Working Out Loud

The Dizziness of Freedom by Diana Renner

Posted on July 16, 2015 by simongterry

Diana Renner and I were discussing working out loud this week when Diana mentioned that she had an unpublished blog post in development that I recognised as the feeling of the ‘trembling finger’ when I am about to work out loud. This guest post is a result of that conversation. It is too good not to be widely shared – Simon Terry

It has been almost two years since I stepped into the unknown and became an independent consultant. Looking back, it feels less like a step and more like a leap. In a single gesture of defiance, I traded security for freedom, leaving behind a relatively comfortable, predictable role in a large organisation. I had never expected to end up working on my own. But the promise of freedom was alluring. It still is. At the same time freedom opens up possibilities that are terrifying.

In his book The Concept of Anxiety, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard explores the immense feelings of dread that accompany that moment when we find ourselves at a crossroads in life. The moment when the choice to do something hangs in perfect balance with the choice to do nothing. Kierkegaard uses the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff, from where he can see all the possibilities of life. As he looks over the edge, he experiences both a fear of falling and at the same time a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge.

Every edge I have stood on has provoked feelings of dread and excitement. Whether going into a first meeting with a new client, writing a few pages in my book, or facing a bored and unmotivated group, I have struggled with what Kierkegaard calls our dizziness of freedom. Just like Kierkegaard’s protagonist, staring into the space below, I have contemplated many times whether to throw myself off or to stay put.

However, what seemed risky and largely unknown two years ago rapidly has become part of a familiar landscape. It would be natural to relax and enjoy the view… Yet I have learned that it is at this very point that I need to become more vigilant than ever and exercise my freedom to choose in three key ways:

To rally against the safe but numbing comfort of the status quo. I need to keep reminding myself that the greatest learning is just outside of my comfort zone. I need to keep stretching myself to keep growing.
To resist the strong pull of the crowd. I have found perspective on the margins, not looking to the outside for approval or acceptance, not following a trend just because everyone else is following it.
To interrogate the world’s criteria for what is good or successful. I am suspicious when I am being offered a formula to quick success or many riches. It is powerful to be able to question mainstream expectations, and carve my own path with courage and purpose.

The responsibility that comes with the freedom to choose is terrifying. But the cost of not choosing is even more so.

We need to welcome this dizziness of freedom as a sign that we are, in fact, just where we need to be. A sign that we need to slow down and reflect on the risk, then step off the edge anyway.

Diana Renner – Leadership consultant, facilitator, author of ‘Not Knowing – the art of turning uncertainty into opportunity’, Chartered Management Institute Book of the Year 2015, UK.

www.notknowingbook.com
www.notknowinglab.com
Twitter: @NotKnowingLab

Change Agents Go to Washington!

Posted on September 23, 2014 by simongterry

Drowning in paperwork? Demoralized by endless meetings where you sit and sit and sit, and have no voice? Tired of performance management reviews that have little to do with your potential or passion? Frustrated by knowledge that buries itself in graveyards of email thread coffins?

Then, we have a workshop for you. Come get rejuvenated in November and learn how your work experience can be joyful, interesting, and rewarding. Changing behaviors at work is challenging, but results in greater productivity, innovation, job satisfaction, and loyalty.

For the first time, a crack team of our Change Agents will descend from the cloud and lead you through a discussion of how you too can “work in the future.”

Where: KMWorld 2014, Grand Hyatt, Washington D.C.

When: November 4, Tuesday morning, 2014

Workshop Description:

W9: Flexible & Agile Workstyles & Processes for the 21st Century Organization

9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Susan Scrupski, Change Agents Worldwide

Joachim Stroh, Change Agent, Change Agents Worldwide

Catherine Shinners, Founder, Merced Group

Carrie Young, Principal, Talk Social To Me

The Future is already here and evenly distributed among the global members of the Change Agents Worldwide (CAWW) network. This half day workshop shares their secrets: how they work, their values, how they adopt/adapt/exapt new ways of working with their global team. A team of Change Agents discuss leading organizational concepts such as: new models for organizational design, the power of self-organization, social and organizational network analysis, and more. They’ll talk about the cornerstone of what makes their networked organization work: transparency, trust, authenticity, and a culture of sharing and cooperation. The CAWW network exemplifies how social and operational integration yields iterative improvements in responding to customers, working collaboratively with partners, and creating value in the marketplace. The workshop also talks about what supports their work: SWARMS, Pods, Cookie Jars, Green Rooms, and other new processes based on agile and self-organizing principles.

