Category: Life & Career

Don’t expect thanks

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Future of Work, Leadership, Life & Career

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.

Niccolo Machievelli, The Prince

The first experience of institutional push back on change is always discovered by accident. You are young and naive. You see a better way to do things. You start to push for the most obvious change to make the world better. Instead of thanks you receive a fierce response from simple rejection to harsh criticism. You have upset the order of things and punishment follows, not thanks.

Welcome to the work of the change agent. You have just discovered Machievelli’s insight – there are always forces invested in doing things the way they are done today. Some of those forces are powerful enough to hurt you.

Don’t expect thanks for making the world a better place. You will be lucky to win any support even though your change obviously makes things better. To succeed you need to convince those who benefit from the current way to change, especially the powerful ones. That process is not easy and it is not smooth. Few people thank you for showing them there is a better way or for taking away their privileges in the current order of things.

I neither know nor care at length 

Where drives the storm about; 

Only I summon all my strength 

And swear to ride it out.

Robert Nichols, Thanksgiving

Remember as you make change that even the people better off are inconvenienced. They have to break habits. They have to learn new skills and may feel less competent for a time. Power dynamics changing can be socially and psychologically uncomfortable for people. Even though they end up better off, even this group may not thank you for the inconvenience of the experience.

Even if you succeed, you will not be thanked. At best decades later when you change has become its own institution a few of your loyal supporters and advocates might acknowledge the role you played and the pain that you suffered. Even then it’s unlikely you will be thanked as successes ‘have many fathers’. Everyone will claim the change was their idea or their work. Such is the nature of success.

Success has many fathers. Defeat is an orphan

Count Galeazzo Ciano

Thank those who inspire you. Thank those who help you. Thank those how believe in you and encourage you. Thank those who make change on your behalf profusely. You know what they are going through. Don’t expect thanks.

Of all the rewards of change after the hard bit is done, thanks is not one of them.

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

WS Merwin, Thanks

Made-up Stories

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Leadership, Life & Career

Fiction is a good home for the reach of the human mind

Deborah Levy


Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
– Monty Python and The Holy Grail

I read another made-up story on Linkedin recently. You know the common kind of fiction, a saintly manager rescuing someone from homelessness and then feels the need to share the story of the good works. Am I a cynic? Homelessness is a real issue and people need help to break the cycle. Possibly. I am being cynical because of the self-promotion involved, but I also suspect that all good and true stories are more complicated than as told in a Linkedin post. We aren’t ever all as good as our social media makes out.

The story prompted me to reflect on the myths and illusions that infiltrate our working lives. Some are well known. Stephen Covey’s insight is that we judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intentions. We embrace the myth of our best intents, overlooking our shortcomings even as we hold others to theirs.

Sadly, we turn the page to right our hearts,
knowing our lives too well

Julia Alvarez, Heroics

Stories are important. Human community is powered by the story. Stories connect us and share values in groups. Stories inspire us to action to tackle the difficult and the challenging issues of our society. The creative power of humanity includes the extraordinary ability to make up and share compelling stories that are more than just true.

The best and most powerful stories have a grounding in truth, but they may also fly far into the realm of make-believe. Those who work with entrepreneurs are often torn by the tensions between visionary leadership and ‘the reality distortion field’ that can exist when people believe without adequate grounding. Entrepreneurship is often a heroic story that ignores the real challenges of the process of creation, the luck and the collective efforts involved in success.

Today he rides through a distant wood, To answer a question, or question an answer
Which once he thought he understood.
Soon, he thinks, I will know the answer.

Charles Martin, Heroic Attitudes

The challenge we face with many heroic stories is that they fail to point the way to repeatable solutions. Homelessness is a complex socio-economic issue. It is tied to a range of social systems and individual issues. As important as individual actions are to create change, the enduring solution is likely to be one that is systemic and collective. Our heroic myths ignore that while individuals helping one person makes a difference the problem demands change from a lot of others to do much more complex work to improve many systems. Our heroic myths mislead us.

In the heroic myths of entrepreneurship, this is evident too. These myths so commonly describe a genius who solves a problem with a product and finds success. The collective and systemic reality of these stories is lost to genius. Rarely do these stories include the work that success takes like the slog of funding, the grind of the teams managing and solving for production, operations and service and the long battle for distribution. This misleading myth is one reason entrepreneurs fail. They don’t understand all that it takes to succeed.

