Tag: wolweek

#wolweek Day 5: Networks and Contributions

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

International working out loud week is from 17-24 November

As I stand before a barbecue writing the final post of the week, I am tired. I am tired but exhilarated. Working out loud week has exceeded all expectation. Why? Contributions and networks.

#wolweek succeeds or fails based on the contributions others make. The week is a mere catalyst.  Your action is what matters. The idea of working out loud spreads when people work out loud sharing their contributions in their networks. Others see and get involved. There is no platform to run. There is no centre. There is an idea spreading through networks through the contribution of others.

Working out loud challenges you to understand what contribution your work can make to others. #wol is a way to give to your networks and allow them to give to you too. 

Last night flying home from Sydney I experienced one of those little contributions. I met a former colleague. He told me a few things but most of all he mentioned he missed my leadership contribution. That one little remark helped make a tiring day satisfying.

Today I had a coffee with someone exploring ideas of how they could make a bigger contribution beyond their current role. Naturally, we discussed the how and why of #wolweek. The same themes kept coming to the fore in that chat: just start; be purposeful; enable people to give to others & build networks.

At the heart of that advice was one idea. Success is not about being good or making the right choices. Success is about experimenting to learn faster and learn more. When you see success in that light you see the value of making a contribution in networks. Deep relationships in networks create options. Options have value. Serendipity happens.

#wolweek is a movement to promote working out loud. However, in so doing, it also shines a light on those who are sharing and giving to others. Making a contribution to these people through #wolweek thanks them for their leadership, their efforts and their many gifts. There are so many people to thank this #wolweek. Anyone who has shared the hashtag or discussed the idea deserves my thanks for their contribution to spreading the movement in their networks.

All I can ask is that you consider what contribution you might like to make.  Look at their contributions, share them in your networks and keep spreading the idea of working out loud.

#wolweek may be coming to an end but working out loud is just beginning. Now it is up to your contributions and your networks.

A very partial list of thanks to finish: thanks to Austen Hunter and Jonathan Anthony, the two most enthusiastic co-founders ever. Thanks to Matt Partovi and Stephen Danelutti for bringing the #weworkunbound network along on the journey. Thanks to Bryce Williams for the definition of working out loud and great post this week on the xOL idea. Thanks to John Stepper for generously giving of his heart, knowledge and experience. Thanks to Jane Bozarth for backing us all the way. Thanks to #ESNChat and The Community Roundtable. Thanks to Change Agents Worldwide for being everywhere, networked and always willing to give. Thanks to the thought leaders who lent us their insight, expertise and audiences. Thanks to the leaders in organisations who shared working out loud with their teams. Thanks to the vendors, partners and consultants who took working out loud to the clients. Thanks to the sceptics who kept us honest with challenges and the better informed who corrected the errors. Thanks most of all to you. Without you, this blog is a mere fleeting squawk, because of you it has a chance to make a contribution.

#wolweek Day 4: Weak Network links and serendipitous surprises

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

International Working Out Loud Week is 17-24 November

#wolweek continues to be an amazing learning experience. I am fascinated to see what others choose to share and to learn more about there work. Many of the greatest learnings have been as a result of the #wolweek tag and @wolweek account creating new links to distant people in my network.

Last night I facilitated a #wolcircle using John Stepper’s guide to the process of purposefully working out loud for 12 weeks. The discussion was dominated by revelations of little moments of serendipity. All the people in the circle had experienced positive surprises aligned to their goals. Discussing why, we came to the view that the serendipity was the outcome of:
– being more active and more visible
– being purposeful and generous in our intent; and
– exploring weak links and enabling distant people to better see our work and purposes.

We were all so thrilled with the progress of the #wolcircle process. After 4 weeks we all want to recreate the experience with others. Thanks to John Stepper for the process and Michelle Ockers for the coordination to make it happen. Thanks also to my new #wolcircle collaborators who have moved from weak to strong links in a few weeks: Annie Humphries, Vannessa North and Matt Guyan.