The workshop will review our philosophical principles, explain the practical application of these principles and demonstrate how they’re exercised in a network-based organization. We’ll also lead audience members through a series of hands-on exercises to experiment with putting these ideas into practice. It will be an interactive day of learning and sharing. We’re looking forward to cooperating and collaborating with new friends of the Change Agents Worldwide network.

We have a special conference registration discount for anyone wishing to attend KMWorld 2014 too. The discount will get you $100 off the early-bird rate and $200 off the regular rate. Please let us know if you’re headed to KMWorld in the comments. See you there!

Smarter Innovation: Road Map to the Future

Posted on September 17, 2014 by simongterry

Last spring, we were approached by the Academic Director of Columbia University’s Graduate Information and Strategy program, Katrina Pugh. She had received word about the innovative way our Change Agents work out loud in the cloud. We were asked to contribute to a management book published recently by ARK Group, “Smarter Innovation: Using Interactive Processes to Drive Better Business Results.”

The goal of the book is to shed light on insights that have been growing in our knowledge space – tacit knowledge sharing, conversations, collective intelligence, applied analytics – but which have never been wrapped together in a coherent way to address such as pressing problem. As our global economy steps out of its long slumber, it will be the innovators who expand opportunity and prosperity for their employees, customers and societies. – Kate Pugh

Our chapter in the book resides within the topic focusing on social and operational integration. We go into great detail about how we work, our values, our innovative business practices, and the strength of our network-based decision-making when it comes to modern organizational design and methods. Authored primarily by three of our Change Agents, but collaborated on by our whole team, the chapter defines how Change Agents Worldwide “works.” And, of course, the way we work is a reflection of how our network wants to work. Every change agent in our network believes in the principles we espouse, so it should come as no surprise that we actually work this way.

The book is fascinating. It’s available today on the ARK Group web site. Contributions by leading consultants and thought leaders who hail from Columbia, Deloitte, Emory University, 3M, Motorola, Pfizer, Intel, and many others have presented cutting-edge examples of how large and small companies are innovating with customer service, supplier intelligence, sales, knowledge retention and discovery, inventory, and open patent alternatives.

If you just want to read our chapter, Innovation by Design, you can download it today from our web site. For all of those who’ve pre-ordered the chapter on our web site, you will be receiving a notification shortly that it’s available for download.

Feel free to download our first e-book as well, Changing the World of Work. One Human at a Time. We are currently working on new book ideas, so make sure to subscribe to our newsletter list to keep up with our new products and services. Lots of good stuff coming from our worldwide team of Change Agents.

The Green Room Experience

Posted on July 24, 2014 by simongterry

Many moons ago, I was a stage actor in a theatre group. Grease paint. Dialogues. Arc lights. And all that! From the plays of Anton Chekov to ‘The Zoo Story’ (my toughest) by Edward Albee). The Zoo Story, I recall in particular, was miles and miles of dialogue. A never ending ascent of a tall ask, for it was a two character, one act play, for a duration of what could be called ‘eternity’.

As much as I remember the performances, memories from the Green Room stay fresh! A time of bonding, intense conversation, reassuring glances and a scintillating access to performers and performances.

The Green Room, Wikipedia says, “is the space in a theatre, studio or similar venue which accommodates performers not yet required on stage. The green room functions as a waiting room and lounge for performers before and after a performance, and during the show when they are not engaged onstage.”

My experiences in the Green Room guides me to think that the definition is perhaps an honest clinical descriptor. Like saying ‘Twitter is a social networking tool’. Or that cars have four wheels and help in getting from place A to place B. Technically right, but far less than what they do.

For the Green Room is a ‘hot and happening place’. In every sense of the word. My recollections lead me to memories of fervent pace and the anxious eyes of fellow performers before the performance. The director’s calm demeanour that magically soothed frayed nerves. Plus it was an incredibly awesome angle to relish some class acts from! A place where you are closest to the real act. Performers and performances in close quarters before their grand performance on stage. You see mistakes. You see spectacular transformations.

The Green Room is a stepping stone to a real performance. In a literal way too! All of those memories and experiences came rushing back. In just a bit.

For now, switching topics and talking about CAWW!

For a while now, Change Agents Worldwide has held my attention. In a very unique sort of a way. It started with random exchanges on twitter that stayed long after the exchanges themselves. Leading gradually to more sustained conversations that were not only ‘useful’ but served to whet the appetite for learning and exploration in the ‘change’ domain in a way that can be described as unique, contemporary and also at the bleeding edge of thought!

