The wars of talent and control

It will become more and more visible ... organisations and leaders who talk flexibility and agility but the reality is still command and control. 

As employees return to the office - or not - the power dynamic is shifting on topics like flexibility and engagement. 

Questions come to mind like: 

➡️ If a company needs particular skills, does it matter where those skills live? 

➡️ Can people work remotely? All the time? 

➡️ Why should people come into the office? What will the true benefit be to them if they do? 

➡️ If people don’t get the flexibility they’re seeking, who else is offering it?

There is an equaling of the balance or see-saw occurring. 

From times when the organisation and its leaders had the power and control, now, towards times when people who have a greater freedom of choice in front of them are exercising that choice. 

Why should people work with your organisation? Or with you as a leader? 

This article from Newsweek by Yuri Kruman, explores the topic more.

‘I love your posts and pictures!’, they said

‘Oh, thank you,’ I said. ‘Now theres a heap of them together ... in the one place.’ 

I’ve curated a collection of ideas, posts and imagery from the last year or so and published them in ‘Better Ways of Thinking and Working’. 

In this era of change, uncertainty and complexity, how are you adopting better ways of thinking and working? 

What are these better ways, anyway … and how do you get started?

In this 180 page full colour collection of practical and mind-shifting essays, you’ll find inspiration, insights and a path to better.

It also features the practical, creative and inspiring hand-drawn visuals that accompany many of my ideas. 

When you need a shot of insight, a change of perspective or a reframing about how you could do things, possibilities are on every page. 


‘Better Ways of Thinking and Working: How Changing The Way You Do Things, Changes What You Can Do’. 

Get it here

Face to face ➡️ Online How did you change

As many face to face workshops and meetings shifted online over the past year, it’s curious to look back: What did you change? 

If you’d planned an agenda, how did things need to adapt? 
Did you change the duration? 
Or the time between breaks, or length or number of breaks? 

Did you change what was planned?
What about group activities and collaboration? 

Did you accelerate and make things faster? Or did you need more time, multiple meetings instead of one? 

Many meetings and workshops that went online, only changed mode: sadly, they remained as disengaing and unproductive as ever!

But now as more hybrid arrangements begin - some people are online, some people are mobile or onsite - we need to consider, adapt and change things again. 

How did you first adapt meetings and workshops that moved online? 

Better ways for who

Imagine if your team started trying some newer ways of doing things... 

How might it impact customers? What additional value might you all bring? 
How might some frustrating customer problems get solved? 

The dramatic value that can be delivered to the customer, member, patient, user, client, can get forgotten. 

Perhaps it gets drowned out because the changes WE have to make are tricky and challenging for us. You know ... change!! *Groan* “It’s hard...”

Every team that tries some new ways of working gets a boost : 
🔅productively
🔅collaboratively
🔅effectively
🔅creatively.

And customers get a boost too!

Services become easier to use, sooner. 
Products get into their hands quicker. 
Interacting with the business becomes less frustrating or complicated... and things generally make more sense and work better. 

Better ways are available to us in how we go about:
🔆Thinking
🔆Understanding 
🔆Acting...
everyday. 

It’s not about using a new app or trying a new tool. There are new ways available at all levels of how we think about work, why we do it and how we do it. 

This is why adopting new and better ways is a cultural shift. 

Yes, it might take awhile. But your customers are waiting on you. 

Trying out some better ways of working

Today I’m working with an organisation introducing them to some new and better ways of working. 

Work changes all the time. 

But sometimes we’re locked into the way we’ve always done things. 

Hey, how much did we have to change in 2020 when we were forced to work remotely - if we weren’t already! 

What if we kept that pace of change going and tried doing other things differently? 

As Steve Denning in ‘The Age of Agile’ explains, new and agile ways are a vast global movement that have been changing the world of work. 

And these ways are moving beyond software and technology where they became known, finding keen supporters in other fields like health, government, education, marketing and finance. 

Most of all, I think today’s workshop will focus on how it starts with the individual. 

Adopting a flexible, adaptive and agile mindset is where it can begin. Yet it’s also about trying things in different ways, and seeing how mindsets shift... as a result of that experience. 

Who might benefit from you working in new and better ways?