Writing

Adapting to circumstances matters more than following a plan. Don’t stress if your resolutions or plans need to change when your priorities change.

Cleaning up my office for the new year, I found the plans for the year that I wrote carefully in January 2017. I had delivered on much of the plan, but a great deal of the great ideas went undelivered. Largely, I had pursued the parts of the plans that were about how I positioned myself and Change Agents Worldwide, how I developed a few new areas of work and how I made new relationships. The products I intended to build and some of the events I planned to create did not materialise.

Would it have been good to deliver those new products and events? Yes. Was it an accident or an oversight that they weren’t delivered? No, they actually sat on my to do list right through to the end of the year. They didn’t get done because the time I planned to allocate to them was taken up by new challenges and new work that was far more important to my purpose and long term plans. The work that I did do on my plan for 2017 created better opportunities than I expected and I changed my priorities. Managing priorities is by far the most valuable way to manage your work.

The opportunities that arose for me in 2017 that were unplanned were all meaningful steps forward like contributing to a Social Business book, helping launch Jen Frahm’s Conversations of Change, building a new consulting and speaking focus on the future of HR, working on a number of agile projects, becoming a Yammer Adoption Specialist, becoming a Workplace by Facebook partner, speaking at Microsoft Ignite again, joining Lantern Pay as Head of Markets and becoming a non-executive director at Bank First. In the latter case it achieved a personal goal I had set for years hence. Everyone of those outcomes came about because I kept engaging my networks and followed the opportunities that the network delivered. I kept my eyes open for new opportunities that were higher priorities than those I had planned.

So as I start the process of planning 2018, I know that my plan will change. What matters most is using the planning process to be clear on my understanding of:

• my purpose;
• my priorities;
• how my networks can help; and
• how to advance my goals.

The actions I set will be the first draft. What happens in 2018 will depend on how I use those four to adapt my plans. Where I end up depends on my continuous process of adaptation, the opportunities and challenges that arise and the actions of others.

The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle. In this sense one should understand Napoleon’s saying: “I have never had a plan of operations.”
Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force. – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

A new year is a time to reflect on what we want for the year ahead. It is a time to reflect on what needs to change and what kind of world we need to create. One desire rises strongly for me – a world where we have relationships and communities with the least collateral damage.

Collateral damage is a term borrowed from military contexts for deaths, injuries, or other harm inflicted on someone other than the target. For me, it is a useful way to consider how dysfunctional relationships can have wide and unintended negative impacts.

Collateral Damage of Commission 

Reckless, thoughtless, or dangerous behaviour by individuals in our society or our relationships can cause long term collateral damage on those inadvertently impacted or merely around the activity. When we act with simple self-interest or without concern for the broader consequences of our actions we see often devastating impacts of actions that can last a long time into the future.

A wide variety of our social challenges offer us an opportunity to reflect on the unintended harm and victims of actions of others and ourselves: climate change, domestic violence, the social ramifications of rising inequality, and so on. 2017 was a year in which we saw many consequences surface of actions taken without regard for consequences on others. Worse still in business and political domains we continued to see leaders act without regard for collateral damage.  We can all benefit by taking greater consideration of those indirectly impacted by our actions and looking for paths that minimise the collateral damage.

Collateral Damage of Omission

A wider category of collateral damage occurs when we simply fail to take action on matters that could prevent issues for others.  I see so many situations in work contexts, in relationships and society where the consequences of minor omissions lead on to damage to others.

A simple example is the undiscussable issues that exist in many organisations and relationships. Topics like racism, sexism, privilege, discrimination, and many more uncomfortable issues easily fall into the undiscussable category. These issue are real but people will rarely raise them or seek to address them. Undiscussable issues are often those that cause discomfort, embarrassment, loss of status, or confront a given in the current culture or relationship.  As a result of a topic becoming undiscussable, collateral damage can occur widely, particularly if silence perpetuates or endorses the current negative impacts. Some times there will be lots of action to address the symptoms that arise in this damage but because the principal cause remains undiscussable the issue persists and in many cases spreads.

The global upswell in focus on sexual harassment becoming public is an example of a previously undiscussable issue coming out. The stories that have come forth are harrowing examples of the damage that can be imposed on others when people know of issues but neither take action to fix them and feel constrained by power, consequences, or other social circumstances to discuss them publicly. Every person who didn’t contribute to making this discussion more open.

More Compassions & Less Collateral Damage

Unintended consequences are by definition challenging to prevent. However, we can reduce the collateral damage of our actions by addressing the root causes of harm. Thinking more broadly about consequences, including wider groups of people in our consideration and fixing the problems. Importantly, we can also take action to exclude from our relationships and even societies those who continue to act without regard for the collateral damage on others.

