Writing

Consideration

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Human behaviour at scale can be daunting. Drive in any traffic and you will see people trying dangerously to get a personal advantage at the expense of others. Spend time in a crowded place and you will be pushed, passed and jostled as others seek to achieve their own goals at your expense. Crowds driven by transactional self-interest can be unruly and dangerous. Some organisations forget this as they seek to leverage self-interest for higher performance.

Surprisingly these moments are rarities in much of our life. These moments depend on anonymity and lack of community for self-interest to overcome the common consideration that underpins society. Only when community breaks down such as in failed states, war zones or pure market transactions, does this become the norm. Even in the worst of these crowds you will still see people letting others past, helping others and standing up for the rules of common decency. Anonymous transactional self-interest bends to consideration of human relationships.

I was reminded by Henry Mintzberg’s post on community & commons that our relationships are part of the shared commons of a community. Trust, consideration and thoughtfulness are all shared in community and used daily in our work and our relationships. Like any commons over-exploitation leads to depletion. To preserve the difference between anonymous transactions and relationships, we need the continued contributions of the considerate to restore the commons and show us the way.

Thank God It’s Friday

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

We can go into the weekend fulfilled.

We look back on a week that is a celebration of purpose and meaningful achievement to benefit others.

We know we cannot have done better this week and that our efforts were well directed to effectiveness.

We have enjoyed a week of the freedom to do the best work we can supported by our peers.

We can rest tonight comforted by the fact that all our work is up to date and the open issues are next week’s work.

We aren’t waiting for decisions and we have made all the decisions that we needed to resolve this week. 

We are excited about the opportunities to learn, to experiment, to create and grow next week.

We have the transparency of our performance, our peers’ performance and our organisation’s outcomes to be confident on what is ahead and ready for the new challenges that the next week will bring.

We know that our accountabilities are clear and that the culture of accountability means colleagues won’t send a flurry of last minute emails dumping problems on others.

Our week will finish with the thanks and congratulations of a team and an organisation that understands, respects and values our commitment and efforts.

We know this is not a dream. We know this is possible. We will make it happen. Thank God it is Friday.

Relationship Sabotage

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Trust is a reciprocal commodity in the future of work. Trust powers collaboration and facilitates exchange in networks. Trust is also reciprocal. Make sure your levels of trust of others are not sabotaging your relationships.

Part of any decision to trust another is an assessment of how they treat us. Trust is reciprocal. We can make finely tuned assessments on how much trust others put in us by simply examining how we interact, how well their goals are aligned to ours and how much reciprocity of trust we experience.

If you start from the assumption that your employees and customers are incipient criminals, it will show itself in your policies and processes. The levels of security and inconvenience that result will be a constant reminder to customers and employees that you don’t trust them.  Even if your levels of protection are in line with your industry peers, you will still bear the consequences of that action in the way your customers and your employees interact with you. Transactions will be more costly, loyalty will be lower and complaints & errors will be harder to resolve because you won’t have the benefit of trust to fall back on.

Are your levels of trust set for the real risks and opportunities in your relationships? Make sure you are not penalising everyone for one individual’s error. Remember if you distrust employees that will flow on to customers and if you distrust customers you employees will experience the consequences. Your customer and employee experience are one experience.

Too many organisations with persistent challenges in lifting engagement or customer advocacy continue to sabotage their key relationship. Make sure you are different. Trust a little more.

The Vast Abundance of Space

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Yesterday I had a three hour gap between my two meetings in the city. For once, I had resisted the temptation to fill that space with a third meeting. Given a little time to stop and reflect, I discovered again things that I had forgotten in my blur of commitments:

  • projects I had conceived but never started
  • conversations I had started but never finished
  • opportunities that I had not given time
  • creative endeavours that needed room for reflection and practice
  • lessons of the last few months work

Productivity is not an outcome of the use of every moment of time. Productivity is an outcome of using time in the most effective ways possible. Using time to advantage means making choices and working on the most valuable tasks. You cannot use time to advantage if you do not have the space to reflect, to create and to learn.

Rethinking work is part of the vast abundance of opportunity in space.  Give yourself a little more.

Command and Control Won’t Cut It #futureofwork #leadership

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

As your organisation adapts to the future of work, your models of leadership need to change. Leadership needs to be as adaptive as the the organisation you are seeking to create. Otherwise the potential of your people and the business will be lost.

You can’t command experiments. You can’t control networks. You can’t command customer collaborations. You can’t command engagement or purpose. You can’t control transparency. You can’t command autonomy.

Organisations that implement new agile ways of working need new leadership models. Activity based working, digital workplace tools, collaboration solutions, innovation hubs, agile projects and product management and lean continuous improvement all require leaders to work in ways that build the capability of people, manage the whole system and value the contributions of others over a leader’s rank and expertise.

As you change to the future of work, change what leadership means in your organisation. Build the leadership capabilities in leaders and the whole team to prosper in new ways of working. Make your leadership as adaptive as your organisation.

