Tag: leadership

Leadership in Transformation

Posted on by simongterry in Change, future of work, Leadership

A common topic of debate in the Responsive Organization movement is whether an organization can become responsive or it must be born that way.

Undoubtedly many of the leading case studies of future of work organizations are organizations created or rebirthed from near death by charismatic founders. Some use this as evidence that the elements of a responsive organization must be present from the beginning. In a previous post, I pointed out that we cannot rely on transparency alone to make change occur for us. The power structures in a traditional organisation will prevent most radical change.

I am unambiguously in the optimist camp. I am not alone and the company in the optimist camp inspires me. I have seen organizations change enough to not recognise their former selves. Change to more responsive ways of working is possible. The question is how.

What gets in the way

Chris Argyris’ classic article Teaching Smart People to Learn is a rich source of observations of what gets in the way of a Responsive Organization transformation.  In particular, Argyris notes that:

… There seems to be a universal human tendency to design one’s actions consistently according to four basic values:

1. To remain in unilateral control;

2. To maximize “winning” and minimize “losing”;

3. To suppress negative feelings; and

4. To be as “rational” as possible—by which people mean defining clear objectives and evaluating their behavior in terms of whether or not they have achieved them.

The purpose of all these values is to avoid embarrassment or threat, feeling vulnerable or incompetent. In this respect, the master program that most people use is profoundly defensive. Defensive reasoning encourages individuals to keep private the premises, inferences, and conclusions that shape their behavior and to avoid testing them in a truly independent, objective fashion.

These hidden values in most organisation get in the way of the transparency-led transformation that many hope to see. The Responsive Organization poses a threat to control, a threat of losing and negative feelings. Importantly the delegation of authority in a Responsive Organization may cause people anxiety as to objectives and rationale for action.

The role of leadership is to act as a counterbalance these natural human values and shift the behaviours to that of a Responsive Organization. We need to create rationales for action more powerful than embarrassment. We need to create community to generate trust, support and connection. We need to enable learning through conflict and experimentation. 

Purpose:

Leaders must create a strong rationale for the transformation. In cases of crisis, startup or near death of organizations, this rationale can often be imposed by a charismatic individual. The external circumstances enable a threat based narrative to bind people together in a defensive rationale for change.

However, most organizations are successful to their own terms. As Argyris notes, we want to feel successful even if our results don’t pass external muster.  

Leaders need to leverage two elements to create a strong rationale for change in this context:  

  • The Purpose of the organization: a purpose is the ultimate rationale for why people come together in an endeavour. It defines the common impact the group of people wish to have on the world.  As a higher agenda, it is the perfect rationale for change for even the most successful organisations.  Purpose is a mastery quest. Very few organizations have the capability to completely fulfil their purpose. They can however strive to better realise it.
  • External orientation: No closed system will find a rationale for change. External orientation is where organizations find the challenges and opportunities that define the purpose into specific improvement opportunities. Leaders need to relentlessly focus the organization on its customers and community to see transparently the challenges and opportunities that exist for change. Well defined external impacts in this community will be what can drive the autonomy of teams in the organization.  Using customer and community data in line with Purpose, also enables change agents to overcome embarrassment-based resistance in the organization.

Community:

Individuals will need support to take on the risks of a Responsive Organization. The role of leaders is to create the sense of community that will support an individual through that change. At the heart of that community will be engagement with others and a growing sense of mutual trust.  Leaders set the tone for any community. They must also work hard to reinforce these key community behaviours

  • Engagement: Engagement begins with transparency and connection. I cannot truly care about the others in my community until I know who they are and understand their purposes, concerns and circumstances. Leaders need to create the conditions to enable people to be more social, to connect, to solve and to share their work challenges together.
  • Trust: Engagement will build trust as it builds understanding. Transparency will reinforce trust. However, leaders need to take on the role of fostering responsibility and accountability as engines of growing trust in the organization.  When people see that individuals and teams are accountable for driving change then they will have greater trust in the change agenda.