The people that I had these conversations with, lead me CAWW. Take a moment. Do go over the website. One particular line from their website that struck a deep chord enough to explore their work “We designed Change Agents Worldwide to function as a cooperative, where value is realized by every node in the network” Every word there, appealed.

So, when I did discover that CAWW had a ‘Green Room’ where I could go and dip my toes in what it is like to be part of the real conversations behind the curtain, I didn’t waste much time asking Susan Scrupski for an opportunity.

What looked like a relatively calm week in June (that later got swamped by a busy calendar) was when I got to get into the Green Room at CAWW! A authentic and thought provoking digital experience.

After sharing my contexts in the ‘stream’, we got down to outlining priorities, problems and challenges. A superlative change agent is one that asks a heap of questions. Some of them out of a seeking for answers. At other times, as part of a nudging thought train in a different direction.

The people at CAWW are masters at it. Deep searching questions. Calm quips. Simple yet profound ideas and a curiosity for more. The beauty of the interaction also got multiplied by the geographical spread of where the ideas and interactions came from. S

Simon Terry based out of Australia and me would exchange a few ideas before Europe woke up and the conversations would continue through the evening with friends from the West! If the maxim of ‘ideas rule the world’ were to be proven true again, in a very literal sense, I didn’t have to look any further.

Engaging and hearing from a variety of people. Richard Martin. Luiz Suarez. Jon Husband. Joachim Stroh. Catherine Shinners Carrie Basham Young. Stuart McIntyre. Thierry de Baillon. Kevin Jones. Guy Alvarez . Marcia Conners. Patti Anklam Presenting a dazzling array or presence, opportunity and thoughts.

A clutch of ideas, an array of links to resources and surveys and more importantly thoughts to pursue, stay with me. Long after the one week in the Green Room of CAWW has gone by! A wholesome refreshing time.

Notwithstanding the fact, that this Green Room triggered a flurry of memories of another Green Room from a different era. More of that story for another time.

For now, people, if you haven’t explored CAWW, you must!

This is a Guest Post cross-posted from Kavi Arasu‘s blog. See original post here. Mr. Arasu applied to be one of Change Agents Worldwide’s Green Room clients. If you’re interested in applying to become a Green Room Candidate, apply at this link.

You Can’t Put a Price on Epiphanies

Posted on July 17, 2014 by simongterry

MrZvrD_g_400x400 — Anthea Rowe, StarTech

$17,000.

That’s the estimated value of the free consulting I received during my seven days in the Green Room. But that doesn’t begin to capture the actual value of the experience. Because you can’t put a price on epiphanies. Or a mindset change. Or the increased excitement, confidence and enthusiasm I developed after working with Change Agents Worldwide (CAWW) for a week.

I submitted my question to CAWW in May 2014. Submitted with bated breath. What were the chances this international collective of brilliant thinkers and do’ers would want to discuss my small company’s challenge? But they did!

My question was: “How can we retain the close-knit culture of our small organization even as we experience dramatic growth?” I work for a small tech company based in London, Ontario, Canada. As recently as last year, it was possible to know everyone in the company by name. Now , with new hires joining us every week, that intimacy is no longer possible. Or at least, so I thought. The Change Agents helped me realize there are many things we can do to keep the StarTech culture alive and strong even as we grow like crazy.

The conversation in the Green Room was vibrant and crackling with energy. I asked a ton of questions of them, and they asked many of me. It was a dialogue in every sense of the word.

Whatever question I asked, there was always a seasoned expert available and eager to address it. Whether it was about our hiring process, corporate culture, change management or plain ol’ intranet solutions – there was always a helpful Change Agent ready to share relevant insights.

And the insights included a powerful mix of theory and practice. Change Agents use evidence from psychology, sociology, organizational behaviour and management research to establish the principles for 21^st century workplaces. They also have a plethora of case studies from organizations large and small that have implemented communications strategies, engagement campaigns, and more around those principles.

So, what did I learn? I learned the future of employee communications is about enabling. Enabling employees to connect with each other. Enabling employees to find their own information. Enabling employees to work out loud so that others see what they’re doing and want to help. The future of employee communications is building platforms that enable employees to connect and self-organize. The future is decentralizing communications so message come from the people who own them.

The dozen or more Change Agents who participated in my session were helpful, friendly and sincerely interested in supporting my company’s success. These people are serious when they say they want to “change the world of work!”

