Writing

Work Changes Culture

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Future of Work

Sharing Out Loud

Work changes culture, not words. The future of work needs action to create new ways of working together. Creating new value requires people to do more than communicate. They must work in new ways.

With management of enterprise collaboration often falling in the Employee Communications function in organisations it can be tempting to see the challenges as primarily challenges of communication. How do we get people to use a new communication tool? What information do we want people to share in our new communication tool? Which communication tool should we use when?

The bigger and more valuable opportunity is to change the very nature of work. Changing work behaviours runs directly into the challenges of changing the culture of the organisation.  After all, culture is the expectation of future behaviours in any organisation. What ways of working are expected, what work is valued and how others will support your work is all wrapped up in a rich tapestry of cultural expectations born of past behaviours, some going back as far as the origins of the organisation.

As we have seen from communication campaigns around values in organisations, message can temporarily influence expectations. However, what confirms a change in expectations is when people see new behaviours being practiced consistently, rewarded and ultimately expected by others.

Sharing information in enterprise social networks is a start but the real value of working out loud is created when people begin to change the very nature of their work process to respond to expectations that they be more agile, more transparent, more collaborative, more trusting and more open to the expertise of others.  When this occurs they get the benefits of the input of others in greater speed, productivity and effectiveness. The changing nature of work and the changing culture of the organisation will develop hand in hand in this case and be supported by increasing personal and organisation value to justify the ongoing change.

Organisations that want to realise the true value of enterprise collaboration need to create an expectation that work will change to be more open. The best way to start that change is not with talk but by fostering the action that role models it to all in the organisation.

Two Paths to Trust

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

There are two paths to trust. The first is a path of ease, sameness and stability. The more sustainable path is the more challenging, the path of understanding.

In corporate life, I occasionally met a manager who had a team. Whatever role they took on, they brought with them the core of a team from their previous role. In some cases the managers and teams had been working together for years through multiple roles and organisations. What these teams gained in effectiveness through long relationships, they lost more in new ideas and inability to change their relationships.  In many cases the junior partners in these teams were being held back to burnish the glory of their bosses.

Trust with people who are the same as you is far easier. When you begin with little diversity in the team, there are fewer conflicts to iron out. The differences is worldview, style and approach are narrower. There are less likely to be shocks and patterns of decisions are easily implemented based on a shared history. Teams like these exist across the business world and they have advantages in the speed with which they come together. We are psychologically predisposed to recruit people just like us.

However, teams without diversity underperform. Study after study suggests that greater diversity improves team and organisational performance. One key reasons is because diversity gives rise to great bases for conflict. Ideas are less likely to be accepted. People challenge the applicability of patterns and history. There are more inputs available and people are more aware of the diversity of circumstances around their organisation. More time must be invested in debate and understanding. Better decisions result. Importantly, when team members are not just a mini me, their individual needs and potential can be considered.  Team members have the opportunity to realise their potential.

Creating high levels of trust in a diverse team is more challenging. It takes effort, conflicts and richer understanding of each individual.  Any team is better for that effort.

Invest in Better Work

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Strategy

Collaboration and other future work practices require investment from organisations to foster community and support the changes in practices. The potential value from this investment is better work organisation-wide.

Speaking at Intranets2016, I had the opportunity to see a showcase of presentations from organisations large and small on how they have leveraged value from new ways of working, better communication and collaboration with employees. I also got a chance to speak to many of the people attending the event and discuss their challenges and concerns.

Reflecting after the event one thing was striking: Each of the case studies had invested time and resources into helping their organisation get the most out of collaboration and community.  They had spent time and money on strategy, on design work, on employee engagement, on training and community management. They had ongoing resources devoted to realising the value of community. When I spoke to many members of the audience winning the support of their organisation to invest in these elements was a major challenge. The success stories were successes because their organisations supported their team to realise the value of changing work.

Many organisations have not yet realised that the potential value creation from their new intranet, their new productivity tools or their new collaboration software far exceeds the investment they need to make to support change and adoption. These tool are part of the furniture in an organisation and while from time to time we invest in the latest version to stay effective, not much more is expected from their use. 

Organisations that invest in community and collaboration know the value creation opportunity is far greater than a more effective tool.  The value creation opportunity goes to the heart of their organisation by making work better, more productive and more effective. What little resource they choose to invest will deliver benefits that are multiplied by all the work that they do in the organisation. Scrimping or not investing at all in this capability leaves the tools to miss their potential and the community of users to miss the benefits.