Learning:

This post is deliberately not titled like a listicle e.g. ’The 3 or 6 things to transform an organisation’. Even a basic familiarity with change highlights that formulas will work only up to a point. Leadership needs to be adaptive to enable any system to change in a sustainable way.

To be true to their purpose and stakeholders, to leverage the potential of their community, each organization will take an unique path through change.  The role of leaders is facilitate the individual and organizational learning required:

  • Experimentation: creating a culture of rapid iteration to address challenges and opportunities will accelerate the cycle of learning in the organization. Leaders must help this experimentation culture to overcome the resistance identified by Argyris and also to spread and have a wider influence in the organization. Lessons learned must become new truths which will take a sense-making role for leaders in the wider organization and mean leaders must champion new ways of working when they arise, whatever the personal costs.
  • Conflict: The biggest reason that organizational transformations fail is an unwillingness of the leadership of the organisation to allow uncertainty and conflict. Conflict will happen. The uncertainty associated with conflict is inevitable. Efforts to suppress this will either undermine transparency, the rationale for change, engagement or learning. Failure to embrace conflict takes many names: politeness, bureaucracy, politics, corporate speak, history, culture, etc. Failure to embrace conflict is an unwillingness to learn and improve. There will always be resistance when change comes and it must be addressed. Leaders need to create and sustain the right kinds of constructive conflict – driven by purpose, based in facts from an external orientation & experimentation, mediated through an engaged community. 

Change is Coming. Lead.

I have seen the potential of purpose, external orientation, engagement, trust experimentation and conflict to drive change. Supported by leadership these are the elements of each organization’s transformation. These elements are critical to a Responsive Organization.

Throughout this post I have referred to leaders and leadership. This need not be hierarchical leadership. Clearly it helps if leadership and power are aligned in an organization in reinforcing the need for change. However, the changes described above are not capable of being implemented by top-down edicts. These changes must come as individuals and groups discover their power and are influenced as a result, This kind of leadership relies on influence and can begin bottom up or even from the middle management so often scorned in organizations.

Change is possible. Change is coming. Smart people can learn. Your people and your organisation can better realise their potential and their purpose. A Responsive Organization transformation will occur if you are prepared to lead the change.

Lead.

Transparency is a Disinfectant

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

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‘Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants’ Louis Brandeis

Transparency is a disinfectant. Openness highlights the need for change. Just as hygiene enables but does not deliver good health, transparency alone will not change the behaviours in an organisation. 

From Transparency to Transformation

Many people hoped the transparency of social business would transform organisations. We are now in an era when an organisation is more transparent internally and externally than ever. Networks & conversations reach across organisational boundaries. Opportunities exist to connect, to share information about opportunities and issues and solve problems together.

Many hoped that with this new transparency would mean organisations followed a path that looked something like this:

Transparency > Greater awareness of issues> Experiments towards a Solution > Autonomous leadership

In this model, increasing the transparency and connection across the organisation highlights the problems. The visibility of problems enables individuals to experiment with new models to address the issues. Those experiments foster the evidence and the leadership to complete the transformation. 

This model has the appeal that people need do little. Simply add technology to make the organisations more transparent and change begins. However we have learned that organisations are communities of humans and that greater transparency is a positive, but it not enough to catalyse transformation. There are real human forces like power holding us back from this change.

Transparency is a Prerequisite not a Solution 

Speak to any change agent and you will hear a common refrain: ‘My organisation can see the problem but it still won’t do anything’. 

Transparency is essential to highlight problems & opportunities. Transparency in networks is good at finding new issues that have been hidden by historical ways of seeing things. Customers and community can raise their issues directly, often for the first time. Employees can share frustrations.  People can use the new transparent organisation to find those with the ability to make a difference to the issue. What transparency doesn’t do is guarantee that person does anything.

Brandeis is right that transparency is a wonderful disinfectant. Transparency also changes behaviours. When people are aware that their actions are transparent they are more likely to consider others and feel the accountability of the community. The rarity of bad behaviour in enterprise social networks is a case in point.

