Writing

Integrate at Goals, not at Process

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, Leadership, Strategy

image

How do you integrate open network conversations into closed linear processes? Integrate social conversations by integrating at the purposes and strategic goals. No organisation wants its collaboration constrained by processes or systems.

Organisations, vendors and analysts are touting the advantages of integration of enterprise social networking into legacy processes in organisations. Enterprise social networking needs to be come a part of the everyday work in organisations as it is another set of tools to foster conversations and collaborations that create value. Without connection to the daily work of individual employees, enterprise social conversations won’t deliver the value we need. However, far too many of our existing work processes aren’t set up to accommodate creative, agile and productive social conversations. Patterns of allowed conversation in a process based integration rarely changes that.

Don’t Integrate through the Current Process

Existing legacy processing systems are designed for efficiency. They constrain choice. They automate steps and narrow discretions. The goal is to simplify tasks, remove errors and ensure repeatable activities can be achieved with the minimum in investment in human talent.

These systems achieve significant efficiency gains with a cost of human potential, agility and effectiveness. However, they are not designed for conversation about work. One only has to reflect on everyday poor customer experiences to see that these systems gain efficiency by handling poorly the exceptional, unusual case or situations requiring a response to change. Conversations, change and collaboration do not fit the industrial model of work that these process systems are designed to fulfil. They are not designed to leverage the potential of talented knowledge working employees connected in networks.

Collaboration is not a layer that can be integrated into existing fixed processes designed for efficiency. Collaboration offers the opportunity to enable people to change and improve the process and the work. Collaboration creates choices with a view to increasing agility, improving effectiveness and realising human potential.

A conversation that must integrate into a process system will become a conversation about the constraints of the system at some point.

Integrate by Creating a Purpose-oriented Conversation

Offer people autonomy, purpose and an opportunity to develop mastery and you will offer them an ability to fulfil their potential. If you want to integrate social conversations into your work, integrate the conversations at this level. The key to reinforcing human potential is to offer people a way to discuss how their work aligns and creates value for the purpose and goals of the organisation, not its processes.

image

An employee who is challenged to integrate his or her work at the level of the goals of the organisation has an opportunity to stop, change or transform the process. That employee can respond to the situation before them, use their discretion and use the talents of their colleagues. The employee can look to deliver greater value than the current process allows. That liberty reinforces their accountability and validates the organisations confidence in the potential of the employee. A key barrier to engagement in many organisations is that an employee can struggle to find the connection between their work and the goals of the organisation. Goal-oriented conversations can play a critical role to surface that connection.

Another advantage of reinforcing a connection at the level of enterprise-wide purpose and goals is that it acts as a reminder that collaboration is an enterprise-wide experience in work. Collaboration is not constrained to the customer management systems or work process systems. A collaborative ecosystem and the social conversations that support it should reach throughout the organisation to achieve its goals and purpose.

Leverage human potential to help realise goals

Telling people what to do and shaping how they might be allowed to have a discussion seems easy and seems efficient. However, it comes at a significant cost of human potential. Leadership in networks demands more of employees, leaders and their organisations. To maximise the opportunities for networked ways of working, allow people the opportunity to find integration of their social conversations at the level of the organisations purposes and strategic goals, not constrained by its processes.

If you would like to create greater value in your enterprise social network or discuss how the Value Maturity Model applies to assist your organisation to create strategic value through enterprise social networking and other forms of collaboration, please get in contact. I am available through @simongterry or Linkedin or www.simonterry.com

Value is a fractal

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration

image

Enterprise social networks are made up of individuals who form their own groups and networks and the community is an aggregation of each of these components. We need to remember this structure when we start to think of value in enterprise social networks.

From Top-Down to Every Scale

One resulting characteristic of value in enterprise social networks is that they resemble a fractal, a mathematical shape that shows similar characteristics at any scale. Value in an enterprise social network does not only occur at the aggregate level.

Smaller scale activities are more important to sustain and grow the development of value across the whole network. There is less opportunity to order or impose value creation in a network than in traditional hierarchies where top down value is the priority and individual value is rarely considered.

Value For Users and Groups Makes a Network

Individual and group practices that create value are the underpinning of value for the whole network. Value comes from connection, sharing information, solving problems and innovating for an individual or the whole community. Without this value to the individual or group, no value creation at the network level will sustain itself.

Individuals and groups must understand and see the value being created to continue to work in new ways in the network. Developing the maturity of a network means building this sense of how value is created and how it aligns to strategic goals.

Create a Sense of Value at Every Scale

The power of the Value Maturity Model is that it is designed to take advantage of this characteristic. The method can be shared with users, with groups and with the whole community to help them make sense of how value is created for them and for the network.

Secret tools of community managers or organisational leaders won’t help individual users and groups find their own path forward to value. The power of value creation in an enterprise social network is the ability to leverage people’s potential to help

If you would like to create greater value in your enterprise social network or discuss how the Value Maturity Model applies to assist your organisation to create strategic value through enterprise social networking and collaboration, please get in contact. I am available through @simongterry or Linkedin or www.simonterry.com

What I learned from Global Day 1 of #wolweek

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

image

Lessons are already coming in from International Working Out Loud Week (#wolweek) even though it has only just begun.

