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From Gigs to Purpose: The Purpose Economy & Portfolio Roles

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work, Life & Career

Mindsets shape our perception. – A large sign that needs to be placed in all workplaces

The changing nature of work is growing greater attention in the business press and in the strategy teams of large and small organisations.  New ways of working and new platforms of work are gaining traction and much handwringing is going on about the potential “post-job” future of work.

Many organisations see the changing nature of work as an opportunity to use transactional platforms to lower employment costs and deliver a greater flexibility of resources. They see platforms that offer a highly competitive pool of temporary and flexible labour as solely an efficiency play. Much of the investment and energy behind these platforms have been driven by the idea that they can take advantage of a struggling and transforming post-crisis global economy, digital technology and new work patterns of work to deliver real cost savings to organisations. That focus on the transactional efficiency benefits of Gig Economy reflects the prevailing mindset on the purpose of work and organisations. These organisations often can’t see that there is another way.

I was recently asked why I wanted to work in the Gig Economy. My answer was that I don’t. I work in the Purpose Economy. A traditional organisation might see an opportunity for efficiency and flexibility through a pool of transactional gig workers. I am looking for flexibility, purpose, relationships, collaboration and learning through a diverse portfolio of rewarding work.

I don’t join large scale platforms that atomise participants, commoditise work, create competitive dynamics and are designed for value capture to the platform (for more read Harold Jarche’s excellent description) . The transactional efficiency mindset of business is strong and deeply embedded. For many people, this has become the only way of business. It is all that they can see. However, there are other more purposeful, more valuable and more human ways of working. Breaking this mindset and setting out in a different pattern can be richly rewarding.

What impressed me as an adviser to Sidekicker was the team’s focus on relationships with both their workforce and their clients. They are looking for skills, talents and a better way of working with benefits to both workers and clients in areas of the market like event management staff where that is a rare mindset. The mindset of doing repeatable high quality business in a relationship for mutual gain is a valuable proposition in a world of atomised marketplaces.

I recently blogged about becoming an adviser to Peer Academy. This platform focuses on helping participants to collaborate, work and learn as peers. The learning and collaboration focus of this platform makes it a far more valuable and purposeful solution for organisations and participants.

I am a participant in Change Agents Worldwide because first and foremost it is a network about relationships, collaboration and learning. Change Agents Worldwide seeks to create value through scaling the efforts of individual Change Agents, but it recognises that it must first deliver value to the individual, cannot compete with them and must allow them to shape their participation and their work. A true network needs remarkably few rules to help individuals pursue their purpose, learn from others and to deepen relationships.

Ultimately, my work is driven by my purpose of making work more human. I write, speak, consult and coach towards this end. The portfolio nature of my work enables me a diversity of projects that contribute to this goal. My future success depends on what work I do, what relationships I build and what I learn. I have an entrepreneurial drive to improve my proposition to better fulfil my purpose. I get to build relationships that shape what I work on, what I learn and with whom I work.

A purposeful portfolio also helps diversify my risk and ensures a more consistent flow of rewards. I’ve been subject to far greater income risk and far more atomisation as an employee than I have ever experienced as an independent worker. Critically the nature and amount of those rewards remain in my control and are agreed through relationship conversations, not market place bidding, bell-curve performance processes or restructures. Not all the rewards are cash, I shape the value that I share in my work.

Before your organisation considers a new model of work for its efficiency gains, consider whether there is a wider benefit in exploring the potential of deeper relationships, richer purpose and more responsive work. Leveraging these opportunities will require you to consider many new areas of organisational work in 2017, but particularly:

  • What do you offer the purposeful worker? Is your organisational purpose clear enough to shape your work?
  • Is your employee & worker experience good enough to attract, to retain and to leverage the contributions of those working in the purpose economy? Are you treating temporary labour as an equal member of your teams or as second class citizens?
  • How does your organisation onboard, collaborate and learn at scale, especially with those who may not care for your processes or be seeking a career in your organisation?
  • Are your team structures and work processes agile enough to incorporate and benefit from the inputs of your new workforce?
  • Can your management capabilities, models, policies and systems handle the networked organisation and a purposeful workforce?

