Think. Build. Ship. Tweak.

Forget the days of heading to the CD shop to buy a CD – just stream what you want to listen to via an online service like Spotify.

So how does a business like Spotify get their sh*t together and take on a market, and an industry and revel in the opportunity to disrupt?
 
Henrik Kniberg shined a light on some of the leadership and management insights of Spotify at a conference recently - he's been working as a lean and agile coach.  

Go anti-silo and have squads and tribes
Henrik reckons a minimum viable bureaurcracy is the way to go…to group people into tribes; to have squads of people who collaborate with each other to find the best solution. These groups cut across the organisation. It’s somewhat of an anti silo strategy.

Healthy culture heals broken processes
Don’t try and scale your product or service – rather, descale the organisation. A healthy culture is what will heal broken processes. We’ve all felt the pain of a broken process when we’ve interacted with a business or organisation and things just didn't go well :-(
 
It seems that control is dying but not yet buried. In fact it’s trust that flourishes; it’s more powerful than control. Having autonomy across the organisation means you can move fast. Be agile.

What agility looks like
In Henrik's words, agility looks like this:

• Think it
• Build it
• Ship it
• Tweak it

Don’t you love it?
 
And it's alignment that enables the autonomy. Without people being aligned to the vision, plan and purpose, you’ll create fear, silos, yawn culture, and a host of flow on problems.

Fail fast ... and recover from it
You’ve got to let people make mistakes. To fail fast. But then recover from the failure.

I think too many leaders think they're encouraging failure yet secretly fear failure because it takes so damn long to recover from it – “hmmm, best to not go there at all,” they think.
 
Rather, go there. Fail it fast. But Henrik says limit your ‘blast radiance’ – limit the effect of the fail and how far it impacts around the organisation.

Are we learning anything people?

Leverage the learning from the fail. And further, you’ve got to then share the learning from the fail. Trust and support people.

Contemporary leaders of today have to let go and let their teams make sense of what needs to be done and how to do it. Community is what matters.
 
Move fast, fail fast, limit the blast.
Think. Build. Ship. Tweak.

Be more encouraging with failure

Hooray, I failed! Candy Crush or any other addictive game will celebrate with me about how I didn't make that level.

It's celebrated with a big colourful banner, sound effects, cheery, joyous music, AND an exclamation point.

"You've failed!"

I can't wait to have another go at it to see if I can learn what I've been doing wrong and get somewhere closer to succeeding. After all, it's fun. I'm failing and I'm trying again.

Playing a digital game we're encouraged to rejoice at our failure and enthused to try again.

Plenty to read over recent years about failure in well authored books and leading magazines and how we need to accept it in the workplace. Ok, well and good... but I just don't think we're 'accepting' failure quite right.

I failed at work? OK, where's the cheery music? Where's the banner and the sound effects? And where is the exclamation point !?!

Building on the happy lessons of improvisers who say ‘yes and’ and who make their partners look good, experimenting and failing is also being willing to let go of your first idea. What else can you cook up?

At one of the earliest improvisation workshops I went to where we were learning the tools, techniques and philosophies of improv, the phrase ‘again’ was shouted with joy when a scene was ‘stuffed up’ or failed. If the story didn't progress or a playing partner didn't pick up the line and run with it, we shouted 'go again', and we have another try and say or do something else. Anything else. Just do something!

We simply started again and had another go at it. Hands up in the air, leaping up, shouting 'I stuffed up!' or 'Again!'

Yes, THERE's the exclamation point! Go again!

Be more encouraging with failure and going 'again' this year. If something doesn't work, try something else. Just go again. Because we failed! Hooray!

Over managed and under led

These words oozed from Darren Hill's mouth to a packed venue full of people who'd come along to learn and think about the Future of Leadership:

"We're over managed, and under led!"

Darren's a behavioural scientist and he's been studying people - and specifically leaders - for a few years now. 

In his presentation at The Future of Leadership event in Melbourne recently, he said that leaders have always needed to:

• manage pressure
• make progress, and
• establish connection

My visual notes from the session captured his key points.

In today's workplaces, leaders need to 'deal drugs'. No, not illicit drugs, but the human chemicals that drive our behaviour!

As Darren talked about adrenaline, cortisol, endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, it became clear that leaders indeed need to lead, to manage the pressure that change brings and to ensure the team makes progress. 

Leaders need to be the heart of connection in the team, to help celebrate failure and to understand these powerful human chemicals and how they impact team performance, behaviour and success. 

Are you leading... or still occupying yourself with managing things? 

'One person can make a B - I - G difference,' he said.

The Future of Leadership event heads to Brisbane, Australia on October 14. Get tickets here because 100% of the ticket sales go to Hands Across the Water. Now that's leadership!