My conversation with Angus Florance of Yammer about Working Out Loud in Yammer for WOLWeek.
Writing
#WOLWEEK Day 2: Make A Connection
Welcome to International Working Out Loud week which will run from 7-13 November 2016. The Theme of this Wolweek is “Working and Sharing Purposefully”.
Each day this week this blog will share a discussion of the 7 Days of Working Out Loud post. Thoughout the week and in the coming weeks we will also be sharing blogposts, interviews, and other content to help practitioners of working out loud to lean and to spread the movement.
Day 2: Make a Connection
Working out loud exposes us to the networks of other people in our work. Understanding and leveraging those networks begins by making a connection.
Nobody Works Alone
Everybody works with others. Even remote lighthouse keepers, solo yachts people and shepherds have networks that support their work or depend on the outcomes of their work. We like to focus on our solo heroic efforts to achieve our goals, but we do so by excluding the view of the networks that support, collaborate in and benefit from our work. Working out loud is a way to bring those people back into our work.
Understand the Networks
Effectiveness at work in an era of global digital network connectivity depends on understand the networks in and around our work. We can now see and communicate with all the people in the networks of our work. Ignorance or inaccessibility is no longer an excuse.
The networks in and around our work don’t respect boundaries. They don’t stop at the edge of your part of the hierarchy. They don’t stop at the edge of your process. They don’t respect the boundary of your organisations or geography. Those networks go where the work demands. They are connected by the fulfilment of purpose. The better we understand these networks of people the more effectively we work.
See the People
These networks are not technology. They are a flow of human conversations and interactions. You are working to engage and benefit human beings. The new opportunity in working out loud is to connect personally at a real human level. To see, acknowledge and begin to understand that person an the relationship to your work.
Don’t look for stakeholders, managers, colleagues or customers. Look for the unique individuals who are a part of your work. Some will hold many roles. Share your work with them so that you can benefit from a better understanding of their unique needs, capabilities and dreams. Averages lie. The more individual and personal your connection with those around your work, the more effective you will be. Hidden insights, capabilities and help will only be revealed when you build a personal connection and a relationship of trust with each individual.
Make a New Connection
Consider the network of people around your work. Which people the greatest mystery? Where do you most rely on reports, averages, data and other myths rather than a human connection? Those people are where you need to deepen your network connections.
Take the purpose of your work to those people and make a new human connection. Share something. It doesn’t have to be big or finished or grand. It just needs to start a conversation. Ask that person what they want or need or fear. Ask that person to share their life and their work. At some level, people love acknowledgement and the opportunity to talk about themselves. Connect at a personal level and you will begin to see the magic of working out loud as a practice.
When you look for the people around your work, you will likely see those who help and support you who you have not acknowledge adequately. Take the time to celebrate these people. Make a new personal connection with them by thanking them for their support of your work. Turn that thanks into the beginning of a new conversation.
Make a connection today. At a minimum you will enjoy the conversation.
WOLWEEK Partner
Change Agents Worldwide is the Principal Partner of International Working Out Loud Week. Change Agents Worldwide helps organisations and individuals leverage the potential of working out loud to create more purposeful and effective work.
Just Start: Working Out Loud in #WOLWEEK
What are you going to do today to share your work in progress in a purposeful way?
It is never too late to take advantage of International Working Out Loud week (7-13 November 2016). All you need to do is start sharing your work purposefully.
The week before Working Out Loud week is always a busy one. The most common topic of conversation is “is it too late to do something ?” My answer is always the same “No, let’s do it.” The theme this Wolweek is “Working and Sharing Purposefully”. That applies to how we promote working out loud during the week too.
People often want to overthink and overplan working out loud. They want to do it exactly right. They want to know they are doing it in the authorised way. They want to know exactly what will happen when they share their work before they do so. They want to know what method of starting working out loud in their organisation will work best for…
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Word Gets Around – Reputation and Working Out Loud
People often worry about working out loud because they believe the practice poses a risk to their reputation. In the modern networked workplace, it can be a greater risk to have no reputation or one chosen only by others.
Working Out Loud involves purposefully sharing work in progress so that others can learn and contribute. Many people used to traditional ways of working where only final artefacts are shared see this as a risk to their reputation. They are worried that experiments, errors, revisions or even the confusion of the development of work might reflect badly on their expertise. They worry that their reputation may suffer if they share their work before it is perfect.