 

PS: An example of the limiting power of mindsets is that we now need to clarify the meaning of ‘gig economy’.  Language that came out of the creative professions to reflect their flexibility in pursuit of purpose becomes redefined in a corporate mindset to transactional efficiency.

When the Cavalry Arrives

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work

This morning I was reading about a high profile group of business leaders who are supporting a change I want to see in business and advocate through my work. For a moment, I felt a wave of relief. I thought to myself ‘The cavalry have arrived to save us’. Then I reflected again on what the arrival of the cavalry means to Change Agents working to bring about change. 

As someone who has been an organisational Change Agent and a consultant to Change Agents, I have seen the cavalry arrive many times in fights for change. Like the cavalry in old films they arrive late, but bringing the power to drive organisational change. In some cases, just like the films, the cavalry can be a saviour of a beleaguered team of Change Agents on the losing end of a battle. Unfortunately, even when they succeed in forcing change, the organisational heavy hitters arriving can have downsides. Here’s why:

Everyone stops when the cavalry arrives: when the official forces arrive, everything stops. Your supporters stop work expecting a quick resolution. Opponents hide out waiting for this to blow over. Nobody wants to discuss the change anymore because the cavalry will sort it. 

The cavalry take charge of the battle: the cavalry are used to being powerful. They are used to winning their way. Usually they will tell the change agents to stop while they make the change happen. They don’t like distraction or initiative. 

The cavalry fights a different battle: The cavalry have power. They arrive with a thunder of hooves and lots of weapons. They fight hard and fast and take no prisoners. A quick transactional solution suits their temperament. They aren’t interested in sustainability or buy-in. With power, it isn’t needed. They will definitely tell you everything you are doing is wrong. 

The cavalry eat your supplies: all those men and horses are hungry. The goodwill, the momentum and resources of your change efforts will be commandeered by the cavalry. These precious resources will be put to work on the cavalry’s charge. They will also follow the cavalry to its next battle. 

The cavalry win their battle but not the peace: the big surprise is to discover that the battle is soon over. You learn that the cavalry is not fighting for the same goal. They just look aligned and when their goal is achieved they declare peace. Sometimes they declare a new goal just to win and declare peace. 

The cavalry charge elsewhere: Cavalry are always on the move. Trench warfare or a long resistance is not their style. They sweep people from the field and move on. When you need help to consolidate the fragile peace that they declared they will mount up and ride away. 

So if you are a change agent, take care when the cavalry arrives. Use the opportunity wisely to advance your cause. Retain the power to make change and keep your relationships. 

If you are a leader, ask yourself whether your efforts to help change agents feel like the interventions above. How are you building the capability to make change?

Infographic for 2017 Work: Foundations, Organisational and Personal.

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work

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This infographic is a visual summary of Work Ahead for 2017: Foundations, Personal & Organisational Work

Simon Terry provides consulting, advice, speaking and thought leadership to global clients through his own consulting practice, and as a Charter Member of Change Agents Worldwide, a network of progressive and passionate professionals, specializing in Future of Work technologies and practices.  The focus of Simon’s practice is assisting organizations to transform innovation, collaboration, learning and leadership. 

Work Ahead for 2017: Foundations, Personal & Organisational Work

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Collaboration, Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership, Learning, Strategy, Working out loud

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As the end of November approaches, that time has come again when we must consider whether we have the right initiatives in place for ourselves and our organisations as we get ready for 2017.  How are you transforming the capabilities and work practices in your organisation to make sure that your teams are more effective in their work?

Why is Work Changing?

