Tag: leadership

Assigned. Chosen. Earned. Part 2 – 2 Stories and a Challenge

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

We shape our impact with our choices of how we respond to our circumstances and the influence we earn in our networks.  Our jobs and the hierarchy do not determine our ability to influence.

That concise message was prompted by The Australian Leadership Paradox, a book on improving leadership in Australia by tackling issues like roles and authority. Geoff Aigner, one of the co-authors, asked me for stories that brought a richer context to my last post. Here are two examples:

A Job. Limited Power.

At the launch of the Academy in NAB, I was asked to become the inaugural Dean of Customer Experience.  The job was tasked with building customer experience capability enterprise wide across a large financial services group.  As a direct report of the Australian CEO, the job was a high profile one in an important initiative.  

However, that description was where the hierarchical power stopped.  The role had no direct reports.  Everyone in learning reported to other leaders in a central learning function or across the many businesses.  There was no reporting on how much learning work was actually going on. The activity and budgets sat in these widely distributed teams. Everyone already had too much work. The Academy was being created because there was a need for better collaboration across businesses on learning. Nobody had seen a Dean before and there was no idea yet what they did.

I had to choose the role that I would play. I could have seen the situation as impossible and quickly failed. I could have chosen to influence the CEO and leverage his power to direct action. However, the giddy sensation of power would be temporary and the businesses would have quickly locked me out. The CEO would have rightly questioned the value I added. My authority would erode if it did not come from my relationships.

I chose instead to share my passion for learning, to advocate for the Academy and to help facilitate a community of the learning professionals across the organisation.  I chose to engage the business by demonstrating new ways for learning to lead change, to solve problems and to demonstrate the value of collaboration. Over time, my authority and my influence increased because of the impact the Academy team delivered.  People began to ask the Deans and the Academy to help solve tricky issues well beyond learning. That influence continued when I left the job.  After all, nobody had told me what role to play, so nobody could tell me to stop just because a job went away.

Why Are You Doing This Again?

The experience of being Dean led to my role in helping sponsor and grow NAB’s Yammer community.  When Yammer began at NAB, it was unofficial with no budget or sponsorship.  There was no place for it in the hierarchy. For the Yammer community to grow, it needed many leaders to choose play the roles of sponsors, advocates and community leaders, because these roles were not in anyone’s job description.  

Over and over again, as we did this, we were each asked a variant of the question:

Why are you doing this again?

Our answer was simple.  The roles were needed and the community added great value to NAB.  It was not our job but somebody had to do it.  We could play the roles and so we chose to do so.

For five years, I worked with other leaders in that Yammer community.  Everyone’s time was volunteered above delivery of the expectations their day jobs which ranged from Graduate to Executive General Manager. We did what was required to build a successful and vibrant community. The roles we played grew the benefits for NAB and the engagement of the community until we ultimately prepared a business case for sponsorship and formal adoption by the company.  

In this process, each of those leaders built their unique position of authority in the community. Many of the leaders got new roles as a result of demonstrating their ability to play different roles and their growing authority. In addition, the community was stronger because its leadership came from within.

Over to you: A challenge – your new role

  1. What problem or opportunity can you see that doesn’t fit in somebody’s job?
  2. What role could you play to draw attention to or solve for that problem or opportunity?
  3. Whose authority & support do you need to make the change happen?

Fair Weather Talent

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

When times are tough is when talent matters most.

Many organisations invest in talent. They understand the importance of investment in and engagement of great people to the success of a business.

Looking after people is easy when times are good. However, we all know the true test of character is what happens when times are tough, there is a crisis, or a decision needs to be made that impacts one’s own interests. These are often the moments when you need your talent most engaged to help lead change.

The impression you create for the talented people in your business will depend on your behaviour in these times of adversity. They will judge your commitment to people and your character on how you make decisions in these moments.

Your decisions probably won’t be the same. Nobody should expect consistency of decisions when things change. However, it is important to be consistent with the approaches and the values of the good times, no matter how hard it is.

If you can remain consistent in your approaches and values, then your people will reward your commitment to talent with greater engagement. Be a fair weather manager of talent and your people will remember.

On Sound Bites

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Complexity is increasing. People demand simpler messages. How can leaders deliver?

Jacob Burckhardt, a Swiss historian of the 19th century, described the paradox that as material conditions improve, complexity increases, but so does that demand for simplicity. Increasing complexity creates a growing social appeal of simple messages and solutions.  Society is exposed to the risk of increasing appeal in the messages of demagogues who promise simplicity often at the cost of tyranny, ‘terrible simplifiers’. We need only look to the ideologies of last century or our current politics and media to see the pull of overly simple messages.

Modern leaders face this challenge daily. Easy jobs get done. The challenges leaders face are complex, networked and moving rapidly. All stakeholders want simple easy solutions. Deliver a sound bite and the leader’s work is done.