They were a diverse group with a wide range of experience: in-house comms, IT and knowledge management types; consulting and management expert types. Many Change Agents currently work in-house – at the UN, Lexmark, Teach for America, etc. – or used to work in-house – e.g., as SVP of HR for an international bank, or an IT and comms professional at IBM. These people know the challenges of moving projects through organizations, getting buy-in… all that good stuff. The other Change Agents members are independent consultants, and they’ve worked with many companies across a range of industries (many of them household names).

The best part about my week in the Green Room was that it epitomized the “Work Out Loud” culture CAWW advocates to clients. Using their online platform, I interacted with subject matter experts all around the world at different times of day and in varying amounts. Some Change Agents were regular contributors throughout the week; others popped in when they saw questions that interested them. But all were helpful. Importantly, the timing always worked for me because I could drop in and out of the discussion as my schedule allowed.

If you have a burning question or planning opportunity related to your organization, my advice to you is this:

If CAWW is ever gracious enough to open their doors to another Green Room participant, leap at the chance!

This is a Guest Post by Anthea Rowe, Communications Manager at StarTech. Ms. Rowe applied to be one of Change Agents Worldwide’s Green Room clients. If you’re interested in applying to become a Green Room Candidate, apply at this link.

Corporate Transformation Starts Here

Posted on June 30, 2014 by simongterry

Business, organization and culture change are hot topics in the corporate world today. However, they often remain conceptual thinking: implementation is seen as difficult. We know companies have to connect with their internal and external stakeholders, we understand a collaborative culture is now key to success, we may even realize that social technologies are not sufficient to ignite collaboration. So, where to start?

Well, the trigger can be as simple as a meeting. A different type of meeting. Here’s an example.

Systemic issues require systemic change

Some corporate leaders understand it: traditional ways of working have to evolve, companies must reinvent themselves. Not for the beauty of transformation per se, but because old ways don’t work anymore. The need for change may come from a reduction of what makes a company strong: market share, profitability, attractiveness to talents, industry leadership – the accelerating pace of disruption shows in the shrinking lifespan of large corporations or in the topple rate evolution. It may also (and simultaneously) come from an increase of what makes companies weak: production issues, customer complaints, employee disengagement, operational rigidity, write offs, quality concerns.

When this happens, unfortunately too many leaders put the blame on external factors: market conditions, competitors’ move…; on anecdotal concerns: inadequate processes, sub-optimal governance…; or worse, on bad will of staff. They change people, update operating procedures, replace the equipment, shift market focus, or hire a strategy consultant. And the problems are still there. Why? Because this is a systemic issue, which requires a systemic transformation.

We’re living in an age of individual empowerment, combined with 3 technological disruptions at the same time (cloud, social, mobile) as David Terrar explained recently in an interview with Thierry de Baillon for The Future of [Collaborative] Enterprise (check it out – it’s an awesome project). In this context, what’s needed is an organizational and cultural transformation of companies. Not just another change management initiative: you don’t cure a seriously sick patient with a Band-Aid.

Mobilize internal stakeholders through collaboration, enable corporate transformation

I was lucky to meet recently someone who gets it. Inspired by the writings of John Kotter, Chip & Dan Health and others, Anders wants no less but to change mindsets in a large, global corporation. He was recruited just a couple of months ago to direct Quality in a leading pharmaceutical company, reporting to its CEO. This function has gone through deep issues in a recent past, which should never happen again: Quality is a vital stake in healthcare. Really. Regulation authorities can have a company close down its operations if quality doesn’t match the required standards. Anders and I met after a speech I made about collaboration for stakeholder engagement. He thought this was the right approach to support his transformation project.

This move was really the first evidence of a new thinking: Anders’ organization and mine are not related, have never worked together. I had never seen a function leader pick the brain of a less senior co-worker, of another functional silo, in an informal mode: no project team, no hierarchical validation, no entry into annual objectives or other corporate rituals. “Wirearchy in action”, as Jon Husband would say. What was sought after here was the diversity of thoughts. Plus, an expertise with engagement through social collaboration that no other function (Comms, HR…) can provide today.

A new style of meeting to spark engagement and collaboration

A 2-day meeting was planned by Anders with his new leadership team, three weeks later. I gladly accepted to help design and facilitate the meeting. This was the opportunity to bring people together around a crucial topic (Quality), to lay the foundations of a new thinking around culture change, and to showcase social collaboration tools and mindset.