Creating better relationships, better communities, and a world with more compassion demands we all work harder to reduce the collateral damage of our actions and our omissions.

Organisations spend a lot of time talking about values. They spend less time exploring their use in practice. The most dangerous for corporate values is rarely an attack on the heart of a value. Corporate values collapse not because of direct attack but by creeping conflict at the edges that create a culture of corruption.

Values – Easy to Say. Harder to Do.

Announcing a new set of corporate values is a remarkably common corporate action, particularly in a transformation or after a crisis. Senior executives, boards and regulators feel more secure when there is a clear standard of the values endorsed by the organisation. However, we always have the stark reminder of Enron’s fine values statement to be reminded that the practice of values matters more than the words.

Values are easy to say but hard to do, because the first thing that happens once they are announced is that they become inconvenient. If values don’t drive choices and action, they aren’t values. As John Stewart famously said:

If you don’t stick to your values when they’re inconvenient, they’re hobbies, not values.

Values are also hard because often organisations find that the values feel like they are in conflict in common scenarios. What do we do if ‘collaboration’ and ‘accountability’ feel like they are in conflict in a scenario?  Because values are often imposed and much rarely discussed, employees can find these situations difficult to resolve, even when they are aware of the values and seeking to follow them. One of the benefits of having a strong organisation culture of storytelling is to help embed one word values into practical guides for decision making in situations like this. In a story, collaboration and accountability have specific meanings in context and usually can be resolved based on the past practices of the organisation & its cultural expectations.

Fraying at the Edges

Resolving these conflicts and other edge cases is important in organisational culture. Values don’t like compromise. The point of declaring some values as pre-eminent should not be to then trade them away when matters become difficult.

The worst corruption of values in organisations is never a direct attack on a corporate value. If the value is real and embedded, The culture of the organisation will usually push back on a direct attack. The sneaky corruption is the gradual erosion of inconvenient values at the edges. Every single time an employee excuses a minor variation from values or a policy or process is created without consideration of the values then no matter how convenient that choice, it is a threat to the future effectiveness of the values. Employees take their lead on values not from posters but from practice. All of those frayed edges are a signal of what matters and what doesn’t.

Senior executives are usually the worst at fraying the edges of values. They have power and status. They have fewer voices to question their decisions. They are busy and important and not prone to stop and ponder inconveniences. Their actions are highly public. When that senior executive stops and says ‘Just this once I will order a limousine in breach of the expense policy, because I really need to get to that flight’, they send a signal that integrity can be traded away for convenience.

To prevent fraying, organisations need a rich ongoing conversation about values that is full of stories, debates and practical examples. The values need to be embedded in employee practice and encompass all of the employees, even the most senior. Most importantly of all, conflicts of values or fraying at the edges should be areas of great concern and common topics of discussion. Treat fraying at the edges as as much a cause of concern as corruption, because that is where corruption starts.

‘There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.’ commonly attributed to Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

2017 has been a year where we have seen the power of the follower. Change in society takes the weight of those who follow the lead of a change agent.

The quote above is likely apocryphal and widely used as a mockery of a form of ‘leadership’ that is all to common in modern politics. Politicians poll the populace and then follow their opinions. Their ‘leadership’ lags public opinion and is at the whim of media cycles and perceptions. In many cases this means politicians follows the swings of opinion. More rarely it means that politicians focus their efforts on supporting late movements of social change whose work is well advanced in society.

Modern politics with a focus on the news cycle and the next election seems to be losing the ability to set a vision and influence action towards in. While this form of following is driven by fear and a lack of influence, 2017 saw many braver examples.

Around the world individual change agents started huge movements of social change by speaking up. The moment of courage came when others rushed to support them and share their own stories or passion for change. The impact of the discussions of domestic violence, sexual assault, racism, mental illness, sexuality and gender around the world has been driving by wave after wave of brave sharing and has forced many to consider their role in a system that can have cruel consequences to those it doesn’t currently support.

Derek Siver’s story of the first follower of the lone dancing guy has been so widely shared the message can be lost. Choosing to be the first follower of the mad, embarrassing or difficult change agent is also an act of bravery. Following takes courage too. Every act of following is an individual act of leadership to influence others.

The value of a community around a change agent is to make it easier to follow and to encourage more of these acts of bravery. Change Agents and their early followers take huge risks in their advocacy. Many suffer greatly as they sacrifice more to lead change in society.

In 2017, Lois Kelly, a colleague on Change Agents Worldwide, ran a Courage camp to help people to explore their courage to make change in their lives and their communities. Having read Lois’ book Naked Hearted this year and knowing her work with Rebels at Work I can see her qualification to facilitate others. We all need to invest in giving others the courage to support change.

