Writing

OMG! We’ve made it out of 2016. We snuck through with our lives, our livelihoods and our sanity intact (We might have a few doubts about all three that we won’t share publicly). 

Except,

2017 is just another year. 365 days organised sequentially and filled with external events from the random to the planned, from the heart warming to the shockingly tragic. It is not the year that does the work for good or bad. The days themselves are innocent. 

We do the work. Our attitudes and our actions shape every single day. We make a difference to our year one day at a time, one action at a time and one thought at a time. 

To make 2017 the year you want to remember, begin with the attitudes and the actions. Make each day count. 

Happy New Year! Now show us what you can do with this one. 

Halfway through this year, I swapped from my Tumblr blog to this new WordPress powered site. My recap of the top 10 posts for the year will be 5 from each six months.

Here are the Top 5 Posts by views for the second half of 2016

• Changing Work is Hard: Propelled by Tanmay Vora’s great infographic of another blog post, I looked at why work is hard to change
• Work Ahead for 2017: Lots of interest in my roadmap for helping individuals and organisations to be more agile, responsive and effective in 2017
• Email is a Problem but Meetings are the Collaboration Issue: Tackle our meeting problem and there is an immediate response.
• The Wirearchy Makes Your Hierarchy Work: The people do the work. The boxes just sit in a neat hierarchy.
• Chats, Conversations and Collaboration (& a Note on Communication):  Unravelling the choices between a glut of new and older technology platforms (Yammer, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Workplace by Facebook, etc) by going back and considering human behaviour.

Here are the Top 5 Posts by views for the first half of 2016 from simonterry.tumblr.com. Two of these are prior year favourites that I regularly reuse and recommend.  All these historical posts are now included in the archive on this site.

• Competency or Capability: Mindsets Matter: One of the first pieces I wrote 3 years ago and still stronger than ever. This year I updated the organisational perspective on this post which has revived interest.
• A Simple Visual History of Digital Transformation: A simple walk through Digital change. No surprise in its popularity. A video is available on my Youtube channel too.
• Working Aloud: Try Three Tiny Habits. Simple steps to be more effective in working out loud.
• Reflections on Facebook at WorkReflections on Facebook at Work (now known as Workplace by Facebook): There has been a lot of discussion of Facebook at Work this year. Here is one of my two contributions.
• Why Collaboration Value is Understated:  I will talk more in 2017 about how to create the strategic value from collaboration. It is still badly misunderstood and rarely effectively realised.

One older post missed the top 5 in each but had enough traffic to be in the top 10 across both sites.  The message still holds true: The Future of Work is the Future of Leadership.

My personal bonus: The most fun post to write this year was The Life Crushing Magic of Hierarchy.

In my reflections on 2016, I included the insight that “there is always more context”. At the heart of this insight is a need for greater empathy. In 2017, I want to do more to foster empathy through my work. Greater empathy is transformational in an organisation’s culture and effectiveness.  It is also a big step to making work more human.

Empathy

After years of making work more mechanistic and more clinical, we are starting to see the return of the practice of empathy. Better service experiences, more effective leadership, and realising the potential of people all require greater empathy than traditional management practiceEmpathy is deeply embedded in the social nature of humanity.

Empathy is deeply embedded in the social nature of humanity.  Our brains have mirror neurons to help us to react to emotions expressed by others and experience them.  We need to use them more. Empathy is a key contributor to human social connection and a foundation for generosity. As organisations start to see the alignment of more human ways of working fostering to their strategic goals, efforts to return empathy to our organisations will continue to rise.

Practices of Empathy

Reflect: Until our minds are calm enough to reflect on and make sense of our own experience we will struggle to be empathetic to others. We need to put aside the time for reflection and for consideration of others.

Humility: The more wrapped up we are in ourselves and our importance the lesson able we are to be empathetic to others. A little humility helps our empathy. Working out loud can help expose the less perfect and more humbling side to others.

Be Purposeful: Purpose is the effect we have on others. Purpose pushes out into the world to understand others and the effects we have from their perspective. Challenging ourselves to be more purposeful will makes us more empathetic and more effective.

Listen: We don’t listen enough to others. We listen to confirm our perspectives. We are too quick to share our own.  We need to listen longer, more actively and more deeply to truly understand.

Design: Empathy is the first step of a design thinking approach. Until a designer or design team understands the user’s needs and challenges from their perspective then they cannot generate the insights or develop an effective solution. Prototyping and experimentation reinforce the lesson that it is the experience of others, not our egos that determine success.

Collaborate: As we connect, share, solve and innovate together we are drawn out of our shell. Our understanding of others, their contexts, and their concerns increases. Shared work reminds us of the value and the need for empathy.