Here are the main features of this meeting, which can easily be applied to any topic and any company. Combined with a modern leadership practice, this set of actionable items is a stepping stone towards an efficient, collaborative corporate culture.

Seek external inspiration. Asking Change Agents Worldwide fellows was my first reaction when I was consulted on this initiative. We are a community of practice, gathering enterprise and solo change agents. We collaborate and exchange ideas via a Socialcast platform. “Can social collaboration improve Quality?”: in just a few hours, I was able to collect insightful answers and suggestions that provided precious inspiration.
Crowd source the agenda. If you want participants to be engaged in a meeting, you have to engage them from the very beginning, i.e. from the meeting design phase. Ask them what they would like to address, and actively build upon it. This gives ownership of the meeting to the participants. For large meetings, if you can’t afford to ask everyone, you can at least “crowd test” the agenda.
Seek unbiased input. Avoiding complacency and political correctness is important to make a meeting really productive. Ideas must flow freely, which can be difficult in some corporate cultures when various hierarchical levels are gathered in a meeting. To that end, I have set up an anonymous survey addressing all the hard topics, to collect straightforward input from the meeting participants. This anonymous input has provided the main material to support discussions along the meeting.
Be social & digital. Face-to-face meetings are – still – often seen as the optimal layout for collaboration. It’s time to bring in social and digital, as collaboration enhancers. Ahead of their meeting, I have created for this executive team a closed group on Yammer. Almost none had used the enterprise social network before. I also showed them how to use the Lync instant messaging system. The idea is to have them move away as much as possible from emails, to work out loud (thanks John Stepper), as a collective, and to develop agility. Hopefully they will continue to use these tools after the meeting.
Be transparent. Both the agenda and the survey outcomes were put at the disposal of participants ahead of the meeting, on the Yammer platform. There was no surprise, because surprise supposes an imbalance in the level of information, which is a disengagement factor.
Connect as human beings. “It’s the human connection that will rewrite the Story of Work in the future” says Louise Altman of The Intentional Workplace. So true! That’s why we started the meeting with the “personal journey mapping”, a very simple exercise I’d seen in an inspiring brainstorming session organized by The Loop. Each person successively draws his/her personal journey on a world (or country) map, while commenting it for the other participants. Suddenly, this person becomes more than a professional with an assigned role. Connection can take place at a much more interesting level: as human beings, with our history and passions.
Share our purpose. Right after drawing their personal journey, participants were invited to answer the question “Why do you work where you work?” If answers were too broad (echoing the company’s mission for example – something that anyone in any other department could have said), they were asked to be specific to their work. By doing so, people were able to realize that all of them were driven by a deep emotional purpose, and that this purpose was shared.
Make it enjoyable. To engage people, to make them want to cooperate, you have to think about their “user experience” of your meeting. Make it nice, and they will be more likely to participate actively. It doesn’t have to be fancy to be nice. Too much fanciness is even bad for focus. But you can manage time wisely: start the meeting at 9 instead of 8:30, finish early so that people have time to catch up with their mail box. You can also ditch formality: chase corporate talk, have drinks rather than a formal dinner after the meeting, or… sit in the grass together. One lunch was actually a picnic in the nearby park.

The meeting has proved extremely successful, for a ridiculously low cost: food and beverage only. By the way, I can only recommend Ander’s wine (Flying Suitcase), that we enjoyed tasting!

Of course, this was “just” a meeting, and you can’t hope for sustainable, large-scale, global change from a mere gathering of a leadership team. Organizational transformation towards collaboration will require many additional activities over time. But you have to start somewhere, and this is a good start.

What are your ideas to kick off a new collaborative culture?

Working Out Loud Requires being Vulnerable

Posted on April 18, 2014 by simongterry

I love listening to Podcasts. I listen to podcasts when I drive to and from work. I listen to podcasts when I am on a long drive – 6+ hours. I listen to a broad spectrum of podcasts: Football (soccer), Finance, Economics, News, Public Radio, Social business, etc. This weeks blog is prompted by a one episode I listened to recently from the podcast Shift, by Megan Murray and Euan Semple.

The podcast I am referring to is episode 21, about Vulnerability. As I listened to the podcast the first thing that popped into my head was that Working Out Loud (#WOL) requires you to put yourself out there and to be willing to be vulnerable. When I think of working out loud, I think of people sharing what they are working on, asking questions, asking for input on a project, takling about an issue you are trying to resolve. In each of these situations you are risking that someone will think less of you. You need to be vulnerable to do any of those things.

