Writing

The Future of Work: Future Focused

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Traditional organisation models sustain the past. A responsive organisation is focused on the future.

Time Capsules

Traditional hierarchical models of organisation are about sustaining history. They are designed to ensure consistency of execution of an established business model. Because that model worked in the past, it is preserved and tweaked moving forward. The focus on process, policy and compliance drag history with them as they attempt to grapple with a changing world.

The time capsule of ideas, information, policy and process that each traditional organisations carries with it distracts from the present reality of the organisations solution. Employees must learn the history encoded into the organisation rather than deal with the surrounding reality of customer needs and changing competitive environment. Employee’s ability to respond is constrained by legacies of history. Intent on sustaining a legacy of a historical innovation, these organisations find themselves incapable of making the key changes to embrace present needs or future opportunities. They fail in their task of sustaining the past because they find it increasingly hard to make it relevant to today.

Future Focused

The best way to prepare for the future is to create in the present moment. That demands organisations try to understand the conditions outside their organisational time capsule. They need to allow their employees the freedom to learn externally and to change their approach in response to their learnings. Decision making must be unencumbered by the legacies of past history. The organisation must be ready to shed its history if the future demands a new model.

This is a Responsive Organisation. Transparency & Networks help these organisations connect externally and internally to accelerate learning and build trust. Experimentation accelerates learning and keeps decision making grounded in the opportunities of now. Autonomy for employees helps shed the legacies of the past. Importantly a focus on a Purpose externally to the organisations pushes the organisation to reach forward for larger impact, rather than reach inward for greater return on a historical model.

We don’t enjoy living in time capsules. It is time for our organisation to be more future focused and responsive

Unlimited

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized
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Often we define ourselves by our limits. However, our human potential is not limited to our role, our status, our resources or our authority. Our potential in networks is exponential.  When we do what we can and move beyond what we alone do, much more can be achieved.

In a recent project, we had one of the inevitable budgetary issues that affect work. We didn’t have the money to proceed with our plans. Steps were underway to solve that problem, but finding budget takes time. Instead of defining ourselves by the limits of our money, we asked ‘what can we do now with what we have?’. After a short creative conversation, we developed a new way to deliver our project, one that involved tests with the resources we had and investing in ideas that had proven success. We switched our model to use the resources we had, to leverage networks and experimentation.

Every time I hear the phrase “above my pay grade” I cringe. It is used to describe information, decisions and actions that are beyond an individual’s limits. Often these are limits people have imposed on themselves. Where they are real constraints, the individual still has the ability to act, to influence or to work around that constraint with the help of others. If you can’t approve it, go influence the person who can.  If that doesn’t work, build a coalition to influence the person who can.

The most insidious limits are those that we alone know. These limits are the thoughts that constrain our actions.  “I am not famous enough”. ‘I am not good enough”. “ I can’t do that”. “I am not influential/smart/powerful/wealthy enough”.  These are the limits that paralyse us even when others expect or demand our action. Limits like these hide in all sorts of forms; respect for others, following process, honouring traditions, fearing consequences and failure, etc.  These limiting thoughts are the simplest yet hardest to break.  We need to unthink them and act.  

We have fewer limits than we know. Together we have few limits at all.

Change Agents

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

At the heart of every failed adoption of social collaboration in an organisation is a piece of technology. The technology is only a medium for work.

At the heart of every successful implementation of the value of social collaboration is a change agent. Change agents help humans realise the value of changed ways of working.

Change agents work from purpose. It is not their job or their project. Change is a quest. They lead change because they passionately believe in a better future for everyone. Purpose enables change agents to push on when others would stop. Purpose guides change agents to focus on the shifting needs of value over the demands of the means.

Change agents realise that others must come to the same realisation of the value of change as they have. They know change can’t be mandated, managed or measured into existence. Change agents use influence, experimentation and open agile change activities to create networks of allies experiencing the new changes. They build capabilities and confidence in others through experiences, support and personal motivation. Change agents connect people, encourage the people to engage in two way sharing and solving of issues on the way to new ways of working.

Change agents focus on the system of the human organisation to influence new ways of work. They don’t focus on the technology of the medium.

Disrupt Success Metrics not Risk Appetite

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Big corporates take big risky decisions all the time. They also lose money in spectacular ways at times. What stand in the way of most corporates and disruptive digital is not risk appetite. Disrupters have a different set of measures of success.

It is Not Risk Appetite

In a conversation about digital disruptive threats to large organisations today the view was expressed that it was their risk appetite that holds them back. There are undoubtedly companies for whom this is the case. Entrepreneurs have high risk appetite than many companies.

However risk management is one thing that large corporates tend to do a lot. They specialise in it. They have expensive professionals to measure and value risk. The global financial crisis showed us their preparedness to take big risks, not always wisely.

Every day large organisations make multi-million and even billion dollar investments in highly uncertain returns. The fact that many of these fail but there is still an appetite to make the plunge shows this.

Big companies make bet the company decisions too. IBM did so when it developed the System/360. Boeing did it with its early jets. Intel was a leader in chips because In part of its investment in plants. Many long lived capital assets like mines, property and large scale industrial plants can involve huge risk and highly uncertain returns.

However these decisions were made and justified by logic of the traditional business measures of success like discounted cashflow valuation, margin, profit growth and shareholder returns.

Different Measures

Tried any of these arguments to justify an investment recently?