However, more likely does not mean a guarantee. Transparency will not overcome the wilfully blind leader, the resort to arguments, justifications and excuses or the use of power to enforce an exception. Each of these may be seen by all but they also might be accepted in the culture of the organisation.  When organisations have strong cultural or power forces that resist the issues, people may see something but still refuse to acknowledge, to discuss or act on it. 

Transformation takes Transparency, Accountability and Leadership

Organisations need transparency. Effective organisations thrive on it and particularly on the most difficult forms of opening their organisation up to external parties like partners, customers and the community. These organisations make accountability to respond to what flows from transparency part of their leadership conversation.

The sunshine of transparency helps create safer and more human organisations. Accountability and leadership leverage that transparency to complete the transformation.

A future post will describe the characteristics of an organisation’s leadership conversation that leverage transparency to foster transformation of organisations.

Give Purpose, Autonomy & Mastery, Not Direction

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

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Last night I came across a reference to A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard, which was once an influential essay describing a model of personal leadership. The essay reflects its origins at the turn of the 19th century, particularly in its description of manager & employee relations. However, a determined & talented employee who displays personal leadership and asks no questions is the goal for many organisations.

The essay contrasts between Rowan’s personal leadership & responses of other hypothetical examples. In describing these examples there is one difference that Elbert Hubbard missed. This missed difference highlights why so many employees might still disappoint when assigned tasks. The difference is the leadership involved in assigning the task.

President McKinley’s request is not the assignment of a mere task. His actions are far more powerful as acts of a leader than Hubbard’s own examples. McKinley allows Rowan to complete the task with purpose, autonomy and mastery:

  • McKinley assigns Rowan a whole & heroic task to deliver a message to an uncontactable General in unknown terrain. This is done where the purpose of this task is extremely clear to all involved – his country needs his unique talents to achieve an important goal in a difficult war.
  • Rowan is given autonomy. There is no direction on how to achieve the task, because he knows he is best placed to achieve it. There is no request for progress updates and no expectation that Rowan do more than achieve it. Once Rowan accepts the message, the outcome it is his to achieve (or to fail). 
  • Mastery is inherent in the selection of Rowan. He knows he has been chosen for his talents, his ability to improvise, to perserve and to improve to achieve a purpose beyond the capabilities of others. Rowan asks no questions because he knows it is his mastery that the others need.

Consider in contrast, Elbert Hubbard’s example of asking a clerk to write a memorandum on the life of Correggio. The task is arbitrary and hence purposeless. The only reason it is being done is that the employer asked for it. The lack of purpose also limits the autonomy. The memorandum fits in some plan not shared with the employee, rightly creating an expectation that further instruction or steps will be forthcoming. Unless the clerk is a scholar of Italian Renaissance painters, of writing or of biography, the memorandum is unlikely to match some arena of personal mastery.

Leadership in every role is a key refrain in the future of work. The world cries out for someone who can ‘get a message to Garcia’. More importantly, the world cries out for leaders who knows how to ask in ways that allow purpose, autonomy and mastery.

Episode 6: Executive Engagement in Enterprise Social Networks / Work out Loud Week with Simon Terry | The Yaminade

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, future of work, Leadership

Paul Woods and I discuss strategic value, leadership, authority, executive engagement and working out loud on the Yaminade podcast.

Episode 6: Executive Engagement in Enterprise Social Networks / Work out Loud Week with Simon Terry | The Yaminade

Dear CEO: This Enterprise Social Network Doesn’t Work For You

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Strategy, Working out loud

Dear CEO

Re: This Enterprise Social Network Doesn’t Work For You

The purpose of this note is to clarify our most recent discussion in the executive leadership team about our enterprise social network. Thanks to your help we have now clarified that the enterprise social network is the last thing we need.

However our discussion on executive engagement in the network was again challenging. Initially there was a great deal of division in the executive leadership team as to how executives should use the network and their willingness to be involved. We did not get to explore your perspective on the role of executives in using our network when you left the room for another commitment declaring ‘this enterprise social network thing doesn’t work for me’.

