Category: Future of Work

The first step for any organisational transformation to adopt digital practices or new ways of working is to allow employees more latitude. The challenge for traditional organisations is that this pushes directly against their traditional management model of eliminating any variability in performance through tight control of employees’ work.

Many of the key practices and approaches that enable the transformation of organisation receive pushback from managers initially because they don’t fit into a traditional management mindset of task efficiency. Management can tie themselves in knots worrying about comments like “how do we know what they will deliver?”, “what are they doing? they just seem to be talking and playing with post it notes”, “why do we have to spend so much time changing things?” and “won’t all this collaboration distract them from their work?”.  The focus of digital transformation is system effectiveness not individual task efficiency. To have the ability to see and effect change at a system level and to deliver purposeful outcomes for stakeholders people need the capability to reflect on change, to design change and to implement it.

Employees will often push back on new digital practices like collaboration, design thinking, agile and experimentation.  If you are busy, the returns of this work are uncertain, the demands of your role are exacting and your organisation values expertise foremost, being asked to test your assumptions and engage with others on your ideas can feel like a waste of your valuable time. People need the time and the incentive to participate fully in the process of improving systems not just delivering their personal scorecards.

If your organisation is so tightly managed that employees are 110% busy, have limited latitude in execution of their roles and no ability to effect change, then your digital transformation journey will struggle.  Without the wiggle room to consider and make change, your employees will not be able to achieve the benefits of digital transformation no matter how many projects or practices you implement. Until you give your employees the time and the capability to create change in the system progress will be stunted.

For tightly controlled & hierarchical organisations, the step to the high levels of autonomy seen in many digital start-ups can be daunting, if not impossible due to cultural legacies and issues of scale. However, every organisation can experiment with allowing employees a purposeful amount of wiggle room. Trust and autonomy aren’t given. They are won through a process of developing these capabilities and proving success through  work.  Helping employees to have the capability to reflection on improvements, exercise their discretion and to lead change in the organisation is a simple first step to change for any organisation.  The power of this small amount of wiggle room multiplied by a large team can extraordinary.  Most importantly, allowing a small amount of wiggle room will help you identify the change agents in your organisation who are capable of leading more and those that you would rather not entrust with the capacity to drive change.

Start by allowing your employees some wiggle room to reflect, to design and to lead change in the system. The rest of your digital transformation can be supplying the platforms, the tools and the practices to make this way of working systematic.

You are here now. 

There’s nowhere else now. There’s no more waiting. You are here. Here is where it starts. It starts today. This is the time and place to act. 

Where you are is who you are. Here is the best you now. Being fully here will give you the best chance. Being present will allow all of you to be here. How can you be your best if some part of you is elsewhere?

If this isn’t the right place today, you’d be starting on your way there. Remember too that some other place may hold no magic – wherever you go there you are. 

You are here now. Make the most of it. Start. 

The CEO should lead digital transformation. CIOs or CMOs should lead digital transformation. You should have a Chief Digital Officer. The posts keep coming offering candidates for the heroic change leaders to make your organisation effective in the digital era. 

By now it is clear that the potential of and ramifications of digital technologies impact every part of your organisation. This is not a future concern. The change is comin fast now. Why should any manager or employee in your organisation wait for a heroic leader to map that change for them?  If the impact is everywhere and here now, why don’t we ask everyone to lead change. 

The organisations best leveraging digital technology aren’t relying on one hero or heroine. We are more than one decade beyond the time that digital change was remarkable or out of the ordinary. Digital technology and approaches are embedded everywhere so the best performing digital organisations. have connected their whole organisation to the digital transformation challenge and are using digital tools and techniques to coordinate the change through the actions of all employees. These organisations are using change agents to leverage both big and small digital changes in all their work. 

Don’t wait for heroic change leadership to work. Don’t rely on change from outside. Engage every  employee in thinking through how they can make their work more effective with digital tools and approaches. Give them all employees power to experiment and lead change to be more effective. That’s the true digital transformation. 

There is only one you. Share with others the best version of yourself. The one that covers the richness of your skills, capabilities and experience. Show the authentic one you.

One of the common mistakes in modern marketing is the suggestion that a brand is somehow independent of the product. We hear people talk about creating and promoting brands with little connection to the experience that the actual product delivers. In fact people can go as far to talk about building a brand without even selling a product as if marketing itself is the point.  All successful marketers know that as the heart of a successful brand is a moment of truth about the experience of the product or service. If your brand isn’t honest you either have a short-lived relationship or need to continuously invest in marketing and efforts to maintain an illusion.

Sadly this flawed marketing approach can also creep into pressures we experience to be the best version of ourselves in work and our lives. One of the reasons people react so badly to “personal branding” is that they see it as maintaining this inauthentic facade.  Too many people feel the pressure to be one person at work and a different person in the rest of their life. There are real costs to this effort.

Firstly, pretending is exhausting. I know because I tried for years to fit into the expectations of managers, peers and organisations as to the kind of employee and manager I should be. When you have a different life experience, different backgrounds and different thoughts this can be really challenging. I found it exhausting & ineffective to pretend. Mark Twain once said “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything”. It is also true that if you be yourself, you don’t have to remember the act anymore.

Authenticity is the alignment of what you say and do with who you are.  Authenticity builds trust and is a key to effective human relationships.  Pretending to be a another more ‘perfect’ version of yourself will undercut your authenticity and ultimately your effectiveness as an employee, a peer and a leader. At some point, the pretence will break down or crack just enough to cause others to doubt you. People build trusted relationships with whole people, not perfect airbrushed cardboard cutouts.

Pretending also diminishes why you were chosen for the job. Usually when people are pretending they leave out the uniqueness of their personal experience and capabilities in pursuit of some universal average expectation. Averages lie. Nobody really is like that. Average is rarely effective. Worse still, you were chosen for your role because of your breadth of capabilities and experience. Denying your whole talents is undermining that choice.

Often it is not easy to bring together the many parts of your life and share them with others. We aren’t a neatly packaged brand. We come with complexities, contradictions and   surprises. Often we are more concerned about these things than others are. You will find life richer, easier and far more effective if you focus on bringing the whole one you to your work.  In the heart of those complexities, contradictions and surprises you will find what defines you, what others can appreciate and what will make you effective in your work.  You are the one you. Share that person with others.