What? Where? Why? of Working Out Loud in 1 minute
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Tag: Working out loud
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.
Much Loved Tools: Pyramid Principle
In a summer job during university I was introduced to Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle as a structure for communication. I’ve used the logic ever since. The lessons of that approach dig me out of all sorts of presentation messes.
Here are the big lessons I’ve learned applying the Pyramid Principle approach to fix communication:
– Remember to have one message: it is surprising how often you see a presentation without a message. These presentations forget to make their point succinctly because they are overfilled with ideas and with elaborate introductions, narratives and evidence
– Structure promotes simplicity: Structure clarifies thinking. Structure clarifies for the listener too. Best of all understanding the structure also makes you more adaptable to change. Only got 5 mins for your half hour presentation? Knowing your key points will help you home.
– Support ideas with evidence: Others forget to support their assertions. In those that do use evidence, in many cases the charts usually tell a different story to the text. Make it easy for your audience to see your evidence.
– Pyramids beats chains: Many presentations are long fragile chains of logic. I’ve seen someone fly around the world only to have the presentation fail at the first question. That presentation depended on all of a long chain of premises. The failure of one idea left all the work bereft. Pyramids stand on other support when one element falls.
The Purpose of Procrastiwork
Procrastiwork is a term coined by Jessica Hische to describe the work you do when you are avoiding the work you should be doing. This blog often forms a part of my procrastiwork. I love the opportunity to work out loud, to clarify my ideas and the conversations that are spun up from these blog posts. I learn so much from my procrastination that it can be quite addictive.
Jessica Hische’s point in coining the phrase is to point out that procrastiwork is a great hint to the work you should be doing. If you choose that work, it speaks to you. I’ve experienced the power of finding purpose in the work. This blog is a big part of my personal purpose of making work more human and it was through posts here that those ideas were surfaced from my work.
Procrastination can be purposeful if you ask yourself the right questions. Work out loud on the work you do to avoid work. The repeated process of transparency and reflection will help you find insights as to purpose.
Work Out Loud on Your Job, Your Career or Your Calling
In their book Creative Confidence, Tom and David Kelley describe the research of Amy Wrzesniewski of Yale University’s school of management. Amy Wrzesniewski has identified that people view work as either a job, a career or a calling. Whatever your view of work, working out loud can help.
Working out loud in a job
If you view work as a job, work is a way to earn money to pay for weekends, holidays and hobbies. Working out loud is a way to make sure you keep your job through recognition of your efforts and growing skill. Working out loud outside of work can take your hobbies to the point that they become a calling.
Working out loud in a career
If you view work as a career, then you are interested in achievements and promotion. Working out loud makes your work more visible. Sharing your work as it occurs accelerates people’s ability to appreciate your efforts. You can learn faster and build your skills in a network. Working out loud connects you with those who can help you find the next job opportunity.
Working out loud in a calling
If you view work as a calling, then you find work intrinsically rewarding. For this group working out loud is a way to connect with others who share the calling. Working out loud helps you build the community of peers that will take your work to a new level and a wider greater impact.
International working out loud week is from 16-23 Nov 2015. Put working out loud to work helping your job, your career or calling.
The Mindfulness of Working Out Loud
‘Pay attention in a particular way – on purpose in the present moment and non-judgementally’ – Jon Kabat-Zinn
Reinforcing loop
Mindfulness and working out loud go hand in hand. John Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness echoes many discussions of working out loud. We need to be purposeful. We suspend judgement. We focus on what we are doing now. Working out loud is one practice that helps bring a mindful approach to work.
Working out loud can bring many of the same benefits of mindfulness practices too. In addition to helping us to learn, working out loud improves our openness, generosity, acceptance and curiosity by keeping us in this moment and asking us to practice these very challenges.
Working Out Loud to Be More Mindful
Challenging ourselves to be purposeful in work and to share that purpose with others can help our mindfulness as we go about work.
Being present in the moment through working out loud helps us to see new opportunities. We begin to see limits to our expertise. We see the value of others. We are guided to see the doors we fly past in the busy challenges of work.
Sharing that which is incomplete takes a willingness to surrender judgement. We need to turn off all our past issues and our future concerns and share now. Focusing on being present without judgement in our work offers powerful opportunities to learn, to adapt and also to connect to others with new depth.
In busy work lives, mindfulness that can keep us present, open and connected is important to our health and success. The habit of Working out loud can be a part of that practice.
The audience for working out loud
The audience for working out loud is another worker trying to learn just like you. The audience is not the entire world.
Adopting a minimum in viable post is one way that people can overcome the barriers to working out loud. Another is to focus on the audience for your working out loud.
Many people are reluctant to work out loud because they assume their audience is the entire world. They are concerned their work in progress won’t we be appreciated by everyone.
