Category Archives: Leadership

Why Not Now?

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Why Not Now?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you are anxious, you’re worried about what might happen. You’re living in the future. If you are sad or angry, you’re reacting to what happened. You’re living in the past. Nothing can be accomplished when living in the past because the die is cast. And nothing can be accomplished when living in the future because it’s all in your head. The only time we have is now.

The only time to start is now. Even if your project is a short one, you’re in a day-for-day slip with your completion date for every day you don’t start. And this is doubly true for long projects. If you’re living in the past, you block yourself from starting because the last project was difficult, you didn’t have the resources or it didn’t come out as expected, and you want to protect yourself from a rerun. If you’re living in the past, you block yourself from starting because you don’t know how it will turn out, you don’t have all the answers, you don’t have sufficient resources, and you don’t know what you don’t know. Acknowledge the problems with the past and potential problems with the future, and start anyway.

Starting starts with starting.

The only time to say something is now. If you’re living in the past, you block yourself from saying something controversial or thought-provoking because you remember how it went the last time someone did that. If you’re living in the future, you prevent yourself from saying something radical because, well, you weren’t paying attention and missed your opportunity to change history. Acknowledge that there may be some blowback for your insightful comments, live in the now and say them anyway. And live in the now so you can pay attention and use your sharp wit to create the future.

If you don’t say something, nothing is ever said.

The only time to help is now. Living in the past, you block yourself from understanding the significance of the situation because you see it through old lenses. Living in the future, you block yourself from helping because you worry if the helping will help or worry the helping will get in the way of your future commitments. If someone needs help, help them now. They will understand that the outcome is uncertain, and they’re okay with that. In fact, they will be happy you recognized their troubling situation and made time to check in with them. When you live in the now, people appreciate it. The time to help is now.

When no one helps, no one is helped.

When you find yourself living in the past, close your eyes, recognize your anger or sadness, and focus on your breath for ten seconds. And if that doesn’t work, put your hand on your chest and do it again. And if that doesn’t work, tell yourself your sadness is temporary and do it again. This is a fail-safe way to bring yourself into the now. Then, sitting in the now, start that project, say what must be said, and help people.

And when you find yourself living in the future, close your eyes, recognize your anxiety, and focus on your breath for ten seconds. And if that doesn’t work, put your hand on your chest and do it again. And if that doesn’t work, tell yourself your anxiety is temporary and repeat. This will bring you into the now. Then, sitting in the now, start that project, say what must be said, and help people.

The only time to shape the future is now.

Image credit: Pixabay

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The Real Reasons Employees Stay Or Leave

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Hint: It’s about more than money

The Real Reasons Employees Stay Or Leave

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

What if every great employee you (or your company) hired never left? Of course, that’s unrealistic … or is it? Joey Coleman is one of the brightest authors and speakers on the planet. His first book, Never Lose a Customer Again, is one of the very best books I’ve read on how to keep your customers coming back. He’s now taken some of the same ideas that worked for customer retention and written a second book, just as brilliant, Never Lose an Employee Again.

Coleman studied and researched organizations worldwide, and he found that 50% of hourly employees quit before their 100-day anniversary. For non-hourly or salaried employees, it’s 20%. I interviewed Coleman on Amazing Business Radio to learn how we can keep good employees.

“How we onboard employees and make them feel part of our community can differentiate whether they will be long-time employees or leave almost as fast as they came,” Coleman said. “The first 100 days are the most important time in the entire relationship with an employee because this is where the foundation is laid.”

So, why do employees leave? Contrary to popular belief, the No. 1 reason an employee leaves to work elsewhere is not money. In the traditional exit interview, where an employee talks to their employer face-to-face, money is the easiest and safest excuse for an exit. The true reasons for leaving are more telling—and can help prevent an employee from going, even if offered more money somewhere else. Coleman cites the Work Institute employee retention study, sharing the top five reasons employees leave:

  1. No clear career path — This is the top reason employees leave. Nearly one-quarter (24%) don’t see future opportunities in the organization. Most employees want to advance their careers and learn new skills. Laying out a potential path for an employee from the very beginning of their employment with you can have long-term benefits.
  2. Stress or lack of resources — Not providing employees with the tools they need or giving them too heavy of a workload can impact their emotional health, which could lead them to find work at another company.
  3. Health and family matters — As much as an employee may love working with your organization, personal health, a sick child or an aging parent can interfere with their ability to work. Regarding the latter, Coleman says, “Just as some employers provide daycare for young children, some employers in the future will also provide an eldercare program.”
  4. Work/life balance — The job has to fit the employee’s lifestyle. Something as seemingly insignificant as a long commute can negatively impact the employee’s personal life so much that they leave.
  5. Money — Almost one in 10 (9%) leave because of money. That means nine out of 10 leave for other reasons, often within our control.

