Doing the work gives you the learning

Our desire for things to be easy can mean we might want to avoid the complicated and challenging stuff.  

We love smooth and easy progress! To be presented with the right answer or have the perfect path to completion roll out in front of us is bliss! 

When it comes to running your own business, solving a client problem or working on a complex task, doing the actual work is what gives us the learning. 

Making decisions and trying things out are learning experiences. Frustrating, uncertain, scary ... yes. But confidence and experience building as well. 

What is that quote about there being no sense of achievement without the challenge? 

We can tap advice, pick up some quick tips or even ask others what their ‘best’ answer is. 

More often than not, the better path is one where we experience it ourselves and learn from it. 

Respect the old please

'Push the new. Drive the change. Create urgency. Move on.'

These phrases are part of transformation at work - everyone’s on 'a journey' and many a leader wants us to ‘move on’. Those labelled 'laggards', are derailing change efforts, resisting the new.

But maybe it’s those who are 'pushing the new' who cause problems by resisting the old, not acknowledging the past. 'We’ve got to move on’ is so dismissive; I never use it in workshops or sessions.

During change, it's vital to spend some time acknowledging and respecting the way things were. For longer-term employees, dismissing the past, asking them to move on could feel like their efforts are dismissed, their purpose, previous roles, the work they did and their commitment ... dismissed.

Could we respect the old before moving on with the new, please?

In Stockholm last week - speaking at the software architect's conference - I visited the ‘old town’; part of the city that’s been preserved, recognised and curated so that in the present day we can understand, learn and respect it.

We learn where things come from, what it used to be like and it builds empathy and respect.

What happens when we 'move on' too swiftly? 

Where's your project on the path of change

Many change and transformation projects are spoken about as a 'path', 'journey', 'ladder' or 'roadmap'.

In short, we're here and we want to get to .... there.

Sometimes change and transformation can feel alot less safe than a simple path or road. It feels more like a gigantic cliff! And Jack Canfield's quote about 'making your parachute on the way down' or the entrepreneurial advice to 'grow wings as you're plummeting towards earth' (aka 'grow a pair!) ... who even wants to jump into a change when you're not sure how safe the whole path will be, let alone the landing!

Whether it's a structural change, a process or system change or a shift in culture towards new ways of working, it's in that metaphorical language we speak (paths, journeys, ladders and roadmaps) that we hear the cues and clues about where we are and where we want to get to.

We also hear about some of the roadblocks, barriers and obstacles (hey, more metaphors*) that are both hindering and helping progress through a transformation.

*Hint: Listen out for these metaphors; you can build lovely rapport and help people shift when you hear these metaphorical barriers and then talk about them, rather than telling people to 'move on'.

Change and transformation doesn't just involve the stuff or things that are changing; it involves the people, the humans doing the changing.

How about a ladder?

A path, journey or roadmap up say, a ladder of change can be tricky, treacherous... and for some impatient leaders, suitably time wasting. Knowing where you're at can help with leading that change.

 

At the bottom of the ladder are organizations and teams in chaos; they’re losing ground and on the decline. They are resistant to change, fearful and frightened of change and don’t know where to begin. They’re moving in reverse. They think they're standing still but it's worse than that. These are the businesses that go ‘belly up’, that become insolvent and are wound up. Too soon and they’re gone.

There are plenty of businesses close to chaos but they’re attempting change and transformation. They’re a little stuck. When teams and organizations resist change – which often happens in the early stages of a change or transformation - there is a sense of being in neutral; poor levels of productivity and a feeling of not getting anywhere. Going in circles, simple changes aren't being adopted and it’s all too easy to continue the old ways of working. Why change?

Progressing up the ladder (or along a path of change) are organizations and teams that are intent on change and transformation but they’re… distracted. They’re too busy looking at competitors and not responding, or they’re focused on internal changes that deliver little impact (or are unnecessary in the first place), or their attention is taken off the positive process of change by other significant troubles. This includes industrial, legal, financial or media crisis stuff. They're in the media everyday. They’re busy all right, but productivity and transformation suffers because they’re focusing on distracting stuff.

If you think of an organization as aiming to make forward progress through change and transformation, each of these stages of the change path or ladder see the business slipping, with wheels spinning, engine revving loudly, just not getting anywhere!