We must admit we were initially disappointed by the comment. However, the remaining members of the executive team spent some time considering your insightful remark. We set out below the outcomes of that discussion:

Employee Engagement will deliver our Strategy

We realised that employee engagement, leveraging new ways of working in every role and discretionary effort to achieve our strategy is what will deliver better results. We believe that building a community in our enterprise social network will be another way for our employees to connect, to share, to solve problems and to innovate. The critical question we should consider is ‘Does this new approach to work deliver value for employees?’. The views of executives are less important than the value created for this community of value creators. All the evidence to date is that the network does work for our employees. Employees are more engaged and working more effectively.

This helped us understand that this enterprise social network doesn’t work for you but it works for our employees.

Leadership Helps Create Employee Engagement

We realised that employees need help to make sense of how to use the network, need help to solve problems and make change occur. That means employees need the support of leadership in networks. Importantly, that leadership does not have to come from the most senior executives. Leadership is a role not a job. We had hoped our most senior executives would play that role to ensure that the activity in the network aligned to strategy and best realised the potential of our people. However, we are already seeing new leaders rise up to fill the gap. The senior leaders who are involved can do more to foster this.

This enterprise social network doesn’t work for you. A strong community works for leaders who will help it achieve its potential and the community will surface new leaders to help shape and foster engagement.

Attitude & Capability are a Question of Leadership

We realised that much of the discussion in the room about lack of time, doubts about effectiveness of managing in networks or lack of skill were problems of attitude or of capability. These issues can be solved because they are the kind of challenges our executive leaders solve every day in other domains when required. People learn new skills, they work in new ways to fulfil the strategy and we ask people to be more efficient and better prioritise their time to do what matters. We ask exactly the same from our employees when we want them to achieve more. We don’t accept their refusal to change.

Towards the end of that discussion an interesting question was asked ‘If engaging in the community that creates value in our organisation doesn’t work for you, why are you a leader here?’. We wanted to share this question with you. 

Conclusion: Our Enterprise Social Network Doesn’t Work For You

We didn’t see at first. We now have come to agree with you that this enterprise social network won’t work for you. 

As a result, we have started a thread in the network asking our employees to contribute to the choice of who should takeover as CEO. That conversation is currently favouring the CMO. The community value her authenticity, respect her authority and trust her leadership. We aren’t surprised that the board seems to agree. Sorry leadership of this organisation’s community did not work out for you. We wish you the best in your future endeavours. You may find some useful suggestions as to what to you can do next in the thread that has started with advice on that topic.

Thanks for contributing so much to our efforts to engage the community, realise our strategy and improve performance.

Engage an executive in your enterprise social network. A great chance for executives to get involved is International Working Out Loud Week from 17-24 November 2014. Help an executive to see the leadership potential of working out loud. Find out more at wolweek.com

The Cultural Renaissance

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

The way people behave matters. We are experiencing a renaissance in focus on culture in our organizations. After emphasising process and systems, we are recognising the value of culture for collaboration, innovation, agility and the ability to realise the potential of an organisation. However culture is a challenging realm for managers more used to tangible systems to change.

Culture is Behaviour

‘Culture is how people behave’ – Mary Barra

Many organisations don’t understand culture. They treat it as an abstraction or a communication issue. The mindset believes that posters, communications and effective change management workshops can drive culture change. If everyone is clear on our values then the culture will change.

Nobody changed a corporate culture with a values statement. Values are subject to conflicts, interpretation and there is a gap to implementation in action.

What Behaviour do you Expect?

‘Culture is what happens when managers are not in the room’

Culture is about behaviours. A culture appears in action, not ideas. That’s why it has a positive or negative impact in a business.

Watching the actions of others is how we determine what actions are required and what is allowed. When a group of people form an expectation that some behaviours will happen and others are prohibited, those expectations shape their actions.

