Infographic of my CMI Keynote presentation on 11 November 2015
Tag: wol
What goes wrong with #wol: #wolweek
A short handy guide to (almost) everything that can go wrong when working out loud
People ignore you: the most common experience. You feel like a madman shouting in a busy street. Actually everyone else is just so busy they don’t notice. Keep going. Also try working out loud in smaller, more connected communities.
People don’t get it: old habits die hard. Another person’s lack of understanding is no barrier to you. Keep practising and keep explaining. They will see the benefits eventually.
People think you are bragging: make sure you are sharing work that is still in progress and sharing the good and bad. Otherwise keep going.
People think you are too noisy: Noise is personal. Help those people to see how they can manage noise. Be reasonable with your own sharing.
People think you are indiscreet: often a perception that passes as people come to know you better. Build relationships. Making sure you are sharing about work helps. Keep going.
People think you are pushy: separate perceptions and reality. You can’t force others to work out loud with you. You can’t expect others to help you if you don’t help in reply.
People think you are selfish: Celebrate others and recognise their help. No work is all about you.
People think you have too much time on your hands: let people know how much you have on. Help them to understand how easy it is to share work when you don’t have to dress it up. Show them how much time you save.
People think you are ignorant or incompetent: they might think that anyway. Better to show them your passion to learn and get help.
People think you are different, divergent, a trouble maker or a rebel: you are. Deal with it.
People tell you that you shouldn’t need to work out loud because of the process, the training, the manual, the system or other support: trust your judgement. Sometimes this helps you find the answer you need.
People think you are lazy: just keep showing the work you are doing.
People tell you they are already doing it: people may well be sharing their work in their own way. Help others to understand your practice. Let them work their own way.
People tell you it is a waste of time: discuss the benefits you get. However don’t feel the need to convert everyone. Know the value to you.
People ask ‘but what’s in it for me?’: explain the benefits.
People tell you that you are not doing it right: Ignore the experts.
People tell you that you aren’t expert enough: Ignore the experts. You work out loud to learn.
Corporate affairs, legal or HR get upset: hmm, hopefully you’ve followed policy to the extent that is possible. Make sure you are clear on the reasons why you are working out loud.
You violate national security laws, anti-competitive protection, intellectual property, espionage laws, conflict of interests or otherwise commit a crime: don’t do this again. Probably wise that you paid attention in your compliance training.
You make a mistake: it happens. Be honest. Move on.
You misspell a word, have an autocorrect issue, bad grammar, bad audio or video or people can’t otherwise understand you: see You make a mistake.
You embarrass someone else: some times working out loud draws in other private people. Take care of their feelings and check first.
Your boss tells you to stop: are they right? If yes, stop. If no, continue in a different way. If your boss is really wrong, do you need another job?
Your family think you spend too much time doing it: probably worth listening to them. Working out loud is about work. You don’t want work intruding everywhere.
All the issues are survivable. Keep going
Keep learning.
If you have more suggestions, please add them in the comments.
Bet on Change #wolweek
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 What, Where and Why of Working Out Loud
Day 5: Celebrate Out Loud #wolweek
Make the work of others public so that we can celebrate it.
If you take only one thing from #wolweek it should be that public praise has value. You can’t celebrate the work of others enough when that work is hidden and you are silent.
None of us make enough effort to celebrate the great work going on around us. We become used to the support, the services and the products that let us do our work.
Who makes the great coffee you drink in the morning? Do they know how much you appreciate their work? What about the security guard who knows your name and greets you with a smile?
Who are your biggest supporters at work? Are they experiencing the same silence? Are they left wondering if they are making a difference?
Who in your life enables you to work? Do you publicly recognise their contributions.
Take a minute today and everyday to thank and celebrate those who help you do the work you do.
Day 4: The vulnerability of heroes #wol #wolweek
Yesterday, while working out loud in a community I shared how hard I found it to blog when I started. I didn’t have confidence in my ideas or my writing style. I assumed nobody was interested in what I had to say. My expertise sat mostly silent.
I also shared that my three habits of working out loud was the discipline to make me write each day. As I sat down to my first coffee, as I do now, I write my post. I publish at the end. That discipline helped me to prepare, to learn and to grow in confidence.
Describing my process was interesting to people. Far more valuable was me describing my doubts and concerns, the issues I faced and how I tackled them. That helped people close the gap between their own experience of doubt and mine. That’s far more likely to foster learning and new action. Melanie Hohertz wrote an amazing insightful & vulnerable new post inspired by that exchange.
On Linkedin, Rohan Light described my sharing of the rather difficult process to my #cmidisrupt talk as a hero’s journey. I hadn’t seen the parallels to Joseph Campbell’s work until he said it. I wasn’t trying to be heroic just sharing that good outcomes come from difficult processes. What this reminds me is that there’s a hero’s journey in all our work as we do battle with the underworld, need the help of others, pass points of no return and eventually reach our destination. Sharing that whole journey with others is what makes a work story engaging, encouraging and useful.