The way we work is fundamentally changing under the influence of five main drivers:

  • Pervasive Global connection: As internet connectivity has gone mobile, we now have the ability to connect with, to converse with and to see the whole system of our stakeholders any time anywhere.
  • Automation: Digital technology has enabled us to automate simple tasks and string together increasingly complex processes and systems.
  • Data and Analytics: As digital connection and digital automation expands so does our ability to gather data and analyse that data to provide insight and run complex algorithmic processes.
  • Changing Consumer Expectations: As consumers are exposed to the potential of digital through consumer technology and consumer services, the businesses must meet disruptive and exacting standards for convenience, service, value and speed.
  • Accelerating Pace of Change: Disruption, greater responsiveness to change and ever-shortening cycles of feedback are the new norm for business and our work practices must adapt to enable our businesses to keep up.

We have already seen great change in digital transformation.

Further dramatic changes in the nature of work are here but ‘not yet widely distributed’ to borrow the phrase of William Gibson..

2017 Future of Work Recommendations

With these pressures on the way we work, every business should have a focus on how it is changing the way its people work and the practices that will support ongoing transformation of work. Here are my recommendations on what work you should have on your backlog for the new year:

Foundations:

These five are in place in your organisation today. However, they may not be well understood, managed or serving your purpose.  As you look to 2017 it is always worthwhile to ensure that the foundations are sound and well aligned.

2017-foundations

Purpose: Be clear on your personal purpose. Look for that purpose in the work you do. Clarify the shared purpose in your organisation. Don’t impose a purpose designed around the leadership table. Discover the purpose through the stories and the work that bring your organisation together.

Strategic Value: What value are you trying to create to fulfil your purpose? What kinds of value matter most to your stakeholders? When do they know you are creating value? What measures tell you that you are achieving your goals?

Networks: To compete in the network era, your organisation must be networked. How are you bringing people together to connect, to share, to solve problems and to respond to the networks around your organisation? The technology matters less than the connection, the behaviours and the shared purpose. Are you clear on the strategic value of your communities, are they well supported with sponsorship, investment and community management so as to accelerate their value creation?

Culture: Move beyond words on a poster. Move beyond generic platitudes. Move beyond an agglomeration of individual team cultures. What specific values are shared across your organisation? Why do these help fulfil your purpose? How do those values translate to expectations about behaviours in and across your teams? Is the culture in your organisation effective for your purpose and the value you are seeking to create? How do you personal role model the behaviours you expect from others?

Employee Experience: Are you working somewhere that values the employee experience and is adapting it to changing work and changing roles in the organisation? How have you aligned your employee experience to your desired customer experience? Does your workplace create rich value for employees and enable them to express their potential in fulfilment of purpose? Does your employee experience work as well for the one-hour temporary contract worker as the long term employee? Does it work equally well for all levels of the hierarchy and all corners of your network?

Personal Effectiveness:  Four Key Future of Work Practices

These four personal practices are enablers of the future of work. They enable an individual employee to deliver greater value in their work by responding to the opportunities and information in their environment. Agile and adaptive they empower employees to continuously improve and innovate.

1

Working Out Loud: Sharing work in progress in a purposeful way with relevant communities will accelerate learning, sharing and feedback cycles. Start working out loud now.

Personal Knowledge Management: Learn how to turn the personal information flood into effective sense making, learning and sharing. A critical skill to make sense of complexity and to leverage networks for learning.

Adaptive Leadership: Enabling the rebel and the change agent to lead more effectively in any system. Improving understanding, influence and the increasing the breadth of leadership techniques to create collective change in any system.

Experimentation: Move beyond the limits of your expertise. Learn by doing. Resolve uncertainty through action. Shorten cycles of decision making and feedback to increase personal effectiveness.

Organisational Effectiveness: Scaling & Accelerating Change

Organisations are made up individuals. These four practices of organisational effectiveness scale and accelerate the personal practices through a focus on design of systems for connection, learning and adaptation.

2

Open Collaborative Management: Middle managers are often those who find a change to digital ways of working most threatening and disrupting. Open up the work of management. Move management from planning, allocation and control to facilitation, alignment and coaching. Shorten cycles and improve the performance value of feedback. Foster the role of managers as network navigators and brokers. Management can be a critical point of leverage in achieving more open, more collaborative and more effective work.

