This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
Creating
Learning from the Bishop’s wife
It’s that time of year in the Hinton household. The time of year when we dust off all our of our old and favourite Christmas movies. Last night we watched “The Bishop’s Wife“. And for me it was as it is every year like being with a good and familiar friend after a long time apart. Fresh and new.
For those of you who don’t know the story, an angel [Cary Grant. Yes that Cary Grant!] comes to earth to answer a Bishop’s [David Niven. Yes that David Niven!] prayer. The Bishop wants to build a cathedral. He’s become ruthlessly obsessed on doing whatever he has to do to get the cathedral built. And the answer the angel brings isn’t quite what he’s expecting.
We discover, through his wife [the very beautiful Loretta Young], that when he was a priest in the small and poor parish of St Timothy’s he was very different. More like his wife – loving, generous and joyful. As the story unfolds we see how he has lost sight of his fundamental values and turned away from what really matters to him. And, if that can happen to a Bishop then it can certainly happen to any one of us. [smile]
The new year is just around the corner. With, or without an angel, may it bring you, your family, the organizations you work for and communities you live in the opportunity to create what you truly value most.
And in the meanwhile, enjoy!
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“How easy is it for me to do great work?”
I’ve been a fan of Bill Jensen‘s work since I read his first book, Simplicity. But, the book that really made me sit-up and take notice was “Work 2.0: Rewriting the contract“. In it he asks leaders to think about how their employees would answer this question – “How easy is it for me to do great work?”
“Work 2.0 is not for the faint of heart… it is for those who are not afraid to stretch their thinking about work and the new contract every employer must make to keep their talent.”
Jane Harper, Director , IBM Extreme Blue
In the 10 years since it was first published the pressure to find and keep the right talent has increased. The employer – employee relationship has changed. But, organizations have not. Or not well or fast enough.
Enter “Hacking Work“, Bill’s most recent project. The idea is simple. As employees we have a choice. We can sit and wait for our organizations to make it easy for us to do great work or we can take action on our own behalf, something Bill calls benevolent hacks, and make it easier for us to do great work.
As a leader ask yourself what you’re doing to make it easier for employees to do great work.
As an employee, don’t wait for your organization to catch up to your needs on the job.
Ask: What can you do to make it easy for you to do great work?
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Celebrating failure
Engineers without borders publishes something called a failure report. They “…believe that success in development is not possible without taking risks and innovating – which inevitably means failing sometimes.” And, they go on to say that they “…also believe that it’s important to publicly celebrate these failures, which allows us to share the lessons more broadly and create a culture that encourages creativity and calculated risk taking.”
Talk about missing the point. The organizational objective isn’t failure. The organizational objective is learning. Celebrating failure isn’t the same as celebrating learning.
And for me it raises a question. How is it that good ideas like organizationally learning becomes something that ‘glorifies’ failure. Is it really so hard to learn from our organizational failures?
For two other perspectives, more individually than institutionally focused check out:
- Steven Parker’s post “Are you part of the cult of failure?”
- Bill Jensen’s post “I F@#ked Up: Big Time… Introspection is Hard!”
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Losing the spark.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this this week. I’ve been recruiting and interviewing and orienting interns and volunteers for a roof top garden project I’ve been working on for the past couple of years. It’s turning into a pretty significant urban farming project in the heart of Montreal’s most commercial area on 6,200 square feet of our church hall’s roof. We want to create a sustainable business by selling part of our production so we can give the rest [hopefully most] of it away.
And here’s the thing. Talking about the project just gets people excited. And I mean everybody. My barista. My relatives, friends, clients, neighbours. Old people. Young people and pretty much everyone in between. Gardeners and non-gardeners. It’s easy to care about and talk about. And guess what people are interested. They want to figure out if, when, and how they can help. And every hurdle that comes up [and believe me there are many], there’s someone there with a way to get over it, around it, under it. It’s just amazing the energy the project attracts.