After reading the reasons listed above, here is Coleman’s top advice:

  • Affirm the employee made the right decision to come to work at your organization — The concept of affirm is one of the eight phases of the first 100 days Coleman covers in his book. There is a scientifically proven emotional reaction in which a new employee begins to doubt their decision to accept your job offer. It is called “new hire’s remorse,” which happens between when they accept the job offer and their first day. Reaffirm your new employee’s decision to accept your job offer. Establish a personal and emotional connection even before their first day.
  • On-boarding must be practiced at a higher level — Don’t just onboard the first day or two (or even a week or two). Coleman says, “If you’re not painting a clear path for your people but expecting them to manage and figure out their careers on their own, then you deserve to lose them.” The amount of time you spend with employees over the first 100 days directly correlates to how long they will stay.
  • The employee’s personal life is important — Notice that three of the five reasons people leave the organization are personal. Coleman says, “You need to know what’s going on between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. as much as you are interested in what’s happening between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. What are your people doing and dealing with when they are not at work?”

I’ve often said that you won’t have a business without customers. Coleman makes the case that the same applies to employees. Much of what gets customers to come back is a great customer experience. You can’t deliver a great CX without a great employee experience on the inside of your organization. Coleman says, “People think that customer experience and employee experience are two different silos. The better way to look at this is that they are two sides of the same coin. We must work on both!”

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Image Credits: Shep Hyken

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Women Start-up Entrepreneurs Battle Against Gender Stereotypes and Ageism

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Women Start-up Entrepreneurs Battle Against Gender Stereotypes and Ageism

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

It’s been thirty-five years since I exited my life as a top retail corporate executive, and become a serial female entrepreneur. It’s been an awesome roller-coaster ride, which includes ten years as one of many adventurous, brave, global women start-up entrepreneurs. Its also been a very challenging, rewarding, and fulfilling learning journey, where I have been both privileged and humbled to have impacted thousands of men and women positively, and globally through my consulting, learning, mentoring, and coaching practice.

Yet, I can’t help wondering how my journey could have been significantly less challenging, and possibly even more profoundly impactful, had gender stereotypes and later, ageism not been so pervasive. Where the “Gender Stereotypes and Their Impact on Women Entrepreneurs” by the Cherie Blair Foundation qualify this further by providing evidence of gender stereotyping impacting women’s journeys to and through entrepreneurship. Which then affects their “aspirations, sources of support, opportunities, access to resources, perceptions, and the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem”.

What is the impact of gender stereotypes on women start-up entrepreneurs?

Some of the key findings revealed by this report include:

  • 70% of women entrepreneurs surveyed said that gender stereotypes have negatively affected their work as an entrepreneur.
  • More than six in ten of those surveyed (61%) believe that gender stereotypes impact their business growth and almost half (49%) say they affect profitability.
  • Stereotypes start early, shape women’s journeys to entrepreneurship, and can have a lasting impact on aspirations, confidence, and behavior.
  • Over half of the women entrepreneurs surveyed (56%) said that social approval or disapproval of different careers played a role in their choice of career.
  • The majority of women entrepreneurs surveyed (70%) also reported knowing a woman entrepreneur when they were children, suggesting the powerful influence of role models on children and young women.

What is the impact of gender stereotyping on women start-up entrepreneurs raising venture capital?

When I attended a recent webinar “Coaching for Success – How Can Investors Support Start-up Founders” held by EMCC Asia Pacific I checked out the percentage of women start-up entrepreneurs who had actually received venture capitalist’s funds. I was shocked, yet not surprised to see TechCrunch report that in the US “women-founded start-ups raised 1.9% of all VC funds in 2022, a drop from 2021.”

Here in Australia, as reported by the Women’s Agenda just 3%  of total VC capital went to all-women-founded start-ups in 2022, while just 10 percent went to those with at least one woman in their co-founding teams. This report also reveals that “83 percent of women believe their gender has impacted their ability to raise external capital, compared with 14 percent of men”.

What is the impact of gender stereotyping on women start-up entrepreneurs’ ability to impact globally?

The new Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2021/2022 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report showed that “start-up rates for women dropped by 15% from 2019 to 2020, and held constant in 2021. Women also experienced sharper declines than men in their intentions to start a business within three years and overall start-up rates in 2020, but not in upper-middle income countries”. Where “Women represent two out of every five early-stage entrepreneurs”.

This means that almost half of the world’s potential entrepreneurs have been handicapped, and are still being restrained and held back from adding value to the quality of people’s lives and making the difference they want to, and can make in the world.

What are some of the key challenges women start-up entrepreneurs face?

Referring to my own personal experience with founding ImagineNation™ as an Israeli Australian start-up 10 years ago, I am able to share a range of key frustrations and challenges which confronted me. This was catalyzed by a recent article featured in Business News Daily which shares the range of core challenges and how other women start-up entrepreneurs might possibly choose to deal with, resolve and overcome them.

Hopefully, other women start-up entrepreneurs might find some inspiration, motivation, and encouragement to be steadfast in pursuing their dreams courageously, with a bit of healthy self-compassion to creatively execute their vision for a better world, from my story.

