Author: simongterry

If there’s one mistake I have made more than any other in my career, it is setting out on a project with a goal to change people. I can assure you that if you read through this blog you will find all sorts of language about how to get people to change, how to drive change and how to force change. Bad habits die hard.

Force is an ever present temptation for managers, leaders and change agents in the world of work. We have a desire to specify exactly how things should work. We feel our position is rational and justified. Why can’t others just do what we need?

Robots might but humans have their own calculations. They consider what we need in light of all the circumstances and their needs. You can’t change someone. They can only change themselves. We need to shift the agency of change from those advocating change to those who must do the work, because that is the only place change can happen.

Understanding this difference, turns challenges of the change into opportunities.

• Do you really need senior leadership support? Are you just trying to get more power to for e change? Fighting for this support can be a bottleneck in organisational change. If they won’t change are they really that relevant to the work?
• What are people trying to say when they resist change? Resistance is at least a form of engagement. It’s better than ignoring change entirely. What insights might improve your change if you understood the drivers of resistance?
• What capabilities and systems might people need to change effectively ? A proper assessment of capabilities, systems and performance impacts of change is essential to make it easier for people to choose to change. Too much capability building is just an elegant form of communication, not actual enablement.
• What might you learn if you share the purposes of the change and engage others? I’ve seen many changes taken well beyond the dreams of leaders when an engaged team takes responsibility for managing the change itself.
• How might you need to change to help others? The most surprising learnings from a change program can be that you are the one who has to change.

In any change process there will be people who don’t want to come along. Some you will have to work around. Others will prefer to leave because they can’t or won’t change. These are far better choices than the false compliance of someone who has been forced to change. In a world of work that demand commitment, compliance is deadly.

Humans are participants in change, not widgets in a process. Allow others to shape the change they need. Help them to make it better. You may even end up being the one who changes most.

The problem with extremism is not the division it creates. There is always division in society. Vibrant civil societies are full of conflict and struggle. The great threat of extremism is that it can foster a growing detachment.

The problem of extreme positions and actions is that they foster detachment in those in the middle. Forced to choose sides people prefer to choose none. The intensity of the fight between extremes creates a ‘no mans land’ in which those forced to choose sides choose none. The lack of certainty caused by ardent opposition disconcerts those who fall in the middle. Unsure of their ground and unwilling to join the fight, the middle detaches and leaves the fight to the extremists.

A civil society requires the participation of everyone. We need all knowledge to combat fake news. We need all voices to be able to hear what’s best for society. We need diversity to be able to leverage the capabilities and talents of all. We need new and different ideas from those shouted by the packs of loyalists. We need all hands to make our society better together.

When we become detached, we leave the floor to the extremists. Amidst their number are the ideologues, the totalitarians and the tyrants. Each of these is happy to trade reality and society for greater power. By ceding the floor when the fight gets extreme,  we open the door to the ideologues and the totalitarians who would like to proscribe what thought and what action is acceptable. No civil society can survive the pretence and the cancer of social relationships that follows.

The remedy to detachment is engagement. Engagement is at the heart of the future of civil society. We must remind each other of the purpose and value of sharing a civil society. We must find our causes, our relationships, our voice and our actions. We needn’t unite in one cause. We can pursue the cacophony that reflects a vibrant civil society.  Far better to deal with complexity, compromise and confusion than to face the quiet certainty of absolutism detached from society. Detachment is the problem, not an answer.

How to Create a Centre of Ignorance

Take any expertise.

Announce it is a Centre of Excellence.

Withdraw it from its business context.

Manage it independently.

Hire externally based on qualifications in the expertise.

Create geographic, cultural and mindset distance between the expertise and business activity.

Set targets for the expertise unrelated to business goals.

Force expertise practitioners to engage with the business practitioners through intermediaries.

Restrict feedback on the performance of the expertise.

Restrict information flow about the performance of the business to the expertise practitioners.

Constrain the availability of the expertise to meet declining cost budgets.

Focus expertise resources on standardising the expertise into fixed methodology.

Treat anyone from outside the expertise as a barbarian.

Periodically upgrade the methodology to reflect new trends in the expertise.

Apply for awards from specialist associations of practitioners of the expertise.

Commence a communication program to the business on the value of the expertise.

You have created a Centre of Ignorance.

All you need to do now is buy an Ivory Tower.

 

We all have a moment of entanglement. We are beavering away at our work, pouring all our efforts into a task that we believe of the greatest importance. We are stressed and feel overwhelmed by what we have to do. Customers, colleagues and bosses are placing their demands and we are racing to keep up with our work.

We are entangled in the doing of our work. So deeply entangled in work’s own logic that we have lost an important thing – perspective. We lose the degrees of freedom of action that come from perspective.

Then one way or other the hard question comes. The question could be asked by a boss, a customer, a friend, a colleague or family.  The question that is some variant of perspective. A question that can take many forms:

‘Why are you doing that? Why is that the best way? Why is that the best use of your talents now? How will that achieve your goals? How does that fulfil your purpose? How is that consistent with your values?”

