Author: simongterry

Corporate power is changing fast

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Leadership

Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets – Dr Paul Batalden

Moises Naim has written a book, The End of Power , in which he highlights that three trends are weakening traditional political power relationships in a range of political domains from sovereign states to other organisations:
– more: more people, information, resources, activity, etc
– mobility: unprecedented mobility
– mentality: new mindsets and expectations driven from new values and expectations

These three factors are also likely to drive dramatic power relationship changes inside corporations in coming years. Corporate politics is just human politics writ small. More than ever employees, customers, suppliers and communities are leveraging these three trends to challenge hierarchical models of power that trace back to the founding of modern corporate structures.

Social media internally and externally connects more and more people and supplies an escalating volume of information. The edicts of senior managers no longer stand alone. Consumers, partners and employees may well be better connected and have more information on what’s going on than the executive decision maker.

The Internet has accelerated the ability of customers and employees to be more mobile and to engage in new relationships with a corporation. Alternatives are now much more easily found and individuals have greater power to make their own choices or even solutions to needs. Voice is an increasing option where once the dissatisfied had only exit to choose.

These trends will only accelerate the already shifting values and expectations in employee careers and consumer purchase decisions. The employee and consumer expectations of a two-way & values-based relationship is likely to increase. Organisations and leaders will find themselves more accountable for their own rhetoric.

Leaders need to recognize these changes and begin to adapt to new models of leadership. Many leaders bemoan the limits of their status and hierarchical power today. The traditional ability to order technical change is simply less effective in complex adaptive situations. The trends that Moises Naim identifies are only likely to increase the number challenges corporate leaders face that exhibit these characteristics. We all need to start learning new ways now of adjusting to new leadership styles that are more two-way, more adaptive and based more in the strength of authority, not role. The rewards of these new models will come in purpose, engagement and the ability of enabled employees, consumers and partners to innovate.

The leaders who adapt first to these changes will hold distinct advantages over those who cling to traditional models of leadership. Which would you rather have a begrudging captive or a loyal follower?

Speak up

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Innovation

So is ignorance an impediment to progress or a precondition for it? In a recent New Yorker article Malcolm Gladwell discusses Albert O. Hirschman’s work on how creativity can be driven from our efforts to recover from ignorance

Many entrepreneurs strike us as remarkably naive. They dared to act whether others saw only risk.

Hirschman wrote the book Exit, Voice & Loyalty, that I read in a long ago economics degree. I would recommend Hirschman’s book to anyone as it is short, an easy read and amazingly insightful as is discusses the choices of consumers, community and employees to agree, exit or speak up.

That book was a revelation to me because it helped me to clarify that there was a powerful path between acceptance and refusal. There is another path between buying or selling. You don’t have to choose only to stay or exit. You can also speak up for change. Usually it is only when people speak up that the system is able to understand the meaning of the otherwise silent & often missed exits.

Reading Exit Voice and Loyalty led me to the opinion that it is usually better to make your first choice to find some way to speak up or make change happen from within the system. There are only so many opportunities for exit or acquiescence. At some point, we all need to shape things in our world. We can all do this more.

Speaking up gives others the chance to respond to your needs or concerns. Speaking up defines the unnoticed issues. Speaking up is not without risk and conflict. In many cases, it demands the creativity or the naïveté of the entrepreneur to safely make your point and generate change.

In an age of technology to enable collaboration and social interaction, we all need to accept that more connected consumers, communities and employees have many more means to express their views. As voice moves from rare to common, these stakeholders will increasingly prefer voice to slipping quietly away.

We should hope that voice is the growing preference too. After all, losing the support of others is a form of feedback, but not particularly useful feedback.

Speak up and encourage others to speak up too.

Look for collaboration beneath the surface

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Leadership

Archaelogists have just discovered an ancient city north of Angkor Wat.  Using lidar they saw that they had been walking over the ancient city for which they were searching. It was buried by time and jungle.

