Tag: Change

The Hustle

Posted on by simongterry in Life & Career

Want to do something meaningful? Meaningful is hard. It is going to take hustle.

Meaningful is Hard

There is no truer statement than “if it was easy, someone would have done it by now”. Making change that matters and doing purposeful work takes effort. The obstacles are real. They are the real work.  Do the work.  

The effort begins with understanding what impact you want to have. Then you have to understand how you can fulfil your purpose. Lastly you need to find people to work with and opportunities to tackle. Finally you get to find out whether you can make a living through working on your purpose. Some times purpose is a living but others times purpose turns out to be a hobby or a calling.

To make matters worse, you need to do all that work in the wrong order and in overlapping steps. In many cases the answers are unclear or contradictory. You do the work and you learn a little more about where you are going.  You keep doing the work and you learn even more. The work sustains you and provides momentum & networks that matter. 

The Hustle Required

There is far more hustle required than you expect. Here’s one example of the hustle required to persuade others: 2% of sales are closed in the first meeting. Yes, 98% of the pitches fail when every failed pitch feels like time to call it quits. 80% of sales are closed after more than 5 follow-up calls, when every empty call feels like time to move on. No wonder 44% of sales people give up after only one follow-up. The winners are those who hustle more and hustle longer. Remember these numbers come from enterprise sales, if your change is more unique or more unusual it could require even more hustle to find your market.  The winners in change stay in the game and they hustle.

The hustle is just working intensively on your purpose: making connections, building relationships, identifying problems and offering ways to solve them. You don’t need to use sharp practices. There are no shortcuts. They will only cut you in the end. You need to do more than “build it” and “turn up”. You need to get out into the market and challenge people to listen to your pitch. 

Hustle. Work your purpose hard. Remember to take the odd break to reflect and reset yourself for the next burst of hustle. If you work it continuously, the hustle will become the Grind.

Inconceivable

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

The idea that you discount is the innovation someone will use to disrupt you.

[Vizzini has just cut the rope The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up] 

Vizzini: HE DIDN’T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE. 

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means

From the movie The Princess Bride

Many organisations feel comfortable that the prospects of disruptive innovation are limited. They view their history, their client relationships, their propositions and their position in the market. With a view back into history, they cannot conceive how anyone could do better. They discount the threats and the opportunities of innovation.

Ernst & Young estimated that in the fourth quarter of 2014, global venture capital investment was $86.7bn. That money is exploring opportunity in many sectors previously regarded as too difficult for startups like health, government or financial sectors.  For example, the funding for startups targeting financial technology (or fintech) has grown exponentially in the last 3 years.  That’s a lot of enterpreneurial dreams that are being backed with capital. The goal of those startups is to do what is inconceivable to other organisations.

Innovators don’t look backward as to what can be expected from the past. Innovators create their own path through difficulties and challenges in the pursuit of new & different ways. They know there is competitive advantage in being the first through into a new concept and that the doubts will hold others back. They also know that the surprise of a new innovation will often paralyse the incumbent players who go through a grief-like cycle of denial, anger, delay, bargaining and finally acceptance that a response is required.

Explore the inconceivable, ridiculous and stupid ideas.  Break the bounds of your organisations traditional ways of seeing and doing as you explore innovation. You will discover you can conceive a lot more than you expect.

The Reverberating Yes

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Say Yes
Yes to the legacy
Yes to the process
Yes to the doubts
Yes to the fears
Yes to the challenges
Yes to the risks
Yes to the passionate fire of the opponents

Say Yes
Yes to the future
Yes to the chaos
Yes to the purpose
Yes to the hopes
Yes to the opportunities
Yes to the strengths
Yes to the occasional efforts of supporters

Say yes to the ongoing grind to bring great things to be

Say yes to reality. Say yes to dreams.

Say yes

Until it echoes

(Even if only in you.)

Stay in

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

“The guys in the white hats win in the second half of the movie” – Anonymous

We have two responsibilities: to stay in the quest for change and to draw others to join us.

Stay in

Change is hard. We all get disappointed and consider bailing on change. That can be the right move when it is required for personal preservation or when we need time to create a totally new approach after a big failure.

However, the bigger need is to give change time. Our instant success culture sees many people seeking to bail when the momentum towards success is around the corner. We need to stay engaged and keep pushing for change. Finding the right path and the right experiments takes time and effort.

Cynicism is easy and ever so tempting. Cynicism doesn’t get anyone anywhere. Worse abandoning change or turning cynical sends a message to others to stay out. Bailing puts change back because others get the message that change can’t be done.

Something made you believe change is needed. If that still stands, then stay the course of change.