The audience for working out loud is another struggling worker just like you. By sharing your work process, your lessons and challenges, you can significantly help an earlier version of yourself. You can also benefit from the advice of the version of you that’s a little ahead in expertise. If a post adds value to your understanding of your work, there’s a good chance it suits this audience.
There are a number of reasons why focusing on a specific audience for working out loud makes sense:
– all writing is better when the audience is clearer. What you’d write to look good for the whole world won’t be as powerful or helpful a learning opportunity for someone struggling with work challenges like you.
– clarity of the audience will help you determine where to share your work. Share where your audience is. Out loud doesn’t have to be the whole world.
– Even when you share on public social media, you are unlikely to reach a global audience. You are likely to reach people who share your interests. The clearer you are on that audience the better you will be able to attract them. Write for an audience. Write for your network. *
– Clarity of who you are writing for will help your generosity and the clarity of the contributions you want to make in your working out loud. At a minimum, Knowing what mattered to you in your work will help you know what to share to help others
Focus on the audience for your working out loud. It will help you to share and learn effectively.
*Always remember the basic advice of respect, relevance and safety in sharing on social media. These can easily be met with a genuine focus on sharing your learning.
Lower the bar. Share more #wol
The minimum viable blog is the least amount of content to communicate an insight and start a discussion.
Many people don’t share their work and ideas because their standards for publishing content are high. Their few posts could run in a newspaper or even a peer reviewed journal. Many people hesitate to work out loud for fear their work is not good enough.
A minimum viable blog is not the end point of an idea. It is a test. By elaborating an idea just enough, the minimum viable blog starts a conversation and draws out more inputs through working out loud.
Lower the bar. Break up your big ideas. Share them regularly in minimum viable form. Start new conversations and learn. Best of all, a regular minimum viable blog is a habit and a constraint. The best creativity is the outcome of consistent practice under constraints.
The Exception Ends in Transparency
The power of culture is it changes our behaviours without us always noticing. Take care your culture is not creating exceptions from social norms. If so, transparency will hurt you one day.
Yesterday, I posted on the exception we have in business for the use of arbitrary power that would be unacceptable anywhere else in society. We allow this exception because we see the use of arbitrary power as part of the expected behaviours at work, part of the culture of work. One reader commented that the use of arbitrary power in business seemed ridiculous when you think about it. That’s the problem with culture. Most of the time we don’t examine our expectations. We just align our behaviours.
Over and over again organisations don’t see the issue in their culture until the light of transparency is shined on their behaviours. Suddenly their actions are judged not by their own internal norms and expectations but by the public social norms of the community. Too many organisations are shocked to see their own behaviour in that light.
Before you get caught by surprise by your own culture, open it up to discussion and reflection. Work out loud to engage customers and community outside the organisation. Keep the boundaries of your organisation porous. Listen carefully to the rebels and change agents bringing you news of issues. Most of all do purposeful human work in the real world. That’s the best way to keep yourself honest.
7 Tips to Working Out Loud in Your Organisation #wol
Here are a seven simple tips to help those who want to encourage the use of working out loud in an organisation
1 Start with why
Working out loud is a change in work practices for your team. People will find it embarrassing, scary and strange. If you want change, you will need to help people to see the rationale. Explain the benefits you hope to see. Connect working out loud to your strategy. Measure and share the successes.
2 Start where your community is
If your organisation talks about work in the tearoom, don’t try to make them work out loud in a brand new technology. You will spend all your energies on the change of technology, before you get to the practices that create value. Put up a poster in the tearoom. Go where your communities currently engage and work there. If you have an enterprise social network all the better, engage its champions and heavy users.
3 Find volunteers
You promised engagement in the social network by December. If you make everyone work out loud, you will get there. Don’t. Forcing people to share defeats the generosity, the learning and the community from working out loud. It increases the chance they will try once and abandon the practice as alien. If I know you are working out loud only to meet an order, I don’t trust you more. John Stepper starts with career talks to find volunteers for working out loud circles. Start with your volunteers and find champions. Remember you are the first volunteer and should role model the way.
4 Simple Practices
Three simple habits. Working Out Loud Circles. Huddles. Posters with questions. Post-it notes on office doors. Town Halls. Sharing photos of work. Don’t overthink it or over-specify it. Authorised use cases can get in the way of serendipity. There are lots of simple options to help people start and see the benefit.
5 Connect networks
Working out loud circles work because people enjoy the peer support as they learn new practices. How can networks in your organisation reinforce the efforts of your few initial practitioners? Make them role models in your networks to find more volunteers. Go outside the organisation and bring in people to help. The working out loud community are a generous bunch.
6 Have Fun
What’s your version of Working out loud under the stairs. Take the stress out of the new and different by making it fun.
7 Take time
You won’t get 100% of your people doing anything any time soon. You may never. Take the time it needs for people to learn by doing and to convince each other with their success. Networks will spread success over time.