Author: simongterry

International Working Out Loud Week 9-15 June

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

International Working Out Loud week begins Monday 9 June.  The week is an effort to build awareness of the power of working out loud through asking people to participate in a week’s practice of working out loud.

Join a growing community of practitioners working out loud to create better ways of working and build community in their work.

Here’s what you need to know:

  • What it means to Work out loud: The 5 elements by John Stepper
  • How do I get involved: Start sharing your work in what ever means seems appropriate to you. It doesn’t have to be social. It just needs to be public. Make sure you tag your sharing with #wolweek so that others can follow along the broader conversation.

If you need a procedure: 

1) do something
2) write what you did on an unfeasibly large post-it note
3) attach to your office wall
4) take a photo of it
5) tweet it with the hashtags #wolyo #wolweek

  • Encourage others to Work Out Loud too Working out loud works for everyone.

Thanks to Austen Hunter and Jonathan Anthony for leading the way on the creation of International Working Out Loud Week

The Last Thing We Need is an Enterprise Social Network

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Collaboration, future of work, Innovation, Leadership, Learning, Strategy, Working out loud

Dear CEO

Re: The Last Thing We Need is an Enterprise Social Network

The purpose of this email is to explain why the last thing we need is an enterprise social network.

This email is in response to the conversation about enterprise social networking in the executive leadership meeting yesterday. We thought it best to summarise the position of the leadership team, because yesterday’s conversation got derailed by anecdotes about social media, technology terminology, fear of change and discussion of abstractions like collaboration, future of work and new organisational structures. Before you left the meeting, you remarked “Based on this discussion, I think an enterprise social network is the last thing we need”. We agree.

We don’t want faddish technology. We need execution of strategy.

As CEO, you’ve been rightly suspicious of all this discussion of social inside the organisation. It is bad enough that your teenage children never look up from using social media on their phones. Whatever that involves, it can’t be needed activity in our organisation. We are a place of work.

What made this country great was well-run organisations, hard work and increasing effectiveness in creating value for customers. That takes focused strategy, disciplined execution and a willingness to do the hard yards. Great organisations aren’t built by chasing technology whims. They come from executing strategy to create better value. When we need to create better execution on strategy, the latest fashionable technology is the last thing you need.

We need better strategic value creation

Times are tough. Industry is more competitive than ever and change keeps increasing. We know customer and shareholder value needs to go up and costs need to come down. We have a strategy that is about meeting these new customer & stakeholder expectations, improving the organisational efficiency and delivering the returns that shareholders demand. We all wonder from time to time whether everyone in the organisation gets the imperative of the new strategy and whether they are all working hard enough to find new ways to create value. We know that we perform better when we have better conversations to make sure that our employees are aligned to the strategy. What we don’t need are distractions when there’s doubt that people even understand the strategy.

When we need strategically aligned value creation, the last thing you need is an enterprise social network.

We need new more effective ways of working

To fulfil the strategy of the organisation, we know as a management team that we will have to start to work in new more effective ways. There has been too much wasteful duplication of work in the organisation. Too many of our processes & policies don’t line up across the silos, aren’t agile enough for the environment and don’t meet customer needs. Both our customers and our employees complain about how badly we do this. We need to start working in new and different ways to identify, solve and improve this on a continuing basis. We have to focus everyone on find and using better work approaches that help us to fulfil the strategy.

When we need working in new and more effective ways, the last thing we need is an enterprise social network.

We need to change management and leadership in every role

Working in more effective ways will likely require us to change the way management works. We are going to need to push decisions down to people closer to the customer and give our people the ability to fix problems. We will need our managers to move from command and control to a coaching and enabling role. We need to ensure that all our people are realising their potential and able to work to create new sources of value. Of course in this new role, middle management will need to be trimmed and the new flatter organisation will need to change more often as we respond to further changes driven by our customers. Employees will need to step up into a leadership role in these changes and with customers, the community and the organisation.

When we need to change the culture of management and asking every employee to play a bigger role in leadership, the last thing we need is an enterprise social network.