Bring Others in

Change succeeds when people are moving towards it, not away.  We all need to help others to engage with our changes.

Global connection has made it easier to find people who share your views and to define sharply the other.  We see increasing polarisation in many debates and stereotypes and generalisations to demean or denigrate opponents. A little sense of the other helps to define a movement. Too much is counterproductive.

Change does not happen from within the safe community of your supporters. Change happens when others join in and opponents finally meet you in the middle ground to move forward together. We have to find ways to bring others in. We have to find others who see the need for change.

Stay the course and when you are in your darkest times seek to find others to join you and help you sustain the change.

Bet on Change #wolweek

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Learning, Working out loud

Change is work. It is not a game of trumps played with opinions. If there’s debate, even more reason to seek to make change and see what happens.

Those trying to stop your change will tell you the job has been done, can’t be done & isn’t worth doing. They can’t be all right, so maybe they are all wrong. You won’t know the answer if you don’t try to make change happen.

People will demand clarity. Others will say you need to be less prescriptive. People will say you are too narrow and too broad. People will say you need to name your change. Others will call your change a fad or dismiss it as mere marketing. The diversity of human opinions challenges all change.

Change agents need to recognise these views for what they are, opinions. Those opinions need to sit alongside your opinion that change is required. Many of these opinion leaders will want to engage you in a long debate at to the absence of merits of your plans. Sadly debates based on opinions are rarely productive.

Remember momentum is your friend in creating change. Action solves the issues of debates. The obstacles are the work and will be overcome as you adapt and experiment forward. Clarity can be refined as you work forward. Value will either be proved or fail. Action helps you recruit more change agents.

For all the people saying there was no need for International Working Out Loud week, there was a far larger group engaging for the first time and learning how to make it valuable. For all the debate about different views of the future of learning and development last week, there was still a need for people to back their views on how to make learning more effective and engaging which won’t happen on a blog or social stream.

Debates are fine. You can learn in a debate when they compare facts and experiences. When debates are just an exchange of opinions, it is far better to move forward, test your opinion and help everyone learn through action.

The Normative Billiards called Culture

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Roll one billiard ball at another across a smooth carpet and they will collide. The outcome will be determined by Newtonian laws of motion. As a result, billiards is a game of control.

Ask a person to walk towards another across a carpet and no matter how narrow the passage they will make efforts to pass each other, wordlessly navigating the changes in course to prevent collision through glances and body language. Human interaction is a game of influence, not control.

The difference in those two scenarios is that billiard balls operate in the grip of immutable physical laws. Human being operate in line with dynamic social norms. One simple norm is that you don’t collide with another if you can avoid it. 

Whenever someone offers you recommendations based on immutable human behaviour make the social norms explicit and consider how they might interplay. When you need to change behaviour remember that changing the carefully regimented process might be less important than changing the social norms. Any organisation will be composed of the interplay of many social norms, some explicit but many deeply implicit. 

Awareness of norms will help your effectiveness in change. We are human. We are not billiard balls. 

The Diversity of the Change Agent

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Change agents aren’t all alike. Organisations that fail to embrace the diversity of the change agent fail at change.

Change agents are a diverse bunch. 

Organisations tend to lump them together in an ‘outsider’ bucket. When change agents don’t think & act in the way of the majority then it is assumed their different way is shared. Yet change agents often find collaboration challenging when they don’t understand that a common desire for change can be driven from diverse motives and methods. 

Adam Morgan of eatbigfish describes 10 challenger narratives in The Challenger Almanac.  These narratives that give a sense of the diversity of motivations and approaches to change: 

  • People’s Champion – standing up for the exploited or overlooked
  • Missionary – ethical or ideological advocate 
  • Democratiser – challenging elitism and exclusivity 
  • Irreverent Maverick – the provocateur 
  • Enlightened Zagger – the deliberate contrarian 
  • Real & Human – advocating for the human 
  • The Visionary – transcending current ideas 
  • The Next Generation – improving fitness to the future
  • The Game Changer – rewriting the rules
  • The Feisty Underdog – battling the winners 

Few change agents fit cleanly in one narrative. Often many narratives will be woven into a unique personal approach. There are plenty of opportunities for conflict as to the objectives and methods in the diversity of narratives. 

Change agents and the organisations that seek to foster their work need to concentrate on building connection as to what is in common. Ideological debates and fractious debates as to approach can illuminate the diverse paths but they tend to delay action. 

Change agents need to embrace the action of others, learn from diverse perspectives and leverage alignment of narratives. Broadening the toolkit of change benefits both the change agents and their organisations.