Give: People in our organisations were never as mechanistic or as self-interested as management theory wished. We always have had human generosity in the wirearchy to make the hierarchy work. The practice of generosity develops understanding, trust, and community.

When we say this time of year brings a gift of peace and joy, we should also include a reminder that some assembly is required and no batteries are included. It’s up to us to make the gift and keep it working.

2016 was a middling year in the all time rankings so it has taught me a lot. There were some amazing highlights like my Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award, two WOLweeks, meeting my Change Agent Colleagues in the US and speaking on Collaboration and Working Out Loud around the world. I was lucky enough to do some amazing challenging client work in learning, innovation and collaboration. With all of this, new relationships were built and existing relationships were strengthened. However the year had its shares of disappointments, frustrations and delays. 

Here are the lessons I learned (or was taught again) in 2016:

Hustle: Everything worth having takes effort. Hustle is the price and we never stop paying. 

Relationships Are Everything: the best work and learning we do together. You find great work through your networks. Work out loud to find and deepen relationships. When things get good, invest in others. When things get tough, call on your friends and connections. 

Shiny New Things: Shiny New Things are great when they are at the edges. Don’t get distracted by them. Don’t get over enthusiastic about them. Don’t make them the core of what you do until tested. Beware the person dangling a Shiny New Thing before you. It’s likely they don’t understand the dangers, no matter how well they sell it. 

There’s Always More Context: You can always learn more. Dig deeper. The better you understand the context. Surprises, disappointments and confusion are reminders to get more context. Some times you discover things are better than you think with more context.  Other times more context will save you. Make sure you share enough context to help others to succeed.  

Think Product: Products are easy to buy. Products are designed for ease of use. Products have a clear customer and a clear benefit. Products can be tailored. At as attractive as complete flexibility is, people want to know what they are getting and that it works. Products offer that promise. The other advantage of products is that they offer focus to the relationships and the hustle. 

Everything is a Test: We learn by doing. Do more. The best failure rate for learning is far higher than my comfort level. 

Give: Everything I have received this year is a legacy of some gift given directly or indirectly. Generosity works. Resist the temptation to make everything a commercial exchange. Don’t worry about the few greedy or unscrupulous people you meet on the path. When you dig deeper into their context, you wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.

Have Fun: I shouldn’t need this reminder. Whether working or not, there is more fun to be had. 

Focus on Purpose: You get one go. You need focus. Purpose is the reason for your work. Make it a relentless focus. 

Thanks 2016. I’m looking forward to applying all this in 2017. I’ve already made some changes but I’m sure there’s more to learn. There’s definitely a lot more to be done to make work more human. 

The blog post promised to transform my life in six minutes. A quick study indicated that I would have to execute six separate one-minute tasks every day. None of the tasks could be meaningfully executed in a minute and there was no time allowance for task-switching. I felt like commenting ‘Why does it take so long?’

Patience is lacking everywhere. Cars want to cut into the traffic from side streets. Politicians promise action on day one. Businesses want to scale fast. Get rich young. Instant Happiness. Respond now. Hustle.

‘Now!’ screams the world. ‘No, Now!’ we respond impatiently.

Understanding takes time. Learning takes time. Change takes time. Success takes time. Transforming your life takes forever.

Be patient with yourself. Be patient with the world.

You will find patience is the source of greater transformation than any scurrying six minutes of action.

We are approaching the end of the year. The Roman god Janus is the god of beginnings, transitions, and doorways. He faces both backward and forwards standing at a point of transition. As you come into the new year, what is your stance? Do you face outwards to customers, your community, and the world? Or are you faced inwards?

A simple question has a profound impact on how people, organisations and nations work, think and succeed. From solo entrepreneur to global politician where we look for answers, decisions, and guidance on our actions, shapes who we are and how we act.

In an outward-facing stance, the answer to the challenge is outside, through learning in the future. There is more to know, more value to create and more to do. The opportunity is to co-create new value together with others. You are open to discovering a better way.

The inward-facing stance looks for the answer inside, in proven capabilities and in the past. The focus is on preserving the current way and current value, often a personal outcome. Your back is turned to others.

Many individuals and large organisations expound the value of an outward-facing stance. However, the weight of their action suggests that they prefer an inward stance. Whether they realise it or not their intended stance is overcome by the inward pull of debate, politics, process, and numbers. Relying only on internal information and capabilities is a massive limiter in a globally networked world. This is rarely conducive to growth, effectiveness or success.

The challenges of our global networked economy demand new mindsets, new ways of working and new value creation. We need to look outward in 2017 to co-create these paths.

