Writing

What if the answer to your organisation’s challenges is to focus and go faster?

Attend any leadership program and they will talk about the importance of leaders work in vision, alignment and accountability. Large organisations expend huge amounts of management time and effort on inspiring and communicating shared vision, managing alignment and creating accountability. Often all this work results in a multitude of projects and overlapping systems pulling against each other for energy and attention of teams.

Visions without execution are often sprawling delusions that demotivate employees and generate confusion rather than effort. Alignment for its own sake can turn into mindless politics and in large complex organisations it can be very unclear which of the many number one priorities, mandatories and diverging divisional goals people are aligning around. Accountability can become a culture of fear with continuous performance monitoring rather than a focus on learning and improvement for progress.

Working in startup cultures, I have had the experience of seeing the power of leadership that concentrates on two other challenges:

• Focus: Are the resources of the organisation focused well enough on the few actions that will deliver success?
• Velocity: Are we making progress fast enough?

Creating an organisational conversation and practice around enhancing focus and velocity delivers step changes in performance. Critically that leadership practice will resolve many of the issues that management theory sought to resolve with vision, alignment and accountability.

Focus to the work of the team is a far more tangible and near term way to engage people in what is important. Focus gives something on which people can pull into alignment, rather than alignment being a constant task of leaders to push. Lastly focus, doing more of fewer things, reduces the conflicts and confusion across the organisation. Success is clearer and it is easier to take the organisation towards it when it is pursuing focused activities and goals.

Velocity recognises that performance in organisations is often systemic. Leaders who enable the teams to move faster will be clearing blockages and impediments and enabling the next level of achievement. Teams focused on velocity will have a mindset of continuous improvement towards their goals. Velocity also pulls people into alignment as focused teams get on with their work and other race to catch up and support that work. The tangible delivery that comes from velocity is much more engaging than any fancy vision or performance rating.

Vision, alignment snd accountability describe outcomes. As a result there is a temptation for leaders to see these as things to be set up and the outcome follows. Focus and velocity aren’t outcomes. They are ways of doing the work.

Critically for leaders, the work of focus and velocity is never done. You can’t just announce and walk away. Complexity creeps into work in many ways and there will need to be constant pruning to maintain focus. Better velocity takes continuing effort from everyone. New barriers are always being discovered just as the new ways to get work done.

Here are two questions to ask often:

• are we spending enough of our time and efforts on the few things that really matter for success?
• what can we do to deliver more faster?

Rather than discussing a distant future, fighting over resources or performance ratings concentrate your efforts into a few goals and help people to get there faster. Concentrate your team’s energy and enthusiasm on the speed of real progress. The outcomes of focus and velocity will surprise you.

AI tools can only leverage what they can see. For far too long, business has poorly measured and understood human behaviour in the workplace. We are likely to need to better understand the human activity, motivations and drivers to get sustainable value from AI.

In a recent post on the Stratechery blog by Ben Thompson on Open AI’s new Deepseek research capability, he concludes with a discussion of where the tool failed badly, an industry analysis with one large private party. Deepseek couldn’t see that business’ information so produced a misleading industry structure without it. For a reader without knowledge, there’s no clue something is missing. It is a Rumsfeld ‘unknown unknown’ as Ben Thompson notes. He goes on to make a powerful point about new value in secrecy in strategy in a world of AI research.

This blindness raised for me another critical question. What else is often invisible in organisations and might mislead business decisions made by AI? The most obvious answer is data on people. For too long, understanding people, performance, motivations and decision making in organisations has been at best random and sporadic. Avoiding the danger of unknown unknowns is going to demand more than faith in AI, it is going to take a new model of how we understand people and surface performance. Productivity measures alone will leave too many blackspots.

When you consider the HR data that most organizations have it is the information collected on joining, changes in roles or benefits that force updates, list of titles, performance grades, some engagement survey questions and productivity data. Much of this is not a system of human data, it is the output of other systems.

When supermarkets like Tesco started to look at leveraging data for loyalty, marketing and digital engagement of consumers, they found their data on products was all driven by their merchandising systems. It was detailed SKU supply chain and logistics data required to procure and stock items. Unfortunately engaging customers more effectively required different data like whether items were low fat, low sugar, feel good, healthy, suitable for lifestyle choices, treats, ingredients or meals. All the inputs to human food decision making. We don’t decide what we want eat in a logistics process. They had reams of product data and were blind to what consumers wanted to know and the key elements of consumer decisions.

