Sooner, Safer, Happier

I am glad to announce that I have started a transformation, and here's how I will do it.

I treat this as just another temporary project with a big, up-front planning and design that I turn into outputs pushed to my people for implementation within clear deadlines. 

I have decided to roll out a new tool, initiate a mandatory mass-training, and impose a brand new methodology that everyone shall follow.

No. Let's stop here. This is all antipatterns in "Sooner, Safer, Happier - Antipatterns and patterns for business agility" by Jonathan Smart.

Organizations are complex adaptive systems. We need to evolve our ways of working to deliver value in a way that suits the nature of the work (Cynefin framework). 

In the Age of Digital, don't use methods from two technological revolutions ago on unique, knowledge-based work that is emergent and full of unknown-unknowns.

Start with the "Why"

Start with why if the why is not already clearly understood, and communicate it three more times than you think you need. You cannot over-communicate the why.

What happens if the status quo is maintained? What’s the “so what”? Why do people need to go through the discomfort of change and lack of mastery? What appeals to the selfish gene? 

There should be a compelling why unique to your context and organization, which is the call to action. “We want to be more agile”, “We want to be more lean”, “We want to be more product-oriented” are insufficient calls to action.

A useful exercise is doing a “five whys”. Break into pairs with the starting question of “Why change?” and take turns asking why five times with each answer forming the basis of the next question.

Desired outcomes

Next, articulate and agree on your desired outcomes. Agile, DevOps, Lean and Design Thinking are the means to an end, they are not the end. They are bodies of knowledge, wisdom, principles, and practices to be applied in context to achieve desired outcomes.

Outcomes should be measured and visualized. Focus on the trend over time and relative ranking on improvement rather than on absolutes, as everyone has a different starting point. The goal is to improve over time.

Business outcomes are hypotheses and they are nested with a lineage up to longer-term, organization-wide strategic outcome hypotheses. Outcomes are not passed down, unchanged, in a traditional order-giver, order-taker manner. Instead they align. They are written and “owned” by the people at each level in the nested value streams.

Leaders go first

The leadership team is number one. If a leadership team is not willing to role model desired behaviors, why shall other teams do it?

People in senior roles have a disproportionate impact on behavioral norms. Trust and role modeling are essential.

Ways of Working Center of Enablement

In order to be successful, there is a need for people who are dedicated full time in a servant leader capacity to orchestrate the improvement of the system of work across an organization. 

For a large organization, the success patterns is to have federated Ways of Working Centers of Enablement, with one for each business unit or value stream and a central one providing the team-of-teams coordination.

The Center of Enablement deal with impediments to achieve the outcomes that bubble up, with a goal of solving them at the lowest possible level. They are not a department of improvement where improvement actions are lobbed over the fence.

There should be an impediment backlog, with the Center of Enablement orchestrating the right people in the organization to help alleviate the top-priority impediments where this is beyond the sphere of influence of a team.

This is leadership in ways of working, being coaches, guiding people on the journey, sharing learning internally and externally, communicating, creating community, rewarding and recognizing desired behavior and outcomes.

Achieve big through small. 

Achieve big through small instead of big through big. Minimize time to learning. 

Change is hardest at the beginning. There is no one size fits all. Context matters. Every environment is unique. Starting small makes it safe to learn, keeps change within risk appetite, and generates social proof unique to your context.

People have a limited velocity to unlearn and relearn. You cannot force pace of change. If you do, you will only get new labels on existing behavior. Start small and within the risk appetite. 

Amplify the experiments that work well, and quickly dampen the ones that don’t. Experiments are then amplified or dampened.

Let the natural champions go first

Allow people to satisfy their psychological need for agency and control, the need to feel in control of one’s own destiny. Allow the Innovators, the natural champions, to identify themselves. They are motivated by the buzz of being first, and have probably been working this way formally or informally for some time. 

Invite participation and get behind the champions. Give the champions the coaching and the support they need in order to deliver business outcomes. As the benefits are seen, recognized and communicate via every mechanism available, the early adopters will want to join in. They can see that it’s safe to put a toe in the water. Gradually invite them in too, within the pace of unlearning and relearning and within risk appetite.

Invite everyone from top to bottom

Invite everyone from top to bottom (a vertical slice), don't leave the pressurized middle behind. They have to deliver, come what may, and are now being asked to change ways of working as well as continuing to deliver. It’s a difficult role and is often missed during a change that is sponsored from the top table and implemented at grass roots. 

Everyone learns together, and no one is left behind. It's not easy, as the most enthusiastic group of people is at the team level. 

Communicate, communicate and communicate

Communicate three more times than you think you need. Use every communication channel at your disposal and add some more.

Use the channels to reinforce the why, the values and principles, the outcomes, to recognize desired behavior and to do story-telling. Have senior leaders recognize the great work of teams in improving outcomes and have teams share their stories.

Stick at it

It requires commitment and resilience. It takes years for sustainable, lasting culture change, for genuine agility. 

For a large organization with a tailwind, it’s three to five years, longer with headwind. There are no shortcuts. 

In organizations with traditional ways of working, change is staccato. In evolutionary biology terms it is "Punctuated Equilibrium" rather than "Punctuated Gradualism". There are long periods of stasis, then a burst of disruptive change. There is lack of ongoing continuous improvement.

Become the best at being better.

Are you an Original?

There are two routes to achievements: Conformity and Originality. 

Conformity means following the crowd down conventional paths and maintaining the status quo.

Originals take the road less traveled, championing a set of novel and useful ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better. Originals don't stop with ideas, they take the initiative to make them a reality.

The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether better options exist. It starts with curiosity. 

Is originality only for gifted people? 

No. Gifted people often apply their extraordinary abilities in ordinary ways, mastering the existing without questioning status quo. Practice makes perfect, but it doesn't make new.

The biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation - it's shortage of people who excel at choosing the right ones. 

When you have an idea, don't run straight to your manager. Run your pitches by peers – they are poised to spot the potential and the possibilities.

I am a person that prefers to dive into tasks early and finish them ahead of schedule. From the childhood we have been taught not to wait until the last minute. 

Originals procrastinate, i.e., intentionally delaying work that needs to be done. Be quick to start, but slow to finish. Wait for best idea, not the first one.

Being original doesn't require being first, it just means being different and better. By taking a break in your work you are more likely to engage in divergent thinking and give ideas time to incubate.

Groupthink is the enemy of originality; people feel pressured to conform to the dominant, default views instead of championing diversity of thought. Social bonds don't drive groupthink; the culprits are overconfidence and reputational concerns.

The easiest way to encourage non-conformity is to introduce a single dissenter. Disrupting consensus encourages the group members to engage in divergent thinking. Dissenting opinions are useful even when they are wrong.

The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader. Find one person who believes in your vision, and begin tackling the problem together.

To become original, you have to try something new, which means accepting some measure of risk. Choosing to challenge the status quo is an uphill battle, and there are bound to be failures, barriers, and setbacks along the way. 

Having a sense of security in one domain gives us the freedom to be original in another.

Originals operate differently when making decisions. Rather than a logic of consequence trying to predict the outcome, they turn inward to their identity. They base the decision on who they are or who they want to be.

We all have ideas for improving our workplace, schools and communities. Sadly, many of us hesitate to take action to promote them. 

What will you do with your idea next time?

"Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World" by Adam Grant.

The Trillion Dollar Coach

What do Steve Jobs, Sheryl Sandberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Donna Dubinsky, Shellye Archambeau and the boys and girls flag football teams at Sacred Hearth have in common?

They, and many others, had Bill Campbell, that passed away April 18, 2016, as a coach, mentor and perhaps most importantly, as a friend.

He was Silicon Valley's best-kept secret.

Without Bill, Google would not be where it is today. After Bill passed away, Google started teaching his principles via internal seminars to emerging leaders.

He worked side by side with Steve Jobs to build Apple from near bankruptcy.

Spending his first decade of the career coaching football, Bill learned that great teams need to work together, and he learned how to make it happen. Being a good coach is essential to being a good manager and leader.

Bill taught business leaders that the path to success in a fast-moving, highly competitive, technology-driven business world is to form high-performing teams and give them the resources and freedom to do great things.

The book is loaded with his lessons and simple, yet powerful, practices and principles. 

Here are some of my favorites.

"It's the people!"

"It's the people" he said. People are the foundation of any company's success, and the primary job of each manager is to help people be more effective in their job and to grow and develop.

Make people flourish through support, respect, and trust. Leading teams become a lot more joyful when you know and care about the people. Believe in people more than they believe in themselves.

Structured 1:1 meetings

Have a structure for your 1:1 meetings and come prepared. Start with a brief small talk, then move to performance: 

  1. What are you working on?
  2. How is it going?
  3. How can I help?

Bill also included peer feedback and relationships, teams and innovation on the agenda. For him, the 1:1 meetings were the best way to help people grow.

Strive for the best idea, not consensus

Get all authentic opinions and ideas on the table for the group to discuss. Sit down with individuals before the meeting to find out what they are thinking.

Failure to make a decision can be as damaging as a wrong decision. If you have the right conversation, then eight out of ten times people will reach the best conclusion on their own. But the other two times you need to make the hard decision and expect everyone to not only accept, but to commit.

Listen

Listen to people with your full and undivided attention. Don't think ahead to what you are going to say next, and ask questions to get to the real issue.

"Don't stick it in their ear"

... he said. Don't tell people what to do, tell them stories about why they are doing it. When people understand the story, they can connect to it and figure out what to do.