We need different conversations

Changing the culture of management is going to demand very different conversations in our organisation. We are going to have to find ways to make sure that conversations are efficient and effective. We need to leverage the contributions of more people from across the organisation. We won’t be able to rely on long meetings, workshops, speeches, video and emails. Did you see the budgets for communications, off sites & roadshows in the forecast for next year? We have to do something different. We will need to involve our people more in making decisions. If that’s going to happen our people will need to be better informed and better able to channel their contributions. Our people will need ways to inform themselves, learn by pulling what they need, share ideas of how to work better and collaborate to solve work problems. We are going to need to encourage our people to join conversations that use their capabilities to innovate, to create value for customers and create new forms of working.

When you need to change the conversations, collaboration and culture of an organisation, the last thing you need is an enterprise social network.

We need more from our people

We wrapped up the last executive leadership meeting reflecting on how big these demands will be on our people. We will be asking for a lot of change in them, their work and the way the organisation exists around them. We will be asking our people to play an increasing role in the success of the organisation. We will want them to lead new conversations to create the future for this organisation. We need our people to be more engaged because we will need much more from our people.

Conclusion: What we need

After you left the executive leadership meeting to catch up with the board, we realised that we are clear what we need as an organisation:

  1. we need to succeed by fulfilling our strategy to create greater value in a rapidly changing market; and to do that
  2. we need to be able to work in new & better ways that create a more effective, agile and responsive organisation; and to do that
  3. we need a new culture in management and more leadership from our people; and to do that
  4. we need new conversations that enable our people to discuss and act on creating better strategic value; and to do that 
  5. we need more engagement and a better ability to leverage the potential of our people to contribute to and lead this change; and to do that
  6. we need an enterprise social network to support the first 5 steps.

If you are surprised by point 6, think back through the needs again. After all you were the first to say that an enterprise social network is the last thing we need. We don’t want an enterprise social network because it is new technology or because it is good for some abstract goal. We need one to help our people to execute on the changes necessary to achieve the goals of our strategy. Enterprise technology only makes sense when it enables us to work in new ways that deliver strategic value. As your management team we can see that the value creation opportunity is compelling. We couldn’t see it when you made your remark, but we have come around to your perspective.

The paperwork required by our old process is already on your desk, but a number of our people have started experimenting with solutions to see what value we can create. (Interestingly, their first suggestion is a better procurement process.) When you get back from the board, your assistant will show you how to log-in and join us discussing how we implement in the new enterprise social network.

Thanks for challenging us to come up with a better way of working.

Please think of the environment and don’t print this email. We’d encourage you to discuss it on our new enterprise social network instead.

—

If this post sounds familiar or if you would like to create greater value in your enterprise social network or discuss how the Value Maturity Model applies to assist your organisation to create strategic value through enterprise social networking and collaboration, please get in contact. I am available through @simongterry or Linkedin or www.simonterry.com

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

It is by imagination that knowledge is “carried to the heart” (to borrow again from Allen Tate). The faculties of the mind—reason, memory, feeling, intuition, imagination, and the rest—are not distinct from one another. Though some may be favored over others and some ignored, none functions alone. But the human mind, even in its wholeness, even in instances of greatest genius, is irremediably limited. Its several faculties, when we try to use them separately or specialize them, are even more limited.

Wendell Berry’s Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture
Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.

 – Wendell Berry’s Jefferson lecture in the humanities http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture

Quoted in http://interactioninstitute.org/blog/2012/12/05/the-turn-towards-affection/

You Can’t Take Your Cat to the Park! So #WOL

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Working out loud is a way to share work that might otherwise be missed By sharing this work you create new valuable interactions around that work.

You Can’t Take Your Cat to the Park

The internet loves cats. We share more photos of cats than dogs and even selfies. There have been attempts to explain cat photos as an projection of internet neuroses, for their cuteness, their lack of cuteness, or simply unexplainable.

