Author: simongterry

CEO: This job is almost impossible

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Leadership, Uncategorized

I am very pleased to be sharing with you today my first post as CEO. Apologies if it seems a little frazzled. I am by the challenges ahead but that’s also because I am writing at home surrounded by the turmoil of my young family. I thought I would pass over the usual inspiring memo and start a conversation here in our enterprise social network. I am humbled by the many posts here that saw me selected as your CEO. I now have a great challenge ahead to honour that confidence in my potential as a leader and to use my new position wisely. We have many challenges ahead and we will need to work together to solve them.

As he was leaving the organisation, my predecessor remarked “This job is almost impossible. You are going to need a lot of help to fix things”  Yet again he was incredibly insightful. 

A Big Challenge

I suspect I see the job of a CEO slightly differently to my predecessor but I agree on its challenges. I see the CEO as less of a commander atop a hierarchy. I haven’t won this role for my expertise or ability to make all the decisions needed. For me a CEO is a guardian of the organisation’s purpose and its impacts for customers, community and people. Ultimately, the CEO is held accountable by these stakeholders for their ability to facilitate great outcomes from the whole team.

To advance our purpose and improve our effectiveness, I will be less of a boss and leading the way as a change agent helping to create the needed focus, better performance and accountabilities in our organisation’s network. At the same time I recognise in a time of rapid change I need to lead the way as learner in chief. That will be easy for me. One of the reasons I am frazzled is that I have a big learning curve ahead and our organisation has a lot to learn.   

Learning on the job as CEO is almost impossible, how can you help me to learn the role, learn better ways of working and learn the future of this organisation?

Only A Job 

I am acutely aware that CEO is only one job. Some CEOs confuse the job and the role thinking that their personal power and expertise is the answer to the organisation’s challenges. I know too well that I don’t have the expertise and I don’t have the answers. You know that well. It was discussed aloud when you chose me.

My authority comes not from the role but from your confidence in my ability to help realise our purpose and to create the answers we need together. That is the only sustainable basis of your decisions to follow. We need to replicate relationships based in understandings of capabilities, effectiveness and authority for every role in the organisation so that anyone can lead, can contribute their expertise and realise their potential. Working together in this way and working explicitly on our relationships will make our interactions can be rich in trust and quickly identify those who would rather work elsewhere. 

Changing our leadership approaches and relationships is almost impossible, how can you help me to create new relationships in this organisation?

We’re Together in Change 

We need trust and strong relationships because we are going to work to use all our talents to fixing things together. We need the people closest to our customers and those with new ideas and new information to have the authority to make change and to call on the support of their colleagues to see it through. At times, we have valued processes and rules over outcomes for our customers and our people. Not all of our ways of working deliver the outcomes we want. We aren’t as responsive as we would like. We have work to do. All our employees have the responsibility to find fixes to the issues that they see in our business. They won’t be able to do that on their own. They will need your help too. 

We will only succeed in the harsh competitive environment if we have the ability to better leverage the talents and potential of all our people. Together we will focus on how we improve everyone’s effectiveness, autonomy and agility to deliver better outcomes for the organisation, its customers & community and importantly for themselves. Our collaboration will be critical to connect us, to share information and to solve the daily obstacles we face to better performance. Everyone has a role to play in this.

Realising the potential of all our people to contribute to purpose is almost impossible, how can you help me to accelerate our change?

Let’s Continue the Conversation

Attached to this post is a memo that the executive sent to the CEO some time ago outlining the importance of this enterprise social network to our strategy. Unfortunately, as it was a email it was only seen by the CEO and the executive team. As all our employees will contribute to creating value for our customers through collaboration and continuous improvement, it would have been wiser to share this with you earlier. As we move forward, our leadership team has agreed to write fewer politely worded memos and to engage in real conversations out loud here in the enterprise social network. I would ask you each to work out loud too.  Sharing our work as it progresses is a way to help us learn and improve.

Our future success is a real challenge. It always is. You might even say it is almost impossible, but nothing less would suit our very capable people. We will improve and deliver our purpose one day at a time. I am frazzled but I couldn’t be more excited as CEO as I have confidence that this amazing group of people will help find each day’s answer to the question: 

‘What Do We Need to Improve Today?’

It is almost impossible to believe that I am CEO of this great network of talented people. I know you will help me get over that too!

