For to be social is to be forgiving – Robert Frost
Writing
People will forget what you said,
People will forget what you did,
But people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
Purpose endures disruption. Discuss.
We know what we are, but not what we may be. – William Shakespeare
In a time of disruptive change, an organisation needs a strong common purpose to unite & guide its people.
Purpose is a product of the community in your organisation. It is the set of beliefs that keep your community together, reflecting your values, impact on others and hopes for the future.
A strong purpose is one that grows out of that community within your organisation. We are talking about deeply personal values and beliefs. This is the realm of pull, not push. People will have selected and remained with your organisation because of purpose. A purpose cannot be imposed without pushing people away from your organisation.
Purpose endures.
Your product, your business model, your competitive position and your returns may all change. Just look at the changes you face:
- Every organisation faces continued change in Who does things. Tasks move. People come and go each day.
- How you do things changes equally fast. That is the point of continuous improvement. We want this continuous betterment of our work.
- When big disruptive change occurs, organisations need to change What they do too. If you haven’t moved from buggy whip manufacturer to delivering remote mobile acceleration control services, you might just have been left behind.
What keeps your organisation together and focused when everything might need to change really fast?
A purpose that is shared by the community of your organisation is a centre of focus and consistency. Importantly, the purpose is something consistently worth the investment of your people’s time, passion and effort over time. Purpose is the core around which your organisation must build its agility to survive. Purpose is the reason for which your organisation must survive and why it must prosper. The more things change the more you will come back to your purpose to choose what to do next.
Discovering purpose
Start an ongoing conversation in your organisation around your purpose. Seek to discover the beliefs that are shared and guide your organisation into the future. Build a consensus and educate those who are new. Social tools are fantastic ways to share and deepen this conversation.
Ask purposeful questions of each other. What is the purpose of strategies, changes and major initiatives? When is your organisation at its best? What beliefs and ideas bring out the best in your people?
The conversations are more powerful when they are not be dictated from the top of the organisation. The best conversations on purpose will be those that surface the beliefs of those who deliver impact to customers every day, who make decisions in the middle of the organisation or potentially by asking your customers to reflect on your purpose. Discuss these points of view. You will find that these conversations contribute to trust by building common ground.
Be prepared to be surprised, but most of all be prepared to find a new focus to the why at the heart of your organisation. Clarity of shared purpose will speed the agility of your people. After all, your purpose is why you are and the best guide to what you may be next.
Have a Point of View
There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The organisation for which I work expects its leaders to have a point of view. Our people, our customers and our community expect that leaders in large organisations take the time to understand what is going on, to see trends happening in the business, economic or social environment, to develop their own perspective and to discuss and act on their point of view. This is something all leaders should take the time to do and discuss.
A point of view enables others to understand you, your values, your perspectives and your purposes. A point of view is also another way to ‘work out loud’, attracting others who share or oppose that view. Each of the resulting conversations deepens the insights, builds trust and fosters speed in collaboration.
Your thoughts and opinion matter so invest a little in developing and sharing them:
- understand your perspectives, values and purposes – put them down on paper and discuss them with others
- find new ways to share your point of view, particularly with new audiences – use social media like a blog or a form of microblogging, but also share those thoughts through customer and team meetings, lunches, seminars, talks, conferences and other opportunities to engage.
- view any reaction as a sign that you are saying something worth discussing and seek to understand feedback and different perspectives.
Have a point of view. Nothing, especially you, is too insignificant to be a part of your point of view.
Shorten the long run
In the long run we are all dead – John Maynard Keynes
The economic concept of the long run is the period that it takes to be able to change every variable in a system. It is the time it takes a system to adapt fully.
The long run defined this way is a handy concept for an organisation to use when thinking about change. Your most disruptive threats will pick the variables that you find hardest to change. Because you cannot or will not change these variables quickly then you will be in danger of losing value to the disruption. For example:
- newspapers: struggled to change an economic model where advertising in the paper funded content to attract an audience when internet businesses offered alternatives for both advertisers and audiences
- music industry: struggled to change their ways of identifying and managing talent and the economics of distribution models tied to physical distribution when digital music distribution disrupted both
- premium airlines: struggled to change high costs of labour, fixed cost infrastructure and the value perceptions of their other premium offerings when low cost competition attacked
If you want to improve your organisation’s ability to respond to disruption, you need to shorten the long run, your adaption time, by speeding up your slowest areas of change. In most cases these will not be simple decisions. The slowest areas of change are often those deep in the hidden infrastructure of the organisation.
One thing you can do is invest in capabilities to help you change all areas of your business more rapidly:
- people capabilities: change leadership, talent, agility of structure and performance measurement
- system capabilities: flexibility of systems, agile development, standardised integration and ability to leverage new technologies in experiments.
- process capabilities: continuous improvement, process measurement, agility of change, etc.
The long run is also the end of the period when the ugly impacts of disruption are felt. We would all like to move faster through the periods of confusion, pain, adjustment & loss and get back to competing aggressively to win.
Ultimately, it comes down to the culture in the organisation. Can you build an organisation that has a long run that suits your business and its environment, where you can change the way you think and work fast enough to survive?
If you can’t shorten the long run, then you can guarantee in an era of disruptive innovation, your organisation will be dead.
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper
W.B. Yeats
…one enquiry only gave occasion to another, that book referred to book, that to search was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to pursue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them.
Samuel Johnson
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Theodore Roosevelt
Happiness is internal. Success is external. Confuse these at your peril.
11 Career lessons: reflecting on my career
This week I was asked to share my career story in a presentation to some colleagues. Take time out to write the presentation I had an opportunity to reflect on how I came to my role today. That reflection helped me to bring out a few highlights to share as I told the story.
Here were the 11 key lessons of my career story:
-
Titles don’t determine your contribution: contribute something of value in every interaction and always look for an action you can take to add value
-
What you want to do more is a clue to your passions: Do more of what you enjoy doing. Understand why you enjoy some challenges over others. That is the way to your passions
-
Ask for all that you want: Don’t negotiate with yourself first. Put your whole ask on the table. Be prepared to fight for it. This includes negotiating roles and responsibilities.
-
Discomfort is a sign of learning & growth: If you don’t feel uncomfortable at some point every day, ask if you are stretching yourself enough
-
If it looks like a duck: If it looks too good to be true, it is. If you have doubts before you start, they will become issues when you do. Make sure you do your due diligence.
-
Take your opportunities: If an opportunity opens that will contribute to your goals, build capability or lead towards your passions, take it.
-
Persist: If you know what you want, persist and overcome the inevitable setbacks. Setbacks are not a judgement on you. Setbacks are part of life and an opportunity to learn more
-
People skills are best learned early: Learn to lead, influence, communicate, manage performance and develop people. You don’t have to be a people leader to do this.
-
Diverse experiences and perspectives create valuable options: Show interest in things beyond your realm. Learn and study widely. Learn to work in different kinds of businesses at different stages of growth. Learn a broad set of skills. New experiences means new learning and capabilities
-
Be the solution to a problem: Every role exists to solve a problem. Understand that and you will get the role and succeed.
- Stay positive and have fun: It’s better that way.