As a remote Australian outback fan, I'm often w-a-y out there, holidaying in our 4WD, taking paths less travelled, seeing the ochre-red sands of central Australia or the remote bush tracks where few tourists go. Spinning wheels? Not good. Get traction and get outta there!

And in change, that's where we get to a tipping point…get outta there.

Up over this point in change and transformation is where productivity changes, focus is shifted and positive friction is achieved, traction is gained.

At the shift stage, organizations and teams are making changes and transformation. The decision is made, they're onto it. They’re bringing new processes and ways of working to the business … but it’s still a hard slog. Change is not the norm; the dynamic of progressive change isn’t leveraged and change takes significant effort to get traction and to stick.

Once the team gets to perform, productivity goes up, change initiatives begin to ‘stick’ in a positive way and the path to being transforming culture is smoother. Positive change initiatives build on previous changes made and the culture is a higher performing one. There is acceptance of change as the norm; ‘This is what we do. We change. We keep changing because that’s how we do things around here.’

Ultimately, organizations and teams that reach transform, do so because they are agile and adaptive; they make change stick, and then reinvent, experiment and review to make change an ongoing part of how they work. 

From some of my blog posts, enews and social media shares, I often hear back from people in industries and sectors that say they are too low down on this path towards change. That they want to get moving; they want to change quicker; they need to or they'll be disrupted, replaced and decimated as a business... and possibly an industry.

Everything about your organisation speaks

In an earlier career in communications, I remember learning (and then lecturing) that 'everything about an organisation speaks'. It speaks to you about the culture; everything from how you're greeted, to what you see, to how people are sitting in pods and rows, to how a meeting room is 'all table' and no space.

How your organisation responds to change says so much about its culture. And if you want to change culture, you need to change how you see, lead and communicate about change.

The way you lead change says everything about your culture. Change brings renewal; if you want to change culture, change how you lead change.

This is why I think the reference to change as a death, a dying or a grief process is done. References to endings and beginnings are done. Change is ongoing. It needs to be part of "how we do things around here."

Rather than allowing change to be a burden, a challenge or a drudge, change can be the catalyst to shifting culture. The move is on from spinning wheels and being stuck in old ways, to a shift, up up up to higher levels of traction and performance.

To change culture, change how you lead - see and speak - of change.

How inspiring are you as a leader?

Straight up then: how inspiring are you as a leader?

Do you even know?

Television’s Dr Phil McGraw often asks guests getting some pop-psych on his Oprah offshoot program ‘Dr Phil’, 'How much fun are you to live with?'

It's a brilliant question that will put you in the shoes of your partner. But the same can apply to workplaces, organizations, teams, leaders and groups.

So how much fun are you to work for? Work with? Collaborate with? Communicate with? Do you even know? Do you need to have a chat to someone?

Think of it like a bellows that fuels a fire with air. At the historic re-enactment tourism village in regional Victoria, Australia, about 90 minutes from Melbourne, there’s a place called Sovereign Hill.

Here you can buy boiled sweets, watch people wear clothes of the pioneer days or get your name printed on a bushranger ‘WANTED’ poster. On a school-day visit in years gone by, I remember seeing the impact of the bellows at the town blacksmith. The Smithy would be operating the bellows using a foot-pump to stoke, feed and ‘air’ the fire and then he’d be tapping, belting and chinking out horseshoes and other historic items of metal blacksmithing in between whooshes of air.

When you look at bellows, you see they have two actions:

• first they draw air IN ...
• before they can blow it OUT.

Do you give or take?

Are you the sucking-air-in kind of person… squeezing the life out of; the one who brightens a room just by leaving it? Do you leave people deflated and flat, beaten and feeling hopeless? Do you even know? Oh how depressing! No no!

Rather… be the one who gives with (good) air and energy and possibility and hope. Make the environment, space, team, project and business feel fired up with air and energy because of you. Whooosh – blow fresh air and energy into the environment. Be inspiring! 

Be filled with possibility

When you’re leading change in a team or organisation, you have to fill the air and the environment with possibility and hope and ‘yes we can do this.’ This is not ‘yee-ha’ but rather a great feeling of capability, high likelihood and a sense of ‘we’re gonna do this because….’ and ‘we can do this because…’

If I followed you around for a week (not in a creepy way), what would I see? How inspiring are you as a leader?