Category: Collaboration

Getting credit

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Collaboration

It is amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit – Harry S Truman

Yesterday I discussed the vexed issue of ownership of collaboration. Credit for the successes of collaboration is one other reason people are so keen to own it and also why ownership belongs with the users.

Credit is also a vexed issue for innovation. As Harry Truman notes, giving credit away is often the only way to get something done. Far too many change agents are frustrated that their good ideas are quickly taken for implementation, often without credit or further involvement. Sadly, the great ideas don’t get implemented easily.

Three other challenges come for organisations that run on the concept of credit:

  • Credit debates are rarely factual. Credit is usually a part of a performance management process that is not connected to facts. Debates about credit suggests people are much more concerned with appearances of performance.
  • Credit gets in the way of collaboration. Credit tends to assume there is one creator of every outcome. Collaborative outcomes, like design thinking processes, don’t fit the system
  • Credit is distinct from accountability which is much more important. I would rather know who is taking accountability for delivering something than who would like to plans to claim it.

How can an innovator or change agents deal with issues of credit?

  1. Don’t Play the Game:  There is nothing to gain and a lot to lose playing along, keeping ideas secret and trying to hog or claim credit.
  2. Work Aloud: working aloud enables others to understand what you have been involved in and reduces the risk others misjudge your involvement later.  Working aloud engages stakeholders progressively. Working aloud reinforces accountabilities, because it enables others to know who to follow up.
  3. Move on & Work with Collaborators: The advantage of being oriented to innovation is you know you have more ideas and opportunities ahead of you. Many of those clamouring to gain credit know that they don’t have the luxury. Often they will learn their lesson when they need help on the next round.
  4. Give Credit Where it is Due: Innovation processes can be convoluted with lots of participants inputs, reuse of ideas and evolution to a successful implementation. Recognition at the end is hard.  Make sure you recognise others along the way. You will discover building a fact based culture of recognition will flow back in appropriate recognition of your role.
  5. Take Accountability for the Innovation System: Individual ideas matter less in an organisation. What matters more is to have a functioning system of innovation, a consistent process that delivers a cadence of innovations into the market. Innovators and change agents should be build a system that lets everyone in on innovation

Who owns collaboration? You do

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Leadership

Lead users to realise the value of better collaboration

Twice last week in conversation I stumbled across the challenge of who owns collaboration. Once was an organisation grappling with who “owned collaboration”. Once was a tech company who noted that their valuable tools lacked a natural “owner” in their clients. This is such a common challenge at least one vendor proposes the effort of annual reviews of ownership.

In many cases what drives the debate about ownership is the need to cut a cheque to invest in a better solution. Imagine if the English language had a license fee. I can imagine the organizational debate about who owned English and who had to maintain it. People see the immediate inconvenience, the benefits are diffuse and there is often a tricky path to realizing value for the company strategy.

In other situations ownership debates arise from the number of parties involved. Ownership is a problematic concept with something that inherently involves multiple silos and many engaged people.

Having spent much of my working life being asked the question of “who owns the customer?” I have the same answer:

The end user does.

Each customer owns their relationship with an organisation. Decisions should be made to meet the customers needs. We need to reflect the customers right to choose or they will go elsewhere. That means everyone in the organisation needs to put the customer first. Everyone needs to put their ego in check and deliver on the best experience the whole organisation can deliver.

Collaboration is owned by the users

Collaboration is no different. Those who collaborate, the employees and other users, own collaboration in your organisation. After all, they make decisions each day to invest their critical time in collaboration to create value for themselves and the organisation. Increasingly, they can engage elsewhere. Engaging users is the best way to create, sustain and build value from collaboration.

Every organisation needs leaders to make sure that that activity is supported & guided to benefit the organisation’s purpose and strategy. In enlightened organisations, just as with customers, support will come from the highest levels. If not, it is up to you to take responsibility to support the users in your organisation.

How do leaders help users own collaboration?

When nobody else will step forward to advocate for a critical skill for future organisations, it is essential that you do. Leading users to own their own collaboration and create increasing value will deliver huge rewards for you and your organisation.

Working Aloud: Try 3 Tiny Habits

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Working out loud

Working aloud requires new habits of work. 3 little habits will help you experiment with techniques and the benefits.

I’ve been reading about BJ Fogg’s tiny habits. In doing so, I realized the tiny habits reflect how I learned to practice new ways of working aloud using enterprise social networking.

How does a busy executive build a habit of working aloud?

Make a decision to build a new habit. Set yourself up with a login and the right apps. Then break your new working aloud habit down into common triggers and simple steps.

I have previously shared that checking in to a social network 3 times a day for 5-15 minutes easily creates the impression of continuous engagement. If there’s always something new from you when people check, then it looks like you are always there.

