Chair and Non-Executive Director, Advisor, and CEO helping healthcare, finance, and educational organisations drive growth, leverage technology innovation, and realise the strategic value of transformation
I so love sharing Seasons Greetings that even snowflakes don’t seem a little odd at the end of a hot summer day.
Thanks everyone for being a part of an amazing year. May you have much love and happiness and see you in 2014 for more discussion of the future of work.
I recently posted about How to Start a Change Movement. That post was picked up in the UK by the team working on change and transformation in the NHS. I have a strong interest in healthcare given my last role leading the HICAPS payments business here in Australia. I saw first hand the efforts to drive change and improve healthcare in Australia and the opportunities to do more.
Through these interactions, I became aware of the NHS’s fantastic initiative NHS Change Day and its Australian counterpart, Change Day. Both initiatives ask people to make a simple pledge of one thing that they can do to help improve the quality of health care, aged care or disability services.
The goal is accumulate a huge volume of all those small changes to deliver large scale improvements in the health systems.
Why does it involve me?
Many people might be tempted to view improving health care as somebody else’s job, even if they work in the healthcare system. After all, the government plays a major role and there are lots of big institutions, like hospitals, healthcare businesses and large corporates. Healthcare is a large and complicated industry with real expertise and deep technical knowhow. Why isn’t making it better a job for others?
However we have seen examples all around the world that experts find healthcare hard to improve.
Healthcare is a system. In other words, it is a complex network. A network cannot be changed by a hierarchy flicking a change switch. Networks need the influence of all the participants to drive change.
The members of the Healthcare network include:
Payers: Private individuals, Government, Health insurers and other social insurance schemes. Political decisions, regulatory rules and a raft of other policy considerations play a large role in the money available, way care is delivered and costs of care that is provided
Providers: These are the people we usually think of as the healthcare system but they aren’t one agent. A hospital is a large network of people working together to provide care and provide all the supporting services. When you extend to all the other forms of care required to treat well a huge range people operating in all sorts of ways collaborate as a network to provide care.
Patients & their communities: Healthcare outcomes are influenced by the life an individual leads and the people who support an individual before, during and after their care.
You: You will likely fall into one of the above categories today or in the future. At some point you will need to engage with the healthcare network. Even if your own health is perfect, you have others in your community to consider.
For great care to be provided all members of that network have to work in concert to produce better outcomes. Every member in a network can contribute to better outcomes. As we see again and again, efforts to work on one part of a network, can have complex ramifications across the whole system. For example:
Improving healthcare is difficult, but it can be done. The complexity means we need to extend the conversation and engage a broader range of people in the change. That change benefits us all. Because it is a network, we all need to play our role to see benefits flow.
Get involved – Make a Pledge
Take the time to consider the ask of either the Australian or the UK Change Day programs. They are targeting 50,000 and 50,000 pledges respectively.
They need your help. All they want is for you to choose to play a small role in the healthcare network. One little commitment will be a start.
Join in the movement for change for the better in healthcare. Be an active member of your part of the healthcare network. Join in the action.
Do what you can do best. The healthcare network will be better for it.
And because networks need good communication and great stories, spread the word. Tell others about Change Day and why they need to get involved in improving the network for all of us.
That is one part of my pledge.
Embrace politics. It is human behaviour. Change the way politics operates to reinforce purpose.
CEOs are often tempted to announce that they want a ‘politics free’ organisation. The only consequence of this announcement is that politics becomes undiscussable in the organisation. It never goes away.
Politics is the way that 3 or more people coordinate themselves to make decisions. Politics is a critical part of human group behaviour. Politics is not bad. It is essential, efficient and effective. In fact the right political behaviours, like understanding, influence, compromise and coalition building are essential to get anything done.
The CEO who wants to ban politics usually wants to address the type of politics that is played in the organisation. We all can play a role ensuring that the politics that is played is the most beneficial to everyone in the organisation and its goals.
Which Politics Would You Choose?
The Politics of Power: In extremely hierarchical organisations, the politics is often feudal with people jockeying to be closest to the powerful players at the top of the hierarchy. A CEO who wants to ban something human usually is under the belief that they have this kind of power. Absolute power reigns and politics is played to swing its impact. The critical element in this politics is loyalty and in reward scraps fall from the table to those most loyal. Fights between coalitions are brutal. These organisations are very conservative – ultimately driven by inside considerations, maintaining power and loyalty.
The Politics of Faith: At times you will meet an organisation with a strong set of core beliefs. The faith might be a set of values, practices or even a view of the world. What matters is that belief in these things is a required part of organisational interactions and unbelievers are excluded from influence. Like most religions, these organisations are quite hierarchical with power lying with those who better understand, define or interpret the beliefs. What matters in the politics of these organisations is doctrine and demonstrations of faith to the organisation’s view. Whether the faith is justified or delivering outcomes is a secondary consideration. Again the orientation of the organisation is internal and they can be quite disconnected from reality and their community.