Organisations are going to have to bring this same analytics into their organisations because when you consider it most organisations don’t have the data today. Some examples:

• who works on what office on what day of the week?
• the informal networks of exchange of information resources and power between roles
• capabilities, skills and talents from previous roles and organisations.
• individual motivations and goals
• non-work challenges and opportunities that may be driving employee behaviour

Until organisations start to leverage different richer kinds of HR data, there is a real danger the human elements of performance are overlooked entirely. That will have devastating effect on people, the value of AI and performance.

Focus on what it takes to create raving fans of your business. The disciplines that come from building a business or a creative practice that has thousands of committed fans will power your growth.

Origins

I first heard of the idea of a focus on a thousand fans from David Hieatt. David Hieatt speaks compellingly on how this has underpinned his success with Howies, Do Lectures and Hiut jeans. I have been repeating the advice for years crediting David.

I failed to appreciate at the time that the idea was actually Kevin Kelly’s. Kelly’s original post reflected that in a network world you can fund a life if your creative endeavours attract just enough fans. I won’t replicate the business logic that Kevin outlines but I do want to highlight the disciplines that come with this focus.

The Discipline of A Thousand Fans

Here are some of the key disciplines that come with a focus on building a connection with fans:

• Fans are people: Shifting your attention from measuring sales into focusing on actual integers of people sounds like a small focus but it is powerful. Sales can be measured and analysed. People can be heard, understood and questioned. A focus on people will bring greater humanity to your thinking about your product and a much richer understanding.
• Fans aren’t just customers: Fans are hardcore. Customers can be accidental or just trying you out. Fans are the people who are passionate about your product. Something you do makes their life way better, not just a little better than the competition. Understand this clearly and treasure it. Don’t ever lose it.
• Fans go deep: Lots of people talk about selling a lot of product to customers. Fans actually buy it. Knowing why might help drive all of your business.
• Looking for fans: Looking for fans will teach you a lot about all the signals in your customer base. Read every complaint lately? There’s a good chance some of those complaints are disappointed fans. If not, you will learn a lot looking.
• Lots of Fans: Both Kelly, Hieatt and others have suggested the number might actually be as low as 100 by making more from each fan. However, my challenge is make it a number to show that there is a deep market of passionate customers. I have seen too many businesses that experienced passion in a handful of MVP customers and then couldn’t scale. The MVP was all of the market prepared to pay for the product. Pushing yourself to look for lots of fans is a reassuring indicator of growth ahead.
• Service Everyone: Fans don’t come with their psychographic profile listed and may not fit an economic segmentation. Segmentation on economic criteria often can have the outcome that the most passionate fans miss out on being valued. Do you want to disregard a key customer group by not serving everyone well enough?

The challenge of focusing on creating a thousand fans is one that will improve any business. Put yourself to the test.

And I suffer through all the accidents
Of change as though I were settling a score,
As if to disinvent what death invents.
I once built a castle, now I do chores.

Joshua Edwards, Decline

In a world that revolves around work, I yet again have the problem of describing what I do. In September last year I finished my role as CEO of HICAPS, Australia’s leading electronic health claiming business. I did so to take up the role as Chair of Bank First, an exciting challenging new part time position.
Suddenly people want to know what I was doing. Surely a part-time role is not enough. I love growth businesses: Was I secretly working on a new business in stealth mode? Board positions in many people’s mind follow an executive career: was I semi-retired? People who were concerned told me not to give up on an executive career: Was I looking for a new job? Growing frustrated with the pattern of questions, I had to reiterate myself what I was doing to have a satisfactory answer.

A Sabbatical to Learn

I have already referred to this period as one of reinvention. Reinvention takes reflection and learning and focusing on that need led to my insight. On reflection, I sharpened my understanding. I am on sabbatical. A sabbatical is an opportunity to learn something new usually granted after an extended period of work. Beginning in an Old Testament agricultural imperative , people have long understood the value of a break after long work. Interestingly, seven years is a common milestone. I spent seven years across LanternPay and HICAPS working hard on creating and growing the business opportunities. I felt badly the need to change my focus and do something new.