While it is the end of Tuesday in Australia, Monday was a holiday and most of the world is only now starting day 2 of #wolweek. Here’s what I have experienced so far:

  • Just do it: #wolweek began as a conversation with Jonathan Anthony and Austen Hunter. Somewhere along the way the idea of a week working out loud had a date assigned and became International Working Out Loud Week. The idea clearly resonates with over 200 tweets alone on day 1. If your idea is good enough put it to test in the market without further ado. We could have spent a year planning the event and got less traction.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • Sharing magnifies: The conversation that started #wolweek was public. We discussed our plans everywhere we could. Ideas and encouragement helped us continue. People jumped in to push the momentum up on this because they believed a week celebrating working out loud was worthwhile. As there is no organisation behind International Working Out Loud week and there has yet to be a meeting, enthusiasm and participation driven by sharing sustains the activity.
  • Networks explode: I wondered if #wolweek would be a phenomenon of a few chatty people at first. However when we saw major influencers (Thanks Helen Bevan, Gloria Lombardi, Helen Blunden, Rachel Miller, Jane Hart, Miguel Zlot and many more) and brands with big reach ( Thanks Change Agents Worldwide, NHS, Yammer and more) join the conversation it was clear that the sharing of #wolweek would be magnified by networks. Networks explode the potential of sharing. As Jonathan Anthony likes to say, we discovered the BOOM! moment.
  • You are the person: Bryce Williams first described working out loud. There are many other advocates who are probably better placed have spent more time promoting working out loud than the instigators of #wolweek (for example John Stepper, Jane Bozarth, Harold Jarche, Luis Suarez, Austin Kleon, etc to name only a few). If we had worried about support, their engagement or permissions, it would not have happened. Many of the above have jumped in enthusiastically as supporters of #wolweek.  

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • Change takes time: I have learned to enjoy the fruits of working out loud in networks, but I have always biased this working out loud to networks that have a common purpose and people I know even, if it may be part of  much larger community. It is still uncomfortable for me to use twitter or another totally public forum for this sharing. #wolweek has already shown me the benefits of being a little more open and a little less final in my sharing in this public forum. I can start to see what Luis Suarez and others have gained from moving beyond email into open conversations.
  • Less noise:  I expected to see a lot of noise (apologies if I am inflicting some, but then adjust your filters). I have been searching for posts with the tags #wol, #wolweek and #wolyo. I expected to find at least some noise. Perhaps it is my purpose in learning about #wolweek, but I have found almost all the posts fascinating, a great insight into other’s work. I am not alone.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Four more days to go globally.  Let’s see what magic all this sharing can bring.

International Working Out Loud Week 9-15 June

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

International Working Out Loud week begins Monday 9 June.  The week is an effort to build awareness of the power of working out loud through asking people to participate in a week’s practice of working out loud.

Join a growing community of practitioners working out loud to create better ways of working and build community in their work.

Here’s what you need to know:

  • What it means to Work out loud: The 5 elements by John Stepper
  • How do I get involved: Start sharing your work in what ever means seems appropriate to you. It doesn’t have to be social. It just needs to be public. Make sure you tag your sharing with #wolweek so that others can follow along the broader conversation.

If you need a procedure: 

1) do something
2) write what you did on an unfeasibly large post-it note
3) attach to your office wall
4) take a photo of it
5) tweet it with the hashtags #wolyo #wolweek

  • Encourage others to Work Out Loud too Working out loud works for everyone.

Thanks to Austen Hunter and Jonathan Anthony for leading the way on the creation of International Working Out Loud Week

The Last Thing We Need is an Enterprise Social Network

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Collaboration, Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership, Learning, Strategy, Working out loud

Dear CEO

Re: The Last Thing We Need is an Enterprise Social Network

The purpose of this email is to explain why the last thing we need is an enterprise social network.

This email is in response to the conversation about enterprise social networking in the executive leadership meeting yesterday. We thought it best to summarise the position of the leadership team, because yesterday’s conversation got derailed by anecdotes about social media, technology terminology, fear of change and discussion of abstractions like collaboration, future of work and new organisational structures. Before you left the meeting, you remarked “Based on this discussion, I think an enterprise social network is the last thing we need”. We agree.

We don’t want faddish technology. We need execution of strategy.

As CEO, you’ve been rightly suspicious of all this discussion of social inside the organisation. It is bad enough that your teenage children never look up from using social media on their phones. Whatever that involves, it can’t be needed activity in our organisation. We are a place of work.

What made this country great was well-run organisations, hard work and increasing effectiveness in creating value for customers. That takes focused strategy, disciplined execution and a willingness to do the hard yards. Great organisations aren’t built by chasing technology whims. They come from executing strategy to create better value. When we need to create better execution on strategy, the latest fashionable technology is the last thing you need.

