My thanks to the community and organisers of Transcending The Crisis for allowing me the opportunity to discuss Responsive Organisation, Context Shocks and Responsive People.
30 Minutes I really enjoyed - and I hope you can find time to, too.
Thank you in particular to Mark Buchan and Si Alhir.
The further ahead you look - the faster you go | davidpcushman AT gmail.com | These are my views and my views only.
Showing posts with label responsive people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label responsive people. Show all posts
Friday, June 26, 2020
Thursday, June 11, 2020
The future doesn't just happen. It is up to you
There is only one scenario in which the future happens to you - the one in which you take no action.
The future is, quite literally, what you make it. It isn't some weird place, separate from us and our decisions. It is entirely the result of our collective response - our actions taken - to the present and our anticipation of our own needs and those of others in the context of now and next.
By its nature the future contains anything that is possible. If it's possible, it can happen.
Some of those possibilities are beyond our control (The emergence of a pandemic is a good example - and even in these it is our response that allows us to control our experience of them).
However - most possible outcomes are the result of our responses. We are imagining and deciding the future we intend to live in.
I am not dismissing the structural frameworks that limit the choices of many people now. I am saying the collective choices we make now are deciding how those frameworks get to impact the lives of people in the future.
In the future, our needs will be the same. The context in which we experience them will vary.
It is in our understanding of those needs in the emerging contexts of the future that we are able to shape the future we intend.
We can allocate our resources to probe for them, make sense of them and serve them.
This is the promise of the Responsive Organisation: It is not simply to test and learn all possible futures - it is to provide the mindset and ways of working to create the future you can imagine and intend. That is, one:
The future is, quite literally, what you make it. It isn't some weird place, separate from us and our decisions. It is entirely the result of our collective response - our actions taken - to the present and our anticipation of our own needs and those of others in the context of now and next.
By its nature the future contains anything that is possible. If it's possible, it can happen.
Some of those possibilities are beyond our control (The emergence of a pandemic is a good example - and even in these it is our response that allows us to control our experience of them).
However - most possible outcomes are the result of our responses. We are imagining and deciding the future we intend to live in.
I am not dismissing the structural frameworks that limit the choices of many people now. I am saying the collective choices we make now are deciding how those frameworks get to impact the lives of people in the future.
In the future, our needs will be the same. The context in which we experience them will vary.
It is in our understanding of those needs in the emerging contexts of the future that we are able to shape the future we intend.
We can allocate our resources to probe for them, make sense of them and serve them.
This is the promise of the Responsive Organisation: It is not simply to test and learn all possible futures - it is to provide the mindset and ways of working to create the future you can imagine and intend. That is, one:
- Informed by insight,
- Ignited by imagination
- Centred on the human experience
- Constrained by the resources and goals of the organisation.
- Your North Star Amid The Ambiguity of the Next Two Years: Learn, Learn, Learn.
- How To Respond To Context Shocks
- Learned Personal Antifragility
- Being Change - The Responsive Organisation Needs Responsive People
- The New Better of Work - The best of distributed teams and office life
- People Audits - When your people aren't coping
- Urgent Digital Transformation
- Accelerated Trend to Automation
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Being Change: A Responsive Organisation Needs Responsive People
Over the last series of posts I have illustrated the need to become, and the benefits of, The Responsive Organisation.
I have drilled into how to identify and how to respond to the Context Shocks from which a Responsive Organisation can benefit. I have provided a guide to developing and scaling its capability to benefit.
But, of course, a responsive organisation needs to be populated by Responsive People.
Indeed, from the lessons we learn from feedback loops, the responsiveness of the people who are the organisation will prove either dampener or accelerator to the responsiveness of the organisation.
I referred to the responsiveness in the individual as 'learned personal antifragility' in a previous post and recommended that those of us who had learned this, may hold some responsibility to share how, with others.
That is the intention of this post.
Engaging people in their personal journey of change is, in the reality of the complexity of organisations, entangled with the change of the organisation.
In the chaotic moments of Context Shock, of the kind we are experiencing through Covid19, the need to 'see what we do not see' is essential - and reliant upon the 'wisdom of crowds' that engaging everyone in the organisation can give you. Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework and its application to leadership through crisis provide ample evidence of the value of this.
A fine example of 'what we do not see' - and one shared by Dave - is this widely published image (below). 83% of radiologists miss the anomaly so don't feel bad if you do. Taken individually there's a very large chance it gets missed. But if you ask 100 radiologists it gets found (17 times being enough for you to take a closer look... at the Gorilla in the dark, top, right side of the lungs.
However, in the context of today's post I want to emphasise the purpose of 'asking the crowd' for its additional value in engaging people in change they can embrace.
Very simply the process for this is:
1. Identify and reach out to your crowd
2. Set the constraints of their observations
3. Capture their response as close to real-time as possible
4. Conduct your quantitative analysis
5. Spot the Gorilla and tell the crowd.
Now we have their attention (as well as useful emergence from weak signals to shape responses to the Context Shock).
The next step is to help them learn their personal antifragility. Your responsive organisation is reliant on people seeking learning experiences in change vs responding with fear. The more people you can take on the journey, the more you can amplify the positive benefits of the responsive organisation.