Like Heraclitus’s river, time has moved on over seven years. I can’t step back into the old world that was before. I need to learn new things again. In the time I have been working on the evolution of digital health a lot has changed. Social collaboration and flexible work have come and gone under the pressure of the pandemic. Many of the old issues are now passé (adoption of video conferencing anyone?) Yet some, like leadership of remote teams, are more vexed than ever. New ways of working like agile are now much more common place. However, organisations struggle with collaboration, how to manage fast paced adaptive change and deliver value from innovation. Transformation is hard in any age.

Concepts of a Plan

The art of a Sabbatical is the focus on learning and regeneration. I don’t have a specific plan. I intend to discover one as I go, following my nose into new opportunities.

I have started work on improving my health and wellbeing. I have fitness to regain and some weight to lose to be healthier. That’s well in hand. I’m also taking better control of my cortisol stress cycle now that I have had time to work to my own goals. I suspect I will live longer and happier as a result.

This change was triggered by an opportunity to return to Bank First. I intend to spend time with the board and management of Bank First on its mission to be a bank for its members in healthcare and education. This will be a critical experience of learning and discovery. Financial services needs innovation that is driving better outcomes for customers. We need to listen to our members and partners more deeply, learn from them and test and experiment our way to new solutions. There’s a lot of people in financial services racing to do the same things as the biggest banks. Mutual members deserve compelling solutions that reflect their unique needs and delivered in ways that suit them better.

I have a five year-old idea for a book that seems more urgent than ever. The good news is that the research and writing has begun. Like the years the book has evolved around a central concept and become stronger for time, thought and learning. More to come on this front.

Discovery

Most of all I want to learn a lot more about people, culture & organisations, innovation, growth and leadership. Nothing about the future is ruled in or out yet. I needed a break and I am taking the first six months for my new role at Bank First and to reset myself. After that I will explore all the options that are available led by purpose and with curiosity as my guide. As always, my curiosity will lead me through networks of old and new friends. So if you have been feeling we need to catch up then it’s almost certain we do.

Let’s hope that curiosity leads our paths to cross. I’d love to learn what’s up in your world.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same

Rudyard Kipling, If

We aren’t defined by titles and status. All of us are capable of reinvention at any age. Follow the purpose that calls you and you will find a new way to define yourself.

Towards the end of West Wing, CJ Cregg, Chief of Staff to the President tells Charlie Young ‘You know I’m living the first line of my obituary’. It’s understandable that a person at the heights of political world might think that there’s nothing more to be done. It’s always tempting to see a fancy role and title as a definition of our potential. Instead, CJ actually goes on to lead a foundation that aims to change world health and poverty.

We aren’t our jobs. They most definitely do not limit us. We are creative and capable people making our way in the world, collaborating and creating with others. It is those other people who draw us out of our own limitations and show us the way to reinvent ourselves. Working towards purpose with others will help you find the opportunity that is your next phase and might well be your next crowning achievement.

Surround yourself with great purposeful people. Trust in the quality of the people around you to help you to new problems and opportunities. Be prepared to walk away from all the trappings of success to start again. Recognise any path of reinvention is a long difficult and winding one. You may not end up where you expect or get there how you thought but you will be richer for the efforts.

Yesterday I was announced as Chair Elect of the Board of Bank First. That’s an opportunity I thought I had lost two and a half years ago. The acquisition of LanternPay had led to my return to the CEO role at HICAPS and I resigned from the board with a sense of loss.

If you’ve ever felt your legacy would be defined by a role, consider returning to one after a decade. After a great two and a half years leading HICAPS again, I left having learned so much more from customers and my people than I ever expected. Much of this experience is relevant to the challenges ahead for Bank First.

HICAPS was very successful. When I pulled up stumps in September, it was hard to walk away from a great business and team to create something new and uncertain. However because I was prepared to walk away from success and others were willing to support a transition, I have a chance of contributing in a different way with an energetic, highly capable and enthusiastic group of people at Bank First.

Life is full of surprises and twists and turns. They say luck is opportunity and preparation. Surrounding yourself with great people helps with both. So never lose hope that more is possible. Make yourself lucky. Start work on the next version of you today. Start with the people who will help make it possible.