The Privilege of Working Out Loud

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud
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Not everyone is allowed to work out loud. Those who can must value their opportunities and seek to help others to share.

I was reading an article in the newspaper on the weekend about a new book by Tara Moss on “Speaking Out: A 21st Century Handbook for Women and Girls”. The discussion in the book of barriers to women speaking up and the techniques that can assist caused me to reflect on the barriers many people face in sharing their work out loud.

Not everyone can work out loud. The real pressures that hold people back can be social, gender, hierarchy or the culture of their organisation. For many people, the expectation in their organisation is that someone with their position, role or work will keep silent, do what they are told and just deliver. Something as simple as talking out loud about your work with others is a privilege.

As a privilege, working out loud is something that needs to be used with respect. I have always stressed that working out loud is a choice. We cannot mandate it, because that choice will not suit many and may not be available to all.

As a privilege, working out loud should be used to benefit others. If you can work out loud, you have a contribution to make. Those who can speak out have an opportunity to help others to be heard. Those who can speak out can support others who may face barriers or abuse. Those who can speak out have an opportunity to role model better ways and to fight for changes that give voices to others in their organisation and their society.

If you can work out loud, use that privilege to help others.

Build Real Relationships

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

I received an email today from the CEO of a large networking organisation. The well crafted message pointed out he had noticed that I hadn’t registered for their latest event and offered me a discount. At the end of the email he politely invited me to connect on LinkedIn.

One small flaw in this carefully crafted piece of relationship marketing. The event is in Chicago. I live in Melbourne, Australia. I have never heard of the CEO, his organisation and I’ve never given them my email.

A piece of lovely copywriting goes to waste because its premise defeats it. The CEO wanted to convey he had considered me specifically. He wanted to build a relationship so that he can sell me services and events. However, because they bought a dodgy email list and didn’t do any research into the list all that work is an evident waste.

You can’t fake a relationship. You can’t turn a transaction into a relationship by declaring it one or by good intentions. Relationships take work. A relationship is not about what you want. Copywriting won’t save you from your lack of interest in your customers & prospects. The transparency of the global economy makes old marketing methods more dangerous than ever.

If you want a relationship, build one for both parties. If you run a networking organisation, start with relationships, not unsubscribe marketing.

Whatever you do, if you don’t want to put in the effort in a relationship, don’t pretend.

The Three Meeting Rule

Posted on by simongterry in Life & Career

Meetings are rarely ever doing. Constraining the daily meetings forces choice and improves effectiveness.

When I started as a consultant I carried over practices from corporate life. I wanted to fill my days with meetings. I had a need to network and to build my business. I needed to tell my story and win work. I took a lot of meetings and spent days running around town.

I was soon reminded how unproductive the meeting circuit was. Taking every meeting chewed up lots of time, created lots of activity and spent energy. The commutes between meetings alone took hours. However it delivered few results.

Reflecting on my lack of productivity I implemented a daily rule of no more than 3 meetings. Limiting meetings had an immediate benefit in creating time to think, to do work and to make choices. A limit also made me much more focused on which meetings to take. I also found that many other meetings could be swapped for a quick phone call, a video chat or an exchange of information.

Any arbitrary rule should always be honoured in the breach. I occasionally take another meeting but now I do so reflecting on the value of that meeting and its cost in my time. Overall my productivity has risen as I look for other ways to get work done.

How would a limit on meetings work for you?

An Excess of Communication

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

I was turning left in my car on a rainy night in the centre of Melbourne waiting for a pedestrian. An oncoming car was turning right towards me except they seemed to be coming too fast and dangerously close. It was disconcerting to look across and see the driver turning right and looking down his face lit by the phone in his lap. We avoided a collision but I had to wonder what message could be so important it needs to be read in the middle of a right hand turn.

I once worked in an organisation with a zero inbox culture. Emails pinged around at rapid speed. Every idea was on the move somewhere else. Every email was less than three lines. Velocity mattered more than value. Everyone was overwhelmed by the flood of messages and few emails created the actions they intended as they were either in transit elsewhere or lacked the information required to move forward.

I watch the politician on the television say the same vaguely reassuring phrases over and again. With masterful skill they pivot each question back to their set phrases. Challenges and doubts are dismissed or simply ignored. Short of time and well aware that the answers form a pattern the interviewer surrenders and moves on.

The legal documents were long and fell with a heavy thud on the table. The goal of the reams of paper was to cover every eventuality in a complex transaction. There were dozens of lawyers in the room and they had been negotiating for days already. Discussion fell into a quick routine as points were hammered out. I looked at the document waiting for someone to point out the small error that reversed the impact of a clause to nobody’s benefit. The conversation was moving on. Rather than paying attention everyone was relying on the amount of discussion to have caught the issues.

‘But how can our employees not know, the policy is quite clearly explained on our intranet’

‘I’m calling to follow up the text about the email on the link in the post’

As he pushed submit on his blogpost he wondered ‘Am I just adding to the excess?’