Myths play a role in forging community. The ancient myths were rich emotional tales of success and failure. Let’s make sure our storytelling has a strong and more complex foundation to guide others

What becomes of the people I have abandoned in fiction … the brides left at the altar, the heroes whose quests are never
accomplished? I like to think about them,

Catherine Essenger, Life after Fiction

Relationship Proxies

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work, Life & Career

Humans are social animals. We seek relationships and we invest them with enduring meaning. We need to be alert to those who exploit this social urge and watch out for relationship proxies that drain us.

Wistfully, I play my lute
Long and deep into the night,
For my heart is shy
Of the empty chamber.

Wang Wei, Lonely (tr. Moon Kwan)
Photo by Tara Winstead on Pexels.com

Lonely in a Crowd

We are surrounded by more ways to connect to others than ever. These means of connection have been our saviour in a pandemic, enabling us to work, to stay in touch with family and to connect with friends. At the same time, we can be left feeling isolated and alone.

In 2018, well before the current epidemic, the Australian Psychological Society issued a report on Loneliness for Psychology Week that called out that one in four Australian adults are lonely. Our rich array of options for connection might enable us to be in touch, but they don’t always meet our needs for human connection

Many of us will have experienced the sensation of feeling alone in a large crowd. The presence of or ability to engage other people isn’t the issue. The challenge is that we want to be specifically recognised, engaged for who we are and have our needs met in relationships. This can go wrong in the most intimate relationships, as divorce trends indicate, but is particularly true in our work relationships. At work, relationships can be transactional and formulaic, driven by roles, status, and not the individual. As we grapple more and more with distributed teams, we need to recognise the effort to recognise the individual and help build relationships that matter for each employee.

Relationship Proxies

Our desire for relationships and this growing sense of loneliness can be a source of manipulation. Beware the stranger offering a relationship. Many scams and hacks rely on people’s desire to engage in relationships, to invest them with meaning, and to trust others who offer the satisfaction of relationships. Extremist movements engage people at a relationship level offering comradeship, meaning and a sense of belonging to lure people to work for their cause. Social media and the profusion of communities on offer magnify the reach and the intensity of these manipulations.

When the reward of sweet foods was rare our bodies desired it. Now refined sugar is a commodity and added to every food and drink to tap into that human desire and push sales. We see the same issues with social media, offering human relationship proxies to drive engagement and push advertising. Follower counts, connections, likes and comments can feel like a relationship. So too can the rush of personalisation available in our ever data hungry world of marketing, emails, apps and websites. However, like a sugar rush, it is but a proxy for the sustenance for human connection. Worse still, the crash after these substitutes deepens the sense of isolation and loneliness, often deliberately so, with the end of driving yet more engagement.

A relationship proxy delivers a taste of human connection, but isn’t specific to you, your needs or your challenges. Real relationships take work. Relationship proxies aren’t that demanding, because they aren’t that concerned about you. Relationship proxies are playing a numbers game of conversion and hoping that their offers of relationship will convert just enough people to sustain sales. We should recognise that AI and automation are already accelerating the ability to create, improve the effectiveness of, and scale relationship proxies.

To end the loneliness epidemic, we need to head in a different direction. A proxy will not deliver the warmth and comfort of a human hug, however cleverly designed. We need to invest in the work of real relationships – relationships that aren’t driven by self-interest and are deeply specific to the other person. Whether at work, in communities or in the wider world these are the relationships that we need to build, to foster and to share. That’s the path to a more rewarding future with less loneliness.

For it is his to fill your need but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Kahlil Gibran, On Friendship

Notice

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Innovation, Life & Career
What do you notice?

There’s a big wide world out there. It is time to notice it and those living around us. The more we deal with the separation of hybrid work and hybrid lives the more important it is to notice others and react to what we are noticing.

Notice

Whether because of writing, consulting, my work in innovation or customer experience, I have learned the power of time paying attention to my environment and what is going on around me. When was the last time you looked up? Over the years, I realised that noticing is a habit. We need to step out of our self-absoption and pay attention to others, to our environment and to all the little things that might otherwise slip below our focused attention. Without the consistency of explicit attention, we will fail to notice.

Some times the clues that we need to notice are tiny – a person’s silence, an odd choice of words, the things that they are not saying or not doing. Because many of life’s issues, problems and challenges cause us to stop, withdraw or be silent, it can be harder for us to notice that people are depressed, fatigued or languishing. We can’t all retreat to the isolation of Walden pond even if it is tempting in our busy digital lives. In a world of exponential change curves, many changes start small until they are suddenly not. The sooner you notice, the sooner you can act.

Many times our busy rush means we don’t pick up on the clues or cries for help that others are offering. If we don’t notice, we can inadvertently brush away the first tentative reach out for help or for support. We can make it appear that others aren’t caring simply by not paying enough attention as we go about our lives.