With just that question it is clear to us that this work is not worth our time, is misguided or even counterproductive. The question has cut through the tangles and freed us to see a better way to work. The question restores our freedom of action.

Entanglement comes in many forms. We are entangled by culture and the way things are done around here. We are entangled by unspoken expectations. We are entangled by our history and the assumptions we bring to our work. We are entangled by senses of duty and obligation to our colleagues, our customers, our family, our friends and ourselves. In all these tangling webs of ties, we can easily lose sense of which way is up, what is right and what is best.

Don’t wait for a challenge, a failure, a post mortem or a Royal Commission to help you get perspective on your work and your plan of attack. Challenge yourself. Ask the hard questions every day. Push back on work that fails the test. You will be far more productive and more satisfied with your work.

When a prophet promises simple solutions, be curious because partial solutions will increase, not decrease, complexity and second order effects are all too common in complex systems.

When a prophet promises a complex solution, be aware that the value is in the outcomes not the effort to get there.

When a prophet tells you what’s good for you, be suspicious as to what’s good for them.

When a prophet tells you what’s good for others, be generous and give the others the chance to speak for themselves.

When a prophet promises it has been done before, be sceptical because context always changes and small differences change outcomes.

When a prophet tells you it can’t be done, be inspired to prove them wrong.

When a prophet promises to end debate, be inquisitive because it is often unclear whether the problem is talking or listening.

When a prophet promises that the fault lies elsewhere, be vigilant that the fault doesn’t lie here.

When a prophet promises to restore order, be concerned because it will take force to deliver order in the face of ever-adapting change.

When a prophet promises to conserve the past, be doubtful because it takes energy to fight entropy and change is required.

When a prophet promises a better future, be pragmatic and focus on the work to be done.

When a prophet promises change in human behaviour, be considerate of whether it is likely behaviour of real humans.

When a prophet promises a small loss of freedom for a large benefit, be sure that the benefit will be at best small and the lost freedom ever-growing.

When a prophet promises to exclude others from community, be confident that they prefer exclusion to community.

When a prophet promises benefit without efforts, be conscious they are offering to take benefits without outcomes.

When a prophet offers something that is too good to be true, be aware that it is.

Experts in collaboration and productivity tools can be overly familiar with the tools and capabilities of the leading platforms. Working daily in the tools and listening to a continuous flow of updates we no longer see have the same view of these tools as an every day employee.  Employee won’t just get the value of new tools and features. We need to help employees make sense of the potential of new tools.  Their work is challenging enough. They don’t need to become experts in collaboration and productivity too. However, learning to create value together through new tools and practices is an important skill in the future digital economy.

I’ve worked in a wide range of organisations and teams. I am still consistently surprised what what features of collaboration and productivity tools are not obviously valuable to others. As I noted recently, the more you work the more you realise that diverse mindsets, company cultures and experiences mean that what is obvious to me is not obvious to others. While I might love the idea of creating a slide presentation with the active participation of a large community of change agents making comments and changing the document online, others prefer a process of deliberate iterations where they carefully control the developing product and who gets access. Experienced the person who sent an online link to a file downloads it and then emails it back to you with comments marked up in their own unique markup system rather than embedded markup features? When you meet the person who still doesn’t get the point, after a decade of modern cloud collaboration, you learn something about their style and approach to work.

These people are not being difficult and they are certainly not ignorant. They are using the tools as best suits their understanding and need for value.  Making sense of the value of the tools we use in work is one of the key skills of the digital workplace. We have now got to the point where the rate of creation of new tools, features and practice is high. In this environment central experts won’t always be well placed to assess the best course of action. The best assessments aren’t always expert. They are practical and founded on the learning of real experience.  We need every employee to participate in the process of assessing and fostering their individual and collective value.

We need to help employees to understand the value of new tools, new practices and new features. They are rightly busy on important work and expect support with adoption of new tools. We need to skill employees in new considerations in their work like the value for others of the tools and practices chosen, the value of iteration and the power of engagement. We have to help employees to develop curiosity, collaboration and experimentation. We can enable every employee to contribute directly to the value creation through their work and that of their peers. These capabilities are not just the skills required to adopt new digital work tools. These are the capabilities that will enable organisations to adjust to a new digital competitive environment and the expectations of consumers.  The key change in any digital transformation is not the tools and the practices used. They key change is the employee capabilities, mindsets and focus on learning new paths to value.

Simon Terry helps organisations develop the capabilities of teams and individuals to enable more effective work and digital transformation.

 

Last year, I facilitated three discussions for HISA on Innovation in Healthcare as part of the Innovating Health series. HISA’s Innovating Health series has the ambition to connect senior participants in healthcare from many different parts of the system to discuss how to use innovation to address challenges and realise new opportunities. A common topic of those discussions was that there is plenty of positive innovation in the healthcare system. However, many participants were frustrated that innovations are isolated or unable to scale due to systemic issues, a siloed approach to health and care and a lack of collaboration between participants.