Rick Wingfield has an elegant hypothesis based in human behaviour for why cats might feature so prominently in internet sharing. Dog owners get to take their pet on walks to the park. They get to interact and receive praise for their dog in a social context.

You can’t take a cat to the park.  If you want interaction around your ownership of a cat, you have to share a photo or video. Other cat owners have the same need for interaction around their cats. Could this be the basis for our cat sharing passion? The hypothesis demands research but it also highlights a common challenge at work that is solved by working out loud.

Most of Your Work Isn’t Known to Others.

Working is more like owning a cat than owning a dog (& just as frustrating at times). Just as you can’t take a cat to the park, much of the work that you do is not known to those around you. This is a major cause of frustration in the performance management process and a cause of loss of employee engagement.

Other people may see some outputs and the few achievements that are celebrated by others. However, the majority of the work and the challenges each of us face are achieved quietly without fanfare or recognition. Like cat owners, the joy & frustrations of this work are a private experience.

Many people want more help, recognition and interaction around the work that they do. We crave the ability to connect with and learn from others doing similar work and facing similar challenges. However, most of the time there is no way for others to see the work that we do.  That work never leaves the small circles in which we operate and the closed systems like emails and hard drives in which we share it.

Working Out Loud = Cat Pictures

Adopting working out loud as a practice enables others to engage us about our work.  

Working out loud facilitates others to guide, help, praise, reuse and share our work. Working out loud also fosters a sense of community around work that encourages better value creation, better alignment and the development of communities of practice.

Don’t forget the sharing of your work can create value for others far from your work place.  Enabling others to reuse, learn from or improve on your experience is an incredibly powerful outcome of the sharing from working out loud.  What seemed to you a small piece of work can create value widely. You may even discover your work is more valuable than you or your boss ever realised. As John Stepper has pointed out, working out loud can add a new dimension to your next performance conversation.

You can’t take a cat for a walk. However, you can share your daily work and start new sharing & interaction around that work. You will be surprised by the rewards.

Why Work Must Be Human

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

The future of work must be more human. As we move deeper into a networked knowledge economy we can already see the fractures of the traditional industrial management model.  

Taylorist scientific management that underpins much of traditional management can be so abstract in its consideration of the human role in work that it can border on a psychopathic level of detachment. There are many examples where the parallels between sociopathy and management have been drawn. Some even go far enough as to recommend it.

How to become a corporate sociopath:

  • Lose empathy: refer only to customers and employees as acronyms, abstractions and averages (see FTE, Engagement score, Customer Satisfaction, Average handle-time, NPS, etc)
  • Lose ethics: Compromise your values to maintain your power & your position first in small decisions and then in decisions with larger influence over time (see Management, Hierarchy, Goal-orientation) 
  • Culture: Surround yourself with a culture that glorifies anti-social behaviour and down plays human elements (see Results-focus, Hard management skills, Efficiency, League ladder, Bell-curve, etc)
  • Lose Reality: Learn to withhold information then to spin information to further your agenda. Slowly begin to believe your own spin and create an internal world that shapes your perception and decision making (see Personal Branding, Managing Up, Stakeholder relations, PR, Marketing, Excel model, Corporate Politics, etc)
  • Isolation: Isolate yourself from friends & community and develop an echo chamber for your own views (see Silos, Work/Life Balance, Corporate retreat, Business Networking, Travel, Staff, Yes Men, etc)
  • Paranoia: Develop a healthy sense of paranoia to survive (see Competitive marketplace, Corporate ladder, etc)
  • Be Bold: Start to judge leadership, power and status on absence of fear, willingness to tackle large scale and boldness of action. (see Go Big or Go Home, Burning Platform, BHAG, Too Big to Fail, Bet the business, etc)
  • Narrow Goals: Sacrifice discussion of the diversity of potential goals to chose a single abstract financial measure of success (see EPS, ROI, Make Plan, etc)
  • Power: Begin to see all living things as commodities subject to your power. (see Human Resources, Processes, Policies, Inputs and Outputs, Capital and Labour, GDP, etc)

All in a normal day in many offices…

Making Work More Human

Not all organisations suffer from sociopathy. They balance the inhuman thread in management with other considerations to retain a focus on realising the broadest of social and human outcomes.

