What’s the new-A-U

Business as usual has been, well, business as usual (BAU) for ever!

In the business world it’s the stuff that’s done to make everyday operational activities happen.

So ...what’s the NEW A U ? What new things are happening that will bring about change? What’s planned up ahead that will continue to challenge thinking, challenge convention and bring a new mindset and behaviour to how things are done?

Whether you’re a leader of a team, a team member in an organisation, or a solo operator running yourown show, what's your ’new as usual’?

How are you bringing new things into your business regularly? The new can be scary, untested, untried. I heard someone recently say, ‘I’m not trying something new unless it's guaranteed to work’. But how will you know it could work, unless you try it?

New ways of thinking and working help you gain the benefits of those new ways sooner, delivering advantages and value to your customers, gaining the advances of first and early movers. Want to wait until more or the majority of people are doing something, because it’s less risky or safer? Great. Go line up and wait... over there. I’m moving along to NEW-A-U. See ya!

Dissing the new

In the area of 'new ways of working' there are opportunities to, you know, try new things. New ways of doing things are happening the world over, across diverse sectors and deep into different domains and areas of expertise.

So there is new. There are opportunities to look, learn and try out the new.

How wonderful!

It’s perplexing when of course some people - no, not you - but some people, dismiss the new.

They dis the new. They bag it, disrespect it, criticize it and claim it’s not for them. But it’s new! How can you dis it if you haven’t even tried it?

Ok, then if you have tried it or have done it, you have incredible experience and insight to offer. And it’s a shame and a waste when that experience isn’t invited, acknowledged, listened to or leveraged in organisations. Our experience gets dissed.

Looking ahead, will you dive in and try the new or will you stand back and dis the new?

How can we adapt to newer ways of thinking and working if we're too busy dissing?

We can make information overload worse

To handle the never-ending flow of information we face, it’s useful realising that the way we currently do things could be making it harder for us to take in information with ease.

We can be so wedded to the automated and habitual way we do tasks: thinking, prioritizing, decision making, listening, note taking and learning, that we’re often blinded to the benefits and potential of newer ways.

This is why some newer ways of working are known as ... new ways of working. Of course!

I see this when I'm working with people, helping them manage their cognitive load. We’re used to our preferences (and we defend them), when we’re reading a document or listening to a presentation for example, yet we struggle with information overload and its effects. The devil you know, right?

We tolerate the inefficiency and discomfort of overload. Many people wrongly believe it would be too hard to learn a new way or the benefits wouldn't be worth the effort.

But newer ways of working are revealing better, easier and more effective ways of tackling all that information. 

 Would you be willing to try some new techniques to handle information overload? 

Locked, blocked, stirred or primed

Locked, blocked, stirred or primed.

It's how I see people, teams and business on awareness of new ways of working. Work keeps evolving and customer needs do too, so we must adapt and respond to these forces. This is agility.

🔒 LOCKED - Unaware of old ways It's easy to stick with old ways of work not thinking anything is 'wrong' with them. But that view is most certainly fixed, locked.

█ BLOCKED - Unaware of new ways If you're not learning, reading, thinking and listening more about how work is changing, this is most certainly a block to success and progress. Are you waiting for someone to do it for you?

☕️ STIRRED - Aware of old ways With this new ways of work talk, many of us can get stirred up, rattled, wondering 'what does this mean?', or 'what will I have to do?' Just realising there are old, last century ways of working and newer this century ways, is sure to stir. And that's ok... because:

👍🏼 PRIMED - Aware of new ways You can't un-know stuff. Once you come upon the way clever leaders, teams and businesses are doing things in this new world of work, you're primed, pumped and ready for change.

ACTION: Plot yourself, your leader, team and the executive or board on this model - and have a conversation about it

Start talking about it - new ways of working

If agility is on your company's agenda, then start talking about it.

→ What does agile mean to you?

→ Why is it important to you?

→ What are your customers expecting?

→ What things can you begin to shift and adjust as you move towards newer ways of working?

→ What older ways of working might need to go?

Too many organisations impose change that disrupts employees and leaves them wondering ‘why’. So much so that no amount of town hall meetings or ‘ask me anything’ sessions will resolve or temper the uncertainty.

When agile or agility is on the horizon, or is underway, start talking about it - at all levels across the organisation and with all sorts of people.

Secretly configuring a change or transformation in the background that will be ‘rolled out’ across the organisation as of x date isn’t agility. It’s prescription and control - sorry, that’s still an old way of working.

Develop, discuss and explore the need for agility in your business and engage with people on it, talk about it. You might need to be willing to hear some uncomfortable questions and uncertain objections.

Action: Put agility on the agenda of your next meeting. Kick off with a conversation about it. Find out what people think.