There is always a moment of vulnerability when we share our work. It won’t go away no matter how expert we are. Rather than pretend it is not there, wrap that vulnerability into the sharing. Make your vulnerability transparent and it moves from a hidden weakness to authenticity and a strength of your work.
#Wolweek Day 3 – Open to Contribution of Others
Working out loud works best when your work is open to the contribution of others.
A short daily report, like “Long day. Too many meetings”, is a common starting point for many people’s practice of working out loud. Sharing this invites some sympathy and may draw some questions about what went wrong. However your network is left to do the work to interpret, connect and help. The fact that the day is done means opportunities to improve have been missed.
We encourage people to work out loud on unfinished work. Work that is still ongoing encourages others to help you finish. Advice & other assistance can have an immediate impact.
Bryce Williams mentioned the value of a narration in his definition of working out loud. Narration also makes it easier for others to help by supplying context. I’ve seen people respond to a report like the one above offering meeting productivity tips only to be told ‘I do that. Just a peak day on the project’. A better narration gives better context and lets others know what challenges you face without asking. Guide people to offer the help you need. If all you need is sympathy and connection, then help others understand.
Challenges you face are likely challenges for others. (We all struggle with bad meetings). Even if others can’t help they might learn from the answers you get. While sharing a short report on the day feels safer, it is much less valuable than offering a chance to contribute.
Make the way other can help and learn from you explicit in your working out loud. It is a small contribution you can make to your network and will bring about a step change in your experience. Work out loud to be open to the contributions of others.
Day 2 Silent expertise to Working out loud
The value of working out loud is closing the gap between our expertise and others. Working out loud makes sharing easier by making it grounded in reality and by making it more common.
Yesterday I had a phone call from a former colleague looking for an expert to help with a specific work challenge. After a discussion about the challenge and who might help, we agreed my colleague actually had the skills to do the work and would learn more by trying. That’s the benefit of one small moment of surfacing and sharing a work problem. Some times we discover we have the answer. We just can’t see it.
When we work silently we lose touch with the relevance of our work to others. We lose touch with the external benchmarks of how our skills are growing. Working in silence, we have only our thoughts for company. They are rarely useful companions. We don’t know what we don’t know. We aren’t always kind to ourselves.
Accumulation of silence also becomes a big barrier to starting to talk. We think some point needs to be spectacular to justify breaking the quiet. I know many fabulous experts who can talk passionately about their work one-to-one. Too many of them would never stand on a stage or otherwise step up to discuss their work because they think it is not special enough.
When you work out loud you increase the feedback on what you know and get clues as to what you don’t know. When you work out loud you prevent the rising expectations that come from silence. Small continuous acts of sharing connect, build trust and create shared experience of work. That makes all future sharing easier.
Reduce the silence a little. Share some work out loud.
Michelle Ockers has done great work at CCA Amatil using the Value Maturity model to support communities of practice and to encourage logistics teams to work out loud.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Lessons from Presenting
Last week I had a long and challenging presentation to give. Here’s some lessons that I take away from that experience:
Blogging helped: all the ideas in my keynote had been explored out loud before on this blog. It is so much easier to put together a big presentation when you have ideas that you have worked up, shared and discussed with others. Where I saw gaps in the presentation, I even blogged them to make sure I had worked out what I wanted to say.
Networks helped: a fortnight out from the talk I lost confidence that what I had to say was worth saying. I asked my Change Agent Worldwide colleagues for advice. As ever they were wonderful encouraging me to speak to my passions, tell stories and be practical.
A Role Models helps:: Looking for a role model to emulate, I studied Nilofer Merchant’s TED talk. At once, I saw a way to connect quickly with the audience and to advance my presentation.
Structure helped:With days to go I had my content, but a mess of a presentation. I went back to first principles and used Barabara Minto’s pyramid principle to rebuild the presentation. I discovered my issue. I had forgotten to explicitly make & support my main point. It sounds obvious but your point can get lost in all the action & theatrics. Fixing that helped.
Practice helped: All the way along I had been practising and refining the pitch. There was one more glitch. The night before I delivered the talk I felt my stories were like a laundry list and not very practical. As I grappled with this I realised I needed to add a pattern to help the audience follow the stories. I settled on Idea>Story>So What>Extended Story. This pattern forced me to make the ‘so what’ real in another story of the same organisation. That was good discipline and helped the flow.
Preparation Helps:Because of all the changes I need not have time to commit my talk to memory. I created a bullet point list of key points, lines and transitions. This enabled me to iron out kinks and simplify again. I was very nervous when I woke but the preparation gave me confidence it couldn’t be too bad. Thankfully my nerves vanished as I began to speak.
The audience enjoyed the talk. I couldn’t have been more thrilled that the message connected and people had idea to take away and try.