Champions of social collaboration and new productivity solutions need to do more than fund the technology. They need to help the organisation see the strategic value of the new tool in new ways of working. When that value is clear then the business case for ongoing investment and in community and change is much more obvious.

#WOLWEEK DAY 5: GROWTH MINDSET

Posted on by simongterry in Learning, Working out loud

This International Working Out Loud Week we will be sharing a reflection on a different element of working out loud each day.  We will be using John Stepper’s latest iteration of the five elements of Working Out Loud as a guide to those reflections. Our fifth reflection is on Growth Mindset.

GROWTH MINDSET

We can be better.

Our talents are not fixed. Through effort, stretch and learning we can improve our abilities. We work every day to be better at what we do, to better fulfil our purpose and our potential.

If our talents are not perfect, that is because they never can be. There are no limits on our ability that work will not release. If our work is not perfect that too is because there is always more, always another better way to attempt. The way we do our work is but one of millions of paths to our goals. If our purpose or potential is never completely fulfilled, then that is because we strive for more. We want to make a bigger difference.

The value of working out loud is to help us see that everyone’s work is not perfect as it develops. We understand the edits, the changes, the false starts and the dead ends that lead to success. We stop comparing other people’s showreels to our own cutting room floor. We realise that embarrassment, failures and setbacks are temporary but abandonment of our purpose is final.

Working out loud brings us together with others who want to grow and to learn.  We come together with others who want to improve their work and achieve their purpose in better ways. We are encouraged, challenged and supported to take on the daily work of getting better. Supported by a global community pursuing better work and a better life, we work together to grow.

We can be better. Together.

International Working Out Loud Week is from 6-12 June 2016

#WOLWEEK DAY 4: GENEROSITY

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

This International Working Out Loud Week we will be sharing a reflection on a different element of working out loud each day.  We will be using John Stepper’s latest iteration of the five elements of Working Out Loud as a guide to those reflections. Our fourth reflection is on Generosity.

GENEROSITY

Generosity is not new. We know how to give. Human beings are highly sophisticated animals at the fine arts of altruism, collaboration and generosity. Giving generously is what our societies do best.

In our work cultures, we some times lose the generosity of spirit that underpins humanity.  Our focus on performance, on efficiency and on competition, can make generosity seem counterproductive, suspect and weak. Yet elite performance and ultimate effectiveness depend on high levels of trust. We build trust when we move beyond our own agendas. We build trust when we start to give something of us to others.

Working out loud helps us to see that our gifts can be many. We can give as simply as giving our attention to another, to truly listen to their needs or their story.  We can give by recognising another and celebrating their progress in their work. We can give by providing material help, information or even just a sense of direction to someone. We can give by creating a sense of shared community in a task or a challenge and allowing others to use our networks to achieve their ends. Everyone of us can give the gift of reaching down and helping someone else up over the work we have completed to where we stand now. When we share our work visibly with a generous spirit we discover others can learn from our work and others yet may reciprocate our generosity with help, support and guidance.

Generosity is the social magic that triggers the wonderful synchronicity of working out loud. Our generous gifts inspires others, some far from our networks, to respond to our visible work. We cannot know what, when or if we will get something back in return for our generosity in working out loud. Working out loud is not a transactional exchange. Working our loud is an investment in our relationships and our networks. We invest for the future and for others. Be generous in those relationships.

The purpose of our work is to benefit others. Give a gift

International Working Out Loud Week is 6-12 June 2016

#WOLWEEK DAY 3: VISIBLE WORK

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

This International Working Out Loud Week we will be sharing a reflection on a different element of working out loud each day.  We will be using John Stepper’s latest iteration of the five elements of Working Out Loud as a guide to those reflections. Our third reflection is on Visible Work.

VISIBLE WORK

All our work is visible to others to some extent unless we actively seek to hide it. What the visible work element of working out loud asks us to do is to consider how we can make our work more visible to those who can benefit and those who can help.

This is not about completed work.  That would be visible outcomes. The element of visible work is making work more visible to others and narrating that work in ways that enable other people to learn and to help. You may not value your work and your work process but making that work more visible to the right people might help you to understand how they value your work and how they can help you make your work more valuable.