Following is less dangerous in a community than a network because we are connected with others in shared purposes, values and relationships. When we build rich communities and a strong civil society we create the conditions for more bravery and following. We create the conditions for society to demand more of its leaders and better support those who follow. We must value the courage of the followers too.

We need to invest in our civil society. One simple way we can start this work is to stop venerating and rewarding those who seek to benefit by bending or even breaking the rules (For want of term let’s call these folks ‘the sharks’). Those who abide by society’s social rules aren’t suckers. They have a richer, more values-based and more relational view of community.

We Venerate The Sharks

We have a lot of terms for the sharks: sharp operators, smooth movers, power players, the 1%, regulatory disruptors, teflon, Sharp elbowed, queue jumpers, and more. Sharks are those folks who see a rule as no barrier to their personal advantage.

Sharks free ride on the general rule abiding nature of society. They see everyone else’s good nature and rule following as an opportunity for advantage. Sharks benefit from all the good society brings but they duck their share of the effort to create a civil society in the interests of their own personal advantage.

Worse still sharks see themselves as special. The advantages they gain reinforce to the cleverness of their stance. When the costs of their actions are widely spread on others, there are few negative consequences. Acting like a shark can seem the only smart way to act and those who follow the rules must be suckers. The role of sharks is to take advantages of suckers in as many transactions and interactions as possible to maximise personal gain.

The Sharks are Proliferating

A civil society requires constant maintenance. Civil society is based on shared relationships, shared values and shared norms.

Sharks eat civil society. They reject the norms and relationships on which it is based. They expect its protections but reject its burdens. Too many sharks and civil society breaks down, because the culture shifts from community interest to self-interest. Once sharks are seen as the smart way, more people become sharks.

My favourite measure of sharkness is not business. There have always been too many sharks in our commercial world. We encourage sharks in that context.

I measure sharkness by behaviour in social contexts: traffic, queues, crowds & government. We have laws and rules that apply in these contexts. However, in the instant of an interaction the consequences of laws and rules are often quite remote. For these contexts to function, we rely on suckers to follow the rules and keep everyone safe.

Having spent time in countries where there are few of any social restrictions on behaviour in these contexts I hope the number of sharks doesn’t keep growing. It’s a subtle shift from some edge freeriding to a complete breakdown of the system and the lack of social safety that follows. Re-establishing social rules in the face of endemic cheating is incredibly challenging because of the lack of social trust and the pernicious effect on the institutions of enforcement.

Turning the Tide

There will always be sharks. Sharks seek short term advantage in transactional interactions. Provided there are benefits to trust and relationships, sharks lose in the long run, even without direct consequences of cheating. As a wise senior executive once put to me ‘the people in the white hats win in the second half of the movie’.

We need to invest in our relationships, norms and our institutions. Civil society depends on the community-minded actions of proud suckers investing in relationships and social outcomes over time.

There is a reason fish school. The united actions of a school of fish can confuse and frustrate the shark. A community of suckers can use their norms and relationships to similar effect. Sharks don’t really understand civil society.

Sharks will be sharks. The suckers win by creating a society of shared purpose, shared norms and mutual advantage. Let the sharks enjoy their own company.

Our status in society or an organisation is not who we are. Our status is not a hat we wear. Status is woven into social networks. Status is a tool we use in life.

When I became an independent consultant four years ago, the biggest adjustment was the change in how others treated me. I had been a senior bank executive with a CEO title. I didn’t change overnight but my status clearly did. Many of my social connections struggled to place what I did and how I fitted in to the social order of relationships. What surprised me the most was the assumption that my new role as a consultant couldn’t have been my choice, because it was too great a fall in status.

Acquiring New Status

Four years later, I have just added to my portfolio a new senior management role at Lantern Pay. Joining a new organisation and starting work with a new team is always a challenge and a learning experience. In a start-up that learning experience is always accelerated by the challenge, the adaptive environment and the pace of business. I’ve learned much in a few weeks, but one learning is unique. I’ve discovered I have a new social status and I feel like I have a new relationship with that status.

With my new job, I am an employee again which fits me into a known quantity, even if I retain a part-time consulting practice. I am a senior manager in the new company. The organisational purpose and ambitions are clear. Suddenly people are affording me a new status. People have congratulated profusely on the new status in a way that doesn’t seem to fit with the change in circumstances. They are happy I am ‘back where I should be’.  I was advising and working with senior executives before and I am still doing the same. However, because an employee role fits with a standard hierarchical social expectation, I’ve got a new status. Because that role is a leadership role, I am afforded a more elevated social position in their eyes. My uncertain state has been clarified and I am better off in their view.

I haven’t changed. The level or complexity of work I am doing hasn’t changed. In a sense my life is a little easier because I have a consistent source of challenging work and some key work relationships that continue. My rising status is because the perspectives of the community around my work.