We know words mislead. The surest test of a culture is what behaviours happen when nobody is watching. We know a single action might be a fluke. We want consistency before we change our expectations of how people behave. Leaders need to take particular care to not announce new behaviours that they can’t live consistently.

Changing Culture Takes Actions

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ -Peter Drucker

If your culture change program remains in the realm of ideas and ideals then the culture of the organisation will defeat it. Make sure you consider the following questions:

– what are your actions today before the change?
-are the actions you expect clear practical and realistic for people?
– who will lead the way in consistently & visibly demonstrating the new behaviours?
– which actions will you discourage?
– how will you ensure the changes in action are noticed and shared widely to reinforce the need for change?

Action is the heart of culture. Change the actions to change the behavioural expectation that is culture.

Authorise Yourself

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

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The biggest limit on our actions and behaviours is our perception of what we are authorised to do. We deauthorise ourselves constantly. We wait to be given authority to act that we could just take.

Authority is Often Your Perception

Because we are unsure of what authority others will give us we wait for clarity. In this uncertainty, our perceptions of authority can be wildly off the mark.

In most cases, other people are just hoping we or someone would do something. They are willing to give authority to act to people who can get something done.  Their view of your authority is a perception too. The best way to change it is to act.

Our perceptions of authority also cause us to deauthorise ourselves in other ways:

  • we worry whether we can express our opinions
  • we worry what information we can share
  • we worry whether we can help others
  • we worry whether we can solve problems
  • we even worry what clothes are acceptable to wear

All of this worry is wasted. We either have the authority or it can be quickly clarified. It can be embarrassing to be wrong on one’s authority but a little social embarrassment is part of getting things done.

Authorise Yourself

Recognise authority is a perception. Perceptions change quickly. Authorise yourself. Act.

If there is an issue, you will discover quickly. Mostly others will gravitate to support your authoritative acts.

For the cost of a little occasional embarrassment you can avoid a great deal of worry and stress. More importantly you will get much more done.

As the famous adage goes “Ask for forgiveness. Don’t ask for permission”. 

The Leadership Thought Bubble

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

One action creates more danger for corporations than any other: asking leaders to give an opinion that they are unqualified to give. Sign-off should not be a time for input.

How many times have you seen this scenario? A team works on research and analysis. Using the insight developed, the team builds detailed recommendations and plans to implement them. However, to put those quality plans into action, they need sign-off from a senior leader.

This is the moment that a carefully developed plan meets the danger that is a leadership thought bubble.

All leaders want to make a difference. Most want to show that they add value. Sometimes leaders deliver a critical insight. However, too many will express a half-formed opinion to challenge a team’s thinking or to show that they are making a contribution. This moment is best described as a leadership thought bubble. An idea that popped into their head as they considered the detailed recommendations.

The thought bubble is a test too many projects fail:

  • Many projects take a thought bubble to be an order, changing their approach, surprising the leader and raising doubts as to the work that has been done. The leader rarely means their idea to replace the work done. Often they expect it will be simply considered.  
  • Other projects engage the thought bubble as a debate, pushing the leader to justify their half formed idea. As we know defending your position strengthens it and the more fragile the idea the more fierce the debate. Bad ideas get built upon and become harder for projects to ignore. Suddenly the leader has a point to prove.

Engagement upfront and ongoing in the development of recommendations can mitigate the danger of a late thought bubble. Clarity of when you are seeking approval and when you are seeking input also helps.

The best response to an unwanted thought bubble is to explain how the issue is addressed another way. If the issue can’t be discounted immediately then take the feedback away to consider in light of work done. In many cases, the leader will forget their thought bubble anyway. If it is an ongoing issue, then a more detailed fact based answer can be prepared at a distance. Even better, design an A/B test to put the leaders perspective to the test against the team.

If you have the confidence in your work, stand your ground using facts against leadership thought bubbles. Better yet structure your conversation so you aren’t inviting a thought bubble. Sign-off is not a time for input.

5 Ghosts of Leadership Past

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Halloween is a time to remember those no longer with us and to laugh at those shades who have not left us. In leadership some ghosts of past leadership styles still haunt us.  They are too real and too enduring.