Visible does not necessarily mean public. The audience who can see your work might be small and focused.  Visible does not necessarily mean insistently distracting. Visibility is the beginning of findability.  You may want to simply make your work visible where it may be found later by someone like you working on a similar problem.

Visible work is a far wider trend than working out loud in the future of work. We see visible work in Visual Management Boards, Kanban, Trello, dashboards and other tools of visual management. We see visible work in agile projects, in design thinking exercises, in ideation exercises and other environments where people need to coordinate work into one vision. The post-it note is the byte of visual work in these contexts. Visible work underpins our activity based workspaces, our collaboration solutions and many more management systems and practices. Rather than simply let the process or environment make your work visible, take control of your work and shape its visibility to help yourself and others.

Think for a minute about your invisible work – the efforts you put in, the anonymous giving, the work that gets folded into other work or slides off the end of the desk or meeting table. How rare is it that there is joy or even satisfaction in the invisible work? Most of it goes to waste. All of it is neglected. Visibility of work is a step to a better life and a better career. Start sharing your work as it happens.

International Working Out Loud Week is from 6-12 June 2016

#WOLWEEK DAY 2: NETWORKS

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

This International Working Out Loud Week we will be sharing a reflection on a different element of working out loud each day.  We will be using John Stepper’s latest iteration of the five elements of Working Out Loud as a guide to those reflections. Our second reflection is on Networks.

NETWORKS

We have always had other people involved in our work. We have always had colleagues, managers, partners, suppliers, customers, regulators and the broader community with an interest in what we do and how we do it. Every day as we do our work without even calling it networking we manage a complex series of relationships to get our work done. We don’t need to go looking for networks. We already have them.

With global connection through digital networks, our ability to see and connect to the networks of people around our work is now greater than ever. With greater connection comes greater demands for transparency, accountability and engagement. With greater connection comes greater opportunities for new information and for learning. Even if we wanted to do our work on a remote island, we would struggle to escape connection to these networks and their demands.

Working Out Loud challenges us to think of the role these networks play in our work and the role that we play in our networks. Working out loud doesn’t add any complexity to the work or to the networks.  That complexity is already there. Working out loud asks us some key questions: Who would benefit from greater visibility to our work? From whom can we benefit if they knew more about our work and our challenges? Working out loud does not demand that we engage the whole world all day. Working Out Loud asks that we share with those in our networks for whom our work matters in a meaningful way.

People who do not participate in networks are treated by the network like a blockage. They lose influence as the network routes around them seeking to engage in the necessary interactions. The value of Working Out Loud is it asks us to consider what role we should play in our networks and how we can better use our networks in our work. That is a critical element for anyone in the future of work.

International Working Out Loud Week is from 6-12 June 2016

#WOLWEEK DAY1: PURPOSE

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

This International Working Out Loud Week we will be sharing a reflection on a different element of working out loud each day.  We will be using John Stepper’s latest iteration of the five elements of Working Out Loud as a guide to those reflections.

We start with Purpose. Purposefulness in working out loud helps unify all the other elements of working out loud: the mindfulness of networks, the visible sharing, the generosity and the growth mindset.

PURPOSE

We work for a purpose. We work to have some impact on others. We work to make ourselves and our world a better place. That purpose should be at the heart of our working out loud too.

Working out loud should be directed to some end.  Working out loud cannot be a random broadcast of activity. We share our work visibly and narrate our work so that others can benefit, whether through a greater understanding of our work, through opportunities to collaborate or have input or through learning about the process we take when we work. Our purpose inspires us to use whatever practices will help us have greater effect.

Purpose should shape the networks and communities with whom we share our work. Our purpose reflects a desire to use our skills, networks and capabilities to help others.  With whom we work out loud should be shaped by these same people.  We should work out loud to benefit from and benefit those best placed to engage with our purpose.

Generosity is inherent in purpose. Purpose leads outside the building of our work, outside our own narrow concerns and encourages us to reflect on how our work can give to the world.  This generous mindset helps us assuage the common self-centred fears of sharing our work as it happens – fear of loss, fear of embarrassment and fear of unfairness.

