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Building Real Relationships – Working out loud and Sales #wolweek

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Working out loud has a great potential to help with sales. However the help is not in the way most people expect. Sales people don’t need more marketing to low probability prospects. The value of working out loud for sales is the ability to participate generously in client’s work and to know when best to engage them. Working out loud is a way to build real relationships with clients that help them do their work better.

Forget the Spruiking

Many people initially see working out loud as a way to market their work. This marketing mindset leads them to share work as a way of bragging, highlighting their offers and generally pushing messages at clients and prospects.

The key problem with all marketing is that we don’t know when clients are ready to buy. This is why so much marketing has low single digit conversion rates. The vast majority of it is wasted because it arrives at the wrong time for the potential purchasers. Adding sales people to this push message strategy does not improve performance and can be a huge waste.

One of the key ways to improve sales effectiveness is better targeting of sales time to higher value prospects. Too much sales time is already wasted where there is no chance of a deal. A sales person can’t devote their time to low single digit prospects of success.

Work out loud to help Clients, not your Business

The majority of my business opportunities come from referrals or clients discovering my work when they need it. As a result my sales time is better spent where it can be most effective.

Genuine working out loud builds relationships of trust in networks. Deep and wide relationships of trust help sales people to be more effective. Sales is not a solo activity. The best sales people collaborate with their organisation, partners and client prospects continuously. Every sales person wants to expand and deepen their network and giving to others to help their work through working out loud is a key way to build the reach of that trust.

Working out loud with referral partners & client influencers is a key first step. These partners will understand clients and may have related goals. Helping these partners to do their work better through working out loud can enhance your understanding of client opportunities and your ability to convert them. Sharing your work in this exchange will help referral partners to better understand your abilities. Before you ask for a favour it always helps to do one.

Any sales person loves to know what their clients are doing. Helping your clients by finding ways to work out loud directly with them on their goals is a great opportunity. You will not be marketing your product and service. You will be a trusted partner sharing ways that they can achieve their personal and work goals. Creating a working out loud circle with clients or prospects is an opportunity to deepen relationships, understand the other and put some value into that relationship.

Highly effective sales people identify a customer’s problem and solving it in ways that create new value and support an ongoing relationship. They start by understanding others and making contributions, not marketing. That sounds like working out loud to me.

How do we influence more widely and more effectively? #wolweek Day 2

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Day 2 of International Working Out Loud week is drawing to a close for me, though there is great energy in the western hemisphere to go. Today for me was a day of reflecting on new reach of #wolweek and on the spread of influence.  

Today leaves me pondering: How can we influence more widely and more effectively?

Little Things Grow

Wolweek is growing before our eyes like Bamboo. New faces and new voices join in the public conversation. We cannot see the private working out loud inside organisations and closed networks.  From all accounts there is activity aplenty there too. You only need to see the growing list of people signing up to lead circles.

Sharing with vulnerability and generosity builds trust.  There is no greater force multiplier than growing trust. At the moment #wolweek is on the trust upswing. Will it continue? Will it last?

Reaching More Widely

The big surprises for me today were conversations offline that took a discussion about working out loud into new audiences, new domains and new organisations. The reception was as enthusiastic as that in public social media. I have seen examples of others at work in the same advocacy. We should compare notes. We need more offline advocacy to continue to grow the community, to diversify ideas and learn together of the potential of working out loud.

We must remember that working out loud just has to be sharing. It doesn’t have to involve the whole wide world loud. There are many who can benefit without feeling comfortable enough to go that far. Circles are a great way to start small and start now.

Challenging Work Itself

Ayelet Baron raised a great question tonight that our lack of clarity on what ‘work’ is might just be getting in the way. WOL can become broadcast easily if we are still in our email-driven input/output manufacturing model of work.

How do we help people to consider what really constitutes the work that creates value? How do we better surface and strengthen purpose? How do we focus on helping people to work the obstacles in the system and work in between?

I know that WOL will be part of the answer.

Ongoing Questions

How can we take the conversation to the places where people are at work and would benefit from the practices of more open and more generous approach to their work?

How can we better reinforce the messages that influence others to trial working out loud?

I will keep reflecting on this and I would value your thoughts.

How do we make #wolweek more valuable? – Day 1

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Our third International Working Out Loud week from 15-21 June 2015 is raising some familiar questions. This post is to share the current work to address these questions and invite some help in making sure that we are helping everyone get the most value out of #wolweek and the practice of working out loud. I would love your input because I think there is more we can do.