When I’m working on client projects it is rare to feel the same way. The things we find ourselves trying to share with employees are hard, or somehow become hard, to talk about and even harder to have people care about. Somewhere we lose the spark.
Have you ever noticed that? Is there anything we can learn from grass roots projects? If so, what do you think it is?
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Time warped 2
I’m reading “Where Do Good Ideas Come From?” by Steven Johnson for my book club. I’m not that into it, but there’s one thing reading it has reminded me. Sometimes your best and most creative thinking happens when you’re not trying. For me my biggest insights happen when I’m walking up Mont Royal or when I’m asleep [and yes sometimes I even remember them].
So that means that one of the conditions we need to create for ourselves if we want to have good ideas is downtime. Time away from the pressure to write, think, make, perform.
For anyone working in, or near, institutional environments knows that this is virtually impossible. We’re now working at least 10 hours a day, 6 or 7 days/week. More work piling on with every passing day. At the same time as virtually every organization I know is looking for more insight into and innovative solutions for their business and organizational challenges, and every government I can think of is looking to recreate our economic model, we’ve got less and less time to just down tools and let our brains do what they do – noodle when we’re not thinking about anything.
There’s something wrong here and we don’t have the time to stop and think about it.
Random Posts:
Time warped
Michael and I were on our way to London, Ontario from Montreal. For those of you who’ve made that trip you know that once you’re on the 401 you just want it to be over. It’s like you’re in a long and endless slip stream of traffic going 120 km/hour. We stop in Kingston for lunch. And as always at our favourite spot the food doesn’t come fast enough. 10 minutes – “Don’t they know we’re on the road?” 15-minutes – “Will it never come?” 20-minutes. “Oh yeah now I remember they make the burgers from scratch.” It’s what we love about the place. Delicious.
And today, I went to Birk’s Jewelers to see about having a sterling spoon repaired – you can’t drip bleach on silver. Who knew? The poor woman behind the counter was apologizing before we even started. “It will take a really long time just to see if the silversmith can do anything.” I know a long time. I once took a gift my mother-in-law had given me – a small leather agenda cover – back to Hermés for repair. It took nearly a year and came back like new. “That’s OK,” I said, “How long?” “Three weeks.” she said. “But even then if they can do something it will take another 4 to 6 weeks.”
Four to six weeks to have a master craftsman repair something with value beyond silver. Why’s she apologizing. Why aren’t we celebrating the mastery.
These stories I think say a lot about our relationship to time. We’re running. Heck we’re sprinting – at home and at work. We’re piling more and more into our days. And we’re forget that mastery takes time and it’s worth the wait.
Random Posts:
Oh dear, what can the matter be?
“E-mails and Intranet Are Top Communication Methods Used to Engage Employees”. Oh dear.
In my last post I spoke about Gary Hamel’s call to reinvent management. In the webcast I refer to there, Hamel talks about a global study of 90,000 employees around the world that was conducted by Towers Perrin and that showed that less than 20% of employees are engaged. I think this IABC News headline, above, may tell us why. Or at least part of the why.
We talk about communications as being more than crafting and sending messages. And yet, this new survey just released by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation and Buck Consultants makes it clear, We still rely heavily on push technology and message sending.
And, in case we needed more evidence, the IABC article goes on to say that “32 percent of survey respondents indicate that their organizations rarely or never conduct employee listening activities”. Oh dear.
In the world Hamel describes. A world where “obedience, diligence and intellect aren’t enough to create a competitive advantage, any more, organizations need employees to bring initiative, creativity and compassion to their work.” And, that “isn’t going to happen if we command it.” It isn’t going to happen because of e-mails and intranet. It isn’t going to happen if we aren’t listening. Oh dear, what can the matter be?
What do we need to do to create inspiring work places? Places where people want to bring more of themselves.
Is it possible? Is there a role for communications in creating inspiring places to work? If so, what is it? How do you see it?