People are scared of putting themselves out there and working out loud. They are fearful that there will be negative repercussions when they make a mistake out in the open. They are fearful that people will think less of them. They are not willing to risk sharing because there is no benefit or that other people will not find what they are sharing as interesting or informative.

The opposite is true. Working out loud has so many benefits and everyone should be doing it within an organization. People will learn and grow quicker and faster by working out loud. Organizations are more effective when people share and are open with each other. The likelihood of finding a piece of information increases as more and more people work out loud. People learn from each other only when information is shared. People improve and innovate on ideas only when ideas are discussed openly. By working out loud, your chances of getting the best information, in timely manner goes up tremendously. Even if a conversation happened out loud months ago, finding that piece of information increases because it was stored for others to discover, read and learn from.

So be brave, take the challenge, work out loud and be vulnerable.

Cross-posted from Eric Ziegler’s blog

Working Out Loud Cannot be Automated

Posted on April 15, 2014 by simongterry

Not sure how I ended reading an old post by +Bertrand Duperrin but I did. Maybe something was calling to me. Maybe it is just purely coincidence that I re-read his blog post. Either way, it has triggered me to write a blog post for the first time in several months. Let’s dig in.

Bertrand Duperrin, posted a blog post back in August of 2012 called Employees don’t have time to waste narrating their work. What caught my eye originally was the title. First reaction, huh? You have to be kidding me. Bertand might be just trying to be sensationalistic with his title, I am not sure. But it did catch my eye and cause me to read his blog post. While the title is interesting, I have to say that the blog post hits a nerve. Bertrand starts his blog post with a concept that I agree with …

It’s impossible to think about emergent collaboration and self-organized structures without visibility on others’ work.

This first sentence makes me think of +Change Agents Worldwide (@chagww, #CAWW). Why? #CAWW is a self organized emergent collaboration organization that is about helping individuals, teams, companies, employees, etc. be more effective. #CAWW works as a network of individuals that interact, share, and cooperate and collaborate on different topics and ideas, always trying to improve upon ideas that will help organizations be more effective. It is almost like he wrote this sentence with the concept of #CAWW in mind.

In Bertrand’s 3rd paragraph he continues down the same path by stating ….

collaboration, cooperation, problem solving and even innovation requires something to be shared so trigger the dynamic. Moreover, people often don’t realize they can be helped : sometimes we believe we’re doing right while we’re doing wrong, we’re doing right while we could do better, differently.

While the first sentence could be interpreted several ways, this statement does not align with the title at all. Only after you get more than half way through the blog post do you start to see where the title becomes relevant. I believe this statement best summarizes the rest of the blog:

if people’s work’s worth being narrated, people should not always be the narrator. Their time is too precious to ask them to play the role of transponders.

So now I get it. People’s time are too important to waste on working out loud (#WOL). Bertrand continues and discusses the idea of having systems do the narrating by automatically creating activities in an activity stream – weekly reports, updates to profiles, etc. I understand where he is going, but I think this concept misses the importance of working out loud (#WOL).

What do I believe? The idea of working out loud is not about the automated interactions? There is some value, but the biggest value is sharing information in a way a system can never do. Sharing information includes asking questions or putting a thought out that could trigger a thought by someone else. Automatic system updates are too prescribed to cause an emotional reaction by the receiver and because of that, the value it just not as high.

I will say though, I do agree with his concept of having people jump out of their every day work systems to work out loud is not effective. To get people to be most effective, the system to work out loud needs to be integrated into the systems they work in every day.

Automatic system updates are the antithesis of what social networks are about. While an automatic update might provide value, they do not deliver come anywhere close to providing the same amount of value as working out loud.

cross-posted from Eric Ziegler’s blog

The Insurgent Communicator

Posted on April 14, 2014 by simongterry

The future of communications is already here, but most corporate communications – specifically internal communications – are proof that William Gibson was correct. The way we communicate in society, from publishing to consuming information, has been reshaped dramatically over the past decade. But inside a corporate environment, you’d barely notice it.

The new communications covenant

In our personal lives we scroll through streams of updates and tweets at lightning speed, digesting news and information from the serious to the mundane. We gorge on videos in the hope that a one-minute video can communicate more to us in less time than reading. We slow down just long enough to interact with the content by liking, sharing, or adding a comment. These habits have become so ingrained that when we come across content that cannot be acted upon we almost feel betrayed, as if the covenant of the new media age has been broken.

