I want to have? What makes me choose these things?

– What do others call on me to do? What is it about me that makes them choose me?

– What do I want to do next?

There is little value in endless reflection to perfect a purpose. Purpose is refined in practice. Purpose in leadership necessarily involves others. Demonstrate leadership in work, learn from interactions with others and see where your purpose is strongest.

Do. Focus on the work. Purpose is there. Purpose comes.

Don’t confuse the tool with the result

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

We all use tools each day. Don’t let the tools takeover.

Many years ago I was lucky enough to experience on a sailing class on Sydney harbour. A spectacular location for sailing and we were all very excited by the opportunity to spend an afternoon on the water. Some of the men in the group were particularly excited that the yacht had grinders. Grinders winch the sheets that set the sails like on the yachts we had seen in the America’s Cup and Sydney to Hobart ocean races.

Our veteran instructor had seen that enthusiasm for grinders before. He had one simple piece of advice before we started. ‘Always remember’, he said placing a hand on the grinder ‘this is the tool.’ he then pointed to the great expanse of sail fluttering in the breeze and said ‘That is your result’. Suffice to say he had to gesture and shout ‘tool’ and ‘result’ more times that day before everyone got the message that the object was not to grind furiously. The purpose was to set the sharpest sail for best performance in the wind.

I have seen that experience many times. People can lose sight of their purpose and what generates performance. When that happens, they often furiously work their tools for their own sake. The role of leaders is to shift the focus from working on tools immediately at hand to the point of work.

Let me give you some examples of tools that commonly go awry:

– The power of a brand is to generate incremental sales and returns. It is not to have the best compliance with brand guidelines. Guidelines are the tool.
– The power of customer relationship management is to enhance the value of conversations with customers. It is not to have a CRM that has every feature and tracks every unit of data.
– The power of enterprise collaboration is to allow a community to achieve some valuable purpose. It is not to have the best solution with all the features or to prevent the community from acting in an unapproved way.
– The power of visual communication is to convey ideas more easily & effectively It is not to have the coolest or most complicated PowerPoint or infographic.
– The power of a meeting is to get buy-in to a collective decision when required. It is not to produce the best or longest stack of minutes.

Next time you see someone who is confusing the tool and the result take the lead. Like the yachtsman, give them a steer in a better direction.

We are all dead

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” – Jack Welch

We are all dead.

The rate of change external to each of our organisations is now so great that no organisation can ensure it is changing faster than the external system. Global interconnectedness, the rapid speed of ideas in a digital economy & new means of working and collaborating means that change will only continue to accelerate.

So if we are all dead what do we do? Change the game.

Jack Welch’s quote assumed that the organisation needed to generate enough change internally to beat the system. If you are a massive diversified conglomerate like GE, then that is a real challenge

Don’t beat the system. Become the system instead. Organisations need to design their structure, boundaries and processes to integrate with opportunities going on around them in that external change. Instead of hunkering down to fight off the change, organisations need to rethink their defenses. The best defense may just be a welcome:

Have an outward facing culture: If your organisation is looking inwards for your ideas and opportunities, you are dead. If your organisation, only worries about its competitors, then don’t worry they are dead too. Open your organisation up to look globally (that really means globally including Asia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa)
– Focus on opportunities to create an ecosystem: Allowing the system to shape your products, services and customers will accelerate your change. This can be achieved in many ways such as partnership agreements, an API or a customer collaboration community. Once you start to see and think about the system in which you operate, new opportunities to change and innovate will present themselves.
– Create agile & open edges in their organisation with the freedom to interact with external changes: hackathons, experiments, partnership agreements and a handful of strategic investments can generate a lot of exposure to change externally that will help the organisation adapt. Make sure your permission and performance processes actually give your people the opportunity to interact. They need to be able to move at the speed of the system and that means trust.
– Speed the sharing of information and execution in your organisation: Copy the system where you can. Use enterprise social. Use agile. Use design. Use minimum viable products. Hack, experiment and test away.
– Kill yourself first: What business model do you most fear losing? What product are you too dependent on? What customer can’t you lose? Tackle these challenges now. Engineer a way to change them or innovate like crazy in these spaces before others realise your vulnerability.