Something to read and think about
Bill Jensen, Work 2.0: Rewriting the contract, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, 2002
Random Posts:
Tension that’s good for you
This past week two of my favourite blogs have posted about tension – In over your head and Six pixels of separation. They both refer to the need to create tension if you want to create. And the second, refers to a conversation I had with Mitch Joel the other day. I thought it would be worth expanding on that discussion here. Even Internal Communicators are creators at heart [and often in reality] after all.
So what is this tension? This tension isn’t emotional tension. It isn’t the kind of tension that’s caused by stress, anxiety, or fear. It is the kind of tension described by my friend and teacher Robert Fritz as structural tension. And, what’s great about this kind of tension is that once you know about it you can use it, design it into your life, your projects, your business to increase the likelihood of your achieving what you want.
Hmmm. Sounds a bit like magic doesn’t it. Well, it’s not. And on some level it will seem so obvious you will be scratching your head. And yet to master its force takes discipline and focus. Here are the basics.
First, know what you want to build, create, bring into being and by when [ Time is a powerful force for good in creating]. You can’t fake this part. You either really want it or you don’t. In the case of the discussion with Mitch that could be something like:
A fun, visually interesting blog for people like me who love baking and where I can share my favourite recipes ideas on healthy eating and observations on life [inspired by my friend Helen's blog]. My friends like it and are sharing it with their friends. I’ve posted [insert real number] posts and have [insert real number] followers by September 15, 2010.
Second, know where you stand in relationship to that end state. To me this is always the part that’s a bit tricky. We like to fool ourselves by making things a bit too good or bad about where we are in relationship to what we want. And that, can really muck up structural tension.
I have a cupboard full of recipes. I’ve got lots to say about my passion for baking and life. I have a handful of friends that I know will love this. I don’t know anything about publishing on line. I’m good at taking pictures but I don’t have a camera.
Now here’s the interesting thing. The more you really want and are passionate about the thing you’re trying to create and the more discrepant the end state and the current state are the more power there is in the system. And the actions you need to take just pop out [trust me, it's true. And that can create emotional tension. You'll get over it if you really want what you want.].
I need to start commenting on others blogs so I can get a feel for what it’s like. I need to find out about wordpress. Get a camera. And, get technical advice. And,….
So that’s structural tension. And that’s a very good thing.
In the conversation with Mitch we were talking about web analytics and how it can get you off track. How is that?
Well it doesn’t have to, but if it does this is what happens.
I want to create a blog that attracts my friends and people who love baking the way I do, so I create the blog and have a 100 followers.
And then you start tracking the analytics and realize that 100 isn’t a very big number of followers. After all Mr Big Blogger has 175,000+ followers and can get speaking gigs for $15,000 a time and…book deals and….
I want to get my numbers up, so I start doing things to get the numbers up.
Your focus shifts to building the numbers and away from the original spirit and intent of your blog. You start manipulating yourself and your readers. And when they’re not they create a structural conflict. Over time these competing forces will drive you away from the thing you wanted in the first place and kill the power of structural tension.
Now, here’s the good news. Once you’re aware of structural conflict you can choose. You can decide if you still want what you wanted when you started – a fun little blog with a few loyal followers. And if it is knowing where you stand against your end state is a good thing. Web analytics can help.
And, if not, it’s time to go back to basics and consciously build some structural tension.
Are your Internal Communications driven by structural tension or structural conflict? How can you tell? Something to think about.
Random Posts:
From conversation to joint creation
This just arrived thanks to the Ideas Project.
John Hagel, author and business strategist, builds on the main idea presented in my last post by making a powerful argument for why social media need to be part of internal strategies. Social media are no longer just about conversation. They are tools for helping institutions set the conditions for collaboration and joint creation.
If you’re a professional communicator what if anything does this mean for you and what you do?
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Recent posts
- Do you know the 3 best headline writing tricks ever … anyone can do, guaranteed!
- You have a presentation to make
- Shocking news!
- Shining eyes
- Why oh why do presenters put so, so much text on their PowerPoint slides?
- Be aware, be very aware
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- Rest, renewal & the global situation
- Learning from the Bishop’s wife