‘There are currently billions of dollars of margin in this industry. We think we can wipe out 90% and capture half of what’s left’

‘We have no revenue but we will be valued in an exit for our incredible exponential customer growth rate and because we might be a threat’

‘We will invest billions and spend all our margin in profit less growth for decades to dominate our category globally’

‘We have billions of dollars of funding to operate in developing markets below cost to expand a new market because what we are doing is revolutionising our industry, we promised to be global and people guess that we are capable of more’

For disruptive startups, it takes bravery, a good pitch deck, the right investors and a whole lot of momentum to make people buy what you are selling. In corporate life, these arguments rarely ever fly. Usually, the premise is so divergent from the usual measures of success the risk of the venture is irrelevant.

Newspapers struggled to react to advertising online because 90% of their highly profitable and very tangible revenue vanished. Kodak didn’t invent Instagram because it had a film business that dominated through its profitable film processing. Retailers struggle to compete with Amazon because nobody is really sure what Amazon wants to define as success. Uber’s global expansion into markets like India where they have paid drivers as much as twice the fare charged follows no short term transactional financial logic.

Even in a more traditional example we see the stickiness of our measures. A recent study from the Reserve Bank of Australia showed that one of the barriers to investment in this country is the inflexibility of return thresholds for investment. Investment return thresholds don’t change even in low interest rate environments. Our Boards, CEOs and CFOs like their measures and stick to them.

How are you going to compete with new measures? If you want to play the disruptive game how do you disrupt your traditional definition of success?

Your next career network

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Your next career is about your networks as much if not more than your expertise. 

Jon Husband made an insightful comment on my post asking ‘What’s your next career?’ Jon noted your next network is an important question too. 

I meet many talented people who haven’t had the success that they deserve. They have great expertise & potential. What they lack are the networks to grow or share their expertise. Without the support of networks to remain current and to offer new edge opportunities the expertise goes wasted. 

Today global networks power expertise in ways that change the game. In Moses Naim’s End of Power he highlights that there are more chess grandmasters than ever because there are more opportunities than ever for people to connect, learn and play. With access to global experts powered by global connection you can’t assume opportunities will find you if you are not engaged in building and sharing your expertise. 

Your step into your next career is going to ask people to take a chance on someone unproven. Whatever your expertise, people will make that decision based on their relationship with you or your relationship with people that they trust. Network connections enable career change. 

We have all heard about the 10,000 hours to build mastery. What is less discussed is the deep network connections required to support mastery. As you commit 10,000 hours to developing your next career spend half that on the network and you will get exponential results. Thick networks of connection help with any transformation.  

Stay in

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“The guys in the white hats win in the second half of the movie” – Anonymous

We have two responsibilities: to stay in the quest for change and to draw others to join us.

Stay in

Change is hard. We all get disappointed and consider bailing on change. That can be the right move when it is required for personal preservation or when we need time to create a totally new approach after a big failure.

However, the bigger need is to give change time. Our instant success culture sees many people seeking to bail when the momentum towards success is around the corner. We need to stay engaged and keep pushing for change. Finding the right path and the right experiments takes time and effort.

Cynicism is easy and ever so tempting. Cynicism doesn’t get anyone anywhere. Worse abandoning change or turning cynical sends a message to others to stay out. Bailing puts change back because others get the message that change can’t be done.

Something made you believe change is needed. If that still stands, then stay the course of change.

Bring Others in

Change succeeds when people are moving towards it, not away.  We all need to help others to engage with our changes.

Global connection has made it easier to find people who share your views and to define sharply the other.  We see increasing polarisation in many debates and stereotypes and generalisations to demean or denigrate opponents. A little sense of the other helps to define a movement. Too much is counterproductive.

Change does not happen from within the safe community of your supporters. Change happens when others join in and opponents finally meet you in the middle ground to move forward together. We have to find ways to bring others in. We have to find others who see the need for change.

Stay the course and when you are in your darkest times seek to find others to join you and help you sustain the change.

What’s your next career?

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

A simple question that shocks people.

In my twenties I hard worked really hard to get into my chosen career. I looked around the organisations I worked in and I noticed something. All the grey haired people were being pushed out. A few successful ones got to stay but most were gone with their potential ahead of them. I realised I needed a second career for later.

I have only a little grey hair left today and I’m still not as old as the people I saw leaving. My life today is more like a sixth career but it had its foundations in asking myself the question ‘what’s your next career?’ I still have more options to go.

Too many people have no answer or haven’t even considered the question. They are just lucky the question has not yet been forced on them.

We may not be able to predict the average number of careers easily but it is more than one. When we add robots, automation and new career options, there is a good chance that we need to be at least considering future options. There’s an opportunity cost to every decision to stay put.

Understand your options. Grow your skills and capabilities. Build networks for careers beyond your first one. Experiment with different things to discover your purpose and to gain experience for next steps. You will find these things make it more likely you get to stay in your current career too.

This career won’t be your last so plan an answer to the question. Then when you have that plan start bringing it to life. If nothing else, prepare yourself that you might need to stop defining yourself by your current role.

Opportunity Cost

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The value of your time is not what you are doing now. The value is what you could be doing.

In economics, the opportunity cost is the value of the best option forgone in making a choice. The option given up may well be more valuable than the option chosen.

We don’t consider opportunity cost of our time quite as often as we should. Time is scarce. Time comes only once and expires every minute. We either allocate time well or we miss out on the value it can create. Realising the value of time is about choices. If we don’t consider our options or don’t chose, we waste time.

The value of time need not be measured in money. Often the opportunity cost of our current great income is a far larger sense of satisfaction, happiness and better relationships with others in our lives.

The opportunity cost may also be our learning, growth and new options. We often discount the value of options and uncertainty. We can’t find out the uncertain value of an opportunity if we never try. The comedian Jim Carrey shared a little wisdom about options when he said ‘You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well do what you love’.

Ask yourself ‘what’s the best use of my time now?’ Make choices taking account of the opportunity cost of your time. Realise the value you might otherwise be missing.