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.
Innovation
Grey zones are costing your organization big time
There’s a lot of focus in organizations on moving fast to meet customer needs and shifting market conditions. We’re encouraging employees to be more involved in defining and delivering organizational success. People from all levels and all functions of the organization are getting together to ‘hack’ solutions to important business problems. Collaboration is our mantra. Innovation our goal.
When the formal structures and systems of the organization aren’t supporting what we’re trying to do we’re finding ways around them. And this is a good thing. But, in our rush to collaborate and democratize our organizations we’re losing clarity. While we’re busy crowd sourcing hacks: Who’s got the responsibility? Who’s got the authority? And, how do we know? Will we only find out once whoever it is pops out of the wood work to disagree with what we’ve been working on/towards?
This lesson came crashing home last summer when I discovered that, on a not-for-profit project I’d been working on for several years, I had all the responsibility and no authority. Since, I’m in the business of clarifying, helping make the grey zones black and white, this was a shocking revelation. But it was an informal volunteer thing, so… “These thing happen”.
Now I’m noticing grey zones places where I would never have expected. In a high growth, high success organization that completed a major restructuring and failed to make accountabilities clear for over a year. In a 500 year old institution where lack of clarity on roles and relationships and responsibility and authority is somehow seen as a good thing. And, in a global company where decentralization of decision taking was taken to such an extreme that their shareholders are now threatening to sue them due to lack of oversight.
The grey zones we create, intentionally or not, are costing organizations time, energy, and money. They are increasing politics. It’s more and more about who you know rather than what you know or how well you do it.
Grey zones are decreasing transparency to the point where it’s virtually impossible for anyone to figure out who’s doing what, why, when and how decisions are being taken.
And, they are decreasing trust in the offering, the leadership, the institutions and, if you’re on the inside, in each other.
At high speeds, when we’re all moving fast to meet customer needs and shifting market conditions, new ways of working are imperative but grey zones may be costing us big time. Are they worth the risk?
Random Posts:
Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
For all the talk in Canadian business about innovation and collaboration, I just read a startling and rather disappointing fact from a talk given by BDC late in 2011: Canadian “businesses invest $2,400 less per employee, per year, in computers, software and training than American companies do.”
A few years ago that amount spent on information and communication technology wouldn’t have bought you much. Today it could set an employee up with enough technology and applications to be able to connect the way they want, when they want, with colleagues virtually anywhere in the world. It could create the opportunity for innovation and collaboration that we believe is so vital.
The United States have been hit harder by the recession than we in Canada have and yet they invest $2,400 more in the stuff that will make it easier for their employees to create new and more efficient ways of doing things; new products and services that better meet the needs of their customers; and a competitive advantage. This doesn’t seem right.
When we as leaders are out talking about the importance of innovation and collaboration to the future of our organizations and our country are we making it a priority? The numbers say we aren’t.
If innovation and collaboration are key strategic priorities, then we need to invest in them. If they aren’t, then we probably shouldn’t keep saying that they are.
Random Posts:
Connecting for big business benefits
This morning I came across three articles. Three different perspectives. Same conclusion. The more connected we are as leaders and as organizations the better.
Perspective 1 - CEOs. A study of 65 chief executives from around the world discovered that CEOs spend an average of 6 hours out of their 55-hour work week alone. The remainder of the time is spent in business meetings [virtual and face-to-face] and lunches and on the phone. CEOs may not like it, but it is how their work gets done and confirms Henry Mintzberg‘s seminal study “The nature of managerial work” [1973].
Perspective 2: Leadership teams. In their new book Strategy & Business, Rob Cross and Jon Katzenbach describe how: “In most companies, the phrase top team is a misnomer…” Instead, they go on to say: [P]ower comes from … members’ informal and social networks, their determination to make the most of those connections, and their ability to work well in subgroups formed to address specific issues… [A]s much as 90 per cent of the information that most senior executives receive and take action on comes throughout their informal networks – not formal reports or databases.” The conclusion: Enriching networks enriches organizations.
Perspective 3: Organizations. ”Web 2.0 … promote[s] significantly more flexible processes at internally networked organizations: respondents say that information is shared more readily and less hierarchically, collaboration across organizational silos is more common, and tasks are more often tackled in a project-based fashion.” This study goes on to demonstrate that the more networked an organization the more business benefits. If you, or your leadership team, ever had any doubts it’s worth taking a look.
Connecting is what we as human beings do. We’re social creatures. Our organizational work gets done with, and through, other people.
Helping your employees connect. A little idea with huge potential business benefits.
It’s a potentially beautiful thing.
Random Posts:
“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?
Random Posts:
Making “magic in the marketplace”
Today, thanks to Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation, I came across this key note address by Bill Taylor, the founding editor of Fast Company Magazine and author of Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself.