Leaders need to pitch

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

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

Recently I was standing in a long coffee queue. Standing In front was what someone who sounded like they were interviewing for a job. All the way through our long wait to reach the front, this individual told the story of their career & achievements in rambling self-centered & quite dull stories that the entire queue could hear. The expression on the face of the listener told me that he was equally uninterested. I was quite surprised that someone who clearly had a lot of experience could do such a poor job of pitching himself.

At the front of the queue, the individual finally acknowledge it was a long story but added ‘I need to tell you all this so you understand my leadership approach’.

He didn’t need to tell us ‘all this’. His story summarised to a few adjectives and two sharp sentences. At that moment, I realized I had the situation backwards. The only reason his audience was listening was the speaker was the hiring manager (Probably also explains why he thought everyone else should hear too).

I believe leaders need to be able to communicate their point of view and leadership approach. However for it to have value it needs to be as concise and as impactful as a pitch. The power of putting forward your point of view is to allow others to engage with it. Your pitch must be engaging. Leaders need to efficiently sell themselves. You cannot abuse people’s respect for your position by wasting time or attention. That waste will only be counterproductive on the relationship and your authority as a leader.

If you want to refine your pitch, here’s some questions to get you started:
-What is your purpose? Why do you lead?
-What 3 adjectives would others use to best describe who you are?
-How do you want your team to feel?

Be concise. Be impactful. Focus on what others need to know.

In short, sell yourself like you are trying to get hired, because every day a leader need to re-earn their authority.

Exploit Their Strengths

Posted on by simongterry in Strategy

Turn your competitors strengths into a weakness.

History is full of example of how clever strategists turned an opponent’s strengths against them. A military strategy list includes Alexander at Gaugemela, Hannibal at Cannae, Marlborough at Blenheim and Napoleon at Austerlitz. Ali’s rope-a-dope in the Rumble in the Jungle and many martial arts disciplines use the strengths of an opponent. In a time of rapid disruptive change, there is a long list of ever changing business examples to add.

How do you make your enemy’s strength your opportunity?

Study their strengths: acknowledge your competitors have strengths and you will be better than many. Study them intently and understand their strengths well, if not better than they do. Don’t rely on your own views. Research their history. Ask others and get a rounded view. Their strengths are also your greatest risks. It is better to understand them well

Encourage overuse: a strength overdone can be a weakness. Overuse of a strength can blunt its impact and even become counterproductive. In many of the examples above the successful strategy was to encourage an opponent to overuse their strength either to create a moment of weakness or to constrains the impact of the strength on the result.

Weaken their focus on facts: a big danger comes from any organisation’s biggest past success. That big success and the strengths that drove success tend to become mythical. Myths are rarely bound to reality’s harsh competive landscape. Leaders can go on trying to recreate a past success leveraging myths when the strategy no longer applies to the situation at hand. Past strengths are often first used and the hardest things for organisations to give up.

Let your competitor be predictable: using strengths is often very predictable. Predictability doesn’t offer any strategic advantage.

Focus on the next competition. Let your competitor win the last competition: strengths are usually built for the last victory. An agile opponent who seeks to change the game can make those strengths a liability in the next competition. This is particularly true where the strength may take a big investment, involve big scale and limit an organisation’s ability to adapt to new competition.

Take calculated risks: every one of the examples above involve calculated risks to go head to head with an opponent’s strength. Many were ‘a close-run thing’. However given in most cases the underdog triumphed against more powerful forces a close competition was already a district improvement in strategic terms.

Persist and ignore doubters: make sure you don’t defeat yourself.

Plan an exit: because these battles involve risk, allow for mitigation. Be ready to flee and fight another day if need be.

If you want to disrupt an opponent, don’t run from their strengths. Focus instead on finding a way to use that momentum against them.

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Uncategorized

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

– Pres. Calvin Coolidge speaking on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/speech-on-the-occasion-of-the-one-hundred-and-fiftieth-anniversary-of-the-declaration-of-independence/

Enterprise Social fosters Social Enterprise

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration

Two new trends are on the rise in business at the moment and they both use the words social and enterprise. Importantly these trends are often more closely connected than many realise. The trends are:

– Enterprise Social Media, the use of social media to foster connection and collaboration inside an organisation; and
– Social Enterprises, an organisation which exists to fulfil a social purpose by leveraging the approaches of the business world

Enterprise social media drives a more social outlook in any organisation where the culture will allow it. At the heart of the connection is that these trends force us to reflect on human concerns like purpose, community and our legacy – enterprise social media simply makes us social.