We should all communicate as simply and concisely as possible. We also know overly simple messages can mislead, be disengaging or be counterproductive. When simplicity does not deliver solutions or when the stakeholders craves a simplicity that is not yet possible, how does a leader progress?

Converse, Don’t Communicate: Politicians speak in sound bites to fit a traditional media broadcast mentality. Leaders can use a range of tools to foster a richer and ongoing conversation. Encourage questions, debate and engagement. Conversations cover complexity more efficiently than any prepared speech.

Talk Purpose, Not Plan: A purpose can and should be simpler than a plan of action. A key role of a leader is to connect stakeholders in a common & worthwhile purpose. People united in purpose are more engaged and more collaborative. Purpose helps people work through complexity. Use your leadership communication to engage people in a simple common purpose.  Better to let the group build a plan together and address the many complexities when united around a simple purpose.

Use Immersion, Not Information: Complex scenarios can be hard to express and share.  Resist the temptation to cut the problem down to a soundbite of fact or a single measure to improve. Show people the situation and let them immerse themselves in the experience. The action is simple but people’s takeaways will be far more complex.

Offer Confidence, Not Certainty: Confidence and certainty are often confused. Leaders can be confident in the capabilities of a group, but uncertain as to the path or the outcome. Offering certainty where it cannot exist is a path of disappointment and deceit. If you cannot express confidence, then the first task is to do what is necessary to do so.

Be Credible, Not Consistent: Complex systems change. Solutions and conversations need to iterate. Conversations should involve learning. Holding to a consistent position in the light of changing facts is likely to be inflexible at best and damaging to credibility at worst. Building trust by building your credibility & capability as a leader is more important than holding to a consistent position for the sake of simplicity. Bear in mind that if you have engaged others in conversation, they will understand the rationale for the change in position for they will have experienced the debate.

We can all communicate more simply. We should. However, we must not trade simplicity for effectiveness as leaders. Even these simple approaches are likely to fail in some circumstances. Leaders must continue the challenge of finding simple ways to engage people in solving the most complex problems.

Ozymandias – Making Change Endure

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

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Change in large organisations is frustrating. Leaps forward are followed by periods when change is either gradually or dramatically undone. Here’s how to ensure you are making progress & stay sane.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

Ozymandias – Percy Bysse Shelley

A Story of Change Unwound

I know the feeling. No outcomes of change projects endure. The world moves too fast.  There’s too much uncertainty. Iteration is required. Change overtakes change. Always.

Launch a product and it will be shuttered sooner or later. Put in a new process, policy or system and the need for further changes begins to rise. Change behaviours or culture and more change will be required.

I remember earlier in my career taking on a role with an agenda and  personal purpose to create a specific set of changes in that organisation. For the first 18 months, great progress was made. Then things changed. I watched as most of the change we had created was unwound. Why it unwound matters little. It was eroded piece by piece.

The Slinky of Change

Not surprisingly, I was disappointed. It seemed so much progress had been lost. It had felt like we were close to the end. I did not relish starting again. 

Change takes determination and commitment. I started pushing again for the needed changes. To my surprise, I discovered what I had seen as a rollback was actually a spiral. We rolled back, around and up. The new efforts to drive change began further back than we achieved.  However we had made progress.  We began again higher up as if we had ascended a spiral, a slinky of change.  

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Why were we higher? The stakeholders had now experienced the first change.  Some things worked. Somethings didn’t. We all learned from the experience. New language and experiences had been created that were the basis for the next effort.  Moving forward again built on the experience of the first change.  We did better this time.  We moved a little further forward. We lost a little less but we still circled up the slinky again.

From that moment on my expectations of change progress changed. A few times you will have the joy of a straight line. Most of the time you are circling up a slinky. Iteration is part of the process for sustainable change.

Keeping on the tension

So how do you maintain your sanity and keep spiralling up a slinky? Make sure you are stretching the slinky with tension.

Keep tension with purpose: Give up your determination to drive change and you are going to go round and round on the spot.  Keep your purpose clear and use that to push on with change. The effort ensures you go higher and forward.

Keep tension with new conversations: The signal you have gone higher is that you are having new conversations and new ideas are in play. Complacency and been here before are the enemies. When you are pushing into new issues and better ideas of progress, then learning is taking place. The tension of that learning is the platform for your next progress.  If this tension is not in your conversations, then you need to bring it.

Keep tension with speed: The faster you go around the cycle the higher you will rise. Accept some iteration.  Learning is part of the process and you don’t know all the answers.  Accelerating the cycle, speeds your learning and that of your stakeholders.

Keep tension by stretching for more: Continuous improvement has to be the goal.  There is no summit.  When you get close to your goal, stretch it further forward again. Your stakeholders will now be more ready to go further. If you started trying for customer focus, make your next play for customer experience management, then holistic design thinking, then…learn and move up. You might be surprised how far this leads in time.