This experience makes it abundantly clear what status is. We often think our status is tied to who we are. It isn’t. We might even think of status as a hat that we wear because of a role or what we do. It isn’t. The hat doesn’t come from the role. It comes from the views of others in our networks. You can have the status without the role and vice versa. Status is a change in our influence with others. Status is a Tool.

Status as a Tool

Recognising that status is given by others and exists only in those relationships is important. Not everyone grants that status or cares about who am I or where I work. The joke of people saying “Don’t you know who I am?” reflects the fact that many people might have status in some contexts, but not all. There is no such thing as a universal status. We are granted status by specific others and can uses it only in certain relationships.

Seeing status as something that depends on the other person and that we use only in specific relationships helps us put status at a distance. We have to accept that this kind of status is ever shifting, depending on a two-way flow of influence in those relationships, like Jon Husband’s concept of the workings of a wirearchy. The status does not have a permanent state. It is something we discover and change as we use it for influence, authority, respect and trust. Importantly, this interdependence highlights the mutuality of our status. If we disrespect or abuse it, it will be lost. Very few leaders survive a mutiny.

Growing comfortable with status as something that sits not with us but in the relationships we hold is also a great relief. We are no longer so beholden to the fears of a universal loss or change of status. Changes are more gradual, more partial and more to do with how we act in those relationships. We have the ability to retain status through those relationships, even when our jobs or our work changes. Most importantly, this insight means we are clear that we are not our status. Changes in status don’t impact who we are or our ability to act. Status is a tool we use in our relationships with the support of others.

Seeing status as something at arms’ length from us and something that exists only in the network web of relationships is an enabler of new freedom of action. New relationships offer new potential for action. Building relationships can develop new status. It shows us how we can help others to build their status, because status is not innate and immutable. Most importantly of all we face fewer personal risks of change and more willingness to see that status comes from action in relationships, not inherent right. If status is a tool, it is one we must use in mutual interest or we lose it.

The ability to keep working and improving is a great privilege for someone building a portfolio career. Not every day is a success but you learn and improve as the game goes on. When you are in the game, things happen. You can still make your way and make change happen. Value your chances inside the game and reflect on those struggling to get in.

Stay in

The last month has been a very busy month for me. I have been to speak as Microsoft Ignite in Orlando as a Microsoft MVP and reconnect with a global community of IT professionals who are changing the world of work. I have begun my work at Lantern Pay as an executive and advisor. Another startup I have advised has raised significant capital and created an exit event. Change Agents Worldwide is growing well, attracting new members and attracting client attention. My board roles see organisations that are performing well and realising exciting new opportunities for growth. At the same time, I have had some exciting new projects arrive as clients grapple with agile work, collaboration, working out loud, innovation and the future of HR. 

I set out over 4 years ago to build a portfolio career. That portfolio is now coming in to place. All this looks like success but it doesn’t feel that way. As we all know you don’t judge success on the outcomes alone. Some times the outcomes are temporary, just luck or timing. Some of the things listed above are beginnings not endings. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have described my position as on the brink of failure. Experiments had failed. Projects had fallen through. Bank balances were low. My confidence was waning.

What’s the difference a year later? I stayed in the game. I kept my faith and worked to build my portfolio of work, business and opportunities. By keeping going, I learned from my experiments. By keeping going, I made new contacts. By keeping going, I let time help me in growing reputation, connections and decision-making. Most of all, in the last year I became a whole lot clearer on what success looks like for me and what I need to do. As I had forecast earlier on this blog, I became a lot more disciplined in my approach to the business, to my products, my relationships and to my opportunities.
Value Your Privilege

One of the other things that became clear to me over the last year was the privilege of the position I have. No matter how glum I felt a year ago, people were still envious of my position & future opportunities. Those conversations helped me to understand that my past advantages are helping my success today. 

Understanding this made me value my privileged position more. 
Whatever you do, many more people want to get in to the game, but can’t see the opportunity to start. Whether it is financial position, networks, experience or mindsets, there are many barriers for those who haven’t yet begun. Many people have helped you achieve your current position in the game, whether that is family, friends sponsors or mentors. Having cleared those barriers puts you in a privileged position. Value the opportunities that come from this position. Work hard & learn to make the most of them.

The most important part of being privileged is working to help others overcome those barriers. I know many others helped me get started on this portfolio career. Many of those friends and partners still do provide support, contacts, insights and opportunities. This recognition reiterates to me the importance of reaching out and helping others build their careers and their work opportunities. We can all be better collaborators, coaches, sponsors and mentors for those starting out or struggling on their journey. There is a lot we can do to help each other stay in the game.