The birth of the business and the founders’ hopes highlight the DNA. The early and crises years add colour, athenticity and credibility. The recent past acknowledges the importance of current people and sets up a discussion of what needs to change. Click here for the guide on mapping history.
What can you do to make people happier at work?
The focus for a
knowledge cafe1 (facilitated by David Gurteen at Portcullis House in Westminster) threw up some valuable insights and reflections.
James Brown the business psychologist kicked off with some personal stories and highlights of the growth in poor mental health identified by the CIPD. For example, in 2017, 55% of organisations in 2017 reported mental health conditions have increased. The figure was 41% in 2016.
The knowledge cafe itself led to a great conversation. James has posted about it here. What I took from it was:
On this last point David Gurteen talked about how he was using Zoom to get high value conversations using the Knowledge Cafe methodology.
1 A final word to plug David Gurteen’s knowledge cafe. This is an open, conversation based approach to learning. Responding to a core question – e.g. what can you do to make people happier at work? – people gain insights in multiple small conversations followed by a plenary round circle. It is a very powerful approach for personal learning.
#knowledgecafe #mentalhealth #employeeengagement #resonantleadership
Every team, group and organisation needs clarity about its purpose. This chart explores questions that are helpful in uncovering purpose. Use this to start a quality purpose-defining conversation within a team at any level in an organisation, or within an association or community group.
Having a strong sense of Purpose that inspires people makes a real difference as our recent webinar explained. But on that webinar about creating and sharing Purpose there were lots of questions about terminology. It is clearly an area that causes confusion. Most clients need to spend time on this and many different companies use the terminology in different ways. Here are some useful definitions. What is important is that you decide what makes sense to you and then use the terminology consistently.
These are used interchangeably but think of Mission as What we are here to do and Purpose as Why. Mission for Google is: “To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,”
Samsung introduces a “why” into their Mission Statement: “To inspire the world with our innovative technologies, products and designs that enrich people’s lives and contribute to social prosperity by creating a new future.”
The “why” is important and it usually refers to who we are doing things for. It provides the inspiration. In other words, why the “what” is worth doing. For Google it is about making information available to everyone. For Samsung it is about enriching lives and creating prosperity.
Now look at Amazon: “To be the Earth’s most customer centric company where people can find and discover anything they want.” You see the same pattern of a What and a Why.
This is about what the world will look like when we are successful. Google describe their vision as “to provide access to the world’s information in one click.” Sounds pretty much like the mission to me. Both Samsung and Amazon describe their Vision as their Missions. But there is a difference. Compare how Oxfam and Vodafone describe their purpose and their vision”
Oxfam
Purpose: “To help create lasting solutions to the injustice of poverty. We are part of a global movement for change, one that empowers people to create a future that is secure, just, and free from poverty.”
Vision: “A just world without poverty: a world in which people can influence decisions that affect their lives, enjoy their rights, and assume their responsibilities as full citizens of a world in which all human beings are valued and treated equally.”
Vodafone
Purpose: “To connect everybody to live a better today and build a better tomorrow.”
Vision: “A converged communications leader, a Gigabit Vodafone for the Gigabit Society.”
There are differences but clearly there is a close link between why we are here and what the world looks like as a result of our presence. Both vision and mission are designed to help clarify and inspire.
Michael Gove famously claimed that Britain had had enough of “Experts.” Whether he is right or not a lot of change involves venturing into new territory. New ways of working require people to work together to learn from each other. The Ideas Exchange is an approach to learning used with members of the International Association […]
1. People want meaning not money People who spend money on others are happier – around the world. Giving is a universal human driver. “Pro-social spending and happiness” is a study conducted by Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton in February 2014. Research shows that people with more money are somewhat happier than those […]
On November 28 I met with a mix of IABC UK members and guests to discuss the challenges and issues raised by Fake News. Facilitated by the superb and provocative Ezri Carlebach people heard from five speakers for five minutes each. Spin and misinformation Jane Mitchell, is a specialist on business ethics, and she talked […]
Common challenges you’ve probably noticed
Digital development is demanding change in the way businesses are run and how they interact with their audiences and their employees. No matter what sector you’re in, you’re likely to be facing at least one of these challenges:
A solution starts with a conversation
Solving these issues requires processes that connect leaders, managers, project teams and front-line staff.
The traditional top down approach is hopelessly inadequate, especially in large organisations. A cascade approach is too slow when there are multiple levels of management and a complex organisational structure. “Top down” also contradicts the message that organisations need to empower their people to take more responsibility for the delivery of satisfaction and productivity.
Achieving that kind of collaboration across an organisation puts a premium on the need for quality conversations – conversations that help people work out how they can support strategic direction. The kind of conversation that encourages people to challenge, work out what they need to do to support change, and feel a high degree of ownership of the outcomes of the conversation.
Exploring the visualisation of strategy
Couravel has been using Big Pictures to help leaders define strategy and then to help teams engage with strategy. The power of visual representation of strategic and market issues is well proven. It was first written about in the Sears case study in the Harvard Business Review which introduced the Service-Profit Chain. At Sears, groups came to a better understanding of the marketplace and what they needed to do to support competitiveness by addressing questions posed by a visual representation of the High Street.
To explore its relevance today we asked 15 leaders from different businesses how developments in technology would affect their business in the next five years. Using ICA’s Technology of Participation (ToP) Consensus Workshop approach, they grouped their answers into seven main themes:
Transformation challenges to address
We then invited them to draw these themes and use their insights and imagination to create a synthesis picture in real time.
The textual list below presents information related to transformational challenges, while the picture conveys the same information visually:
What this gives the organisation is a visual representation of Digital Transformation and what it needs to do to navigate change.
To involve people in a conversation about how to respond to these challenges, the visual route represents an engaging starting point because it:
Conversations around the visual
What is more important than the visual are the conversations around it; and they must be well facilitated. The visual becomes the focus for a conversation whereas questions draw people out.
For example, questions we used following the ORID framework of ICA’s ToP Focussed Conversation method include:
Using pictures to lead the conversation around Digital Transformation
This led to some penny-dropping moments for people involved in the leadership of change. For example:
Rethinking how we think about change
We need to rethink the process of change. If we want people to let go of past practices we have to pay more attention to the way individuals respond to change. To encourage people to collaborate to define new practices, here are a few “must haves”:
Using the Technology of Participation facilitation approach and visual thinking tools such as Big Pictures, we can create the kind of approach to collaboration needed to support transformation.
This approach is valuable in most change situations including:
Visuals and support provided by David Gifford.
Storytelling is often seen as a communication tool to be used by leaders to influence an audience. But this misses one of the most powerful dimensions of stories – they are things that people, as social animals, have always shared and used to communicate deeper meaning. The sharing of stories has a powerful ability to […]
