Author: simongterry

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?

Purpose endures disruption. Discuss.

Posted on by simongterry in Change, future of work, Innovation

We know what we are, but not what we may be. – William Shakespeare

In a time of disruptive change, an organisation needs a strong common purpose to unite & guide its people.  

Purpose is a product of the community in your organisation.  It is the set of beliefs that keep your community together, reflecting your values, impact on others and hopes for the future.

A strong purpose is one that grows out of that community within your organisation.  We are talking about deeply personal values and beliefs.  This is the realm of pull, not push. People will have selected and remained with your organisation because of purpose.   A purpose cannot be imposed without pushing people away from your organisation.

Purpose endures.  

Your product, your business model, your competitive position and your returns may all change.  Just look at the changes you face:

  • Every organisation faces continued change in Who does things.  Tasks move.  People come and go each day.
  • How you do things changes equally fast.  That is the point of continuous improvement.  We want this continuous betterment of our work.
  • When big disruptive change occurs, organisations need to change What they do too. If you haven’t moved from buggy whip manufacturer to delivering remote mobile acceleration control services, you might just have been left behind. 

What keeps your organisation together and focused when everything might need to change really fast?  

A purpose that is shared by the community of your organisation is a centre of focus and consistency.  Importantly, the purpose is something consistently worth the investment of your people’s time, passion and effort over time.  Purpose is the core around which your organisation must build its agility to survive.  Purpose is the reason for which your organisation must survive and why it must prosper.  The more things change the more you will come back to your purpose to choose what to do next.

Discovering purpose

Start an ongoing conversation in your organisation around your purpose.   Seek to discover the beliefs that are shared and guide your organisation into the future.   Build a consensus and educate those who are new.  Social tools are fantastic ways to share and deepen this conversation.  

Ask purposeful questions of each other.  What is the purpose of strategies, changes and major initiatives? When is your organisation at its best?  What beliefs and ideas bring out the best in your people?  

The conversations are more powerful when they are not be dictated from the top of the organisation.  The best conversations on purpose will be those that surface the beliefs of those who deliver impact to customers every day, who make decisions in the middle of the organisation or potentially by asking your customers to reflect on your purpose. Discuss these points of view.  You will find that these conversations contribute to trust by building common ground.

Be prepared to be surprised, but most of all be prepared to find a new focus to the why at the heart of your organisation. Clarity of shared purpose will speed the agility of your people.  After all, your purpose is why you are and the best guide to what you may be next.

Have a Point of View

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Leadership

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The organisation for which I work expects its leaders to have a point of view.  Our people, our customers and our community expect that leaders in large organisations take the time to understand what is going on, to see trends happening in the business, economic or social environment, to develop their own perspective and to discuss and act on their point of view.  This is something all leaders should take the time to do and discuss.

The ability of leaders to have a point of view and engage in discussion on topics a long way from their daily work domain might seem unusual to some.  However in an environment where there is a lot of change and disruption, it is a necessary skill and delivers real benefits. You might be surprised how much conversation your point of view engenders.  

A point of view enables others to understand you, your values, your perspectives and your purposes.  A point of view is also another way to ‘work out loud’, attracting others who share or oppose that view.    Each of the resulting conversations deepens the insights, builds trust and fosters speed in collaboration.

Your thoughts and opinion matter so invest a little in developing and sharing them:

  • understand your perspectives, values and purposes – put them down on paper and discuss them with others 
  • find new ways to share your point of view, particularly with new audiences – use social media like a blog or a form of microblogging, but also share those thoughts through customer and team meetings, lunches, seminars, talks, conferences and other opportunities to engage.
  • view any reaction as a sign that you are saying something worth discussing and seek to understand feedback and different perspectives.

Have a point of view.  Nothing, especially you, is too insignificant to be a part of your point of view.

Shorten the long run

Posted on by simongterry in future of work, Innovation, Learning

In the long run we are all dead – John Maynard Keynes 
  
The economic concept of the long run is the period that it takes to be able to change every variable in a system.  It is the time it takes a system to adapt fully.  
  
The long run defined this way is a handy concept for an organisation to use when thinking about change.  Your most disruptive threats will pick the variables that you find hardest to change.  Because you cannot or will not change these variables quickly then you will be in danger of losing value to the disruption.  For example: 
 

  • newspapers: struggled to change an economic model where advertising in the paper funded content to attract an audience when internet businesses offered alternatives for both advertisers and audiences
  • music industry: struggled to change their ways of identifying and managing talent and the economics of distribution models tied to physical distribution when digital music distribution disrupted both
  • premium airlines: struggled to change high costs of labour, fixed cost infrastructure and the value perceptions of their other premium offerings when low cost competition attacked

  
If you want to improve your organisation’s ability to respond to disruption, you need to shorten the long run, your adaption time, by speeding up your slowest areas of change.  In most cases these will not be simple decisions.  The slowest areas of change are often those deep in the hidden infrastructure of the organisation.  

One thing you can do is invest in capabilities to help you change all areas of your business more rapidly:

  • people capabilities:  change leadership, talent, agility of structure and performance measurement
  • system capabilities: flexibility of systems, agile development, standardised integration and ability to leverage new technologies in experiments.
  • process capabilities:  continuous improvement, process measurement, agility of change, etc.

The long run is also the end of the period when the ugly impacts of disruption are felt.  We would all like to move faster through the periods of confusion, pain, adjustment & loss and get back to competing aggressively to win. 

Ultimately, it comes down to the culture in the organisation.  Can you build an organisation that has a long run that suits your business and its environment, where you can change the way you think and work fast enough to survive?

If you can’t shorten the long run, then you can guarantee in an era of disruptive innovation, your organisation will be dead.

Posted on by simongterry in Learning, Life & Career

…one enquiry only gave occasion to another, that book referred to book, that to search was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to pursue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them.

Samuel Johnson