I want to believe in the power of rosemary 
knuckled along the fence
even as the stars order themselves 
  to an unalterable and essential law.

Judy Jordan, Help Me to Salt, Help Me to Sorrow

Celebration of culture carriers often ignores their motivations.

Organisations looking to strengthen culture often do so by finding and celebrating culture carriers. Culture carriers are those people who live the values that an organisation wants to foster and inspire the practice of those values in others. Highlighting and celebrating the work of these change agents can strengthen the practice of key values in teams.

Often, this celebration goes awry for a simple reason. The culture carrier doesn’t see themselves as a change agent. They are just doing what they do. They don’t see their work as differentiated or exceptional. They will resist the celebrations.

Worse still, the organisations motivation for influencing people can be wildly divergent to the individuals practising the target values. Many organisations decide on the values they want without consulting their people, let alone those who demonstrate the desired culture.

Celebrating culture carriers whose actions and motivations are not aligned runs two risks:

• highlighting to these individuals their disconnect to others leading to exit or changes to conform to the prevailing values
• presenting these individuals to the organisations as isolated superheroes without connection to other’s work and goals.

Before you start to celebrate the exemplars of your target culture, take the time to understand their experience, motivations and goals. What you learn may be far more useful to any changes you want to foster and will enable them to present their efforts as human and realistic to others.

Sometimes I tremble like a storm-swept flower,
And seek to hide my tortured soul from thee,
Bowing my head in deep humility
Before the silent thunder of thy power.

Claude McKay, Poetry

Working for purpose teaches us lessons we cannot find in any other domain. The challenges of adding value in problems of purpose teach us humility, managing change with deep compassion, and how to stretch collaborative creation to its limits.

Purpose is the sense that your work delivers value for others. That may be traditional benefits for customers, but for many importantly extends to others such as the disadvantaged or community as a whole.

Start a small commercial business to solve a customer’s problem and you are shareholder, director and executive. You are the agent of your own path. The work is by no means easy and success is not guaranteed but you are your own boss. Success criteria are relatively clear and in your control. Rewards also accrue directly to your efforts.

Problems of social purpose can be tougher to understand, measure and solve. The systems at play, complex interactions and stakeholder dynamics can be far more complicated. The decision making criteria involve far more than profit and loss. Some even may be wicked problems that government and society have been struggling to solve for years, like the Indigenous Expectations Gap in Australia. These problems aren’t addressed by the clever decision making of a single talented individual. These problems have already humbled too many enthusiastic and heroic change agents.

Throw all your smarts, energy, talent and enthusiasm at a problem of purpose and it will teach you humility. From outright failure to ongoing rejection of work by the stakeholders you are seeking to benefit, the paths to learn your limits keep expanding before you.

The stories of failure in work of purpose are many. Whether it is well-meaning charity that threatens local economic activity, unintended consequences of compassion or just lack of understanding lack of community engagement, clever people working hard to make a difference often don’t.

For example, trying to reduce incidence of diabetes in indigenous communities involves more than a knee jerk idea of better diet. The issue is woven into wider indigenous health challenges, household structures, social interactions, community expectations of shared property, income cycles, and many more issues. This is not a problem solved by tackling education or food preparation.

These are no problems of purpose solved by an individual acting alone no matter how great their characteristics. Purpose only occurs in and works for a wider community and demands solutions that engage teams and the wider community working together. Work on purpose because of its collaborative, compassionate and community-focused nature pushes us to go beyond the patterns of our past successes, to seek new insights from others, and to reflect on the limits of the traditional heroic mode of work.

Creating greater value in purposeful work involves having the humility to accept that progress will be hard, solutions will be newly created with many authors, and that many more stakeholders should be involved in designing and measuring success to capture all the elements of the systems at work.

Don’t be daunted by the prospect that purposeful work might set you back. See it as an opportunity to learn beyond the limits of your own ego. What you learn in that work will have impacts on many other domains of your life. Despite the many frustrations, purposeful work is incredibly rewarding.

loving-others-to-death—
as Chekhov put it, "compassion
down to your fingertips"—
looking on them as into the sun

Michael Ryan, Reminder