The Politics of Interest: With less hierarchy, the politics in an organisation might swing to that of self-interest or interest of a group. Like our modern democracies, interest groups lobby to further their agendas. The critical element of politics is self-interest and canny manipulation of overlaps of interest. Decisions are shaped by the shifting movement of these coalitions. This is the usual kind of politics that the CEO is trying to ban. It is assumed that self-interest is inherently evil and will manipulate outcomes. Self-interest may not always be bad. Coalitions build cases for their own interests that may involve external stakeholders but the politics is very much about their own benefits and future.
The Politics of Purpose: Great political movements form around a purpose. Great organisations are no different. Great leaders use political behaviours to connect coalitions more strongly to a common purpose. That purpose must have an external orientation. Great and inspiring purpose is about the impact organisations have on the world.
Don’t ban politics from your organisation. You will only push it underground where it will continue but be less manageable. Instead understand and discuss the politics at play, challenge the approach and use politics to strengthen purpose.
Living and working in a hierarchy can shape your attention to the world. We all need to be fascinated less by power inside our organisations. We need to be fascinated more by customers and the community outside the organisation.
A common piece of advice in large organisations is expressed this way:
‘What interests my boss, fascinates me.’
The advice highlights that your boss often has a major role in perceptions of your performance and career opportunities. The suggestion is that the path of success is to be ever more conscientious on what matters to your boss. Managing their interests will deliver rewards from their greater hierarchical power.
Except that is terrible advice in almost all circumstances:
Being fascinated by every whim of your boss might build a great relationship between you two. (Warning: It might be counterproductive too) However, it will not drive real business performance.
So next time someone asks you to worry about what your boss thinks, don’t. Look outside the organisation in your networks to find what matters. Make your mantra:
‘What interests my customers and community, fascinates me’
Your boss is just one voice in your network and probably the least valuable one.
Great to be involved in the first Change Agents Worldwide webinar with Susan Scrupski and Harold Jarche.
Circles of Control and Influence Revisited: The Poster
Every journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step – Lao Tsu
The vision of the future is dazzling. It arrives from on high as if delivered by parcel delivery drones, endorsed by gurus and acclaimed by cheerleaders of the future.
Everyone is captivated by the insight of the strategy, the incredible new technology, the uplifting rhetoric of the new corporate behaviours and the breathtaking audacity of the new organisational structure.
Then you stop. Reality hits. The vision needs to be executed.
You turn around. Oddly all the drones, the gurus and the cheerleaders have disappeared. The new plan still needs to be implemented. You turn over a few rocks and it appears nobody has done what you need to do before. You need new capabilities that nobody has. A grumbling begins that people never believed in the high flown vision in the first place. Senior management are disappointed at the progress made on the ideas that they only just dreamed up.
The greatest breakdown in management is between thought and action.
You could start action for action’s sake. Announce a radical transformation, a wrenching restructure or a bold acquisition if you have that kind of power. Even if radical changes were possible, those kinds of change fail more often than not. All that boldness might just be a distraction from real action to create change.
If you are somewhere in the middle, there is only one choice:
Take one step forward.
Pick the step that makes most sense to move closer to the vision. Something you can do. Something practical and possible. Something that builds capability to do more. There is always something. Do it.
After that step you do another. You gain momentum. Might not be exciting at first, but it is progress. Eventually you will meet the drones, the cheerleaders and the gurus down the path. They might just be surprised to see you because they understand the difference between thought and action.
Take the advice of an ancient Chinese master. Move forward into change one step at a time.
The best first step is the one right in front of you.
Susan Scrupski, Harold Jarche and I will be discussing the practical steps to move forward with collaboration in the first Change Agents Worldwide webinar, in partnership with Socialcast VMware
The only knowledge we can manage is our own – Harold Jarche
If you are a middle manager in a large corporate, the concept of circles of control and circles of influence is sold as the concept that keeps you sane. There are only some things you can change yourself. There are some things you can play a role in shaping. Everything else is beyond you.
If you follow this model, you will keep calm and stay in your box.
However, even this narrowing of accountability doesn’t seem to work in practice.
Why does this view of circles of control and influence break down? Discussion of these circles is usually framed in terms of the organisational hierarchy.
Control is defined your role, your resources and your people. Influence is those parts of the organisation you relate to directly up the hierarchy or as partners in the work. Every other person or silo is a mystery and will remain so. Relationships outside the organisation are excluded.
Rethink your Circles for a Networked World
However, a networked world enables us to see control and influence differently:
Our networked circle of control is much smaller than hierarchy suggests.
Other people are not under our control as much as we might like to pretend or the systems of our organisations might suggest. When networks enable us to listen, to engage and to learn together, this becomes very clear. Employees, suppliers and other partners don’t act the way we want from orders. They are motivated by an alignment of interests. We need to influence their actions to get results and to win engagement.
If our resources or decisions require interactions with others then those interactions come with influence.
We control our personal states, our learning and the things we personally can move around, little else.
Our networked circle of influence is much larger than hierarchy suggests.
This circle runs wherever our communication reaches. The more you network and the more you act the more influential you are.