A colleague and I worked out loud today on some big sheets of paper around our workspace. This process of exposing our work enabled a breakthrough. I better understood one of the challenges of our project as it was mapped visually by the colleague doing that work.

I had only heard this work described in technical terms. Honestly, I had not focused on what contributions I could make to a colleague’s technical expertise. Seeing and discussing the work, I realised I had an idea from my prior experience to contribute to a solution. Jointly, we developed an innovative way forward using our expertise combined. Moving from talking about our capability building work to seeing and understanding the work better enabled me to realise the link to prior experience.

They say luck is when opportunity meets readiness. The value of working out loud is it fosters both requirements for luck.

Work out loud. It improves your luck.

For more on serendipity and working out loud, see Harold Jarche on working out loud.

#wolweek Day 3: Generosity and Curiosity

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

International Working Put Loud Week is from 17-24 November 2014.

Generosity and curiosity are values at the heart of working out loud. These are human values we need to foster in the future of work. In times of rapid change and complex social relationships we need generosity and curiosity to build relationships, to prosper and to learn.

I woke this morning to an incredibly generous post by Jonathan Anthony, a reminder of the simple power of the generous acts of acknowledging, recognising and encouraging others. As you can tell from his blog, Jonathan is a curious man who took the chance in our meeting to ask lots of questions, to share lots of ideas and experiences and to deepen an already rich relationship.

Taking a lesson from Jonathan, I endeavoured today to be curious as to the purposes and concerns of the colleagues and stakeholders in my current project. The outcomes were powerful. By asking simple questions I identified issues that concern them that are disrupting our effectiveness as a team. Ask and be surprised what you learn.

Last night I attended a Melbourne Chamber Orchestra board meeting where we discussed philanthropy, an important topic when arts organisations are ever more dependent on private sources of funding. Two things were recommended in that presentation: stand for something and use networks. I tweeted this was great life advice too.

An important conclusion from the philanthropy discussion was that to receive support an organisation must be both generous and curious first. The organisation must show curiousity for the purposes and concerns of its community, it must build strong relationships and a reputation for effectively meeting needs. The organisation receives by giving generously to the community through the organisation’s purpose and to the philanthropists through fulfilling theirs.

Working out loud must leverage generosity and curiousity. These values move people to purpose and away from rampant self-promotion. They move working out loud from me to us. These values are the way working out loud builds trust in work relationships.

Show real interest in another. Go out of your way to help. Seek to understand their concerns and purposes deeply. Invest the time. Give first of yourself.

Enjoy the surprises and the many returns.

#wolweek Day 2: Volunteers

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

International Working Out Loud week is from 17-24 Novemember. To learn more see wolweek.com

I have a Melbourne Chamber Orchestra board meeting tonight so I will close my reflections of my experience day 2 of #wolweek a little early today. I remain blown away by the generosity of those involved in #wolweek.

Volunteers

The future of work demands volunteers. Quality knowledge work, effective leverage of personal relationships and discretionary effort are not things that can be demanded.

Working out loud is a voluntary task. Nobody had to work out loud this week. The vast majority of people won’t. People participate when they can and because they want to be involved. We have had people apologising that they can’t contribute more which speaks to their personal desire much more than our request.

International working out loud week comes together based of the voluntary efforts of people all around the world. There is no coordination and no leverage to get anything done other than a shared sense of purpose. At best there are a few polite invitations and casual conversations around people being involved in some task.  Everything is optional and yet we have people adding to the activities and adventures all the time.

Here’s an example of how we work. The founders were discussing a tweet chat as part of #wolweek. We thought it would be a great way to get everyone in one conversation. We mentioned it to people and kept discussing ways.  I suspect we were waiting for someone to volunteer to do it. As we started to think about logistics, the team who run #ESNChat let us know they are devoting their tweet chat Thursday US time at 2-3pm ET to #wolweek. They are much better at tweet chats than us and have an existing audience interested in the idea.  Perfect solution to the tweet chat dilemma. All it took was a volunteer.