Here are the five commonest questions and the current attempts at answers:

  • How do I work out loud or get involved with #wolweek?  
    • To understand working out loud read John Stepper’s Five Elements of Working Out Loud.  Then buy his new book.  
    • If you want to understand the history, there is a family tree of #wol which is built from Dennis Pearce’s PHD dissertation that supplies all the details. Because the working out loud movement is focused on sharing and aren’t big on doctrinal disputes, nobody is claiming ownership and we embrace all related movements, especially #showyourwork. 
    • You may already be sharing your work which is great. Just make sure it is work in progress and your intent is a generous community oriented one – helping others to learn and to help you. Self-promotion might be valuable but it is not working out loud (& is much more likely to be treated as unhelpful noise)
    • To get involved, share some work in progress any way you want with others for them to learn or to help.
    • You don’t need to use technology, a hashtag or even be that public. Share with at least one other person and you are involved.
  • Why is there a week? Shouldn’t people do this every day?
    • The week is to promote the sense of community that comes from working out loud.  
    • People can experience that community in a week and can learn more about working out loud.  Hopefully people try it ongoing. 
    • The week is only a beginning and not a limit to the practice. We would love people to practice every day (we have suggestions on how to start daily practice too!)
  • Who is behind #wolweek? And who is making money from this?  
    • International Working Out Loud Week is not officially aligned with any organisation and is the barest network collaboration itself. 
    • International Working Out Loud Week is a collaboration of Austen Hunter, Jonathan Anthony and I. We loosely coordinate our activities by working out loud. We started with a conversation in a public forum and we still haven’t had a meeting or used email. We are each authorised to act to advance the organisation. We chat occasionally. That’s all the organisation we need.  
    • So far the only money involved over 3 International Working Out Loud weeks is the sub $80 budget spent on supporting the wolweek site. Nobody gets a salary as we are all volunteers just like our passionate community. There is no income because no money changes hands. No profits were harmed in the making of #wolweek.
    • If other people can benefit from wolweek because they have a product or services to sell, that’s fantastic because it all reinforces working out loud.
  • What is a #wolcircle? Why do we need 1000?

To make #wolweek valuable in its goals in promoting working out loud, we need to address these and other issues well.  We also need to ensure that we are giving people confidence to act on their new practice and advocate for the movement. The best International Working Out Loud week is one where the movement develops ways to engage others and create ever greater value from learning & collaboration.

What else can we do or say? How can we create greater value from this and any future #wolweek? Work out loud with us in the comments or on a social media network.

The Gig Economy

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Being on the board of Melbourne Chamber Orchestra gives me a few insights into the life & careers of classical musicians.  There are some interesting parallels and hints for the potential future of work.

Responding to Disruption

By no stretch of the imagination is classical music a growth industry. Largely a creation of the late 19th century, public orchestras face a challenging & disruptive environment. The economics of this art form and cultural practice are dependant on ticket sales, the work of philanthropists and shifting government support. The predictable upfront income of subscriptions are harder to sell in an immediate world. Ticket sales can be a challenge when there are many competing sources of cultural and popular entertainment. Sources of revenue from music recordings have declined with digital media, if not vanished.  Classical music that was once sold at a premium is now a budget category.

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra is itself a response to these conditions. The orchestra is not a full-time orchestra like many of the state and international orchestras. The organisation depends on its agility, its creativity, its exceptional talent, the support of its community and its ability to attract support to artistic projects. Every season is a delicate balance of private philanthropy, ticket sales, subscriptions and some government support for projects. Essential to the ability of the organisation to fulfil its purpose are innovations, like the Australian Octet, and collaborations, whether with local arts organisations in MCO’s extensive Regional touring program or in performances with other arts organisations.

A Work Life of Gigs

For the musicians in MCO this means that their working life has a range of facets that may be more common for everyone in the future of work:

  • Work for Purpose: You don’t choose an artist career for its financial returns. You become an artist to fulfil a personal purpose and to share your art with others. There is little reason to stay around for the money if you are disengaged and certainly no reason for that to be your only artistic endeavour.
  • Gigs: When jobs are few and far between and highly competitive, then work becomes a series of gigs. The diversity of gigs is something that appeals to even those who have a steady job because it offers the chance to play new or different works or develop new skills with new teams of people.
  • Specialists and Generalists: Musicians need a specialisation in an instrument and often a style of music because there is usually a focus to their practice and their purpose. However many will have a general range of other instruments and styles to support themselves and adapt.  A few will compose or conduct to add to their opportunities. Musicians may well back up their music with even more general talents from media to administration to an unrelated day job that helps support a life.
  • Constantly learning:  Musicians are constantly learning. They practice to improve. They work to improve. They want to challenge themselves to better their art. The demanding and competitive nature of the industry means that you must keep learning.
  • Global: Australia is a small market. Creative talent operates in a global economy. To learn, many artists travel overseas to work or to study. With global connection, they can collaborate and learn from people all around the world. Artist can build international reputations through collaborations, teaching, performing or winning competitions.
  • Entrepreneurs: Many musicians need to be entrepreneurs to survive. They have to run their own small chamber groups, orchestras, programs, festivals or events to get the diversity of performance opportunities that they want and to expand their opportunities.
  • Agile organisations: Because of the dynamic opportunities available to talent in a global economy, the organisations need to be agile shifting and reshaping as things change.  If your best artists leave or are unavailable due to other gigs, you may need to hire new talent but you might even need a new repertoire or organisations. These agile organisations can be project based or short lived.
  • Teaching: When everyone is always learning, many people earn a living from sharing their expertise and teaching.

Community Matters

One of the key reasons that Melbourne Chamber Orchestra exists is to enable chamber musicians to practice their art in Melbourne and to help create a rich and deep community dedicated to fine music in this city. Melbourne has great music schools, halls and many performance opportunities. Young and experienced musicians need a diversity of opportunities to practice their art. I am very proud MCO can support artists at the beginning of their career but also allow experienced artists to return home from overseas or interstate and make a career in Melbourne.  

With the support of the Melbourne community, MCO can provide artistic and commercial support to talented musicians to learn, connect and work in the city and help take great music to new and existing audiences in Victoria and beyond.  At the end of the day, the quality of the music and the growing talents of the artists are the surest measure of success for any chamber orchestra.

MCO is currently conducting its 2015 Annual Campaign. Help support the work of the organisation.

Leading change with #wol: #wolweek

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Working out loud

Working out loud can be an agent of change. Leaders can leverage working out loud to make change.

Here’s a story I heard last week of a leader using working out loud for change. Unfortunately I need to make the story anonymous which robs it of a little detail.

A new leader took over a team with average performance. Halfway through his first conversation with the team he realised they weren’t receptive to his introduction of the changes of a new leader’s agenda.

So midway through the first team talk, his strategy changed. The leader transparently outlined the team’s strengths and weaknesses and how they contributed to performance. Importantly he led with his own performance pointing out how he needed the help of other’s in the team to address gaps in his own skills and approaches. The team was paired up to balance out strengths and weaknesses and enable shared learning.

In the first year, using this approach, results doubled. Suddenly an average team was performing well. After four years of openness, collaboration and shared learning, the team has energy, new approaches and on track for best in industry performance within five years.

The results that have been achieved engaged the team in the value of new approaches. Because people felt supported to change, they came up with a new vision for the team, new ways of working and new energy. Working and sharing learning together helped accelerate change.

Leaders can use working out loud to drive change. They need to start by being transparent and open on their own needs to learn, to grow and to collaborate. The results and engagement from working out loud are worth the effort.

On the Shoulders of Giants – #wolweek

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

We do our best work together. 

 ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants’ – Isaac Newton

On The Shoulders

My best work builds on the ideas of others. I am supported in my work by networks of people who give generously of their ideas their time and their networks.

Working out loud helps me to better leverage these networks and leverage their boost up to see just a little further. Sharing work in progress makes it open to the contributions of my network of giants. 

#wolweek is a chance to share that experience with others. This wolweek we begin a campaign to create 1000 working out loud circles so that 5000 people can benefit from the lift of others in their network in achieving a goal that matters. 

Of Giants

If you depend on giants for your view, you need to remember to feed them. If you only take from the giants, they will walk away leaving you alone.

When working out loud is practiced with generosity, you give back to others. The network gets its return and the giants will stay around to hold you up.

#wolweek is for me a chance to give back to all those who have supported me. Some of these are the inspirations and thought leaders that I try to recognise in the social streams. Others are the leaders and contributors who advocate and make change happen.

Hopefully as #wolweek grows we can give back to a wider global community too. 

Spreading the practice of working out loud will foster a mindset of making contributions to networks. That’s why spreading #wolcircles is important. A #wolcircle participant can’t be selfish in working out loud. They must give and take. 

In a globally connected world we all stand on the shoulders of giants if we work out loud with generosity.

One Thousand #WolCircles

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

1000 Cranes bring peace. 1000 #WolCircles connect people in purpose.

Great things happen when people embrace a bold dream. For some time John Stepper and I have been discussing how we make his wonderful work enabling others to work out loud available to more people.  John has developed a great facilitation process using circles of 4-5 people to support each other as they work out loud. I have led a circle and the outcomes were invaluable. At a recent event, John’s talk on the value of working out loud inspired the establishment of 18 circles.