In an organisation with an enterprise social network, your influence is potentially everyone. Influence doesn’t stop at the boundaries of the organisation. There will be times to achieve a goal you might need to work outside the organisation to influence back in. This much wider influence removes our ability to absolve ourselves from bad things in our organisations, our customers or our community. We have the ability to influence their change. For example:
Circles of influence are just as powerful as circles of control. They require different actions but the impacts can be as great.
Keep Calm. Use influence to have impact. Just don’t define yourself and your circles in terms of a hierarchy
Susan Scrupski, Harold Jarche and I will be discussing the role of networks in organisations in the first Change Agents Worldwide webinar, in partnership with Socialcast VMware
Middle managers like to complain about being squeezed by pressures from above and below. Their organisations love to blame them for all the ills in the place.
Middle managers have two great advantages that they can use to drive change:
Without use, these opportunities whither. Middle managers need to take advantage of them when they can.
Networking in the middle
Frontline employees have very full lives juggling customer expectations. In my experience, they have limited opportunities to engage in networking across the organisation. Enterprise social networks do assist to connect frontline people with the rest of the organisation but the pressures of direct customer engagement often means time is limited and is often focused on better meeting customer needs.
Senior management are often removed from the day-to-day interactions in the organisation because of the scale of their jobs and the greater exposure to external stakeholders. Nobody wants a hierarchy where messages need to go to the top to spread because it is a terribly inefficient way to share information.
If middle management is to have any meaningful role, middle managers needs to play a role networking the organisation across the middle. Middle manager jobs should give them enough perspective and exposure to their peers to seek and share information widely across the silos and beyond. As nodes in the network of the organisation, managers can dramatically increase their influence sharing information, connecting people, reducing duplication and guiding action. Build a reputation as a generous middle manager who is happy to collaborate, share information and advise and you will find people beating a path to your door. Your authority increases when you want to act.
Authority to act
When everyone around you assumes authority depends on hierarchical position, having any hierarchical power is an advantage to action. You don’t need to be at the top, you just need the respect of others. Yet many middle managers wait assuming further endorsement is required.
What middle managemers needs to do is leverage their network position and their hierarchical opportunity. Organisations often give way to people who have hierarchical power who are prepared to act, especially where the activity is beneficial and well aligned to strategy and purpose.
When I was a mid-level manager in NAB, a group of graduates came to me wanting to know whose authority they needed to set up a TEDX style speaking program in NAB. I told them they needed no authority. It was a great idea, there was a demand and there was no obvious sponsor in the organisational hierarchy. Finding one would be more work than organising the first event.
I suggested that they could do it themselves and start straight away. For safety’s sake, I told them that if they were challenged on their authority they should say I approved it. When they did get a challenge, that answer was more than enough because the people who worry about permission rarely have the courage to check its source. A TEDX style event sat well with the culture that NAB was building and the strategy of being more open and aligned to customers and the community. The first TEDX event had over 200 internal attendees and the events which were run by volunteer graduates for 2 more years were huge successes.
Network and Use Authority
If you are a middle manager and want that role to continue in your organisation, don’t fall for the blame game. Network yourself to increase your authority and use whatever authority you have to add value in line with the organisation’s purpose and strategy.
Susan Scrupski, Harold Jarche and I will be discussing the role of networks in organisations in the first Change Agents Worldwide webinar, in partnership with Socialcast VMware
Is it really December? Businesses and schools are winding down for the summer break. The cricket has started. Christmas is rapidly approaching. With that comes a quick close to 2013.
2013 has been a year of adventures, obstacles and challenges. More than anything else it has been a year of new momentum. I could not be more excited by the incredible opportunities that have arisen this year:
Embrace the Chaos and all its Obstacles
I was reflecting on all that has happened this year when Dany DeGrave tweeted yesterday about the need to maintain momentum in the face of obstacles:
Obstacles are the work. They are just things to go round, over or through. Keep up the momentum of #change @DanyDeGrave
— Simon Terry (@simongterry)
Obstacles are the work. They show you have chosen to have an impact. They help us see our purpose. They provide the challenge and interest.
Obstacles are proof that your work matters to others. These challenges remind us that change is human and social. They encourage us to share knowledge with our networks, to work aloud and to pay attention to the knowledge moving around us.
Obstacles help us reflect on what matters. Pushback make us ask new or obvious questions. An orderly progression of success can be quite tedious and generate its own doubts. If success is that easy, are we missing something?
If there weren’t obstacles, our talents would not be required, we would not learn and not grow in the work. If there weren’t obstacles, we would not get the rewards of overcoming them. If there weren’t obstacles, we would not have the joys of collaborating with others to move forward around over, under or through.
Your Obstacles. Your Momentum. Your Year.
So next time you are considering a year of obstacles, remember the hard work proves that you are on the right track. Obstacles are proof of your momentum.
I bought this poster at the midpoint of this year. It has been a reminder ever since that every year is my year.
Every year is your year too. Move past challenges. Reflect on the successes.
Maintain momentum in doing whatever you need to do to make it your year. Your impact is up to you.
If you would like your own or other great posters, the source is The Poster List.