When Rory Yates and I reflected on what had given us some form of personal antifragility, the themes reflected in the slide above became clear (follow previous link for our validations).
With my 4-steps of Making Responsive People (above slide) I am seeking to replicate some of what we have learned from 20+ years in digital innovation and change.
1. Play: If you aren't a gamer and never have been, you missed out on some foundational stuff. We learned trial and error in a very 'safe to fail' environment. Let's close that gap in your psychological armour.
2. Feedback Loops: Properties on the web were so much more instantly measurable than anything that had come before. We learned to try stuff and saw, very quickly, what happened as and when we did. We saw rewards fast and that improved our responsiveness. So find what measures directly what you do, and measures it fast. Then, crucially, we must encourage and reward you to respond to what happens.
3. Positive Psychology: Recognise that most people fear change. They don't seek learning opportunities. They see threat in movement. It's natural. But it can be overcome. Programs which help people identify their 'Fixed Mindset' blindspots (see Carol Dweck's Mindset) can and do help us to change our approach to change. Building happiness through low-effort, high impact activities such as Yale University's (free and online) Science of Wellbeing Course gives us the tools of positive psychology to help.
4. Learn Through Doing: This is the essence of Being Change. But simply thrusting people at anything, from back to normal, to new normal, to no normal, without making them change ready, is a recipe for fear, unhappiness and dampened organisational responsiveness. You may identify some teams are ready to go straight to this step. Game-on for them . But they are in the minority. So for the rest, ensure steps 1-3 are conducted, then start your newly responsive-ready people on small, relatively low risk, test-and-learn projects with very small teams (5 works well).
Applied at scale you have tools to make your people, and with them the organisation, much more responsive.
I have drilled into how to identify and how to respond to the Context Shocks from which a Responsive Organisation can benefit. I have provided a guide to developing and scaling its capability to benefit.
But, of course, a responsive organisation needs to be populated by Responsive People.
Indeed, from the lessons we learn from feedback loops, the responsiveness of the people who are the organisation will prove either dampener or accelerator to the responsiveness of the organisation.
I referred to the responsiveness in the individual as 'learned personal antifragility' in a previous post and recommended that those of us who had learned this, may hold some responsibility to share how, with others.
That is the intention of this post.
Engaging people in their personal journey of change is, in the reality of the complexity of organisations, entangled with the change of the organisation.
In the chaotic moments of Context Shock, of the kind we are experiencing through Covid19, the need to 'see what we do not see' is essential - and reliant upon the 'wisdom of crowds' that engaging everyone in the organisation can give you. Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework and its application to leadership through crisis provide ample evidence of the value of this.
A fine example of 'what we do not see' - and one shared by Dave - is this widely published image (below). 83% of radiologists miss the anomaly so don't feel bad if you do. Taken individually there's a very large chance it gets missed. But if you ask 100 radiologists it gets found (17 times being enough for you to take a closer look... at the Gorilla in the dark, top, right side of the lungs.
However, in the context of today's post I want to emphasise the purpose of 'asking the crowd' for its additional value in engaging people in change they can embrace.
Very simply the process for this is:
1. Identify and reach out to your crowd
2. Set the constraints of their observations
3. Capture their response as close to real-time as possible
4. Conduct your quantitative analysis
5. Spot the Gorilla and tell the crowd.
Now we have their attention (as well as useful emergence from weak signals to shape responses to the Context Shock).
The next step is to help them learn their personal antifragility. Your responsive organisation is reliant on people seeking learning experiences in change vs responding with fear. The more people you can take on the journey, the more you can amplify the positive benefits of the responsive organisation.
With my 4-steps of Making Responsive People (above slide) I am seeking to replicate some of what we have learned from 20+ years in digital innovation and change.
1. Play: If you aren't a gamer and never have been, you missed out on some foundational stuff. We learned trial and error in a very 'safe to fail' environment. Let's close that gap in your psychological armour.
2. Feedback Loops: Properties on the web were so much more instantly measurable than anything that had come before. We learned to try stuff and saw, very quickly, what happened as and when we did. We saw rewards fast and that improved our responsiveness. So find what measures directly what you do, and measures it fast. Then, crucially, we must encourage and reward you to respond to what happens.
3. Positive Psychology: Recognise that most people fear change. They don't seek learning opportunities. They see threat in movement. It's natural. But it can be overcome. Programs which help people identify their 'Fixed Mindset' blindspots (see Carol Dweck's Mindset) can and do help us to change our approach to change. Building happiness through low-effort, high impact activities such as Yale University's (free and online) Science of Wellbeing Course gives us the tools of positive psychology to help.
4. Learn Through Doing: This is the essence of Being Change. But simply thrusting people at anything, from back to normal, to new normal, to no normal, without making them change ready, is a recipe for fear, unhappiness and dampened organisational responsiveness. You may identify some teams are ready to go straight to this step. Game-on for them . But they are in the minority. So for the rest, ensure steps 1-3 are conducted, then start your newly responsive-ready people on small, relatively low risk, test-and-learn projects with very small teams (5 works well).
Applied at scale you have tools to make your people, and with them the organisation, much more responsive.
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The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