We cannot and we should not make people work out loud. It won’t work and it is counterproductive. Working out loud is part of the process of work growing up. We are no longer children who speak when spoken to. We are adults who share what we want to share of our work, our challenges and our lessons.

What other tasks in your work could you move to a voluntary model?

Give

Volunteers give of their time, their effort and themselves. They do so to help others. 

What are you going to give?

#Wolweek Day 1: Lessons

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

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Every International Working Out Loud Week is an experiment. We have ideas. We share most of those ideas. We endeavour to engage others. However community means you never quite know what is going to happen. The day before I always wonder “What if there was a working out loud week and nobody shares?” Thankfully I don’t need to deal with the answer to that question just yet.

#wolweek is off to a great start. There’s more energy, more participants and more openness this time than ever before.

Today was a day of chatting with others, working on client work alone and of administration for me so I didn’t have the most exotic lessons from the day. However, I spent a part of the day curating #wolweek material so I had a wonderful overview of the experience.  Here’s what I learned:

Be Bolder

I am still at times timid sharer. There’s lots of “should I or shouldn’t I?”. With every experience I learn to share more. Every time I do share more I get greater value.

I am inspired by the boldness of others. The biggest reactions to people sharing today were to people who stepped well outside what they would normally share. Helen Blunden, Jodi Brown and Jeff Merrill were three examples of how to share work in a way that opens it to others to engage. Jennifer Frahm has an amazingly bold example of working out loud within a corporate context that I hope she gets to share some day.

You can always connect more

When a face to face meeting had been arranged by 9am as a result of a #wolweek post, you saw the potential of openness to connect people. We were also flooded with insightful blog posts. There were lots of comments and conversations triggered by posts that would not have happened without #wolweek. Let’s hope the rest of the week brings more people together in valuable conversation

I spent the morning with a consultant in a completely different field exchanging expertise. Jane is brilliant at helping to make accounting easier, to make it more valuable and putting her clients in control of their finances.  Her expertise to help my business and I shared a little of my expertise in exchange. I’ve saved hours of pointless work as a result.

Have fun & Be human

#wolweek wouldn’t be here but for a community of people who saw the potential and have been advocates and given their energy to the idea. We have had great support in so many places that it is unfair to not name them all. The #wolweek twitter account is an effort to recognise many.  I also have to thank the Change Agents Worldwide community for their thought leadership and enthusiasm. The common characteristic of the supporters is that they are people who have fun and value the human part of work.

To kick off #wolweek today I shared a short post in Linkedin inviting people to engage. Linkedin is rarely a place I associate with fun and human behaviours. However, the post has received an energetic response from people who want to embrace the change, the fun and a little more humanity at work.

Share

Share with me your #wolweek lessons and stories. I would really love to hear them and feature them in #wolweek. Most of all I would love to hear about the #wolweek stories that are happening away from public social sites – in offices and in private communities. Let us know what you see so that we can make #wolweek better next time.

There’s a whole week to go. What’s going to happen in your #wolweek?

Please share it.

 

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

17-24 November 2014 is International Working Out Loud Week

Work out loud. 

Let others in to the mysteries of your work. Let others find out what you know and how you do it. Let others learn from your expertise, your tips and your tricks. Let others know so that they can guide, connect, help and accelerate you.

Share your work on a post it note on your office door. Write on a whiteboard. Post a note to the enterprise social network. Give a talk. Share with the world in communities, and other social tools. However you can, share your work visibly for others to find.

Show interest in the now more visible work of others. Help others to achieve their goals. Share your networks to build theirs. Recognise their achievements and their efforts. Share your insights, advice and expertise.

Work is not a secret mystery of private talents with sudden successful outcome. Work is a long iterative and collaborative process of learning together. Working out loud facilitates better outcomes and a more effective and human process.

Work out loud. There’s an adventure ahead.