Scalable Capability Development: Turn each employee’s learning into a contribution to scalable system for delivering strategic value. Create Big Learning systems that scale learning around strategic capabilities for the organisation’s success. Coordinate your learning agenda as an agile change program. Curate the capability building of your teams, leveraging learning from peer communities and leverage social learning to bring 70:20:10 and a performance-oriented approach to learning to life at scale and in the workplace.

Effective Networked Organisations: Take advantage of the networks in and around your organisation to rethink your business model and organisational design choices. Break the centralised/decentralised binary and move beyond hierarchy. Enable autonomy, foster alignment and improve effectiveness for purpose. Skill your teams to achieve effectiveness in the wirearchy. You don’t need to purchase a new management system. You need to adapt your approach to managing knowledge, trust, credibility and results to your purpose, culture and community.

Agile Innovation & Change: Adapt to the changing needs of the environment and stakeholders to deliver new value. Accelerate innovation and change through new approaches and by putting in place the systemic support for employee-led innovation, change and transformation to a more responsive organisation.

Simon Terry provides consulting, advice, speaking and thought leadership to global clients through his own consulting practice, and as a Charter Member of Change Agents Worldwide, a network of progressive and passionate professionals, specializing in Future of Work technologies and practices.  The focus of Simon’s practice is assisting organizations to transform innovation, collaboration, learning and leadership. 

Keep Asking for What You Want

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work

Our connected world is great at supplying solutions. However everyone needs to know what problems you want to solve. Ask for what you want. Don’t stop asking until you get it. 

I was raised to be grateful for whatever life brings. My life has been overwhelmingly positive. I have received so many blessings it is hard to be thankful enough. However the flip side of a pattern of success and an attitude of acceptance is that it can cause me to forget to ask explicitly for what I want. Waiting quietly can replace a public hustle.   

Let’s be blunt. The universe respects hustle. The return doesn’t come to the five minute version of hustle. The universe rewards persistent and public effort. Success is driven by continuing to build relationships, sticking at a plan, learning from experience and working hard at clear goals. Overnight success is usually a seven year effort. 

How does our connected world deliver its help? When you are clear what you want and go after it, you are more likely to succeed. Focus helps you and helps others to help you. Just publicly putting your Purpose into the world can start to attract people, resources and efforts of help. The support of others, their help and opportunities will help you stay focused and persist. Persistence will attract more people and more opportunities to solve your challenges and meet your needs. 

If you don’t ever express what you want, then you are missing out. Give yourself the time and the opportunity to get what you want. Keep publicly pushing for your goal. Our connected world will reward your intent & persistence in time. 

Thanks to Eddie Harran for the inspiration 

Innovation: From Crisis to Critical

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work

Yesterday for HISA’s series on Innovating Health, along with Vishaal Kishore, I facilitated a discussion of healthcare leaders on how to create a culture of systemic innovation. In the conversation we discussed the insight that participants in the healthcare system are great at innovation in a crisis. When the urgency and need are high, resources are made available, change leadership arises, collaboration comes forth and novel solutions are pushed through to solve challenges. We need to reflect on why the innovation and change that arises in a crisis is not more critical to our organisations.

Learning from Crisis Innovation

Many organisations and systems are capable of extraordinary things in a crisis. Inspired by crisis level performance, the response of leaders can be to seek to leverage and replicate this capability beyond the crisis. Many leaders try to recreate innovation and change through a manufactured crisis situation, either through a ‘burning platform‘ or simply a high pressure project environment.  These strategies result more often in crash than crash through. It is rare that sustainable change flows from a skunkworks or a pressure cooker because people and systems push back on embedding and adoption of change when the crisis subsides and practices return to normal. These interventions are transactional and not generative. In addition, the costs of a rolling crisis to employees and organisation involved can be extreme.

Other leaders take the view that innovation is only possible in special circumstances and therefore look to create space for those unique circumstances of shared purpose, collaboration, leadership and resourcing. With this mindset comes a focus on a special extra space for innovation. This space ranges from extra time, to special teams, to extra funding through to dedicated innovation labs. There is an important role for dedicated space for innovation. Critically these spaces can act as ‘wiggle room‘ to enable change agents to learn and demonstrate their potential and to enable organisations to test approaches and see proof the value of innovation. Extra space for innovation can be a key part of a transition to wider changes in the system to foster and support innovation across the organisation.