Breaking the bubble of sociopathy in dysfunctional organisations takes effort. The steps are not that hard to practice:

  • Listen: Start to listen to the real human voices. Help others to speak and tell their stories. Help others to share their potential and contribute to a better organisation.
  • Engage: Find out other people’s goals. Help them to realise their goals and their potential. Invest time in working for others and understanding their needs more deeply.
  • Immerse: Spend time in the actual environment where work occurs talking to the people doing the work and the customers and community benefiting from the work. See the context and consequences of actions.
  • Reframe: Change the scale of decision making. Look at individual impacts as part of the process. Use names of actual people. Ask ‘what could we do to create more value?’ Ask ‘Is there another way to move forward without these impacts?’
  • Design: Recognise that policies, processes and products are built by and used by real people. Design to their needs and with their involvement.
  • Collaborate: Share your plans with others and allow them input. Let others help shape and improve your work.  Be transparent as to the strengths and weaknesses in this process.
  • Experiment: Test potential decisions. Make room to learn.
  • Lead: Encourage. Enable. Inspire. Don’t impose or impact.

Making work more human does not require us to abandon capitalism, to remove our results focus or be less ambitious. It may make work more challenging but it will also increase our sense of purpose and reward. 

Every employee in an organisation can ask for one or more of these steps to be added to a decision making process. One such request may be novel but it is rarely seen as a challenge to the authority of traditional management approaches. Introducing these techniques acts as a catalyst of change. The impact is to help make work more human. We are all the beneficiary of that action.

The Blocking Boss

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

image

Obstruction is everywhere

The commonest question I am asked when talking to potential change leaders is:

’What do I do when my boss doesn’t support my work, my change agenda or my leadership approach?’

That challenge is one I am personally very familiar with it. I am not alone. Recently in conversation with Geoff Aigner one of the authors of The Australian Leadership Paradox we were both reflecting on how commonly change agents experience this challenge. The topic came up repeatedly in conversations the authors had exploring Australian leadership in preparation for that book. Many of the reasons for the conflict are tied to the four paradoxes that the Australian Leadership Paradox book outlines. If your boss prefers the other side of paradox, you are unlikely to agree on a way forward. However, both Geoff and I agreed that overcoming a blocking boss likely deserves a book of its own. Instead, here’s a short post from my personal experience.

In this post, I refer to a boss because it is the concept most experience. However, the person in a hierarchical position of power may not be your direct boss or even in your line of management. In other cases the blocking may be more abstract to pin down with distant committees or an abstract ‘they’ opposing your work. In these latter cases, it is essential to first separate the myth from the reality and find real people with whom discuss the work. One can’t argue with a perception.

Here is some lessons from my experience working with a unsupportive or blocking boss:

  • Be wary: Aware
  • Embrace your power: Ignore 
  • Change the conversation: Influence
  • Work the system: Evade 
  • Flee the system: Escape 

Be Wary: Aware

Before you continue with any change that is opposed by the hierarchy you need to be aware. You will need to check your motivations. You will need to understand your own strengths, weaknesses and resilience (each will be tested). You will need to be clear on your change, its impacts, risks and consequences. You will need to understand the landscape incredibly well. You will need to see the networks in the organisation, the political agendas, the personal agendas, the influence, the strategy and much much more.

If you are simply in the flush of enthusiasm for an idea, stop. If your ego is bruised by rejection or you don’t like criticism, ostracism or exclusion, then don’t continue. If it has become a power game to continue, then stop. Important change is not about you. Leading important change is about delivering better outcomes for everyone. Leading this kind of change takes enduring commitment and purpose to deliver for others. A bruised ego is a warning sign that this is personal. 