–

Previous posts:

#1 The Last Thing We Need Is An Enterprise Social Network

#2 Dear CEO: This Enterprise Social Network Doesn’t Work For You

Use Digital Capabilities to Build Digital Capabilities

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Our traditional management models die hard. 

Many organisations are starting to consider how they build new digital capabilities like agile, hypothesis-based experimentation, design thinking, analytics and collaboration. Yet when they start to plan these changes to more digital ways of working, they use management models from pre-digital management:

  • transactional approach to interventions
  • solutions defined by expertise
  • linear implementation approaches
  • waterfall project plans
  • push compliance and competency models focused on supply of new skills to employees
  • narrow delivery models using only learning and classroom learning
  • limited if any measurement of the changes

These approaches seek to make organisations ready for more digital management using the methods of traditional management.

Digital Dog Food

We can do better than this. We can start by asking projects to build digital capabilities to eat their own dog food. If nothing else, they will learn on behalf of the organisation the challenges and opportunities of new digital ways of working. 

New Digital Capability Building

Projects to build digital and responsive capabilities in organisations can be role model projects for those capabilities. Taking a leaf from the digital tool suite challenges those building capability to consider capability building that offers:

  • many paths on the learning journey as part of career paths and achievement of learner goals
  • mobile options, social learning and performance support to sustain learning in the digital work place and wherever is convenient for employees
  • offers people pull and push options across the range of 70:20:10 learning with options also for the depth of content and timing of learning experiences
  • encouraging people to seek out and share learning options from the depth of learning available in their personal networks 
  • engaging programs built from deep insights into the change and capability challenges for employees in working in new ways

New Digital Delivery

The projects to build new digital capabilities themselves can adopt digital approaches by shifting to:

  • agile delivery
  • minimum viable solutions
  • hypothesis-led test and learn iteration
  • considering needs for adaptive change and related changes on the wider organisational system
  • encouraging learners to act as a community to support successful delivery of the project goals.
  • strong analytics supporting not just the delivery of learning but also the strategic contribution of the capability building  
  • leveraging collaboration and networks in and outside the organisation to build capabilities, particularly in making smart decisions on what to build and what to buy.

More Effective

Working on transformation projects in these new ways won’t always be efficient.  It definitely won’t be easy. However, using the tools and approaches of digital management enables organisations to learn and evolve their goals through the process of transformation. This learning will be the path to step changes in effectiveness and a better match to employee and organisational needs.  At a minimum, it helps ensure that the project creates a team of highly capable change agents to help drive the next phase of the journey.

You need change. Don’t settle for less.

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Changing structure is just rearranging deck chairs. You don’t need a new system. You don’t need a new process. More rules won’t fix what your current rules can’t fix. You don’t need more expertise because most of the potential you have goes wasted now. More data will mean more confusion not less. You won’t become more effective by being more efficient.

There are no transactional fixes. If you could flick a switch to create transformational change, everyone would.

There is no proxy for the hard work of change.

To create transformational change in the system that is your organisation you are going to need new conversations and new capabilities. At the start these conversations and capabilities will be uncommon and uncomfortable. You will need change agents to start the conversations, sustain debate and action and help others build the capabilities.

Your unique path to change will emerge guided at first by the few and eventually by the many. Find your change agents. Invest in their development and back their action.

When you need change, back the people who bring it about. Anything else is just a distraction.

PS: if you still think you need new structures, processes, systems, rules, expertise and data to change you will need change agents to be able to make use of them in your organisation

Create a space – #RebelJam15 reflection

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Moderating the Asia Pacific part of RebelJam15 yesterday was a joy. The event, a 24 hour series of talks was a global celebration of those rebels making work better, changing their organisations and grappling with how to create a more human future of work.

Part of the magic of Rebel Jam was that the event was a space for a conversation. Speakers volunteered themselves. They chose to step into the space and share something of themselves to advise or educate others. The contributions were diverse and remarkable.

The future of work needs more conversations not less. A key role for any rebel or leader is to create the space for new conversations. The more wicked the problem the more important the conversation. Equally important is that it be a real human conversation with passion, emotion, conflict and a sense of shared goals and trust.

We cannot always predict what will come from these conversations. Many won’t work. However every space we create that allows others to show us their potential is a step forward. Every interaction that creates learning and new ideas is a step forward. Every bond that grows from understanding and dialogue is a step forward.

There will be steps back too. As one of the great slides yesterday noted: ‘An optimist is someone who recognises that a step forward followed by a step back is a Cha Cha’. We can carry our hope and our energy into more conversations in the space we create together.