Reputation is an important component of the networked workplace. As our work becomes more agile and dynamic we need to make decisions on who has authority, who we can trust and who influences our decisions. Reputation plays a key role in influencing these calls.
However the best reputations are based on stories of actual work. They aren’t based on a marketing pitch. You get a reputation not just because of the output you produce but how you produce it. A good reputation is rarely one of how someone perfectly executes 100% of the time without drama. Those stories are too unreal and too boring to share. Great reputations are people who solve problems, engage others and demonstrate their abilities working through challenges and triumphing in the end.
Surprising your stakeholders by sharing some of your challenges may be risky but it is far riskier to pretend you have none. Pretence is the way reputations are destroyed. Building a deeper relationship by purposefully sharing the work, seeking input and creating solutions to challenges together will make your stakeholders an engine of a positive reputation.
Many people who are worried about reputation actually create for themselves the opposite risk. They share nothing of their work. That silence is not filled by people saying good things about their work. With nothing specific to attract attention or to discuss, most people won’t say anything at all. In a sceptical world, the absence of a reputation is bad news. The silence that is created is filled by people talking about other topics or worse talking from ignorance of what is going on and why.
Word of your work gets around. To build a strong and healthy relationship, you want discussion of your work. Shape the views and conversations about your work purposefully through working out loud.
International Working Out Loud week is from 7-13 November 2016. See wolweek.com for more details.
Digital Workplace Masterclass
Really Looking forward to helping people set up their plans for 2017 with this Strategic Planning workshop for Enterprise Social Networks and Digital Workplace initiatives. Join us in Melbourne on 16 November and set yourself up for success.
Melbourne – 16 November, 2016
Did you know that digitally mature workplaces are 26% more profitable than their competitors?
Digital technologies are fundamentally changing the way we work beyond purely operational efficiencies that lead to cost savings. Digital workplaces offer organisations and employees the opportunity to deliver real strategic benefits. To achieve the benefits and successfully transition there are 2 key elements: a clear vision and a well constructed implementation plan that also defines measures of success. How prepared is your organisation for the changing business landscape?
In this practical masterclass, Anne Bartlett-Bragg and Simon Terry will guide your development of a strategic plan for your digital workplace approach. Combining deep dives into practical use cases for your organisation with a workshop to develop your own personal strategic plan, this masterclass will put you in the position to lead and manage your workplace implementation to success.
This workshop is relevant to people…
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Digital Wiggle Room
The first step for any organisational transformation to adopt digital practices or new ways of working is to allow employees more latitude. The challenge for traditional organisations is that this pushes directly against their traditional management model of eliminating any variability in performance through tight control of employees’ work.
Many of the key practices and approaches that enable the transformation of organisation receive pushback from managers initially because they don’t fit into a traditional management mindset of task efficiency. Management can tie themselves in knots worrying about comments like “how do we know what they will deliver?”, “what are they doing? they just seem to be talking and playing with post it notes”, “why do we have to spend so much time changing things?” and “won’t all this collaboration distract them from their work?”. The focus of digital transformation is system effectiveness not individual task efficiency. To have the ability to see and effect change at a system level and to deliver purposeful outcomes for stakeholders people need the capability to reflect on change, to design change and to implement it.
Employees will often push back on new digital practices like collaboration, design thinking, agile and experimentation. If you are busy, the returns of this work are uncertain, the demands of your role are exacting and your organisation values expertise foremost, being asked to test your assumptions and engage with others on your ideas can feel like a waste of your valuable time. People need the time and the incentive to participate fully in the process of improving systems not just delivering their personal scorecards.
If your organisation is so tightly managed that employees are 110% busy, have limited latitude in execution of their roles and no ability to effect change, then your digital transformation journey will struggle. Without the wiggle room to consider and make change, your employees will not be able to achieve the benefits of digital transformation no matter how many projects or practices you implement. Until you give your employees the time and the capability to create change in the system progress will be stunted.