Only continue if you can see the landscape, the benefits and risks to others and your own motivations clearly. Only continue if you know that the journey will be rough and unrewarding and you have the strengths and the resilience to persevere. The experiences you have in this difficult leadership journey will demand continuing self-awareness and system-awareness. You will need to manage this carefully and know when to protect your self (see Flee the System: Escape)

Embrace Your Power: Ignore

The simplest technique is to ignore your boss and continue on. Of course, this is rarely the safest. It also misses the opportunity to understand whether your boss might be right (see Change the Conversation: Influence)

When you understand the difference between your job, the role you are playing and your authority, you may discover you don’t need your boss to endorse your work to achieve the change that you want. We often have far more influence and resources at our disposal than we expect or understand. Remember we have a uniquely human capacity to constrain our power to act. These constraints are insidious. Thinking you need support of your boss or organisation for action is one artificial self-constraint.

Without formal support from the hierarchy there is much you can do by taking on new roles and leveraging your authority in your networks. If you do this in a community with others, then you will magnify your influence. (see Work the System: Evade)

Sadly, you may find this also means you will receive no recognition for your work from your boss. You may even see your performance discounted for having engaged in activities that were not required or were seen as a distraction. Ultimately you might lose your job for insubordination or the threat you pose to the authority of your boss.

Most people are not comfortable with this level of risk. Therefore it is advisable to use this approach in combination with the others below. Remember if you believe enough in the change, losing your job when you can’t bring about change might not be such a bad thing (see Flee the System: Escape)

Change the Conversation: Influence

Every leader needs to have hard conversations to influence change in action. You should seek to engage your boss in conversation about the change, if only to understand their perspective more deeply. Prepare for this conversation.

How well do you understand your boss’ goals and drivers? What reasons does your boss have for blocking you? Does the strategy of the organisation or the bigger system give you any levers to change their perspective? Are there facts that you know that your boss does not or vice versa? What is it that you see that you may not have discussed adequately with them?

Before you begin this conversation recognise that the conversation will go best from a position of strength. Prepare. Find others who can help you with your change and to influence your boss (see Work the System: Evade).

Choose your timing. Make sure you have done all that you need to do on the other areas that you boss has asked of you. You don’t want this conversation to become a feedback session on how you fall short of your role’s performance expectations.

Prepare for the conversation.  Seek to find alignment on goals & purpose first. Only then move on to the implications and finally to agreeing new actions.

Hard conversations are not easy and may not be appreciated. The difficult conversations might lead you to further insight into changes required or to see change is impossible (see Flee the System: Escape). However, change will not come about without continuing to have hard conversations.

Work the System: Evade

Not all change uses official channels. Not all change is public and approved. There will be times when you might need to run a rebellion or even a revolution to make change happen, particularly in large organisations or large systems. At worst, you are going to have to play the politics of power and influence to at least continue your work or at best find someone more influential to release your constraints.

To continue to work on change when it is opposed, you will need to become well aware of how to lead in the networks in your organisation. You will need to use networks to avoid the obstructionist managers and build a coalition that can continue your work. This may even enable you to stop completely, if a coalition of others takes up your work.

You may need to even go into the networks outside your organisation and push change back in with influence from external sources. External networks, like customers and community, can validate the reasons for change. That can help you find new ways to influence your boss (see Change the Conversation: Influence) or more confidence & strength to continue (see Embrace Your Power: Ignore).

A boss who is asking you to stop work on change will not appreciate activity to perpetuate that change in this way. If you are working at the boundaries of the organisation take care that you are not jeopardising both your goals and the organisation. However, it is almost always required that you work the system and its rules to advance your cause when your boss is opposing needed change. The risks you are taking might lead straight to Flee the System: Escape.  Running an evasive strategy is rarely fast or effective first time. You will need to prepare for a long campaign and many setbacks. Be ready to persist.

Flee the System: Escape

Not all change succeeds. Sometimes persistent & effective opposition is a warning signal to leave. Your organisation may not want to become the organisation you would like it to be. 

Sad as it may be, in this case the best option is to get out fast. Staying will only lead to the organisation rejecting your changes and you.

Leave and take your leadership elsewhere. You will find greater reward working elsewhere and you might even find a way to make the change later.