Here’s some triggers and habits I used to create a new working aloud habit:

Trigger1: First coffee, tea or other beverage
Habit1: Describe Describe one moment in your day ahead. Tell of something you are doing or starting, a visit, conversation or meeting. A post simply stating where you are can work. Everyone has something worth noting.

Trigger2: About to leave for lunch
Habit2: Interact. Like a post or answer a post. Interactions supporting others have great value. Your quick answer can make a difference.

Trigger3: Leaving for the day
Habit3: Recognition Recognise one person or team achievement. Every organisation needs more recognition and there’s something to recognize every day.

That’s it. The community will do the rest. You might not see a response immediately, but if you keep the habits up these posts will draw likes, questions and comments. Then people will ask you questions on other topics which you will answer in Habit2. Over time, people will engage you in the community and its concerns.

Repeat

Now repeat that process for a few weeks. As a busy executive that may be all the working aloud you will ever do. However, as the habit builds you might find yourself more willing to put time into the community and its rewards. When you are more confident with the habit and relationships in the community, you can swap to new topics and bigger challenges.

Don’t rush. Let the little habits grow from 5-15 minutes 3 times each day. If the benefits aren’t there, stop. However, don’t be surprised if over time the responses change how you work going forward.

Enterprise Social fosters Social Enterprise

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration

Two new trends are on the rise in business at the moment and they both use the words social and enterprise. Importantly these trends are often more closely connected than many realise. The trends are:

– Enterprise Social Media, the use of social media to foster connection and collaboration inside an organisation; and
– Social Enterprises, an organisation which exists to fulfil a social purpose by leveraging the approaches of the business world

Enterprise social media drives a more social outlook in any organisation where the culture will allow it. At the heart of the connection is that these trends force us to reflect on human concerns like purpose, community and our legacy – enterprise social media simply makes us social.

Enterprise Social Media fosters Purpose

Enabling your employees and other partners to connect and share their stories and experiences will quickly surface the themes of your purpose. Discussing and sharing these examples helps build a stronger sense of community in an organisation and deepens engagement. Importantly, the social network will also offer a forum to discuss, clarify and resolve of the conflicts of purpose that organisations face. Purpose is not a statement issued by management. Purpose is an ongoing dialogue with everyone in the organisation and it’s stakeholders.

Enterprise Social Media fosters Openness

Enabling your people to share their passions, interest, experiences and concerns is going to bring the surrounding community into your organisation. People now have a tool to collaborate on community and social issues. This can range from awareness building to forming groups of like minded employees to organising volunteering and activism. The more open your organisation the better it will be at responding to social needs and feedback.

Enterprise Social Media fosters Accountability

A highly engaged community can become a conscience for Purpose. If employees have a concern about delivery to Purpose or the wider social impacts, they have a forum to discuss and seek action. Importantly this is a public and transparent forum where they may have like minded colleagues. These conversations build accountability in managers across the organisation to explain the connection of their decisions to Purpose, to the creation of social value and to broader community impacts

Enterprise Social Media fosters Leadership

Organisations are full of people who have leadership potential but lack the impetus and a first follower. Social media offers a low risk environment for these first time leaders to connect with their personal purposes and to attract followers. It also offers an environment where leadership for the commmunity can be recognized by the community. Building the leadership voice, action & reward for leadership in your organisation will enable social value.

Enterprise Social Media fosters Innovation

Social value can be created in many traditional commercial organisations through adding a little innovation to everyday activities. Enabling your employees to make suggestions and work together to realise these ideas using enterprise social media can accelerate that process by bouncing unconventional ideas off traditional processes. Employee ideas can add social value by suggesting new challenges to tackle, a change in sourcing, to better ways to leverage waste and even debating where an organisation creates value for customers and the broader community.

Purpose+Openness+Accountability+Leadership+Innovation=More Social Enterprise

People crave purpose and to make a meaningful contribution to society. My experience suggests that given the chance people will leverage enterprise social media to seek to create additional social value in and through their colleagues and organisation. These conversations can generate deep pride and engagement.

The main barrier to this effect is a culture unwilling to allow the challenging conversations required. Our work in fostering more social enterprise is to get out of the way of our people, embrace the growing potential for more social value and do what we can to build stronger purpose and social impact.

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.

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.

Great advances are social

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Collaboration, Innovation

I was fascinated by this article on new research into the rise of the Mayan civilisation.  You might wonder why I post this article here and why you are reading about the birth of the Mayan civilisation.  The punchline is at the end:

“great civilizations don’t grow out of previous dominant groups like the Olmec, nor do they arise in isolation. They are the result of hybridization”

Hybridization requires the very human and social processes of conversation and exchange of knowledge to enable cultures to exchange information, ideas and technology.  

Our organisations need to be social and connected well with customers, community and the environment.  In our hyperconnected world, the pace of these interactions is increasing around us.  

If we are not engaged, we will be isolated while others advance.  That can only increase the danger of digital disruption.