For tightly controlled & hierarchical organisations, the step to the high levels of autonomy seen in many digital start-ups can be daunting, if not impossible due to cultural legacies and issues of scale. However, every organisation can experiment with allowing employees a purposeful amount of wiggle room. Trust and autonomy aren’t given. They are won through a process of developing these capabilities and proving success through work. Helping employees to have the capability to reflection on improvements, exercise their discretion and to lead change in the organisation is a simple first step to change for any organisation. The power of this small amount of wiggle room multiplied by a large team can extraordinary. Most importantly, allowing a small amount of wiggle room will help you identify the change agents in your organisation who are capable of leading more and those that you would rather not entrust with the capacity to drive change.
Start by allowing your employees some wiggle room to reflect, to design and to lead change in the system. The rest of your digital transformation can be supplying the platforms, the tools and the practices to make this way of working systematic.
You are here now
You are here now.
There’s nowhere else now. There’s no more waiting. You are here. Here is where it starts. It starts today. This is the time and place to act.
Where you are is who you are. Here is the best you now. Being fully here will give you the best chance. Being present will allow all of you to be here. How can you be your best if some part of you is elsewhere?
If this isn’t the right place today, you’d be starting on your way there. Remember too that some other place may hold no magic – wherever you go there you are.
You are here now. Make the most of it. Start.
#WOLWeek: 7 Days of Working Out Loud
7 Days worth of practice of working out loud for the upcoming #wolweek
As International Working Out Loud Week approaches on 7-13 November 2016, many people want to experiment with working out loud in their networks and their organisations. Here’s how to use the 7 days of International Working Out Loud Week underway and to set up your working out loud practice ongoing.
We know new practices are best learned through experience and consistency of practice. Using a practice consistently is the way to iron out the kinks, to learn what works for you and to build new habits.
Here are seven days’ worth of actions to get you started on working out loud during working out loud week.
Day 1: Share a Purpose
Choose some purpose that is important to you to make the focus of your #wolweek efforts. This purpose may be delivering a great outcome in a project for a group of stakeholders or it could be a personal ambition…
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#WOLWEEK: 7-13 Nov 2016
International Working Out Loud week returns from 7-13 November 2016. The global movement for working out loud will again come together to explore this key practice for personal and organisational effectiveness. The more digital transformation advances, the more aware we are of the networks in and around our work and the better we need to be able to leverage new transparent ways of working to fulfil purpose.
For this International Working Out Loud week, the theme will be “Working and Sharing Purposefully”. We are looking to explore your stories and your experiences of working out loud with a focus on how you have made purposeful choices in the way you make your work visible to others and how sharing your work has helped shape the purpose of your work.
The first question raised by Working Out Loud in John Stepper’s view is “what am I trying to accomplish?” We can all benefit in…
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Working Out Loud: Sometimes Nobody Knows
Working Out Loud surfaces the hard, the difficult and the uncertainty of work. The value it delivers begins with what we usually hide. Transparently sharing work in progress reduces the stress of uncertainty.
When you see the work around you in the form of polished artefacts, the performance of others can be intimidating. The glossy output gives no signal of how hard it was to put together, how much effort was involved or even the doubts and uncertainties of the creator. We can feel like others are so much more talented and accomplished because they don’t share our doubts and uncertainties about work.
This morning on the radio a musician, Emma Louise, was telling the story that her big surprise when she meets other musicians to talk about work is the discovery that everybody is uncertain about what they are doing. She described the relief in knowing she was not alone in her doubts.
This is not just a challenge for creative arts. In many workplaces one of the commonest forms of stress is the pressure to hide one’s own doubts and uncertainties about work. Nobody else is sharing any doubt so your own feels wrong. Hidden behind all the artefacts is a whole lot of confusion.
Working Out Loud brings work in progress out into the open. While it will raise anxiety at first to share one’s shortcomings, doubts and concerns, my experience is that it is exactly like the conversation that Emma Louise describes. Others emboldened by openness and vulnerability will admit their own doubts and concerns. Soon we find out that those we most admire and are most intimidated by have a little part of their work where they are just ‘making it up as they go along’. Collaborating together to support one another, to share skills and to close gaps is a powerful way to tighten a team and reduce the intimidating barrier of perception.
If you are concerned to admit that you don’t know the answer through working out loud, remember sometimes nobody knows. You may just have to find the answer together.