Create the space for new conversations.

#wolweek Day 7 – the power of naming

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

We don’t see things as they are. We see them through our intentions. The power of #wolweek is naming our intent and sharing it with others.

Many people work out loud naturally or have done so since social tools became available. They rightly query why we need #wolweek.

The simple answer is it is not for them, except as a celebration of their exemplary efforts. Wolweek is about change in the way people work. If you already work out loud then you also know the majority don’t share your approach.

In Meg Wheatley’s Two Loops model of change and most similar theories of change a key part of the process is naming the change. Why is a name required? We don’t see the world. We see the world through our own intentions. A new name helps engage our curiosity and to open our filters to look at behaviour again in new ways.

If it has never occurred to you or your organisation that almost all work is a collaboration and that all people learn from sharing, then working out loud is a shock to your system and a reason to look again with new intent. The vehemence of the response that all working out loud does is create noise tells me that this shock is working.

If you want people to act differently, you need to help people to look at things differently. Working out loud week is a collective shout to help that to happen.

Building Personal Agency – #Wolweek Day 5

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Change agent just do change. They convey a their personal agency. They intuitively understand they can make a difference with their work. We can spread this sense through working out loud.

Yesterday I spoke about the enthusiasm fostered by working out loud. A key part of that enthusiasm is earning a return on our personal agency. When we share our work we help discover its significance. We also help discover our power. Sharing our work enables others to suggest ways we can do more and ways we can do the things we dream of achieving.

The difference between a change agent and a regular employee is someone once showed them how to make a difference. Working out loud enables that moment. I’ve seen it in #wolcircles. I’ve seen it in working out loud in social and face to face. When people realise they have the power to act and a network to support them the potential of personal agency is enormous.

A reflective mindset helps people create opportunities to exercise their personal agency. Working out loud helps people see not only their work but the process of their work. The community can support them in this reflection with questions, new insights and suggestions.

I’m a firm believer that every employee can improve their work. I’ve seen people transform their personal impact when they take up the challenge to act and are supported to do so. Working out loud week will have given many a taste of this and the energy that comes with it. One thousand #wolcircles will spread that energy and action widely.

Help us carry the energy, enthusiasm and agency of Wolweek forward. Start a wolcircle today. Continue to work out loud. Share working out loud with others.

#Wolweek Day 4 – The Human Spirit of Sharing

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Working out loud can be a practice of social media. More importantly sharing work in progress for learning and help is an every day human practice. The value of working out loud is to take that every day practice and make it deliberate, more accessible and more often repeated.

The medium is less important than the creation of human connection when two people share a work challenge.  Share their collective insights, knowledge and expertise is what creates the value from working out loud. This human connection will involve concepts like generosity, understanding, learning and trust. These human concepts can happen in many ways that do not involve technology.

As a number of advocates participated in The Enterprise Digital Summit’s Hangout on Air about Working Out Loud today, what struck me was the energy and enthusiasm of the group.  All those advocating for working out loud shared their surprise and the energy that they had gained from encouraging others to work out loud. We didn’t need anyone to talk about their enthusiasm. It was conveyed with smiles, the energy in their stories and a strong desire to share and contribute.

That generosity of spirit and enthusiasm extends to the working out loud on the development of the practices of working out loud. A cursory examination of the available material on working out loud highlights that this is a practice that is being defined and refined out loud. Generous people are devoting their thoughts, energies and collaborations to improving working out loud and to make it more accessible for individuals and organisations. Many people are doing this simply because the purpose matters to them and they can make a difference to others.

That’s a uniquely human spirit 

#Wolweek day 3 – Embedding habits

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Only 8% of people keep new year’s resolutions. 25% don’t even survive a week. New habits are hard to create. Why? Life gets in the way.

Nearing the midpoint of International Working Out Loud week we can reflect on this challenge. Many people have had great success & new energy. Some people are disappointed that more of their colleagues & networks are not working out loud. Others are disappointed that they haven’t worked out loud more, better or differently.

Life is getting in the way. It always does.

The value of International Working Out Loud Week is not perfect practice. The value of #wolweek is real practice in a community of other practitioners. We learn together. We support each other together. There have already been many amazing interactions triggered by this new working out loud. Everyone is a real moment of generosity.

The goal of 1000 #wolcircles recognises the potential of a 12 week peer support process to help us to learn and to support us in our practice. Life gets in the way but having other people around helps keep you practising. If you or your organisation want to accelerate the habit consider #wolcircles.