 

Reflection Transforms You

Posted on by simongterry in Learning, Life & Career, Working out loud

Today I was talking to a former colleague who reflected that after a year our personal approaches to work had changed dramatically and the way we see the world had changed too. My response was that if you reflect on your work that outcome is inevitable.

The process of daily reflection identifies ways to change and to improve. Lots of daily changes driven by reflective practice accumulate. In pursuit of mastery your approach to work becomes barely recognisable to where you began. Reflection transforms you step by step.

Working Out Loud Helps reflection

Harold Jarche recently made the point that working out loud isn’t much value without reflection on the value to you and to others of what you are sharing.Reflection is required for working out loud but it is also driven by the practice.

Reflection is a key driver of the benefits of working out loud. The practice of working out loud will accelerate personal learning and transformation through:

– Purpose: Working out loud helps you discover the purpose behind your work and enables you to better focus your efforts. Things that bubble up to be shared are more likely to be purposeful for you. Purpose will also be near the things we choose to do most often. Understanding why you work is a key element of any transformation
– Awareness: sharing your work sharpens awareness of what it is you do. Awareness is the beginning. As they say, knowing you have a problem is the first step.
– Sharing: framing your work to be shared can give you a new perspective too. Asking yourself what others will see and what tacit knowledge you rely on is a valuable reflection process.
– Engagement: the questions and observations of those with whine you share drive new insights and new lessons.

Work out loud and the connections and reflection will change you and your work for the better.

International Working Out Loud Week is 17-24 November. Get involved at wolweek.com.

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

The OODA Loop of Blogging

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work, Learning, Strategy, Working out loud

Work out loud and accelerate the benefits of blogging.

The OODA loop is one of my favourite strategic tools because it highlights the competitive advantage in speed and learning in a Responsive Organisation. I have also found OODA a useful mindset for my blogging and a way to ship posts consistently.

What is the OODA Loop?

Developed by a U.S. Airforce strategist Col. John Boyd the OODA Loop is the concept that strategic advantage goes to the party who can best navigate the decision loop through observing the situation, orienting themselves, deciding what to do next and translating that decision into action. Through transparency, autonomy and experimentation, a responsive organisation moves decisions to the edge of the organisation accelerating its OODA loop to deliver better business value.

How does OODA accelerate my blogging?

Observe: My blogging is built on a foundation of being constantly on the look out for insights. Every day as we work we are exposed to great ideas, wonderful learning and exciting conversations that challenge our thinking. The more I capture the more I learn and the more I have to share. Are you tuned to observe and capture these opportunities to share through a blog? Managing your attention to observe these moments and building a system to capture notes at the moment helps.

Orient: A blog is an expression of your cumulative knowledge and experience. Finding a way to orient a new observation against your current knowledge matters to building a consistent philosophy. You need to know how a new post fits into your blog. Once I have an insight I try to quickly connect it to other ideas on the blog and elsewhere that extend the thinking. Building this system of links helps reassure you of the value of a new post. Ultimately I would like these links to provide an ever evolving network structure to the ideas on my blog.

Decide: Struggled with a white screen? Found your 500 word post is 2000 words long? These are challenges of deciding what you are writing about. Decide to share one small simple idea. Keep it simple. Stop when it is done. If the idea gets complicated break it into a series. If you have oriented well then the decision on the role and scope of a post is a little easier.

Act: Write. Just start. The best way to solve a problem in a post is to write. You can always throw out and start again later. Only by writing and posting do you generate the interactions that create new insights. Embrace permanently beta. Ship the post and let others help you learn more. This focus on action in blogging is the power of working out loud.

Accelerating the OODA cycle on your blog reduces the risk of a writer’s block or a monster post that can be finished. Work out loud one idea at a time and invite others to share and accelerate your learning.

International Working Out Loud week is from 17-24 November 2014. For more on #wolweek check out wolweek.com. International Working Out Loud week is a great time to put OODA into action in your working out loud.