Keep tension by sharing work and lessons: The more people are paying attention as the change and rollback happens, the more learning occurs. If sharing creates a little conflict or discussion it helps. You will get attention. The more people watching the bigger the potential movement for the next change. Work out loud and spread any new ideas and lessons as widely as possible.  You are seeding the tension that will help create the next lift.

If you are lucky enough to have a straight line of continuous progress to your goal that is great.  If you despair at the process of rollback and iteration, look at it differently. The only enduring changes are the ideas and human potential created by the change process. Every thing else is going to be thrown away someday anyway.

Mahna Mahna

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

I love the Muppets.  As someone who has grown up with Jim Henson’s creations, from Sesame Street to today, I have seen this song performed many times. Every time it gets stuck in my head. Mahna Mahna has its own place in pop culture. Slate Magazine even profiled its origins, history and is influence.

The lesson…

The magic of the Muppets is the ability to capture moments of human nature and make us laugh.

There is a lesson in this little performance for any leader or person pushing change. When Mahna Mahna collaborates, others follow along.  When Mahna Mahna becomes absorbed in his own scat singing, he gradually loses the interest of his followers. The Snowths stop singing and wait for him to finish. When he returns to the collaboration, they engage again.

We have all seen leaders pushing change who get overly excited by their message. They end up talking to themselves about change.  

Never forget the goal is to take others along. This can require frustratingly small steps of collaboration and a focus on engagement, so that others don’t get lost or you don’t appear self absorbed.

And like Mahna Mahna, never give up and keep having fun!

Opposition is engagement

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

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Many years ago I pitched an initiative to a senior executive group. The presentation went without a hitch. There were no hard questions and no push back. I walked out of the meeting pleased until a wise mentor of mine asked a devastating question:

What level of engagement was there in the room?

My mentor went on to point out that without pushback it is unlikely anyone in the room actually turned much of their mind to my initiative. The lack of pushback was bad news because it meant that support would fade quickly and little follow through would occur. Sadly, he proved right.

That day I learned a lesson to bring on questions, debate and conflict to generate engagement. No matter how compelling your case for change, you need debate to get people to consider the options, risks and issues. Without debate, people don’t agree. They just acquiesce.

Debate, questions and conflict are an essential part of how knowledge gets attention, currency and is shared in organisations. You can’t advance a meaningful agenda without them.

If it feels like you lack opposition, then there’s a good chance you are inadvertently playing to the safe ground. Platitudes might win unthinking support. That might work for a while, but there’s a risk you will lose your support when real challenges arise.

If others aren’t bringing debate, then start the debate yourself. Raise the hard questions and doubts. Provoke your likely opponents. A real discussion upfront is always better. Knowing where you stand as a change agent is critical.  It will give you valuable information on what to do next to move forward.

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.

Too United We Fall

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Uniting the like-minded agents of change is a common first step in creating change. Too much unity of the like-minded is also a path to failure.

Undoubtedly change agents benefit from connection, collaboration and collective force. The life of a change agent can be a lonely one. Having others to share the load matters.

Building an overly united collective of people equally oriented to change has its dangers for the success of any change:

– Shared Context: People embrace ideas when they share sufficient context to understand them. Uniting a group of change agents can rapidly accelerate the sharing of knowledge within the group. Soon that group will have lost some shared context with those that need to embrace change.
– Us & Them: Silos are inevitable in any attempt to draw a ring around a group united in purpose. Without great care, unity will also come at a cost of factionalism as people seek out those who hold views of those closer to their own. All of this connection is in the opposite direction to the external engagement that drives change.
– Grand Plans: United we dream. We plan lots of steps without engaging those who must join us in the changes. United we dream. Dreams inspire, but don’t deliver.
– Power of Conflict: Interaction, debate and conflict helps keeps ideas evolving and relevant. Flaws appear when ideas are challenged and when ideas are tested by diverse views. Unity will reduce conflict. No change prospers by talking only to the converted.
– Compromise: Surrounded by those equally convinced, compromise can feel weak. Standing ground against the system looks like an option and is commonly raised. This gesture of pulling rank on the system may come with a giddy sense of opportunity but is actually a failure, alienating others and preventing further progress to change. Opting back-in later is always challenging.

So how do you get the benefits of greater connection without the risks?

– Share your story: Work out loud. Keep putting ideas out and discussing them widely
– Keep the doors open: Constantly engage with new people, both like-minded, neutral and opponents. Any time your ideas are not being disturbed once a day you are in an echo chamber.
– Favour unity of purpose & action over dogma: People only need to be agreed enough on the direction to work together. The change agents don’t need to agree each last point of implementation yet. Details will come in time.