A question I often ask myself “what story does this thing I notice tell me?’ Looking for a narrative, a pattern or a rationale behind the little things can help you to go beyond observation and develop ways that you might engage to learn more. Those narratives can help you pick up on incipient trends and inspire your own creative thinking about what is possible or what might be to come.

Engage

We are ever more dependent on our ability to notice when the bandwidth of our relationships is so reduced by hybrid working relationships. Checking-in, checking-up and reaching out become very important activities to support those who matter to us to continue with all their work and life activities. Related is the practice of thanking those who have helped and supported us. We need to notice those who are helping us to get by so that we can remember to encourage that activity and also to know who we need to call on in times of challenge.

Noticing is not enough. We may not perceive the situation correctly. We may not understand at all. We need to engage to better our understanding of what we see and also act to make change or help those who need it. Nobody who is struggling needs to be told that everyone notices that they are struggling and how tough that struggle may be. Much of the discussion around issues such as Black Lives Matter, Indigenous inequality, racism, gender equality or sexual harassment is a frustrating repeated pattern of the wider community saying ‘I noticed this (usually at last). It is bad’ and the directly affected individuals saying ‘I’m glad you noticed. I know it too well. What are you going to do?’

Challenging times increase our need to notice others, notice situations and notice changes. With a better habit of attention we can work to make life better for others through engagement and action.

So what do you notice and what will you do about it?

Portfolio of Purpose

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work, Life & Career
A Portfolio of Purpose

All the talk about purpose can be confusing. In particular we can be vexed by the difference between personal purpose and organisational purpose. The high bar that purpose sets for work can also create the feeling that every single moment of our work life should contribute to personal purpose. As the outcomes of our efforts that benefit others, purpose is not required from one task or one job, the outcome flows from a whole life – all the ways we work, hobbies, volunteering, family and more. We need to manage our personal portfolio of purpose.

Discovering Purpose

Discussion of organisational purpose can make it feel like purpose can be imposed. It can also create the impression that anything not directly to that purpose is less valuable, even where it might matter greatly to you.

Purpose is the outcomes of our effort that benefit others. Organisational purpose is the shared outcomes of individual efforts. The organisation itself has no purpose that isn’t shared by the people who make it up. Both personal purpose and organisational purpose are discovered not imposed. If your organisational purpose was developed by consultants or around a board table, it likely misses some of the subtleties of the culture in practice of your organisation. At worst, that statement of purpose is irrelevant to how the organisation acts.

Engaging with others, it is helpful to have a sense of the positive outcomes that you want to contribute for others. If you aren’t clear going in, you can always discover purpose in the work and in the collaboration. The best way to discover individual or collective purpose is not by what people say but the choices that they have made to benefit others through work. The Purpose is in the Work.

A Portfolio of Purpose

Most of us struggle to make everything we do or every organisation we join, directly relevant to our personal purpose. Life just doesn’t work that way. There is always development work, preparation, administration and overhead in all parts of life. Both individuals and organisations need to do things for money, to learn and to grow. Often your personal purpose is met later along the path and not right now.

Two approaches can reduce the sense of disappointment we feel when we must tackle tasks away from our personal sense of purpose:

  • Recognise purpose comes from all of life: Work is not the be-all and end-all of purpose. For many work may actually be a means to an end to pursue social or artistic purposes that don’t fit well into traditional work roles. The richer and more diverse your life the more likely you are to find ways to express your contributions to others. That also means knowing when to stop the gradual encroaching of work into every aspect of our life and identity. You aren’t your job and don’t let it define you. If your job doesn’t quite fit your sense of self, then embrace the difference. Difference is OK and you only need change role when the difference becomes direct incompatability.
  • Manage a diverse portfolio of activity: Recognise that the perfect job is rare, will likely become the end of a long search and may even be fleeting. Putting all your effort in the job basket can ignore the myriad other ways that you can make a contribution. Look across all the domains of your life and build a portfolio of contributions to others – that portfolio of purpose will provide the greatest chance for you to experience the personal rewards and to discover more about how you can contribute. Like any portfolio, diversity of effort also helps mitigate against disappointment in any one part of your life. There will always be some part of your efforts that are rewarding.

I have been exploring the portfolio life for some time, combing work, running businesses, consulting, advisory relationships, board roles, volunteering and helping friends. Every one of those activities gives me new insight into my personal purpose and new chances to express my contributions to others. The breadth of activities reduces the need for any one activity to meet my highest expectations. I learn and grow as I work across the breadth of this portfolio of roles.