The inadvertent consequence of both of these approaches is a view that innovation is over and above work.  Innovation happens in a crisis, a project or a lab. It doesn’t happen at my workplace. Innovation is what others do when asked. Sustainable systemic innovation requires organisations to focus on how innovation can become critical to work and not a crisis. The best innovations are driven by the insights, interactions and lessons of the flow of everyday work.

Critical Innovation Leadership is Leadership

When we look at some of the human elements that align in a crisis situation to enable people to push through to realise new ideas, we can see that many of these circumstances are not that special at all. In fact they should be critical to the success of any work. Leaders should foster these in all work. Clarity of purpose supports all work. Focus on value for diverse stakeholders improves effectiveness of work everywhere. Great leadership and collaboration to work across silos and around barriers is essential to all work. Resourcing and risk appetite should be driven by value creation and the needs of work. A learning mindset is critical for all work in an era of continuous change and rising expectations.

We can and should address challenges in crises when they arise. We can all benefit for the extra reflective space, practices and resources for special areas devoted to innovation. However, the challenge for all work and all leaders is how to move innovation and change from crisis to a critical everyday part of every role. We need to focus on the capabilities, behaviours and systems that enable and act as barriers to innovation in everyday work. Aligning and improving these aspects of the system will benefit all work.  All work benefits when leaders set about creating the ideal circumstances for innovation and change.

Changing Work is Hard

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Collaboration, Future of Work, Leadership

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Some time ago I published a post on five small changes that we can each make to make work more effective. Tanmay Vora turned the post into the great sketch above that has been widely shared. On the weekend I wondered whether all this sharing actually helped anyone to change their work. Tanmay and others responded that they were using the sketch as a guide to their work. However, my question remains open. Do we have as much change as we should? Do we act on the small ways to improve work?

Changing Work is Hard

Changing work is hard.  We would all like work to be more effective, but we continue to cling to ineffective practices. We know there are better ways but we don’t always use them. Why is there a gap between our future of work intent and action.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why changing work is difficult.

Reactive not Reflective: We are busy.  Being busy often deprives us of the time to reflect on how best to do our work or how we could improve our work.  While time pressures should present an incentive to plan a better way, we often think it is better to just start.  Take the time each day, if only for 5 minutes to reflect on how your work could be improved.

Habit: There is comfort in habit. Habits provide patterns of certainty in an incredibly volatile and uncertain world. Habits can be behaviours or habitual mindsets. Together they create ingrained and unthinking behaviours. Sending an email or organising a meeting is a routine next step and others will share the habit making it harder to break.  Find triggers for new habits. Make a choice to think and go another way and lead people away from bad habits.

Social Capital: Dave loves his meeting. Dave has perfected his meeting to suit his needs and his project. How do I tell him that it is a complete waste of everyone else’s time? We aren’t always great at feedback and we hate to put our accumulated social capital in jeopardy, particularly if what we are asking is out of the usual. Explore better ways of working with your work colleagues through collaborative coaching conversations. Encourage them to reflect and to help you find better ways of working too.

Fear: Our workplaces are full of fear. Fear power, fear of ostracism, fear of loss of status or wealth or purpose. Our workplaces put the full neurological gamut of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness under threat. Adding change to the mix risks upping the fear quotient. We need to make the benefits of change clear to ourselves first and then to others. We need to use these elements of our uncertainty to help us, not hinder us.

Conscious Incompetence: New skills are hard. They don’t work as well as our habits. We may have been unconsciously incompetent at our old approach, but as soon as we try something new we are conscious of the gap in our skills. Practice and experience is the only way to improve our skills. We need to do the work and get better.