  1. Defying social expectations

As a relatively new arrival to the Israeli start-up scene, I was repeatedly told that as an “outsider” I could not know “how we do things around here” despite my 25 years of culture and change management consulting experience. I attended weekly start-up events in Tel Aviv, and often stood, as a lone woman, alongside diverse groups of young men, usually drinking beer and dressed in black. I also found that being older than the average start-up entrepreneur, despite my 25 years of experience in mentoring women in business, I also faced the dreaded “ageism bias” and as a result, I was largely ignored at many of these crucial networking events. Because in Israel “if you don’t network, you don’t work!”

I chose to detach from this, by refusing to conform to what appeared to be men’s ideas of what a start-up entrepreneur should look, be and act like. Instead, I chose to learn as much as I could from my range of experiences, enabling me to adapt, innovate and grow, as do many other women start-up entrepreneurs when faced with these challenges, to accelerate my innovation solution.

  1. Accessing funding

With no family or relatives locally, or the ability to get a financial guarantor, I had no access to source funds externally, despite meeting a number of local venture capitalists. Who, I noticed, tended to focus mostly on investing in a “quick win” or in growth-stage start-ups. When attending a government-sponsored meeting in Sydney, to qualify for an Australian Government Entrepreneurship Grant, I was confronted by a panel of three aggressive and oppositional male VC consultants who mercilessly tore my start-up invention and myself apart. Telling me it was not worth investing in and would be replicated by others within six months. To date, it still hasn’t been copied.

I eventually recovered my composure, confidence, and courage and made the decision to bootstrap, self-fund, and pay my own way forwards, which took longer, and yet was the best decision.

  1. Struggling to be taken seriously

Even when I applied my then 25 years of consulting, learning, and development knowledge, skills, and corporate experience to research, model, and replicate the “secret sauce” behind the Israeli start-up system, it was hard for me to be taken seriously. Finding that some people, in both Israel and Australia, found defensive ways to negate and minimize my 10-year immersion in an innovation culture when I was designing, iterating, pivoting, and marketing my unique innovation learning and coaching curriculum.

I focused on continuing to develop my self-efficacy, on finding my tribe, and on researching, and building a global reputation as a thought leader on the people side of innovation, by experimenting with blogging and presenting webinars.

  1. Owning your accomplishments

In the first 9 years, I presented more than 6 free innovation webinars, and 10 blog posts a year, generously sharing my IP and knowledge, without really recognizing and acknowledging the value of my own creative ideas and inventions. Whilst this helped me find my collaborators, build an ecosystem, and added to my reputation-building efforts, I gave away far too much without getting sound financial commitments from potential clients.

I now truly value and esteem my knowledge and IP at a deeper, and still share free webinars and 10 blog posts a year.  I now focus on only presenting 2 learning and coaching programs a year where I charge participants more than double, compared to what I initially charged.

  1. Building a support network

Interestingly, this has been very challenging, due to having lived in a patriarchal culture in Israel and a “boys club” and the “old boys’ network” here in Australia which permeates every level of our organizational culture and civil society. In my experience, I have also sadly discovered that the majority of women in the consulting, learning, and development sectors prefer to compete, rather than collaborate.

I find that I am still constantly challenged by people’s ageism bias, and manage this by mostly working globally, and online, mentoring and coaching both men and women who are seeking to fulfill their potential, adapt, innovate, and grow to effect positive change in their worlds.

I also focused on developing the “friendlies” included in my global Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams alumni and network, my Linked In tribe, and my International Coaching Federation (ICF) colleagues to draw upon, and support when needed.

  1. Balancing business and family life

Having recovered from a significant burnout experience more than 25 years ago, I have been able to achieve and sustain a reasonable work-life balance. By managing, developing, and leading my business effectively, being both self-disciplined, and methodical, and being curious and creative, even when my old habitual task holism threatens to take over.

It takes focused attention and deep intention, being passionately purposeful to ensure that I stay on track with doing the “one thing” I am creating, inventing, and innovating whilst on the roller-coaster ride.

  1. Coping with fear of failure

Self-doubt, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, risk adversity, and rejection are the key neurological perils confronting many women (and men) start-up entrepreneurs. This creates opportunities for women start-up entrepreneurs to learn how to bravely and boldly be, think and act differently in articulating their passionate purpose and achieving their vision in an uncertain and constantly changing world.

I experienced a number of significant failures, which deeply hurt me viscerally, emotionally, and cognitively, as well as resulted in serious financial losses.

I focussed on using these as “teachable moments” to learn how to take smart risks, manage my self-talk and not self-depreciate my inherent self-worth. To seek feedback and help when I froze as a result of my mistakes, losses, and failure, which ultimately enabled me to develop the deep courage, healthy self-compassion, and GRIT to stay in the start-up entrepreneurship game.

This enables me to role model, mentor, teach and coach other women start-up entrepreneurs, develop embodied presence, and be congruent in walking my talk.

How can you take action to eliminate gender (and age) stereotypes as a women start-up entrepreneur?

If we want to ensure that almost half of the world’s potential women start-up entrepreneurs are empowered, and enabled to add value to the quality of people’s lives and make the difference they want to, and can make in the world, make sure to take personal responsibility in:

  • Supporting women in their efforts to make a difference and contribute to the common good, despite age or gender differences, gives women start-up entrepreneurs greater chances of long-term growth and impactful success.
  • Eliminating from your locus of control and influence, any gender stereotyping and ageism biases.

We can then maximize the benefits gender and age differences and diversity bring, and collectively make the world a fairer, more inclusive, equitable, and balanced place in all domains that contribute to the common good, and a planet that balances and includes all people equally, with profits.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, is a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, starts October 3, 2023. It can be customised as a bespoke corporate learning program.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique innovation context. Find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Why You Must Define Innovation

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(Hint: It’s All About Efficiency)

Why You Must Define Innovation

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

As the world around you becomes more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), you know that you need to build skills to navigate it and inspire others to follow your path.

But what if you are the source of ambiguity? 

Because you are. Every time you speak.

The words we use always have clear meaning and intent to us but may not (and often don’t) have the same meaning and intent to others. 

That’s why one of the first and most essential things a company can do when starting its innovation journey is to decide what “innovation” means. It may seem like an academic exercise, but it becomes very practical when you discover that one person thinks it means something new to the world, another thinks it’s a new product, and a third thinks it means anything commercialized.

Ambiguity = Efficiency?

“Innovation” isn’t the only word that is distractingly ambiguous. Language, in general, evolved to be ambiguous because ambiguity makes it more efficient. In 2012, cognitive scientists at MIT found the ambiguity–efficiency link, noting “words with fewer syllables and easier pronunciation can be ‘reused,’ avoiding the need for a vast and increasingly complex vocabulary.” 

You read that right. In language, ambiguity leads to efficiency.

Every time you speak, you’re ambiguous. You’re also efficient.

The RIGHT level of Ambiguity = Efficiency!

In 2014, researchers at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona found that language’s ambiguity is critical to communicating complex ideas,

“the researchers argue that the level of ambiguity we have in language is at just the right level to make it easy to speak and be understood. If every single object and concept had its own unique word, then language is completely unambiguous – but the vocabulary is huge. The listener doesn’t have to do any guessing about what the speaker is saying, but the speaker has to say a lot. For example, “Come here” might have to be something like “I want you to come to where I am standing.” At the other extreme, if the same word is used for everything, that makes it easy for the speaker, but the listener can’t tell if she is being told about the weather or a rampaging bear.”

.

Either way, communication is hard. But Sole and Seoane argue that with just the right amount of ambiguity, the two can find a good trade-off.”

A certain level of ambiguity is efficient. Too much or too little is inefficient.

How to find the RIGHT level of Ambiguity for “Innovation”

In everyday life, it’s ok for everyone to have a slightly different definition of innovation because we all generally agree it means “something new.”  Sure, there will be differences of opinion on some things (is a new car an “innovation” if it just improved on the previous model?). Still, overall, we can exist in this world and interact with each other despite, or maybe because of, the ambiguity.

Work is a different story. If you are responsible for, working on, or even associated with innovation, you better be very clear on what “innovation” means because its definition determines expectations and success for what you do. If it means one thing to you and a different thing to your boss, and a third thing to her boss, you’re in for a world of disappointment and pain.

Let’s avoid that.  Instead:

  1. Define the word
  2. Get everyone to agree on the definition
  3. Use the word and immediately follow it with, “And by that, I mean (definition)”

Gently correct people when they use the word to mean something other than the agreed-upon definition. Once everyone uses the word correctly, you can stop defining it every time because its meaning has taken root.

So, the next time someone rolls their eyes and comments on the “theoretical” or “academic” (i.e., not at all practical, useful, or actionable) exercise of defining innovation, smile and explain that this is an exercise in efficiency.

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3 Flavors of Product-Service Shift

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Which One is Yours?

3 Flavors of Product-Service Shift

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

The most profound change in enterprise computing in this century to date has been the shift in value delivery modality from product to service and the corresponding rise is XaaS or Everything-as-a-Service. The current bull market leaders in the tech sector take this for granted, and the prior generation of incumbents are still scrambling to get themselves onto the new model. For consumers this is an all-upside proposition; for enterprises, it is a balancing act of open fluidity versus secure compliance. But everyone seems to know their place in the new order—or do they?

As the product-service shift unfolds, it can manifest itself at three very different levels of value delivery, each of which has its own priorities. When you are looking to help your organization navigate the transition, it would be good to get clear as to which path you are on:

1. Infrastructure Model Transformation

This is the easiest to absorb, the impact for the most part contained on the vendor side within Finance and Legal and on the customer side within the IT organization itself. Basically, all you are doing is changing the contract from a license to a service level agreement, and staging a series of leasing payments out of op ex instead a one-time purchase out of cap ex. For clarity sake, think of this as a move to subscription, not yet to For most people in the organization, it is a non-event.

2. Operating Model Transformation

This move has the most impact on incumbent vendors and their installed base. As Todd Hewlin and J B Wood described in Consumption Economics, the shift is based on a change from the customer to the vendor as the one who must absorb goal attainment risk. In a product model, once the customer has bought and paid for it, the customer owns virtually all the risk. That can readily lead to a lot of drive-by selling, the sort of thing that built out empires of shelfware in the late 1990s. In a service model, by contrast, the vendor can never stop owning the success of the offering, not if they want to protect against their installed base churning out from underneath them. This is the true product-service shift, and even now it is sufficiently novel that both customers and vendors are still sorting out the implications for what staffing and expertise is needed on both sides of this relationship.

3. Business Model Transformation

This is the most impactful for venture-backed start-ups and the incumbent franchises they are looking to disrupt. Typically the former are re-architecting an established but aging value chain by substituting digital services for physical-world interactions. The biggest disruptions we have seen thus far are in retail, print media, financial services, transportation, hospitality, and communications, with lots more to come. They all represent daggers pointed at the heart of established enterprises because even when the latter can find ways to re-engineer their own offers to match the new paradigm, it is still painfully hard to bring the rest of their ecosystems up to speed to deliver the whole product. And to a lesser extent, the same goes for their customer bases. That is why disruption usually starts with targeting customers who have been disenfranchised by the old solution. It is only over time that the Innovator’s Dilemma bill comes to for the established vendors, but when it does, it hits with a wallop.

For most companies, the path you want to double-click on is the Operating Model Transformation, and in the next post, I want to dig in a lot deeper there.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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The Real Problem with Problems

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The Real Problem with Problems

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you don’t know what the problem is, that’s your first problem.

A problem can’t be a problem unless there’s a solution. If there’s no possible solution, don’t try to solve it, because it’s not a problem.

If there’s no problem, you have a big problem.

If you’re trying to solve a problem, but the solution is outside your sphere of influence, you’re taking on someone else’s problem.

If someone tries to give you a gift but you don’t accept it, it’s still theirs. It’s like that with problems.

If you want someone to do the right thing, create a problem for them that, when solved, the right thing gets done.

Problems are good motivators and bad caretakers.

A problem is between two things, e.g., a hammer and your thumb. Your job is to figure out the right two things.

When someone tries to give you their problem, keep your hands in your pockets.

A problem can be solved before it happens, while it happens, or after it happened. Each time domain has different solutions, different costs, and different consequences. Your job is to choose the most appropriate time domain.

If you have three problems, solve one at a time until you’re done.

Solving someone else’s problem is a worst practice.

If you solve the wrong problem, you consume all the resources needed to solve the right problem without any of the benefits of solving it.

Ready, fire, aim is no way to solve problems.

When it comes to problems, defining IS solving.

If you learn one element of problem-solving, learn to see when someone is trying to give you their problem.

Image credit: Pixabay

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How to Make Navigating Ambiguity a Super Power

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How to Make Navigating Ambiguity a Super Power

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You are a leader. The boss. The person in charge.

That means you know the answer to every question, make the right decision when faced with every choice, and act confidently when others are uncertain. Right?

(Insert uproarious laughter here).

Of course not. But you act like you do because you’re the leader, the boss, the person in charge.

You are not alone. We’re all doing it.

We act like we have the answers because we’ve been told that’s what leaders do. We act like we made the right decision because that’s what leaders do in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world where we must work quickly and flexibly while doing more with less.

But what if we didn’t? 

What if we stopped pretending to have the answer or know the right choice? What if we acknowledged the ambiguity of a situation, explored its options and interpretations for just a short while, and then decided?

We’d make more informed choices. We’d be more creative and innovative. We’d inspire others.

So why do we keep pretending?

Ambiguity: Yea! Meh. Have you lost your mind?!?

Stanford’s d.School calls the ability to navigate ambiguity “the super ability” because it’s necessary for problem-finding and problem-solving. Ambiguity “involves recognizing and stewing in the discomfort of not knowing, leveraging and embracing parallel possibilities, and resolving or emerging from ambiguity as needed.”

Navigating ambiguity is essential in a VUCA world, but not all want to. They found that people tend to do one of three things when faced with ambiguity:

  • Endure ambiguity as “a moment of time that comes before a solution and is antagonistic to the objective – it must be conquered to reach the goal.”
  • Engage ambiguity as “an off-road adventure; an alternate path to a goal. It might be rewarding and helpful or dangerous and detrimental. Its value is a chosen gamble. Exhilaration and exhaustion are equally expected.”
  • Embrace ambiguity as “oceanic and ever-present. Exploration is a challenge and an opportunity. The longer you spend in it, the more likely you are to discover something new. Every direction is a possibility. Navigation isn’t simple. It requires practice and patience.

Students tend to enter the program with a resignation that ambiguity must be endured. They leave embracing it because they learn how to navigate it.

You can too.

In fact, as a leader in a VUCA world, you and your team need to.

How to Embrace (or at least Engage) Ambiguity

When you want to learn something new, the library is one of the best places to start. In this case, the Library of Ambiguity  – an incredible collection of the resources, tools, and activities that professors at Stanford’s d.School use to help their students build this super ability.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of resources, so here are three that I recommend:

Design Project Scoping Guide

  • What it is: A guide for selecting, framing, and communicating the intentions of a design project
  • When to use it: When you are defining an innovation project and need to align on scope, goals, and priorities
  • Why I like it: The guide offers excellent examples of helpful and unhelpful scoping documents.

Learning Zone Reflection Tool

  • What it is: A tool to help individuals better understand the tolerance of ambiguity, especially their comfort, learning, and panic zones
  • When to use it: Stanford used this as a reflection tool at the end of an introductory course, BUT I would use it at the start of the project as a leadership alignment and team-building tool:
    • Leadership alignment – Ask individual decision-makers to identify their comfort, learning, and panic zones for each element of the Project Scoping Guide (problem to be solved, target customer, context, goals, and priorities), then synthesize the results. As a group, highlight areas of agreement and resolve areas of difference.
    • Team-building – At the start of the project, ask individual team members to complete the worksheet as it applies to both the project scope and the process. Individuals share their worksheets and, as a group, identify areas of shared comfort and develop ways to help each other through areas of learning or panic.
  • Why I like it: Very similar to the Project Playground concept I use with project teams to define the scope and set constraints, it can be used individually to build empathy and support amongst team members.

Team Dashboards

  • What it is: A tool to build trust and confidence amongst a team working through an ambiguous effort
  • When to use it: At regular pre-defined intervals during a project (e.g., every team check-in, at the end of each Sprint, once a month)
  • What I like about it:
    • Individuals complete it BEFORE the meeting, so the session focuses on discussing the dashboard, not completing it
    • The dashboard focuses on the usual business things (progress against responsibilities, the biggest challenge, next steps) and the “softer” elements that tend to have the most significant impact on team experience and productivity (mood, biggest accomplishment, team balance between talking and doing)

Learn It. Do It.

The world isn’t going to get simpler, clearer, or slower. It’s on you as a leader to learn how to deal with it. When to slow it down and explore and when to speed it up and act. No one is born knowing. We all learn along the way. The Library will help. No ambiguity about that!

Image credit: Pexels

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Shared Values Key to Achieving the Most Radical Visions

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Shared Values Key to Achieving the Most Radical Visions

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

With the political season heating up, an increasingly frequent topic of discussion is how radical candidates should be. Some say that the optimal strategy is to be mainstream and court the middle. Others argue that it is better to more extreme and rile up the passions of your most active supporters.

Yet as I explain in Cascades that’s a false choice. The truth is that once seemingly radical positions, such as voting rights for women, civil rights for disenfranchised racial groups and same-sex marriage are now considered mainstream. To win those battles, however, activists needed to appeal to shared values.

What’s key isn’t any particular policy, but whether you can appeal to common values and mobilize supporters to influence institutions that will determine whether you can bring change about. You don’t do that through enforcing ideological purity or demonizing your opposition, but by putting forward an affirmative vision for a better future.

Change Starts With Passionate Grievance

As a young man, Nelson Mandela was angry. “I was sympathetic to the ultra-revolutionary stream of African nationalism,” he would later write. “I was angry at the white man, not at racism. While I was not prepared to hurl the white man into the sea, I would have been perfectly happy if he climbed aboard his steamships and left the continent of his own volition.”

After the National Party won elections in 1948 on a white supremacist platform, things got worse for native blacks , Indians and coloureds (mixed race). Mixed marriages were outlawed and it was mandated that races would live in segregated areas. This policy of Apartheid would only become more extreme over the next half century.

Mandela and his comrades stepped up their efforts as well. Rather than just merely protesting, the African National Congress (ANC) adopted a program of direct action, including boycotts, stay-at-homes, strikes and other tactics designed to undermine the Apartheid regime. Whatever hopes for working within the system that had remained were now gone for good.

Yet while Mandela’s actions intensified, his views tempered somewhat. Originally skeptical of building links with other racial groups, he began to see the value of collaboration. That’s what set the stage dealing the first blow to Apartheid, The Freedom Charter.

Searching Out Common Values

In June 1955, the Congress of The People, a gathering that included blacks, Coloureds, Indians and liberal whites convened to draft and adopt the Freedom Charter, much like the Continental Congress gathered to produce the Declaration of Independence in America. The idea was to come up with a common and inclusive vision.

However, the Freedom Charter was anything but moderate. It was a “revolutionary document precisely because the changes it envisioned could not be achieved without radically altering the economic and political structure of South Africa… In South Africa, to merely achieve fairness, one had to destroy apartheid itself, for it was the very embodiment of injustice.”

Yet despite its radical aims, the Freedom Charter spoke to common values, such as equal rights and equal protection under the law—not just among the signatories, but for anyone living in a free society. It didn’t seem so at the time—and the struggle would go on for decades—but the Freedom Charter ended up being the first major blow to Apartheid.

In later years, when Mandela was accused of being a communist, an anarchist and worse, he would point out that nobody had to guess what he believed, because it had been written down in the Freedom Charter in 1955. Of course, it would have been conceived differently if it had been an ANC-only document-—and some within the ANC bitterly protested—but it was the common ground that document created that brought about the end of Apartheid.

Influencing Institutions

All too often, those who seek to bring about change, whether that change be in an organization, an industry, a community or throughout society as a whole, seek only to mobilize support among interest groups. That’s necessary, but far from sufficient. The truth is that only institutions can bring about real change.

In South Africa, Mandela and his comrades suffered under an all-powerful regime. Yet what they understood was that the government relied on many institutions outside the country for its survival. That was a significant vulnerability that could be exploited by mobilizing interest groups to influence key institutions.

One key campaign was taken against Barclays Bank in British university towns. For example, in 1984, Anti-Apartheid activists spray-painted “WHITES ONLY” and “BLACKS” above pairs of Barclays ATMs in British university town to draw attention to the bank’s investments in South Africa.

This of course, had little to no effect on public opinion in South Africa, but it meant a lot to the English university students that the bank wanted to attract. Barclays share of student accounts quickly plummeted from 27% to 15% and two years later Barclays pulled out all of its investments from the country.

It was a major blow that helped lead to other corporate divestments, sanctions from western governments and, eventually, the downfall of the regime. Apartheid had simply become economically untenable.

Surviving Victory

Mandela’s ascension to the Presidency of South Africa in 1994 was a historic triumph, but if it had stopped there the victory would have been limited. As we have seen more recently in places ranging from Ukraine to Egypt, even great, hard-fought victories can quickly be reversed. Every revolution inspires a counter-revolution.

To achieve lasting change, you need to plan to survive victory and you do that by reaffirming your commitment to common values. In the case of South Africa, that meant adhering to the principles of the Freedom Charter, which called for equal rights for all citizens, even for the white oppressors. That’s why today Mandela is remembered as a hero and not some tin-pot dictator.

In researching Cascades, I found that these principles held true not only in political and social contexts, but even in the corporate world. Radical change was achieved in firms ranging from IBM, Alcoa and Experian to fields like healthcare and education. In many cases, the degree of change surpassed anything anyone thought possible.

The truth is that success doesn’t depend on how radical or how moderate the vision, but how well you can appeal to shared values. Or, as Mandela himself put it, “to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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95% of Work is Noise

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95% of Work is Noise

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

There’s a lot of noise at work. I’m not talking about the audible noise you hear in your office or the chatter of your coworkers. I’m talking about the noise purposefully created to slather a layer of importance to things that aren’t all that important.

Corporate priorities are created at the company level to move the company in a new direction. There are regular presentations made by the leadership team to educate everyone on the new direction and help everyone think the initiative is important. This takes a lot of time and energy. Then, there are regular meetings held across the company to hear the sermon of the corporate priorities. How much does it cost for everyone in the company to sit through a one-hour sermon on corporate priorities? How much does it cost to do this quarterly or monthly? Because the cost is high and the value is low, corporate priorities have a high noise content.

Monthly reports on the status of the corporate priorities take a lot of work to pull together. These reports tell us how things are going at a high level but are not actionable. Some initiatives are green, some are yellow, and some are red. So what? After reading a monthly report of a corporate initiative, have you ever changed your work in any way? I didn’t think so, because the report is noise.

If your work brings about no changes, the work is noise.

If you complete a talent assessment for your team and no one’s work changes or no one changes teams, the talent assessment is noise. If you are asked to create a summary of your work experience to support a talent assessment and nothing changes after the assessment, the talent assessment program is noise. If you are asked to put together a succession plan and nothing changes, the succession planning process is noise. If you are asked to put together an improvement plan for your team’s culture and no one reads the plan or holds you accountable, the culture improvement program is noise.

If you write a monthly report and no asks questions about it, the monthly reporting process is noise. If you write a charter for a project and no one asks questions about it, the project definition process is noise. If someone sets up a meeting without a defined agenda, that meeting is noise. If no one writes meeting minutes, the meeting is noise. If there will be no decision made at the meeting, don’t go because that meeting is noise.

Work is 95% noise.

If someone asks for help, help them because that is not noise. When you see a problem, do something about it because that’s not noise. When you see something that’s missing, fill the hole because that’s not noise. When something interests you, investigate it because that’s not noise. When your curiosity gets the best of you, that’s not noise. When something is important to you, that’s not noise. When something should be important to someone else, tell them because that’s not noise.

When the work is noise, don’t do it. But if you must do it, do it with minimal effort and do it poorly. Don’t start the work until two weeks after the deadline. With luck, next time they’ll ask someone else to do it. If you think the work is noise, it probably is. Don’t do the work until you’re asked three times. Then, do it poorly.

If the customer won’t benefit, the work is noise. If the work is new and the customer might benefit, the work is not noise. If you are unsure if the work is noise, ask how might customer benefit. If you are pursuing something that will grow the top line, it’s not noise. If you’re unsure if the work is noise, ask how the work might grow the top line.

If it’s noise, say no. That will free up your time to say yes to things that are real.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Four Characteristics of High Performing Teams

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Four Characteristics of High Performing Teams

GUEST POST from David Burkus

What makes some teams more successful than others?

What leads teams to consistently deliver great performance while other teams fail to live up to expectations?

Why do some groups of talented and seemingly compatible people fall short against lesser teams with less suitable members?

Years ago, a team of researchers and organizational development professionals at Google sought to answer those questions in a research study they labelled “Project Aristotle.” And in collecting data, Google and the team looked at a variety of different factors around teams.

They looked at the levels of introversion and extroversion on the team.

They looked at the academic backgrounds and of course the work history.

They looked at workload size and how much work they were asking them to do.

They looked at whether new teams, or senior teams, or sort of mix of seniority performed better. They looked at just about every aspect of what makes up a team to try to figure out what could explain how the best teams worked.

But it turned out the answers weren’t any of that. It turned out it wasn’t about how a team was composed and who was on it. It was about how they behaved. It was about the norms, behavior, and culture when the team was working together that really made the difference as to whether or not the team succeeded or failed. And that study kicked off a wave of research on what behaviors and norms high performing teams exhibited.

And in this article, we’ll summarize that research by presenting the top four characteristics of high-performing teams.

1. Defined Roles And Responsibilities

The first characteristic of high performing teams is that they have defined roles and responsibilities. Everyone on the team knows what is expected of them, and everyone knows what to expect from everyone else. This level of clarity provides the team with a couple advantages. If everyone knows what’s expected of them, then they’re more likely to turn those expectations into reality. But the real advantage develops when this role clarity is done on a constant basis. When teams are checking-in regularly and updating each other on their progress—and making appropriate changes as needed—it keeps projects from falling apart. One of the biggest project derailers is when one individual on the team needs to make a pivot in their work but fails to update the team. In those situations, when the team finally comes together to merge their individual responsibilities into the team-wide deliverable the pieces don’t fit together. Defining roles and responsibilities, and continuing to update them, prevents this error and keeps projects on track more often.

2. Know Strengths And Weaknesses

The second characteristic of high performing teams is that they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. If clear roles and responsibilities is the “hard stuff” of keeping a team at optimal performance, then knowing strengths and weaknesses is the “soft stuff” that’s equally important. Because in order to properly assign roles and responsibilities, teams have to know who would perform best in each role. High performing teams are typically composed of members with diverse backgrounds, trainings, and strengths and weaknesses, and they work in such a way that some members’ strengths offset other members’ weaknesses. In addition, this level of shared understanding about each other makes it easier for team members to provide feedback and step in and help. They’re more aware of when the demands of a task might veer outside of a specific teammate’s expertise, and so they know when to step in and assist. In addition, if one teammate decides they need help, then they know who else on the team is their best source of aid.

3. Trust And Respect

The third characteristic of high performing teams is that they trust and respect each other. In other words, there is a high degree of psychological safety on the team. This means that teammates feel safe to express themselves and to take risks. They feel safe to speak up when they disagree and safe to provide feedback. They even feel safe to fail because they trust the team will still respect them and draw lessons from that failure. And in the end that constant learning is what makes them high performing. Real candor on a team only happens when the teammates trust their voice will be considered and respect the voices of others on the team. That level of candor means a team is free to explore more possibilities when solving problems and makes it more likely they’ll find innovate new ways of accomplishing their objectives. In addition, the trust and respect of psychological safety means teammates are more engaged in their work and more committed to the team, which makes it less likely their performance will slow down any time soon.

4. Know The Mission

The final characteristic of high performing teams is that they know how their work fits the mission. High performing teams know how the work they are assigned fits into the bigger picture of what the organization is trying to accomplish and the impact that it will make when achieved. Sometimes, this level of task significance is about the outside stakeholders in the organization and how they’re served by the work the company does. Other times, it’s about the internal colleagues and other teams who are served by the teams’ work. But every time, it’s less about some grandiose mission statement and more about being able to see a clear and causal connection between the day-to-day work and a specific person or group who is served by that work. Without that connection, it’s easy to get lost, bored, and stagnant as a team. But with a clear and compelling “who” at the center of their work, it’s easy to be focused, inspired, and high performing.

When looking at all four characteristics, it’s surprising to note what’s not on the list.

Talent isn’t on the list. Talented individuals joining a team may help, but only if the team maintains these norms of behavior. Talented people who don’t coordinate their work with others are detractors, not performers.

Diversity isn’t on the list. Diversity is hugely important to a team’s success but diversity without trust and respect often leads to dysfunction.

In fact, it’s not about the elements or traits of any individuals. It’s about their habits. It’s about their norms and behaviors and whether or not the culture of the team contains these characteristics—characteristics that help everyone (regardless of skill or past performance) do their best work ever.

Image credit: Unsplash

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on December 14, 2021.

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