#Wolweek is never perfect. Perfection is for things that are complete and can’t be improved. Working out loud helps us to get better. We can all keep doing that a little more and a little more together.

Building Real Relationships – Working out loud and Sales #wolweek

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Working out loud has a great potential to help with sales. However the help is not in the way most people expect. Sales people don’t need more marketing to low probability prospects. The value of working out loud for sales is the ability to participate generously in client’s work and to know when best to engage them. Working out loud is a way to build real relationships with clients that help them do their work better.

Forget the Spruiking

Many people initially see working out loud as a way to market their work. This marketing mindset leads them to share work as a way of bragging, highlighting their offers and generally pushing messages at clients and prospects.

The key problem with all marketing is that we don’t know when clients are ready to buy. This is why so much marketing has low single digit conversion rates. The vast majority of it is wasted because it arrives at the wrong time for the potential purchasers. Adding sales people to this push message strategy does not improve performance and can be a huge waste.

One of the key ways to improve sales effectiveness is better targeting of sales time to higher value prospects. Too much sales time is already wasted where there is no chance of a deal. A sales person can’t devote their time to low single digit prospects of success.

Work out loud to help Clients, not your Business

The majority of my business opportunities come from referrals or clients discovering my work when they need it. As a result my sales time is better spent where it can be most effective.

Genuine working out loud builds relationships of trust in networks. Deep and wide relationships of trust help sales people to be more effective. Sales is not a solo activity. The best sales people collaborate with their organisation, partners and client prospects continuously. Every sales person wants to expand and deepen their network and giving to others to help their work through working out loud is a key way to build the reach of that trust.

Working out loud with referral partners & client influencers is a key first step. These partners will understand clients and may have related goals. Helping these partners to do their work better through working out loud can enhance your understanding of client opportunities and your ability to convert them. Sharing your work in this exchange will help referral partners to better understand your abilities. Before you ask for a favour it always helps to do one.

Any sales person loves to know what their clients are doing. Helping your clients by finding ways to work out loud directly with them on their goals is a great opportunity. You will not be marketing your product and service. You will be a trusted partner sharing ways that they can achieve their personal and work goals. Creating a working out loud circle with clients or prospects is an opportunity to deepen relationships, understand the other and put some value into that relationship.

Highly effective sales people identify a customer’s problem and solving it in ways that create new value and support an ongoing relationship. They start by understanding others and making contributions, not marketing. That sounds like working out loud to me.

How do we influence more widely and more effectively? #wolweek Day 2

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Day 2 of International Working Out Loud week is drawing to a close for me, though there is great energy in the western hemisphere to go. Today for me was a day of reflecting on new reach of #wolweek and on the spread of influence.  

Today leaves me pondering: How can we influence more widely and more effectively?

Little Things Grow

Wolweek is growing before our eyes like Bamboo. New faces and new voices join in the public conversation. We cannot see the private working out loud inside organisations and closed networks.  From all accounts there is activity aplenty there too. You only need to see the growing list of people signing up to lead circles.

Sharing with vulnerability and generosity builds trust.  There is no greater force multiplier than growing trust. At the moment #wolweek is on the trust upswing. Will it continue? Will it last?

Reaching More Widely

The big surprises for me today were conversations offline that took a discussion about working out loud into new audiences, new domains and new organisations. The reception was as enthusiastic as that in public social media. I have seen examples of others at work in the same advocacy. We should compare notes. We need more offline advocacy to continue to grow the community, to diversify ideas and learn together of the potential of working out loud.

We must remember that working out loud just has to be sharing. It doesn’t have to involve the whole wide world loud. There are many who can benefit without feeling comfortable enough to go that far. Circles are a great way to start small and start now.

Challenging Work Itself

Ayelet Baron raised a great question tonight that our lack of clarity on what ‘work’ is might just be getting in the way. WOL can become broadcast easily if we are still in our email-driven input/output manufacturing model of work.

How do we help people to consider what really constitutes the work that creates value? How do we better surface and strengthen purpose? How do we focus on helping people to work the obstacles in the system and work in between?

I know that WOL will be part of the answer.

Ongoing Questions

How can we take the conversation to the places where people are at work and would benefit from the practices of more open and more generous approach to their work?

How can we better reinforce the messages that influence others to trial working out loud?

I will keep reflecting on this and I would value your thoughts.