First Working Out Loud event at another firm helped launch *18* peer support groups aka #wolcircles cc: @pkmchat @simongterry @chriscatania

— John Stepper (@johnstepper)

May 27, 2015

It is time to dream big. We want to create a 1000 circles so that over 5000 people can fulfil some important personal goal with the support of a circle of peers. The circle process is free and publicly available. These circles share the practices of working out loud in a purposeful way. They also give people an opportunity to reflect on what matters to them, what relationships they need to foster and how to give generously to others.

So our plan is to create 1000 working out loud circles between the International Working Out Loud Week next week from 15-21 June to one we will hold in November this year.

How you can help

I look forward to working with you to share 1000 #wolcircles around the globe

#EductechAU Workplace Learning – Building Strategic Capability for Change

Posted on by simongterry in Learning, Strategy

Photo: Shannon Tipton (@stipton) votes to change the status quo at #EdutechAU.

As our organisations look to adapt to a connected world, learning will need to play a far more strategic role. Learning functions need to move from being order takers to change agents in the transformation of leadership, culture, work and organisational structures. After all, we won’t achieve our strategic goals if people don’t have the capabilities we need.

Changing the Learning Game

Change was at the forefront of the agenda of the EdutechAU workplace learning congress this week. There wasn’t a speaker or a panel that did not seek to address how organisations were using learning to manage change. These changes were hardly minor. For example, in the case studies alone we had examples of:

  • Medibank building capability for workplace culture and wellness issues in an activity based workplace through experiential & mobile learning
  • the Australian Electoral Commission rethinking its entire employee development cycle between elections with a goal of focusing more on the why and how than the what.
  • Coca Cola Amatil building the capability of its operations teams to learn for themselves and from each other without training
  • AT&T using the scale of MOOCs to retrain its global workforce into strategic capabilities and out of declining roles
  • using learning and the learning function to change culture at Northern Lights

In all the talks were the key drivers of transformation for businesses and that learning is seeking to better leverage.  All our work is becoming:

  • more connected and social
  • more open and transparent
  • more automated
  • more flexible
  • more complex
  • more knowledge based
  • more dependant on culture
  • more demanding in terms of speed, quality, efficiency, effectiveness, etc

These changes present an opportunity and a threat to learning function everywhere. Learning has opportunities to be more strategically valuable, reach more people than every and in far more engaging ways. Learning has the potential to do and control less but achieve far more by moving from design and delivery to facilitating learners to pull what they need. At the same time, the threat to learning is that both learners and management has far more available from social channels external to the organisation and the participatory culture available in those networks often more agile and even more engaging.

To leverage these challenges for opportunity, learning needs to move from an order taker for training programs to a strategic agent of change. The new challenge for learning is to rethink how they set about enabling the network of people in the organisation to build key capabilities, to help people build constructive culture and to change the way managers manage and leaders lead. The answer will be less about control and specific training programs and tools and more about how learning works in a system of capability building that reinforces the organisation’s goals and uses the best of what is available in learning, in the social capital of the organisation and its networks.

Becoming More Human

Speaker after speaker highlighted another key element of this transformation.  As work becomes more personal and more human, there is also a need for learning to lead that change too. Learning functions need to consider how they design human experiences, faciltitate human networks and realise human potential, even anticipate human emotions. The future of work puts a greater demand on design mindsets, systemic approaches and the ability to weave together networks of experiences and people in support of capability building in the organisation.

This human approach extends also to how learning works. These kinds of programs need experimentation, learning from failure and adaptation over time as the people and the organisation changes.  Learning will need to role model and shape leadership as a vehicle for realising the human potential of each individual, organisation and each network.

The Obstacles are The Work

EdutechAU was not an event where people walked away with only a technique to try on a new project. There were undoubtedly many such ideas and examples from social learning, to MOOCs, to experience design & gamification, to networked business models, to simulations and other tools. However, the speakers also challenged the audience to consider the whole learning system in and around their people. That presents immediate challenges of the capability of the learning team and their support to work in new ways.  However, those very challenges are part of helping the system in their organisation to learn and adapt. The obstacles are the work.

Thanks to Harold Jarche, Alec Couros, Marigo Raftopoulos, David Price, Ryan Tracey, Shannon Tipton, Emma Deutrom, Joyce Seitzinger, Con Ongarezos, Peter Baines, Amy Rouse, Mark L Sheppard and Michelle Ockers for their contributions to a great event.