Both writing and baking involve long periods of waiting and short periods of activity. The rest of life happens in the gaps between the periods of activity. Consulting and knowledge work reflects the same patterns. The challenge is to use the time in between to best effect.

At work, we can easily fill our waiting time with wasteful effort. There is plenty of busy work to do. We drink coffee, tea or water. We can answer emails for hours. We can attend lots of long and ponderous meetings. We can search for information. We can make documents longer or slides prettier. We can update systems and manage the status and location of information. We multitask as if doing more than one task at a time was productive, fast or effective. Very little of this work adds anything to the experience of customers of the organisation.

Baking bread you need to manage the timetable of your rises and proving to fit around the rest of your work and deliver you a loaf when required.  That takes preparation, a few techniques to manage time and patience. When I bake bread, it is not multitasking. I do one task at a time but I am interweaving my tasks in the available time.  Because baking is not my day job, it is clear to me that I need to focus on completing other work in the time gaps that baking allows.

Because I want to blog consistently, I have a similar process for blogging. I write my posts at roughly the same time each day for a short intense burst. Into the 23 hours beforehand, I weave ideation, design, development, research and reflection for the post around the work I have to do. Blogging is not my day job, I focus on my consulting and coaching work and the life I need to live in that time.

In my consulting practice, the time between work on engagements is used for one of two purposes:

• developing new client or partner relationships; or
• developing new product offerings.

Managing the investment of time in these two activities is essential to the long-term health of my practice. When you are busy it is hard to continue to invest in this work so you need to be good at weaving. When you are quiet, you need to sustain the investment and ensure you don’t become wasteful of the time available.

The important part of all these processes is using time ‘in between’ work to best value. That time may not always be work. I have a life. I also want to relax, stare out the window and wonder about things. I just allow for those as activities, enjoy them for what they are and never confuse them with working.

One experience in my career is consistently the most rewarding. That experience is helping someone to discover their potential.

Many people realise that they have the potential to challenge themselves, to learn and to develop new skills through their schooling years. Some people never meet a teacher who inspires them and do not receive support from parents, friends or other community members to extend themselves. The first time some people encounter a purposeful supportive and challenging learning environment is in the workplace.

I have met so many people who can describe the effect of the first manager who believed in their potential. Someone took an interest in their work and their capabilities and encouraged them to do more. Often this moment of transition came around their first promotion when they were picked over others because of untapped potential. With the encouragement of a supportive environment and the push to do more, these individuals can go on to discover extraordinary talents. I know people who took up their university studies midcareer and went on to do PhDs or into the heights of new occupations as a result. I know people who never took formal study, but became the smartest and wisest CEOs in the business through practical experience, understanding of people and a keen intelligence sharpened by life experience. A few people get there on their own. Most require challenge, support and encouragement to start the journey of self-improvement.

We can all play a role in helping others to realise their potential. Sometimes all it takes is a simple act of recognition of potential to spark people. At other times, we can play a role to show people a possibility and begin coaching them into action. Even realising a small amount of potential can transform a person’s outlook, experience and life. This is work we can do as parents, managers, peers and community members.

What small step can you take today to help someone see their potential?

We know our positions. There’s no value in a stand-off. The value of conversation is the generative conversation. 

We have conversations every day. We aren’t very good at them. Too many of our conversations are determined by positions fixed before they begin. If 2017 highlights anything it is the need for richer and more generative conversations. 

I recently saw the phrase ‘the animated middle’. It was used by Poet Ann Lauterbach 

“The crucial job of artists is to find a way to release materials into the animated middle ground between subjects, and so to initiate the difficult but joyful process of human connection.”

When I saw that phrase it resonated deeply with me. The Art of Conversation is finding the animated middle ground and enhancing human connection. Great conversations aren’t always easy. Many are difficult and challenging for all involved. They generate new perspectives, new options and a new relationship between parties as they come to a better understanding and find shared ground in people’s purposes, concerns and circumstances. 

If our conversations aren’t doing this work, then we are just chatting. We are pushing information and positions at each other. Chatting can influence another to change their view but it is their action, not an outcome of co-creation by the two parties to a conversation. The other party to a chat is just as likely to dig in to their position or get the wrong impression. 

Seeing the work in the animated middle ground of Conversation as art also brings to the fore that we are engaged in collaborative co-creation. Something new is generated by the discussion. Nobody escapes from a real conversation with their perspective intact. Like art, some times what arises in that middle ground is difficult and provocative but essential. The more change we want from the conversation the greater the co-creation required. 

Our work and our civil society depends on better conversations. We need to explore the art of Conversation in Ann Lauterbach’s animated middle ground.