Many organisations need a lidar for collaboration.  

Obsessed with roles, structure and the formal processes of work they are unable to see the collaboration buried beneath the jungle of complexity.

  • Organisation charts and hierarchies don’t explain how work gets done or how information flows.
  • Decision rights might be clearly recorded and followed, but the decisions that get made are influenced by complex webs of human collaboration: influence, culture, trust and the flight of knowledge.
  • Performance measures are usually based on an individual heroic model of performance.  They don’t track of assists, team contributions or enablement.  This approach can force people to avoid collaboration or keep collaboration secret so as not to diminish perceptions of achievements or be seen to be wasting time improving the performance of others.
  • Collaboration is simply not recorded anywhere.  It happens on the phone, in hallways and in meeting rooms with no ability to record it happened, capture or share the value.

If you would like to improve the collaboration in your organisation, ask yourself whether you understand well enough what is already going on.  

Build your own collaboration lidar.  Pulse check activity across the organisation.  Go looking for the collaboration that exists buried in the jungle and do what you can to get your teams to make their relationships, knowledge and collaboration open to the whole organisation.

Follow your heart

Posted on by simongterry in Life & Career

Keep following your heart and your biggest dreams, no matter how far away they might seem at times – Commander Chris Hadfield

Dealing with big career choices, or even little ones, can be a bewildering process.  There are always too many pros and cons, there is lots of helpful and unhelpful advice, there is too much uncertainty and often we don’t even well understand our own thinking and preferences.

Mentors can play a critical role in providing an external perspective in these choices.  They can also help straighten out tangled thinking and the influence of other’s views.

Most powerful of all is the question that a mentor can ask:

‘what does your heart tell you to do?’

For many people, when they put all the logic aside the answer is crystal clear.   Their heart knows what choices they have to make to move forward on their passions, to realise their career ambitions and to live without regret.
 

The voice of the heart can be muddied by all the complexity and pressure of a big choice.  Find the time or the help to listen to it, however quiet, and you will move forward with more confidence.

Follow your heart.

Posted on by simongterry in Life & Career

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands and you find yourself in a great and wonderful world. You discover yourself to be a greater person – Patanjali

Dent the Universe? You have

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Leadership

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. – Wener Heisenberg

I meet a lot of enthusiastic people who have ambitions to change some part of their world. They want to put ‘a dent the universe’. The energy and passion that comes from people who embrace change and a desire to make things better is extraordinary. I would happily spend all day listening to these people describe their passions for a better world.

But just talking about passion doesn’t make change. Right?

Many of the people think they are stuck at the first hurdle. They want to create change but they question whether they have the capability, whether they have the opportunity or influence and what it will mean for life and careers. Most of all they grapple with the issue of ‘why me?’.

In almost every case, I find the person has missed a key point. It has to be them. They have already made a dent in the universe. They had started driving the changes that they want. The force of their passion, values and the capabilities that bring them to this change have already pushed them over the line into becoming a change agent. What has started to happen is that they are now holding themselves back and holding back the change that they want to see.

Like the quantum physicist whose observations change the measurement, the fact that these aspiring change agents are asking the question about how to have an impact means they are already:
– All are involved in some kind of learning or awareness building activities on the issues
– Some are already influential role models to the communities that need to change
– All have seen the problem because they have some capability to contribute to a solution
– In many cases, they have missed that things have got better with the actions that they have already taken
– Usually people are so concerned with their personal doubts that they can’t see any of these things.

These conversations are some of the richest I have. The challenge is simple – releasing someone from constraints that they have put on themselves, showing them the impact has begun and helping them start to drive even more change.

Whether or not Mahatma Gandhi actually said ‘Be the change you want to be in the world’ there is enormous power in that idea. Most people focus on that phrase as meaning ‘Become the change…’. Too often that ignores that ‘Be’ could mean that they already are the change. It might just be a question of living up to their potential.

So what kind of change agent are you? Something prompted you to read this post. What is your potential?