Category: future of work

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.

Your hierarchy doesn’t work. It is. No value has ever been created down your hierarchy. Nothing of value occurs because of the flow of resources, information or power up and down a hierarchy. All the money invested in perfecting hierarchies through restructures are a massive exercise in waste. Much of the money in perfecting the flow of information up the hierarchy suffers the same fate. The focus on the hierarchy is a focus on status relationships, not the relationships of work.

The real engine of value in your organisation is the interactions and collaborations in and through the hierarchy. These collaborative relationships are where the work gets done and where the formal hierarchical decisions are shaped, influenced or frustrated.

The value that is created in any organisation comes from the wirearchy. Jon Husband’s working definition of wirearchy is

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

Speak to any sane chief executive and they are frustrated with the limits of their information, their power and their influence. The constraints that they experience are the outcome of the two-way dynamic of the wirearchy that wraps in and through their hierarchy:

• The ability to order an outcome is not the ability to achieve an outcome. Humans intervene to assess a careful two-way dynamic of trust, credibility and purpose before they yield to raw exercises of power.  In many situations the cost of an order to information, trust and credibility may overcome the value of achieving any result.
• The vertical relationships in organisations are often far more tangential and remote than the everyday demands of other horizontal or external relationships. Money, rewards and status can matter less than personal relationships or fit within a group.
• Information is not a standardised input into decision making. Our view of information is shaped by context, by relationships, credibility and trust that come from relationships. Decisions are not made on the papers but through a complex web of relationships and influences.
• Because central planning and control is inherently unreliable, it is the cooperation and collaboration in the hierarchy that reorders work, resources and information to enable critical outcomes to be achieved. The tighter the hierarchy seeks to control these the more poorly the system performs.
• In the absence of trust, the wirearchy fills the vacuum with rumour, gossip and investigative research. Human networks find a way to bring partial transparency to secrets, by routing around the barriers.
• Most dangerous of all hierarchical power with its one-way flows is slow and unresponsive. Remote from the ever-changing interface with customers and the market, the hierarchy is a barrier to innovation, experimentation and adaptation.  The change agents who navigate the wirearchies in and around hierarchies are those who remedy this danger.

Our organisations invest heavily in perfecting the hierarchy often at the expense of investment in the elements of this two-way dynamic. Learning, knowledge, trust and collaboration are after thoughts in many organisations plans for the digital world. What would be possible if instead of the perfect hierarchy we invested to develop knowledge, trust, credibility and results in our interconnected world?

When your goals are big, uncertain & scary, leave the worry to one side & move one conversation at a time closer to success. #life

— Simon Terry (@simongterry) September 6, 2016

When we are starting something new, we put pressure on ourselves for that one big action that will make everything right.

“Don’t Just Talk. Do Something”

We look to leap directly to our goal. The current culture of entrepreneurship and business values action over talk.  We place greater pressure to do the right things to succeed. However great action is driven by great understanding. Understanding takes conversations and support.

Success is rarely direct. Success is best facilitated by many conversations with your network.

“But, I don’t like to network”

I hear this complaint all the time. The constant self-help refrain of the need for networking puts people off. They see networking as foot in the door introductions demanding assistance from strangers.

There is no doubt that approach can work for the charismatic and persuasive, but for most of us it is a low return strategy. You can hand out hundreds of business cards with a winning pitch but you won’t make as much progress as one deep conversation with a friend.

Don’t network. Converse. 

Start a conversation with someone you know well. Just one conversation today will help you move closer to your goal. Instead of ‘networking’ engage your existing networks through one conversation at a time.

Discuss their goals. Explore how you can help them. Don’t ask for help. Focus instead on how you can help. Steps towards your goal and further conversations will materialise as these conversations progress.

As these conversations progress, you will build your confidence to starting the same conversations with people further out in your networks.  Powered by understanding and the challenges of others, you will see new paths for conversation and action that are invisible today.