We need better strategic value creation

Times are tough. Industry is more competitive than ever and change keeps increasing. We know customer and shareholder value needs to go up and costs need to come down. We have a strategy that is about meeting these new customer & stakeholder expectations, improving the organisational efficiency and delivering the returns that shareholders demand. We all wonder from time to time whether everyone in the organisation gets the imperative of the new strategy and whether they are all working hard enough to find new ways to create value. We know that we perform better when we have better conversations to make sure that our employees are aligned to the strategy. What we don’t need are distractions when there’s doubt that people even understand the strategy.

When we need strategically aligned value creation, the last thing you need is an enterprise social network.

We need new more effective ways of working

To fulfil the strategy of the organisation, we know as a management team that we will have to start to work in new more effective ways. There has been too much wasteful duplication of work in the organisation. Too many of our processes & policies don’t line up across the silos, aren’t agile enough for the environment and don’t meet customer needs. Both our customers and our employees complain about how badly we do this. We need to start working in new and different ways to identify, solve and improve this on a continuing basis. We have to focus everyone on find and using better work approaches that help us to fulfil the strategy.

When we need working in new and more effective ways, the last thing we need is an enterprise social network.

We need to change management and leadership in every role

Working in more effective ways will likely require us to change the way management works. We are going to need to push decisions down to people closer to the customer and give our people the ability to fix problems. We will need our managers to move from command and control to a coaching and enabling role. We need to ensure that all our people are realising their potential and able to work to create new sources of value. Of course in this new role, middle management will need to be trimmed and the new flatter organisation will need to change more often as we respond to further changes driven by our customers. Employees will need to step up into a leadership role in these changes and with customers, the community and the organisation.

When we need to change the culture of management and asking every employee to play a bigger role in leadership, the last thing we need is an enterprise social network.

We need different conversations

Changing the culture of management is going to demand very different conversations in our organisation. We are going to have to find ways to make sure that conversations are efficient and effective. We need to leverage the contributions of more people from across the organisation. We won’t be able to rely on long meetings, workshops, speeches, video and emails. Did you see the budgets for communications, off sites & roadshows in the forecast for next year? We have to do something different. We will need to involve our people more in making decisions. If that’s going to happen our people will need to be better informed and better able to channel their contributions. Our people will need ways to inform themselves, learn by pulling what they need, share ideas of how to work better and collaborate to solve work problems. We are going to need to encourage our people to join conversations that use their capabilities to innovate, to create value for customers and create new forms of working.

When you need to change the conversations, collaboration and culture of an organisation, the last thing you need is an enterprise social network.

We need more from our people

We wrapped up the last executive leadership meeting reflecting on how big these demands will be on our people. We will be asking for a lot of change in them, their work and the way the organisation exists around them. We will be asking our people to play an increasing role in the success of the organisation. We will want them to lead new conversations to create the future for this organisation. We need our people to be more engaged because we will need much more from our people.

Conclusion: What we need

After you left the executive leadership meeting to catch up with the board, we realised that we are clear what we need as an organisation:

  1. we need to succeed by fulfilling our strategy to create greater value in a rapidly changing market; and to do that
  2. we need to be able to work in new & better ways that create a more effective, agile and responsive organisation; and to do that
  3. we need a new culture in management and more leadership from our people; and to do that
  4. we need new conversations that enable our people to discuss and act on creating better strategic value; and to do that 
  5. we need more engagement and a better ability to leverage the potential of our people to contribute to and lead this change; and to do that
  6. we need an enterprise social network to support the first 5 steps.

If you are surprised by point 6, think back through the needs again. After all you were the first to say that an enterprise social network is the last thing we need. We don’t want an enterprise social network because it is new technology or because it is good for some abstract goal. We need one to help our people to execute on the changes necessary to achieve the goals of our strategy. Enterprise technology only makes sense when it enables us to work in new ways that deliver strategic value. As your management team we can see that the value creation opportunity is compelling. We couldn’t see it when you made your remark, but we have come around to your perspective.

The paperwork required by our old process is already on your desk, but a number of our people have started experimenting with solutions to see what value we can create. (Interestingly, their first suggestion is a better procurement process.) When you get back from the board, your assistant will show you how to log-in and join us discussing how we implement in the new enterprise social network.

Thanks for challenging us to come up with a better way of working.

Please think of the environment and don’t print this email. We’d encourage you to discuss it on our new enterprise social network instead.

—

If this post sounds familiar or if you would like to create greater value in your enterprise social network or discuss how the Value Maturity Model applies to assist your organisation to create strategic value through enterprise social networking and collaboration, please get in contact. I am available through @simongterry or Linkedin or www.simonterry.com

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

It is by imagination that knowledge is “carried to the heart” (to borrow again from Allen Tate). The faculties of the mind—reason, memory, feeling, intuition, imagination, and the rest—are not distinct from one another. Though some may be favored over others and some ignored, none functions alone. But the human mind, even in its wholeness, even in instances of greatest genius, is irremediably limited. Its several faculties, when we try to use them separately or specialize them, are even more limited.

Wendell Berry’s Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture
Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.

 – Wendell Berry’s Jefferson lecture in the humanities http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture

Quoted in http://interactioninstitute.org/blog/2012/12/05/the-turn-towards-affection/