So what’s in your portfolio of purpose?

In the moment

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work, Life & Career

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We can easily cloud our present decisions with issues we bring in from the past and concerns about the future. Realising our life and career opportunities requires us to be present here and now.

I see a very common situation in business. Before a conversation, a meeting or a presentation begins, the room is clouded by the history between the participants. The parties to the discussion aren’t really ready to listen and engage. They have come to filter the discussion through their expectations of the others. Nothing productive can come from a fixed mindset in a world of rapid change. I’ve seen opportunities thrown away because people couldn’t overcome their history.

At the other end of the spectrum, people often lose opportunities because they are a paralysed by choices in uncertainty. The future is unknowable. You can manage risks, but risk and uncertainty should not be an excuse for delay or inaction. We need to decide now based on what we know now. If the world reveals more later, then we adapt.

We are all more productive when we are truly in the moment examining each moment for what it is and what it offers. When we are present we can listen and explore what we are being offered. We can pick up the clues on what is not said. Most importantly we can make choices based on today, not yesterday or tomorrow.

We only get one chance to use each moment. If we use this moment to replay the past or foreshadow the future we lose our chance to interact, to learn and to adapt. The best future comes to those who use each moment as best they can.

The Convoluted Paths of the Greater Good of Working Out Loud

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work, Life & Career, Working out loud

Helping doubters to see the value of working out loud involves not just enabling them to experience others differently but helping them to see the value of the greater good. A challenge we face is that the value that flows from giving of ourselves travels along a convoluted path.

Reciprocal Benefits: Stories of the Paths of Referrals

Almost all my consulting work comes through referrals. Working out loud is a key foundation for that flow of referrals. However, there’s no linear process, no response rate to track and no measure that can capture the paths through which these come. I don’t work out loud for referrals.

I don’t work out loud for referrals. I work out loud to better understand lessons from the work I have each day and to benefit from the insights of others on that work. I also enjoy that others can share these lessons. However, generating business value is a lovely side benefit.

That benefit is not predictable because it is a function of reputation, relationships and work that’s ongoing, not a transactional exchange. Here are some examples:

  • I post on Linkedin about working out loud week and the post is shared widely. The post reminds a former colleague of mine about me and some work we did together. My friend refers me to a friend of their as a potential solution for an unrelated topic.
  • I agree to have coffee with a friend of a friend who is running a small business to discuss a business challenge. After a number of conversations where I offer some advice, things go quiet as we both return to our work. Months later, the small business owner refers me to another friend of theirs. Eventually, a colleague of that person retains me for some work.
  • I collaborate with a small group of partners and competitors over four years. We share insights, ideas, and approaches even when we occasionally come up head to head competing against each other for work. After a number of years, there’s a flow of great referral opportunities between members of the network. We like working with each other. We understand each other’s relative expertise. We know we can’t do everything.

I see each of those examples of referrals to my consulting practice as an indirect outcome of reputation, relationships and work done out loud over many years. I have faith that if I continue to work in this way the benefits will keep flowing. Try explaining it to a doubter and they will explain it away as a result of hidden strategy, luck, reputation, or expertise.

The Greater Benefit of Altruism

Even harder for the doubter to grasp is that I would still work out loud, if none of these or other examples had happened. I enjoy helping others. Seeing others succeed in their work because you were able to assist is amazing. Having the ability to help others is a privilege.

I knew the power of help and generosity. However, I had not seen the specific power of working out loud until I started blogging consistently at work.  Each day I shared a post on some lesson from my work and career. The posts were short and the audience was small as they were shared only inside the organisation. I realised the value to others one day when walking into the building a stranger enthusiastically rushed up to me and thanked me for a recent post. Speaking like a close friend, they explained that the post had enabled them to solve a problem and they now used that technique consistently. One person’s work had been made easier by my blogpost and they were extraordinarily grateful. Even more remarkable, a person I had never met felt they knew me well enough to forget to even introduce themselves.

Work today is hard, competitive, and it can be alienating for people. Creating just one moment of human connection founded in generosity can make a wonderful difference to others. It can also be a great reminder that those who give receive the greatest rewards, even if nothing ever comes back but thanks.

Tall Poppy Podcast with Tathra Street

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Future of Work, Leadership, Learning, Life & Career, Working out loud

I recently did a podcast with Tathra Street on making leadership safe for humans.  Tathra has an series of interviews on the idea of Human Centred Leadership. In our 30 minute conversation, we discussed my leadership lessons, how work is changing, the demands of digital culture, working out loud and more.

The discussion was great but sadly the audio quality did not hold up to the content of the discussion.