Purpose also sustains us in our growth mindset.  There are obstacles in any work. There are many obstacles in adopting a practice of working out loud. There is also no one right universal way of working out loud that will suit every person, situation and purpose. We embrace all the practices and approaches that have been created to foster purposeful sharing of work because any practice may be of benefit to someone. There are many schools of working out loud.  People may be inspired by the ideas and practices of Bryce Williams, John Stepper, Jane Bozarth, Harold Jarche, Sahana Chattopadhyay, Helen Blunden, Dennis Pearce, Jonathan Anthony, Catherine Shinners, Ayelet Baron, Lesley Crook, Isabel De Clercq, Bert Vries,  Simon Terry and many more. Focusing on how we can learn together, how we can help each other to achieve more and how we can move beyond the setbacks is important to taking our work and this new practice to the world.

Purpose is the reason at the heart of our work, our life and our careers. As we seek to use working out loud ‘for a better life and career’ we must be guided by purpose in our practice.

International Working Out Loud Week runs from 6-12 June 2016.

#intranets2016 Day 1: human work inside and outside

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Future of Work

Three themes came through strongly on Day 1 of Intranets2016:
– focus on the work, not the technology
– consider your intranet in conjunction with your external internet presence because work stretches outside the organisation
– your organisation is human so engage them and help them with change to new ways of working

Work, not Technology

No intranet should exist as a cool piece of technology. No intranet should exist solely as a channel of communication.

We come together to work. We want out tools at work to help us to do what we need. We need to connect, share, solve or innovate together. These use cases should be the focus and the source of value of any work tools.

Work goes Outside

Intranets need to connect with Internet assets because work goes outside and involves external communities. Examples were everywhere consistent navigation between internet sites and intranet to encourage architects to update the external status of projects, Australia Post using a public intranet to engage all its communities and the integration of external social content and other content into intranet experiences.

Our work involves stakeholders inside and outside the organisation. We need to have consistent conversations and share the same information to work effectively in a transparently connected world. Importantly, it makes no sense to be recreating materials and managing distinct solutions with the same information. Transparency in this way is a great way to address remote working and mobile worker needs.

Changing Work

Great tools need to be used. We need to help people to adopt the tools and use them in their work. Importantly change starts before the tools are designed. Using collaborative design and deep data analysis we should understand the work, the challenges and how use cases can align to business needs.

Organisations then need to invest in ongoing support for leaders, champions and users. New ways of work are not launched they are fostered, role modelled and rewarded.

Risk Management in Responsive Organisations

Posted on by simongterry in Future of Work

Leaders of traditional organisations often look at the discussion of Responsive Organistions with horror. Confronted with transparency, autonomy, less process and experimentation they exclaim ‘where’s the risk management?’ Responsive Organisations can have highly effective risk management but they leverage adaptation not compliance in managing risk. 

Traditional Risk Management. 

Traditional risk management is an elegant science. Determine the risks, their frequency and their consequences. Choose your appetite to take risk informed by this assessment and the cost and outcomes of mitigation. We mitigate or accept risks driven by the risk appetite. This process is straight forward in organisations where the focus is scaling a proven process or business model. Risks and their mitigants are reasonably well understood. 

We often focus on the compliance, policies and processes as risk management. They are simply the mitigation, an outcome of what should be a considered decision of what risks to take and which risks to avoid. Many businesses go wrong when they forget to set a risk appetite and seek to mitigate all risk. We have seen organisations where risk appetite declines and processes are tightened with every bad outcome. 

Responsive Risk Management

Responsive Organisations approach risk with the same fundamentally commercial logic. However they tackle the risk assessment and mitigation in a more adaptive and systemic way. 

If the risks of activity are unclear, hard to assess or changing quickly more dynamic risk management will be required. We step out of the domain of setting a fixed policy or process and move into learning in a distributed way. We apply the same process but we learn and mitigate risk using other methods. 

Better understanding by leveraging the insights of entire network of the organisation and its stakeholders is a risk mitigation strategy. So is a continuous process of experimentation to ensure losses are small until greater confidence is achieved. Autonomy shifts the locus of accountability closer to every day risk decisions and accelerates the responsiveness to bad outcomes. Most importantly of all motivating people through purpose and a focus on outcomes mitigates the incentive mismatches which create many risks for traditional organisations. 

The best risk management strategy is responsible, engaged and responsive people. People help drive the adaptation and response to a changing environment of risks. Responsive Organisations manage risk using this distributed capability to adapt.