Value sooner is the goal.

I'm posting about newer ways of working this week and getting value into the hands of customers, users, clients, patients, students - whoever those people are that you're there for - this is the goal.

The goal isn't to complicate, grandstand, waffle on, time waste or keep busy. Nor is the goal to over-consult, keep working on something until its perfect, bring even more people into a meeting or add still more people into the cc field of an email.

It's the reverse.

With new ways of working, you're looking at how to get to value, sooner. That often means reducing waste, doing the minimum to get something up and going, staying focused on the work elements that best deliver value ... and then delivering that value, testing it out.

When I work with teams and organisations helping them understand and introduce new-er ways of working than what they're currently using, I'll work through these four topics with them:

1️⃣ Involve

2️⃣ Ideate

3️⃣ Implement

4️⃣ Iterate

Let's look at them in more detail over the next few days. Are you with me?

Resisting new ways of working / stuck in old ways of working

Resisting new ways of working / stuck in old ways of working. It’s no secret the world of work keeps changing. As customers demand more, better, sooner, companies large and small need to respond and deliver. The best way for most businesses to respond to customer needs is to change the way they do their work.

Sure, keep shuffling the organisation chart around, restructuring, unsettling and disrupting people, but these are structural tweaks that don’t make much of a cultural or behavioral change.

You’ll need to do something else.

New ways of working are that.

← There were old, last century ways of working.

↓ There are new, this century ways of working.

→→→ And there are yet to be seen and experienced, future ways of working... up ahead.

New and future ways of working can mean different things to different people, teams and industries; it kind of depends where you're at now. If you resist or ignore newer ways of working now you'll only need to make a bigger shift to them later. It's easier to adapt now than play 'catch up' later.

More coming on new and future ways of working this week.

Q: What's a way of working that you use/do now ... that you didn't do just a few years ago?

Up in the clouds... or down in the details

Up in the clouds... or down in the details. Author Jim Haudan suggests people across an organisation 'fly' at different levels. You'll experience it every day.

We have different altitudes of perspective and so we see different things, think differently.

We know this from being in an aircraft:

✈️ On the ground: you can see the airport, trees and tarmac as you're taxiing to the runway;

✈️ Up in the air: up to a few thousand feet up there, you can see cars, roads, rivers and patchwork quilts of fields and farms; and

✈️ Cruising Altitude: way up there, at 35,000 feet and above it’s cruising altitude and you're getting the big picture.

You can see a broader perspective stretching way w-a-y over the horizon. Today's leaders need to be able to fly at all levels - and most of all, to be able to recognise it or hear it when others are speaking.

This is one of the capabilities of the 'Leader as Facilitator' I posted on yesterday. Your preference may keep you 'locked' at a level that's not helpful.

Q: What say you? Are you an 'up in the clouds' person, 'down in the details' or do you fly somewhere in the middle? 

Premature solution giving.

When we’re thinking or talking in a meeting and someone jumps in with ’the solution’... Ta da! Big fanfare! Once they’ve spoken it’s as if no other solutions are welcome or matter.

The problem isn’t the person jumping in with the solution. They’ve had an idea and they’ve said it. Good on them!

The issue is with the meeting leader. 'Premature solution giving' is an example of what happens when meetings don't have an effective process.

I’m not talking about the agenda of the meeting, but the process or ‘way’ the meeting is happening.

Designing a process is a contemporary facilitation capability that today’s ‘leader as facilitator’ needs, so they can:

🌕 Create better and safer environments

🌕 Lead more productive meetings

🌕 Guide more effective team interactions

🌕 Respond more swiftly when some sh*t goes down in a meeting. (That is, no sweeping it under the carpet or ‘parking’ it in a carpark flip chart).

Learning the facilitation capability builds leadership confidence, boosts productivity and lifts psychological safety.

Urgh! What else kills that feeling of safety in a meeting?

What society expects of you

In recent posts I’ve mentioned the expectations we can have:

- of ourselves

- of others.

There’s a third. It’s what we perceive society expects of us.  

- Society ... you know, other people. Them. Those people over there.

We can worry a lot about what people think of us. What will they say? How will they perceive us? These worries can become huge filters, censors and constraints to our thoughts and behaviour. They can cause us unnecessary doubt and make us procrastinate, second guess ourselves and reject some of the great things we attempt.

We can also worry that we ‘should’ be doing better ... or more or higher or faster or longer or neater or cleaner, than we are.

These are the three types of perfectionism and expectations, all on the increase in the world right now:

- Of ourselves

- Of others

- What society expects of us.

All of this pressure, piling up, making us overthink, overwork, lose sleep and get stuck.

Next time you feel stuck or find yourself judging your work or ideas, check in on which of these three types of perfectionism could be at play. 'Seeing it' is the first step to finding ways around it.