Most of all, the content sources we view are customized to us – not by an entity that thinks it knows what we should receive, but by ourselves, either handpicked or based on our preferences, profile data, and personal network. While some may say this creates an echo chamber, the more one expands their network (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn) the greater the chance for serendipitous encounters with news/information beyond one’s usual horizon — more so than via any editorial driven publication.

Most internal communication professionals know this of course. So why do most corporations communicate to their staff using “web 1.0” methods or worse? Sure, some companies have implemented internal social networks where employees can customize their activity feeds, but when it comes to publishing and accessing “the official” news they often have simply recreated the old publishing model on a social platform, rather than re-imagine how the news can be created, published, and consumed. There are cultural and leadership factors in play here, but I want to focus on the less obvious reason, the communications staff.

Fear of change vs. opportunity

In story after story of companies implementing ESNs (Enterprise Social Networks) I’ve heard similar refrains: “Our comms people don’t want to use it” or “The communications team is actively resisting adoption efforts.” So even though they are well aware of the communication trends around them, which they’ve probably adopted in their personal lives, and even though they likely know that the future is here and it’s only a matter of time before it reaches them, they are resistant to the change. They only see the threat to the status quo and not the opportunity that comes with it.

They fear losing the control that comes with being THE source for their area of news in the company. They fear what might happen if (gulp!) their news isn’t as visible as before in a new social model or if the decision to receive their news is (double gulp!) left up to the employee! They fear the change that will come as the role of a professional communicator evolves, as it certainly will. They also fear possibly losing their job, seeing a diminished role for communicators in this future. But what they should fear most is being left behind.

Communications is the new front for organizational change

The opening quote also pertains to the larger world of business too. Companies are changing – or will be forced to change in the near future, some radically. The very idea of “the company” as we know it and the nature of what it means “to work” is being called into question by futurists, thought leaders, and enterprise change agents (some of whom are communicators), many of whom exist at the fringes of mainstream business but whose influence is slowly bleeding into the center. Radical change always starts from the edges in.

There is an opportunity here for communicators. Author and futurist Clay Shirky said, “When we change the way we communicate, we change society.” Apply this to your organization. The influence that communications – as a group, process, and medium – wields is immense. The communications department should be on the vanguard of your organization’s evolution.

We know though that many won’t sign up for this path, even if the opportunities for the individual and the profession as a whole are spelled out in blinking lights. Such is the nature of change. This means however, more opportunities for those few communicators that do want to be change agents for their organization. It can be risky of course. The old command and control culture will fight back and if you ride too high in the saddle you will be picked off before you’ve had a chance to influence real change.

The insurgent advantage

That’s why a subtle approach will have a more lasting impact. Start by building a purposeful network in your company – you will need allies. If there is an ESN start “working out loud” to demonstrate the power of social communications, even on an individual level. Work with your internal stakeholders on new ways to publish their news – start small, but think big. If you can re-imagine the communications process for one small group, it could have implications companywide. Influence your allies to introduce the same changes in their groups.

Share your ideas with communications leadership, but don’t present them as some revolutionary way to change the face of communications at your company – that will expose you as an insurgent and the machine will fight back. Instead, find ways to couch them as enhancements to the current model, such as additional means to broaden the visibility of messages and increase readership. They will probably still reject them, but you’ll be planting the seeds of change, and as your network and influence grow through your underground efforts those ideas may resurface again from a different person in a different part of the organization, possibly from a place they can’t afford to ignore. Being a constant gardener for the future of the workplace is no less rebellious, but will pay off more than the efforts of someone whose overzealous passion for change can be misunderstood, thus marginalizing them.

It will take patience and drive but you’ll still be working against the system, from the inside, as a trusted colleague and employee looking to make your workplace better. Do you have what it takes to be an insurgent communicator?

The Future of Work is The Future of Leadership

Posted on March 5, 2014 by simongterry

An insight about the future of work dropped this morning as I discussed leadership in the network era with Harold Jarche and Jon Husband, my colleagues in Change Agents Worldwide.

The Future of Work is the Future of Leadership

The future belongs not to the leadership of technology. The future belongs to the technology of leadership.

Our opportunity is not incremental improvement in the leadership of change to implement network technologies. Our opportunity is a much more important transformation of the critical human technology of leadership for the network era. Only new leadership capabilities & concepts will enable us to realise the potential of the future of work

Realising Human Potential is What Matters

If you are one of the thought leaders, consultants or vendors working to bring about the adoption of social collaboration technology, you know there is a raging debate about what changes in social and network technology means for organisations. However, there is much that is unclear in the debate about the future of work. Social Business is dead, not dead or even not enough. The biggest challenge is adoption, lack of executive buy-in, return on investment or even organisation’s success. You need a collaboration layer, you need purposeful collaboration or you need cooperation instead.