Across each of the three Innovating Health sessions discussion continued to return to the view that a step change in performance and policy outcomes will require:

• systemic innovation in healthcare beyond the boundaries any one organisation and the boundaries of our current siloed view of modalities and services
• greater connection of payers, providers and consumers to enable change and to increase choice and control
• creating ‘crucibles of innovation’ to enable policy makers, payers and providers to experiment, to learn and to demonstrate the value of new solutions; and
• parties coming together to take action on change.

Moving Beyond Silos in Health & Care Payments

Collaborative industry conversations are a powerful motivator of change because they enable participants to step out of their individual roles and see the wider picture of the system. These HISA conversations also highlighted to me the imperative to move from conversations to action. In August last year, I found a way to make a direct contribution to these four challenges by joining LanternPay as its Head of Markets, responsible for growing LanternPay’s propositions in healthcare, disability, insurance and ageing. This role brought together my passions for healthcare, collaboration, innovation and driving strategic change in complex systems.

LanternPay is a standardised claim payment platform across healthcare, disability, government and private insurance and aged care. Claim payments is a critical enabler for the necessary systemic innovation in the health and care, but too often in the past the solutions delivered to market have been siloed and not delivered to the broader needs of providers and payers. To improve the experience of the health and care system for all, consumers, providers and payers must all benefit, improve their choice and control and move forward together in a connected way.

Connecting Payers, Providers and Consumers in Choice and Control

In all my conversations around health and care, I have found providers are looking for standardisation of claim and payments workflow and greater certainty of payments to ensure. Providers want to maximise their revenue opportunities by delivering the widest range of services to consumers across health, disability and aged care. Providers don’t want to navigate multiple custom payment channels for each consumer, learning new processes and payment approaches on each new scheme and program. Having won the battle of getting the consumer to their practice or business, they don’t want to have to turn away consumers because of uncertainty or complexity of payment. Importantly, the provider doesn’t want to feel their direct relationship with the consumer is being managed by the payer or an intermediary.

LanternPay simplifies and standardises the claims experience for providers integrating it into their business processes and providing certainty of payment. Integration of claims and payments into provider systems reduces the cost to providers of adding new customers and new revenue sources. The effect of this change is significant. Here’s how a range of providers to the Transport Accident Commision in Victoria describe the experience of the change that LanternPay has brought to servicing TAC clients.

Health and care costs are rising faster than inflation. All payers and providers in health and care need to find ways to realise cost savings while continuing to improve care. Directly, LanternPay remove claiming costs and reduce customer & provider workload by simplifying and standardising the payment process for providers. LanternPay enables resources to be redirected from the administrative costs of claims and provider management to improving customer service and the quality of care.

LanternPay enables payers to work with consumers and providers to realise the benefits of consumer choice and control on costs. Our rules engine capabilities, deliver schemes the ability to shape authorisation and reporting with the participation of providers and consumers. The benefits are we turn authorisation rules into a real-time experience, improves data gathering and awareness of all parties of their choices. Our approach also enables schemes to move from payers after the fact to be a engaged participant in the delivery of care, helping consumers to understand more clearly the role of the scheme in assisting them to get care.

Consumers would like to make different choices to improve their care, but feel constrained by the lack of transparent, efficient & flexible payments platforms that deliver solutions where and how they choose to engage care. In a real-time omni-channel world, no payment scheme can afford force consumers to use only one channel of engagement. If payers want to avoid expensive costs for provider and consumer adoption, they need to provide solutions where the consumers are. Consumers want to focus on their care and recovery, not learning a new tool or process. For consumers, LanternPay enables choice of provider and ability to manage their care simply.

Systemic Innovation takes Collaboration & Action

LanternPay is already operational in the NDIS nationally and with the TAC in Victoria, but this is just the start of the wider vision for our platform. We have much work to do to develop the claim payment capabilities our platform and collaborate across the health and care ecosystem. We are actively working to engage payment schemes, both government and private, and to bring them together with providers who see the potential for new ways. We look forward to launching additional payment schemes as the year progresses.

To date, the response across health and care has been enthusiastic and we are finding great collaboration opportunities to showcase the innovation possible. As an example of our collaborative approach in action, Uniting Care’s LeapIn! has recently launched a new Android plan management application in the NDIS, based on our unique capabilities. We are actively collaborating with additional industry participants, providers, government and private schemes because they can see the growing scheme and provider benefits of a platform approach.

In our markets, we believe the best way forward is to demonstrate the potential for change in tangible ways. We are working to show the value of additional savings by bringing together providers, payers and other partners in pilots of new approaches. Transformative ideas need to be tested in practice with the widest range of participants in the health and care system. It is only through this action together that we will achieve the necessary innovation in health and care in Australia.

If you are interested in action to create innovation in heath and care, then reach out to talk. I would love to work with you to demonstrate what is possible when people come together to realise the value of innovation.