Conclusion: Be Aware. Lead. Continue.

Be aware first and foremost. Maintain that awareness as circumstances change.  If you have a purposeful & needed change to lead, the only option that you have is to continue. When you stop, you lose your authority to lead. You will become part of the blocking mechanism of the manager who opposed you – by your actions, by your words or by your example.

Networks route around obstructions. You should too. Keep going. Be aware. Persist. Learn. Change your approaches but above all continue until you succeed or must escape.  

Good luck for safe and successful change leadership.

image

Networks Demand Leadership. Make Your Choice. Act.

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

image

Leadership in networks is less about the position you are assigned. The opportunity is the role you choose and the challenge is building authority. The job might be assigned, but the role is chosen and your authority is earned. The networks in and around your organisation are waiting for you to act. If you don’t act, they will move on without you.

Networks solve obstructions

Networks route around obstructions. One potential source of obstruction is the formal roles in an organisation, the hierarchy and the resulting silos.  What results is a wirearchy which Jon Husband has described as

a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology

Think about your organisation. There is a formal process to get a decision made, but everyone knows that the real decisions don’t follow the process. There is informal lobbying. Often someone who is not the decision maker is hugely influential. People chat casually testing positions. Additional information is shared. Deals are done. Trust and credibility play a key role in influencing the ultimate decision, often more than the facts on the table.

These actions are all examples of a network working around the potential obstruction of a hierarchical role or process. These conversations are all examples of how ‘two-way flow of power and authority’ is shaped by people’s actions to demonstrate ‘knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results’.

You are a potential obstruction

If you aren’t results focused, aren’t performing the roles required or the network doesn’t have confidence in your actions, a network of people working together will start to route around you.  Your failure to lead others becomes an obstruction. No matter how fancy your title or your place in the hierarchy the network will start solving for the obstruction that you represent. The network in and around every hierarchy is what makes the hierarchy functional.

To avoid being an obstruction, you need to focus on your authority and fulfilling the roles that advance the needs of the organisation and its networks. Your job won’t save you.

Authority takes Action

Leadership in networks is not an abstract and exalted status. Every person in a network is connected. Leadership is demonstrated when people take on needed roles and others move to action.

Leadership is the technology of realising human potential. Leadership is the technology that inspires and enables others to action. That takes a decision to embrace a role, action, influence and authority.  In networks, including the networks wrapped around your hierarchy, that authority comes from action, not position.

The differences in influence and ability to create value come through action.  Action is what builds authority.  The best way for someone to assess your ‘knowledge, trust, credibility and focus on results is to experience it’.  Authority grows influence with other people in the network and that accelerates further action. 

Networks and Network Leadership is not Bounded

If a network needs to go around or outside the hierarchy to solve a problem it does. All it takes is a connection for your network to extend further. Network leaders need to ensure that their leadership goes outside their hierarchies as well.

Customers, community, other stakeholders all influence your knowledge, credibility, trust and focus on results. Sharing the voice of the customer or the community can be a significant part of influencing change. Try to have influence internally without influence externally and you will find over time that your credibility erodes. Celine Schillinger has described how change agents can find that they need to build credibility externally to be more influential in their internal networks.

Leadership is a Choice. A Choice to Act.

Taking on a leadership role is a choice. It is a choice to help others make something happen and enable them to realise their potential. Whether you are in a hierarchy or a network matters little. The same rules apply. The choices that you make, the knowledge that you gather, the influence you build through credibility and trust determine your authority as a leader and whether others will follow.

Nobody has to follow you. Our hierarchies are a fiction that supports our need for status, order and clarity. The networks in and around your organisation know that and work around the hierarchy every day.  

That same network is waiting for your choices and the actions that follow.

SCNOW Webinar Series from Socialcast and Change Agents Worldwide

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Change Agents Worldwide and Socialcast have now completed four great webinars on the future of work, enterprise social networking and collaboration:

Recordings of these webinars are available at the Socialcast webinar centre.