If you are a manager in an organisation trying to achieve outcomes in a rapidly changing business climate, you most likely missed this entire conversation. The debate about the impact of social collaboration technology is not even on your radar (unless a consultant or vendor has caused you to reflect on it for a moment before you returned to the daily challenge of running your business).

What matters most to managers is more effective human collaboration – collaboration that improves the performance of your business for your customers and delivering better work experience for your people. Managers everywhere wish there were better ways to tap the talents, innovation and engagement of their people to help deliver better outcomes. That is at the heart of the discussion of employee engagement in our organisations.

The technology that engages people and realises potential is called leadership. That’s why so many investments are made by organisations in leadership development and in a push for leadership in every role. Leadership is the most effective technology to solve for the management wish.

Network Era Leadership Realises Human Potential

Work is a human task. Leadership is the work of mobilising others to action. Leadership is how we help people to realise their human potential. Much of our network and collaboration technology is just an infrastructure for the work and leadership required. The network can magnify the culture of the organisation, but we need the right leadership models for managers to realise the potential of a network era of work.

Traditional management & leadership approaches inherit many of their concepts from process models borrowed from the industrial era. In this mindset human potential is measured in productivity terms. The command and control culture focuses on using the right processes to drive human productivity and align that productivity with the right tasks. The engines of human potential (engagement, knowledge creation, experimentation, innovation & enablement) are driven out as sources of volatility & waste. What many call leadership is better described as a process of command of people with an efficiency mindset. That is not leadership at all.

These traditional management concepts also get baked into organisational systems. We have built much technology to explicitly or implicitly reflect these industrial models of management and work. Look inside any organisation and you will find plenty of systems designed from the top-down that reinforce hierarchical command and control. Pull out your system process maps and look for your employee’s ability to do exception handling. In many cases there is no exception process. Exceptions are handled in hacks.

Transparency, responsiveness, the ability to work across silos and effectiveness are often surrendered to tight control of process, narrow measurement of process outcomes, compliance and efficiency. Critical systems in customer management and human resources systems offer some of the most striking examples of these constraints and are widely copied from organisation to organisation. To the frustration of everyone, managers and people must work around these systems to collaborate and cooperate effectively while managing waves of top down change management to bring them back to compliance with process.

The disruption of the networked era is evidence of the scale of change that networks are bringing to our lives. ‘Kodak Moment’ has an entirely new meaning today. This pace of change focuses our attention on a need for change in the concepts of leadership & organisation to support a changing world of work.

We need not focus much on the threats of this era. The opportunities of new models of work and leadership are greater. New network technologies give a glimpse of the potential for leaders to better leverage the people of organisations for work and innovation. However, realising the potential of human collaborative and cooperative knowledge work in networks demands new leadership models.

We Know How to Start Leading in the Network Era

Each new era brings social changes and requires new more effective concepts. We updated the concepts of leadership and management at the birth of the industrial era, leveraging existing concepts from the military and other spheres of human life. Now people need to work to develop new models to leverage the infrastructure delivered by networks and collaboration technology.

The good news is that many of these concepts are already clear and have been developed by practitioners to the point where they are capable of application in everyday work. These practices now work highly effectively and can be taught. Managers now need to pick these up and build the capability in their people to lead in new ways, using:

Deeper self-awareness and understanding of human behaviour and drivers of high performance
A greater focus on systems and a wider view of outcomes and stakeholders
Purpose & Trust to enable leadership & followership in every role
Experimentation & Adaptation
Collaboration & Cooperation
Network models of work organisation like Wirearchy, Pods and Swarms
Social work and learning, such as personal knowledge management, working out loud.

However, we cannot expect managers do to all the work alone. We will need to support them with learning, coaching and the opportunity to practice the new skills and mindsets. We need to change the organisational systems and processes that hold back this opportunity to better leverage human potential.

Making these changes is the great challenge of leadership is in the new network era. It is the work I will be focused on with my colleagues in Change Agents Worldwide as we help others to navigate these changes.

The future of work is the future of leadership for everyone in organisations. Building a better more effective model of leadership will help realise the human potential of this future. Join the effort in your organisation to build a new technology of leadership to make this possible.

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