Here are 5 ghosts of past leadership that should be allowed their rest:

1 The General

Military command and control and military hierarchy have inspired much of our thinking in both leadership and management. For some, being a general in command of troops is the model of leadership.

Except the military no longer sees it this way. The military knows good leadership that empowers and enables teams to perform at their peak makes a life or death difference. Their approach has evolved well before business. Military leaders think of empowering agile teams to outpace their opponents in decision making and change to achieve a purpose. Military leaders fight a network with a network. The modern general is far less a commander than our perception of the napoleonic era ghosts of leadership.

2 The Decision Maker

Big leaders making big decisions is the second ghost of leadership past. These ghostly apparitions believe that if the ‘buck stops here’ then it makes you a leader.  

We know hierarchy is usually a terrible way to make a decision.  Decision making by remote hierarchical leaders lacks context, impedes agility and frustrates the engagement necessary to implement decisions. Nobody loves a dictatorship. Organisations need to make decisions in responsive ways and leverage experiments to help them to learn.

3 Egotist

If Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” is the sound track to your leadership, you might be living a ghostly legacy of the days when leadership was about charisma, big profile and a way to express your ego. These ghosts live on with leaders who think that the bigger the ego boost the more influence they have.

Leadership is not about you. Leadership is how we realise the potential of others and how we achieve purposes that benefit others. Check your ego and exorcise that ghost.

4 Know it All

It is said of John Stuart Mill that he was the last person to have been taught everything there was to know in his era. Mill was exceptionally bright, but the pressure of knowing everything led to a nervous breakdown and he has been dead for over 140 years. The legacy of the all-knowing leader lives on as a ghost.

Only leadership ghosts think in our increasingly complex and fast moving age that leaders must have all the answers. Leaders must enable their organisation to know more and use it better. They do not need to be the expert. They need to know how to better leverage expertise and to enable their teams to do the same.

5 The Invisible Leader

If there are oak panelled doors between you and your team, you might as well be a ghost. Nobody is led by pronouncements from the boardroom or one-way communications. Leadership takes relationships and engagement.

These ghostly leaders need to get out and engage with their teams. Turn leadership transactions into relationships and create some real influence and accountability.

Let the Ghosts of Leadership Past Rest

Let the ghosts of leadership past rest.  Like other human interactions leadership is constantly evolving and adapting to suit the challenges of our times.  Leaders need to let go of the old models and experiment with newer and more effective ways of engaging teams, particularly in networks.

Accountability, Rank and Authority

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We assume people who hold rank in a hierarchy are accountable. Rank is rarely the measure of accountability. Accountability in networks is more likely to be found with social constructed authority.

Accountability in hierarchy can be attenuated by the distance of people in positions of power from customers, employees or others stakeholders. Our expectation that the buck stops with those with highest rank increasingly disappoints us. Without trust, those in hierarchical positions can continue to operate and exercise power.

Authority is earned and lost in networks

However, authority is earned in networks. Authority is not given or imposed.  The status of authority as a social construct means accountability to the network is built in.  

Importantly, in a network authority will often attach to the most authoritative figure who is a part of the conversation, whether they seek it or not.  Nilofer Merchant described this phenomenon well recently highlighting that leaders who step up to engage in social conversations will be expected to act. The reach of this expectation will run to their supposed authority, well beyond their power or their rank. In a societal conversation, leaders may be expected to act on their own power and influence their industry or society. By chosing to bring their rank to the conversation, they start with an expectation and an authority. The challenge is what they do next.

An authority who fails to exercise their status will lose it. Any authority that becomes unreliable, malicious or inauthentic will quickly lose their status. Losing the authority that is the underpinning of influence and action, is the swift form of accountability found in network relationships that depend on trust.

As we lose our trust in hierarchies, we will go looking for trusted authorities in networks. Should they fail us, we will change them rapidly.

This post is the second in a five part series on managing accountability in the network era. The posts deal with: