Future of work

Here’s a cool presentation on the future of work.

http://www.slideshare.net/jbrenman/the-future-of-work-2361479

I like the golden rule of real estate = location, location, location.

The golden rule of work = communication, communication, communication!

Is there anything else?

Post growth society

I see September’s HBR focuses on the ‘green’ economy and life in the post growth society. Yes the idea of limitless growth seems to have been exposed as a myth over the last 12 months. But post-growth society?

There will be growth alright, it just won’t be evenly distributed. While the ‘net’ might be flat, some will grow strongly and others contract significantly. I’m already sensing an inspiring and revolutionary undercurrent of activity and change. Expect a significant redistribution of capital and wealth. Keep your eyes open. Stay light on your feet. Make sure you’re on the right side!

Materialism has taken a heavy blow though. About time. Don’t think that will change any time soon.

HR2.0

I spoke yesterday at HRINZ on change and HR. It was version 1.o of some thinking I’ve started on these two topics. It was a start. One of upsides of the current economic turmoil is that its forcing individuals and organisations to think again about ‘value’.

I often encounter unflattering comments about HR’s value from senior and line managers in organisations. I wonder if HR has become overly preoccupied with process, systems, tools, technologies and frameworks.  It reminded me of the IT industry. And led me to thinking about how pervasively we use the web today. It’s a long way from the IT industry I knew in the late 80’s.

The internet has transformed itself from simply a transport mechanism into something that delivers real value to people. The current term being used is Web2.0.

Web2.0 is about technology:

• as a platform for it’s users to create individual value (eg Flickr)
• as an architecture of participation (eg blogging)
• as a means of harnessing collective intelligence (eg Wikipedia)
• providing users with a rich user experience (eg RSS)
• letting users pull information to meet their immediate demands (eg Google)

WEb2.0 has lead to an exponential rise in the use and creativity of the web. No change management plan here!

What would HR2.0 look like?

As a starter I’d suggest that HR 2.0 could:

• insist managers are responsible for achievement of goals aligned with the overall strategic intent of the organisation.
• let individual managers decide what they need (from HR and others) to achieve those goals. And who, when and how those needs are met.
• focus at least 70% of their effort and resources (budget) on meeting the individual in-action needs of managers striving to achieve clear goals.
• work within an organisational framework of clear values, culture and shared sense of accountability.
• offer a suite of useful tools, frameworks and resources without advocating any.
• inspire people to be bolder in their sense of possibility and potential.

Interested in talking with anyone interested in further developing this thinking.

Value for Money

VFM is a bit of a catch-cry at the moment. There’s a lot of talk, but I doubt whether any significant improvement in VFM will occur. For three reasons:

1. Reducing head count and other resources puts more pressure on day-to-day operations and people have to pedal faster to keep up with business as usual. There is less time to think systemically about innovating and improving value from the public’s perspective.
2. Reviewed budgets line-by-line while appearing to save money can actually result in cost increases elsewhere in the system.  So overall costs can go up. But more importantly missing the bigger opportunity to make larger system-wide improvement.
3. And talking about the system … the wider political system is inherently highly risk averse. It would be a brave CE who would risk his reputation and career by being bold and failing.

To make significant improvements in VFM we need to:

• think systemically about what’s happening and understand the demands placed on the organisation.
• consider ‘value’ from the perspective of the consumers or public.
• identify a limited number of focus areas (no more than 5) for significant improvement. (I hear, that even Microsoft has there 3 big bets!)
• find ways to manage (rather than avoid) risk taking.

Interested in thoughts from the front lines.

Creating relevance

Someone once said to me “I don’t need more information, I need more insight”. That was over 10 years ago. It’s even worse today! There’s more information and, it seems, less attention to go around.

A valuable insight, is to be able to distil the vital few from the trivial many. Whoever you are – whether you’re a chief executive, policy analyst, HR specialist, mother, fireman, or anyone. Malcolm Galdwell wrote an interesting book on this – “Blink”.  It takes experience to pick the ‘right’ vital few.

Many organisations are currently operating with significantly constrained resources (compared to a year ago). For too many the response has been for their people to pedal faster! Do more with less, but the underlying thinking hasn’t changed. Too many organisations/teams still lack a coherent and simple strategic plan which shapes the focus and engagement of their people. And the current economic pressures aren’t helping. Everyone is simply to busy to think differently.

This is part two in my emerging leadership framework. It seems important that leaders can take what is personally important to them and turn it into a strategy that creates relevance for them and their teams in their work environment. This is a piece of “thought leadership”.

A useful tool can be to build a team charter . This would be explicit about the future that the team is building. I call it the intended shape of the future. While we can’t control everything that influences our future, there is a lot that we can control. So it is important to make some deliberate choices about where to focus. And there should only a few areas of focus! I’d recommend 3-5. I call them the pillars, that support the intended shape of our future. I understand that Microsoft, with all it’s resources, has their “3 big bets”. I’ll bet their people can remember 3!

It sounds simple, but it requires the ability and intention to synthesise a wide and diverse range of inputs. It requires a discipline to stop doing some things. And, it requires the courage to keep going. Then we can start to shape the future we want, rather than react to the future that simply arrives.

Slowly then quickly

There’s a great speech by Al Pacino  in the movie ‘Any Given Sunday’.

OK, it’s a boys movie.

But putting  the aggressive competitiveness to one side. What’s the message?

It’s that, small things add up.  Whether you’re talking about communication, leadership, relationships, sport, finance, music, acting, or anything else. It’s the little things that add up. That matter.

It means that the future arrives slowly (inch by inch) and then quickly. It can be a big surprise. A big unpleasant surprise. One morning we wake up and trillions of dollars of wealth has disappeared!

Behaviour by behaviour, we create our future. And the future of others around us.

Jan Carlzon talked about moments of truth

Malcolm Gladwell talks about outliers

de Niro talked of the inches

What are  the inches that matter to you?

Take care of your inches!

Borrowed creativity.

I was speaking today with a prospective client about some coaching.

We ended up discussing an individual’s personal brand.

I’ve always liked the idea of expanding the idea of a communication objective from a specific piece of communication, to a longer term communication strategy. Like a personal brand.

In essence, over time and many interactions, how do individuals want others to:

• think about them
• feel about them
• act towards them

Of course, your audience matters too. What do they want and value?

One of the attributes valued highly these days is creativity.  Perhaps I’d like people to think of  me as creative! I’ve written before about creativity, and the importance of  listening to others for ideas. Rather than coming up with ideas all by yourself!

So, in the spirit of borrowed creativity, here is Fast Company’s Top 100 Most Creative People (to listen to).

http://www.fastcompany.com/100/mcp.html

Borrow, learn, distil, reapply, combine, but most of all enjoy.

Working the room!

Yesterday, I spoke to a group of independant professional advisors/counsellors. The topic was networking, as a marketing tool. I made three points:

1. The predominance of social networks can be seen as much more than a marketing tool. I think they are becoming an extension our brains and are making us more intelligent. Our intelligence afterall, is the result of the brain’s complexity – the billions of neurons interacting with each other. By connecting to other individuals we significantly multiple the possible interactions. Connecting our neurons to neurons outside our brain. The beginnings of a global brain (see Peter Russell’s “Global Brain”  http://www.peterrussell.com/GB/globalbrain.php).
2. But, chemistry matters. The chemistry that connects the neurons in our brain to each other is a complex bio-chemistry. The neurotransmitters that pass signals across the synaptic gap (between neurons) has to work. Or we don’t think effectively, or at all! Between people that chemistry is the chemistry of conversation. Important elements of the chemistry of conversation include – effective questioning, active listening and empathy. That chemistry has to work too.
3. And, that chemistry also includes ‘attitude’. Someone spoke of those who think of networking as “working the room”. If that’s your attitude, I doubt the conversation chemistry will work. I find it best to leave your agenda at the door. Just talk to people, enjoy talking to them, be curious, be yourself . Let any business opportunities emerge. Don’t work the room!

As always, interested in your perspectives.

Connecting things

My daughter said to me recently “I’m not creative”. That is an interesting decision to make about herself. Especially these days when every job stresses creativity and innovation. She meant creative in the sense of  creating products and ideas that are original and/or aesthetically pleasing.

Well apart from thinking everyone is creative, it made me think about what creativity is these days. Firstly, what I think it isn’t is, individuals thinking in splendid isolation until the ‘aha’ moment arises. And something beautifully complete emerges. Everyone goes ‘wow’!

That’s not creativity anymore. Perhaps it was once. Today almost all the interesting thinking is collaborative. It reminded me of Steve Job’s quote “creativity is just connecting things”. Once it might have been connecting things in one’s own brain. Today it’s more about connecting lots of things in lots of brains – to yours.  That’s why the Twitter phenomenon is so interesting.

So what are the skills that make you creative these days. I’d say the main ones are  questioning, listening, observing, reading widely, indulging in a range of experiences, and taking a non-judgemental and  open  attitude to life. Then the ideas emerge.You can see what’s already there. Because there seems to be no shortage of ideas out there. And very few are originally crafted by individuals.

So if you’ve convinced yourself that you’re not creative, it doesn’t matter. Take someone else’s ideas. They’re probably not using them anyway. Outsource your creativity to your network, because ideas aren’t in short supply. What is in short supply is the awareness, courage and the ability to successfully implement them. Creativity is just a commodity, but making new ideas happen is still a very rare ability. Practise that.

shaking the pyramid

I spoke with someone last week week involved in the re-structure of a public sector organisation. He’s a tier two manager. We ended up talking about Maslow’s pyramid. We, like everyone, prefer to operate at the top of the pyramid – the self actualised/transcended piece. The view is better up there, and it means that lesser order needs are taken care of! But we talked about the difficulty of staying at the top, when worried about our safety, security and belonging needs. Can you be at the top, when the base is shaking?

In particular, how do you communicate (to self and others) higher order messages at times of great uncertainty. This includes messages about the future, vision, change process and wider stakeholders. Will people really be listening  at times of  change, when their concerns may be more immediate and more personal.

My friend was wanting to ensure communication focused on the bigger picture. The view from the top of the pyramid. But, I think the best response when you’re on a shaking pyramid though is to shore-up the base. It got me thinking about communicating positively when their is considerable uncertainty about security and status. In the current environment – “will I have a job tomorrow?” How do you allay people’s fears.

Here are three potential strategies

1. Validate the thinking and feelings of your audience by actively listening. Don’t try and change how they think about the future.
2. Share your own feelings, particularly if you have doubts yourself.
3. Widen the perspective beyond the negative aspects of the change, by asking people about their other experiences of change or other perspectives of the people around them.

Just talking about the negative aspects of change, starts to diminish its hold on people and helps steady the pyramid. Then you’ve earned the right to communicate from the top.