Initiative: Nothing changes unless someone acts to influence change. We can wait for our boss or others to discover the change themselves.  However, to bring about change sooner we need to exercise individual leadership and take on the challenge of making change happen. We must be our own role models. We need to find our voice and lead with our actions to change the way we work.

 

Simon Terry provides consulting, advice, speaking and thought leadership to global clients through his own consulting practice, and as a Charter Member of Change Agents Worldwide, a network of progressive and passionate professionals, specializing in Future of Work technologies and practices.  The focus of Simon’s practice is assisting organizations to transform innovation, collaboration, learning and leadership. 

Getting Past The Obvious

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Collaboration, Future of Work, Leadership

One of the commonest forms of corporate sabotage of change is to raise a difficult issue as an obvious objection. The challenge is not raising them but working to resolve them through conversation. Don’t accept the obvious.

Present a new idea or try to make a change in a large organisation and at some point you will encounter the following behaviour. Somebody will to raise a complex and difficult issue as an obvious barrier to the success of your project. They will frame their naysaying in the name of straight talk, speaking on behalf of others, being a devil’s advocate or even helpfully raising an issue that others may be too supportive or politically correct to discuss.

These conversations appear everywhere:

  • “We need to make changes to adapt to digital” “But, let’s look at these digital competitors. They are tiny and none of them are making money. Why should we copy them? We will have to give up a lot of margin if we do.”
  • “We are planning to be more diverse in our hiring” “But, and I hate to say this, if we are honest we haven’t found the talent available for the roles we have and I’m not even sure they are interested.”
  • “We want the organisation to be more collaborative” “But, we need to be realists and recognise we have demanding targets, a headcount reduction and if we asked them our people would tell you they are already busy”
  • “We want to be more innovative” “But, isn’t innovation just the latest consulting buzzword? Our customers don’t want costly innovation. They want a lower price”

The objection is carefully designed to appeal to an ‘obvious’ point and to make the speaker appear intelligent for having considered a wider range of issues than you have presented. Many of these issues are valid challenges that your project needs to address.  Many are also overblown or illusions. The challenge is that the speaker expects the ‘obvious’ to be a definitive answer. Even if you can create a conversation about ways to move forward past this issue, the speaker won’t be contributing to the solution.

Getting Past the Obvious

Here are some suggestions to avoid this issue

Anticipate the Obvious: If it is going to be raised anyway, it is better that you raise the issue yourself. Challenge yourself and your team to engage stakeholders early and flush out the obvious and not so obvious objections that might be in your path. Understanding the likely objections and potential responses is an important part of handling this challenge.  Preparation will also give you the best chance to dispute a throway remark in the moment with facts and evidence.

Hold the Tension: The person raising the obvious issue expects the conversation and your project to end. Resolving difficult issues requires hard conversations. Plan for this hard conversation and allow yourself the time to keep your stakeholders in this hard conversation until progress is made. Create an environment where this challenging issue can be discussed and progress or new perspectives might be found.

Bring the System into the Room: The challenge comes from bringing a selective part of the system around your project into the room. You need to consider how you can involve a broader view of the project and its stakeholders. Can you bring out broader benefits that make persisting worthwhile? Can you bring other voices into the conversation to offset the obvious?

Reframe the Obvious: The obvious remark may also hold a clue as to the path to its solution. Look at the examples above. If margin is the issue, then what if profit is lost to unmet disruption. If a stock of talent is the issue, how do we redefine, find or create a flow of talent. If workload is the issue, how can collaboration help. If price is the issue, how can innovation drive value.

Ask to Do the Work: A lot of obvious issues turn out to be no issue at all in practice. They are built on untested assumptions, rumours and guesswork. Ask to do the work. Ask for a richer conversation with a wider group of stakeholders. Ask to put the issue to the test by doing an experiment, a pilot or gathering real data. Too many obvious barriers are only barriers around conference tables.

Don’t accept the obvious issue as a barrier to the progress of your project. Your stakeholder may not even care. They might just want to appear clever in the meeting. Do the preparation and the work and you will carry your project far beyond the obvious issues. The real challenges are the issues nobody anticipates.