Enterprise Social Media fosters Purpose

Enabling your employees and other partners to connect and share their stories and experiences will quickly surface the themes of your purpose. Discussing and sharing these examples helps build a stronger sense of community in an organisation and deepens engagement. Importantly, the social network will also offer a forum to discuss, clarify and resolve of the conflicts of purpose that organisations face. Purpose is not a statement issued by management. Purpose is an ongoing dialogue with everyone in the organisation and it’s stakeholders.

Enterprise Social Media fosters Openness

Enabling your people to share their passions, interest, experiences and concerns is going to bring the surrounding community into your organisation. People now have a tool to collaborate on community and social issues. This can range from awareness building to forming groups of like minded employees to organising volunteering and activism. The more open your organisation the better it will be at responding to social needs and feedback.

Enterprise Social Media fosters Accountability

A highly engaged community can become a conscience for Purpose. If employees have a concern about delivery to Purpose or the wider social impacts, they have a forum to discuss and seek action. Importantly this is a public and transparent forum where they may have like minded colleagues. These conversations build accountability in managers across the organisation to explain the connection of their decisions to Purpose, to the creation of social value and to broader community impacts

Enterprise Social Media fosters Leadership

Organisations are full of people who have leadership potential but lack the impetus and a first follower. Social media offers a low risk environment for these first time leaders to connect with their personal purposes and to attract followers. It also offers an environment where leadership for the commmunity can be recognized by the community. Building the leadership voice, action & reward for leadership in your organisation will enable social value.

Enterprise Social Media fosters Innovation

Social value can be created in many traditional commercial organisations through adding a little innovation to everyday activities. Enabling your employees to make suggestions and work together to realise these ideas using enterprise social media can accelerate that process by bouncing unconventional ideas off traditional processes. Employee ideas can add social value by suggesting new challenges to tackle, a change in sourcing, to better ways to leverage waste and even debating where an organisation creates value for customers and the broader community.

Purpose+Openness+Accountability+Leadership+Innovation=More Social Enterprise

People crave purpose and to make a meaningful contribution to society. My experience suggests that given the chance people will leverage enterprise social media to seek to create additional social value in and through their colleagues and organisation. These conversations can generate deep pride and engagement.

The main barrier to this effect is a culture unwilling to allow the challenging conversations required. Our work in fostering more social enterprise is to get out of the way of our people, embrace the growing potential for more social value and do what we can to build stronger purpose and social impact.

Perceptions matter

Posted on by simongterry in Leadership

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere – Martin Luther King Jr.

I am passionate advocate for diversity. I have seen the power of different perspectives, skills and backgrounds working together. Embracing diversity enables us to leverage the potential of all the world’s talents. We all need to advocate for more equal treatment of others.

If you consider this an issue for others, remember this. Discrimination is about perceptions. People are discriminated against because of what they are perceived to be and what that is assumed to mean. Gender, age, race, creed, sexual orientation, and any of the many other bases are all simply proxies for flawed human perceptions.

Perceptions can and will be wrong. Discriminatory perceptions are almost certainly guaranteed to be wrong. In a world that accommodates discrimination, you can never predict which side you will fall of the arbitrary line of these views.

There are too many reasons why someone, including you, might be in the wrong camp. I have seen people form false & prejudicial perceptions for reasons as silly as the colour of clothing, a person’s way of talking or the colour of hair. Silly as the reason may be the prejudice based on perception was real. That anyone should have to continue to experience prejudice is intolerable.

Don’t leave the fate of the talent in your organisation to arbitrary perceptions. Silence is not a strategy and cultural issues will not work themselves out in time. Take steps to address any issues:

  • make clear your own position, advocate for equality of opportunity and treatment and create a culture that calls inappropriate behaviours
  • go talk to those in your organisation who may be at risk of experiencing discrimination and listen to the stories of what is occurring
  • examine your own unconscious biases and encourage others to do the same 
  • make changes in people, policies and processes to foster a more representative organisation 

When nobody has to worry about the flawed perceptions of others, we are all better off.