Here’s what really caught my attention: ”You can’t build something special, compelling, distinctive in the marketplace unless you also build something special, compelling distinctive in the workplace… Strategy is your culture. Culture is your strategy. Success today is about so much more than just price, performance, features, technology, pure economic value. It’s about passion, emotion, identity, sharing your values… Real magic in the marketplace is when you make your organization more memorable to encounter.”
And that my friends can’t happen when the relationship with employees is the last thing on the C-Suite’s agenda! It can’t happen when leaders do not trust employees [though they expect employees to trust them], where leaders are not loyal to employees [though they expect loyalty from them] and where they are not proud of employees and the work they do [though they expect employees to be proud of the leadership and the organizations they work for]. Broken cultures on the inside will always show on the outside sooner or later!
Recommend you take the 20+ minutes [Bill comes in at about minute 4] to watch it. Some great stuff on bench marking too!
Random Posts:
Mobile crazy
As the year begins, it seems like everybody is talking about mobile and the growing demand for ‘mobile hubs’. Single devices that can do ‘everything’, ‘anywhere, ‘anytime’.
It’s not a new story. Our insatiable appetite for connecting to information and people and things is being fuelled by new technology and new apps that make it easy to get whatever we want, whenever we want and wherever we want.
You see it on the street. You see it in cafes. You see it in your own TV room. Yes, we’re mobile crazy. So what’s happening at work?
I think it’s interesting that I haven’t had a client ask about mobile technology since the early days of the cell phone – when it was decided that guys that drive trains or go up poles had hands that were too big to handle the technology. Today many employees are able to work remotely. And most employees – even those with big hands – have company cell phones and laptops. And some have smart phones.
But are we thinking about how we can make it easy for employees to get whatever they want, whenever they want and wherever they want to do their jobs. Are we planning for a workforce that could be fully mobile. So I’m curious about what kind of thinking is going on in your organization and what you think the implications are.
Would being fully mobile make it easier for your workforce or parts of your workforce do their jobs?
Are you and your colleagues thinking about supporting employees with a single integrated mobile device? Should you be?
How would it change your workplace?
Is your intranet mobile accessible? Should it be?
What kinds of hardware and apps would employees need/want that they don’t have today?
What implications will this have for the content you develop?
And when and how should internal communications be part of the discussion?
Or would “mobile work hubs” be crazy?
I’m hoping to hear from you.
Random Posts:
Places worth caring about
“The emersive ugliness of our everyday environments… is entropy made visible. We can’t overestimate the despair we are creating…”
James Howard Kunstler
Wow! ”Entropy made visible.” ”Despair we are creating.”
Nowhere is that more true than in our places of work. These are mostly soulless places. Nothing that would build hope or confidence. Nothing of the brand experience we talk about and expect our employees to be so proud of and to deliver to our customers daily. Not even a hint of the business you’re in unless the corporate identity on the wall behind the reception desk gives a clue.
And, reception areas where the receptionist is missing. They lost their job two rightsizings ago.
Long characterless hallways. Rows of cubicles [no personal items please]. ‘Art’ that isn’t or motivational posters or nothing. Overly sterile washrooms. Kitchens where everything that matters – cups and cutlery are locked up. [You have to pay for your coffee as a cost control measure - my God you’re working 60+ hours a week at wages that were designed when people in your position worked 38.5].
Common areas that aren’t. No one wants to hang out there.
Boardrooms filled with chairs and designed for PowerPoint presentations not for people or work we really do or the collaboration and innovation virtually every organization today is aspiring for.
By the way, this description is focused on white collar environments. But I have to say that I’ve been in smelters that were more human and more appropriate than most office spaces I’ve been in.
We say we want to engage employees. What is there about the place you work in that is engaging? We say that the employee experience of the brand is a key element of culture. How does the design bring your brand to life for employees? If it’s not, then isn’t it time to get this on the Corporate agenda? How?
__________
Thanks to Mitch Joel for reminding me about James Howard Kunstler’s inspiring and funny TED talk.
Random Posts:
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:
Just do it!
You’ve heard it before… Actions speak louder than words.
So, are we just making all of this institutional communications stuff just way too complicated – for ourselves and the people we work for and with?
Why don’t we just do it? Set up the conditions that allow our employees [including managers by the way] do the best possible job ….
Well because… organizations are changing their mission, vision, values and strategies every year or two or with every change in leadership depending which comes first? It’s like clockwork.
And the same time their employees are trying to keep up.
Realigning key business systems and processes – operations, technology, finance, HR.
Realigning the organizational structures and reporting relationships.
At the same time as they are being more innovative, collaborative, nimble, engaged, customer-focused, – all faster…
And the organizations we’re in aren’t designed for all this change.
We’re wrapping ourselves up in knots. Putting in more hours. Doing more stuff. Creating Rube Goldberg Machines of our organizations?
It just can’t be that complicated.
What do you think? Can we stop all the madness and just do it?
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Recent Posts
- Decisions based on compromise
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
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Recent posts
- Decisions based on compromise
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
- Staying in touch with reality
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