*This article captured the key points of the Lean coffee discussion held on 21 May 2020.
How do we accelerate to new business models while having to restructure?
The issue: how do we accelerate our understanding of new business models while we are having to deal with the challenging operational concerns brought on by Covid-19. This was an imposed, legislated change so we have to deal with it. How do you do so and provide good leadership while not compromising too much?
- While doing the urgent changes look ahead all the time to how this contributes to where we want to be as a business;. The Jim Collins flywheel concept, building momentum to move the change in the direction you want.
- The imposed changes have disrupted our longer term view, so is this sustainable?
- In this situation real conflict between short term cash flow focus, doing what we have to to get through and long term momentum for change. Difficult to have both mindsets simultaneously.
- We need to incrementally build towards the long term but recognise the need for some drastic short term measures to ensure that we are around for the long term. You need to understand where you are in the cycle because there is no mission if you can not survive.
- How do we organise ourselves to be able to do more with less?
- Infinite game concept – ultimate goal is to survive so you can continue to play.
- Remember you always have more time than you imagine. Take 5 minutes and think through your risks and trade offs – don’t just react.
- Chunk it down to bite sized pieces, e.g continuity phase, resilience, growth – which gives us time to think and see what are the most important things to do.
How do we cope in a Hybrid work from home culture?
The issue: How do we manage the immediate need to work from home and keep the organisation together.What does the future state look like and how do you get there?
- Hybrid work culture will be the new mainstream
- We won’t go back to everyone going into the office and this will impact how we will lead teams
- We are social beings and need face to face contact- if you don’t need to go into the office for work then is the role of the office?
- An example maybe 3-4-5 week (maximum 3 nights out of town, 4 days on the client site, 5th day in the office compulsory 1 day in the office per week- is this a possible model as we rethink “the office”. Corporates will need to find a way to keep the team cohesive. The office may become more about the collaborative aspect than “doing work”
- There is still an issue of people not feeling safe leaving home.
- Introverted /extrovert tension and how do you keep both groups engaged?
- Increasing emphasis on communication, virtually as well as physically.
- We need to keep motivated. People are working longer when from home at a level that is not sustainable.
- How do you encourage people to come in when people are afraid to? We need to work with the stage where they are at.
- To allow trust you need to know where they are at and to do that you need to have one on one conversations. We need to be aware of the mental health aspect.
- There is also a recruit/retrain opportunity/threat as our most valuable team members may realise their own value in the market now and that they could work from home for someone else.
- Are people going to start having multiple jobs/ everyone becoming a consultant?
- With the move to working from home will we move to a 4 day week?
- Portfolio careers as per Charles Handy and the Empty Raincoat.
What have we lost by not having serendipitous interactions?
The issue: how do we get casual, lucky discussions in an environment where we have to actively communicate i.e. make an effort to communicate vs casual interactions that just happen organically.
- Build on casual interactions eg the stuff daily quiz and then discussion arises from that.
- Need to create the opportunity for casual communication – it doesn’t happen by accident.
- Some use one platform eg Teams for formal interactions and a different platform eg whatsap for social interactions. Different chat rooms for the social side is one way to get a virtual water cooler and has the side benefit that your team gets more comfortable using the platforms. Not as good as a water cooler but it’s something.
- Introverts are loving this but extroverts definitely not.
- Now we have gone back to physical interactions, some teams have ditched Zoom and gone straight back to their old habits. It is a matter of willingness not just the technology.
- People who have worked through the lockdown have often been working longer hours and this has a real psychological effect and teams need help to be more disciplined at home – do we need to bring back the tea break?
- Everyone needs to be on the virtual conferencing even if they are physically in the same place. There is the need to establish a new norm so that those off site are not disadvantaged.
- There is a problem that deliberate communication is not by its nature serendipitous and this is a problem for fostering innovation. There is a need to do something though.
- Re reverting back to old ways is it because it is easier? How much is willingness and how much is it ease in using the technology? Why would they revert back? It is more habit and team dynamic than the technology. Deliberate facilitation is the key.
Do you always need to have a ‘burning platform’ and in this case a pandemic, to accelerate change that CIOs/CDOs /CEOs have been calling for some time now?
The issue: is a burning platform necessary to implement fast change or are there other strategies to make rapid change?
- Always take advantage of a good crisis! This has been a chance for IT teams to show how good they actually are – to increase their visibility. They didn’t become good overnight but now it is visible. Also a chance to look at where the opportunities are to add value to the organisation.
- The capabilities people have shown has freed up ITs ability to have different discussions with people. Take advantage of this crisis to get the ear of the executive.
- The idea of the burning platform is too negative as it is based on fear, uncertainty and doubt. Fear based change doesn’t create long term sustainable results. We need to change to a positive paradigm for long term results. Meaningful change does need a catalyst; it doesn’t happen spontaneously but it does not necessarily have to be a burning platform. Often if there is change without a burning platform it is due to a change in leadership or (more rarely) a change in direction of the existing leader.
- This is a situation which has been imposed, where we are reacting, and it is more about conforming rather than willingly changing. In this case there is no burning platform. The challenge is to foster the social contact that is necessary for creative thought (and change) to flourish. This is the next stage we are heading to.
- Without a burning platform how do you sustain change?
- Take advantage of the crisis to facilitate the need to change.
- Everyone wants change but no one wants to change. Attitude of “I’m ok it’s you who are the problem therefore you are the one who needs to change.
- Work on brain science and understanding people’s inbuilt drivers is changing how we think about change – we are naturally risk averse and we are very bad at judging risk.
- This (coved-19) is an extended challenge. We are a long way from the end.
Risks associated with the new Covid way?
The issue: we moved to 98% working from home overnight and there is the risk that in doing so we have slightly optimised suboptimal processes rather than optimising fully. The risk is that though the job got done there is still the opportunity to do better that we may be missing.
- Covid working from home is very different from normal working from home. Working from home with Covid-19 meant that there were children home as well as other distractions.This was a very different set up to a sustained working from home environment.
- Performance management issue – keeping focus on tasks that matter.
- You got to see more of the real person – is that a risk for some people? You got to see behind the mask – this deeper knowing may in turn lead to a better work environment. We saw behind the corporate armour, we heard the work voice and the home voice. Conversely families got to see our corporate persona!
- We saw a real work/ life symbiosis.
- Authenticity came through. Perhaps as barriers are broken down people and teams can be more effective.
How do we maintain the current openness versus freezing up again?
The issue: how do we maintain our current openness and the chance to have frank conversations vs freezing up again?
- We want to keep the real person rather than the work persona. The question is how do we do this?
- When we are more open we are also more vulnerable, as we get closer we also are more authentic and as we go back to the office we may lose that closeness. How do we bring it back?
- We need to put real effort into this if we want to keep it.
- Trust is necessary for high performing teams and you also need to keep “the why” clear.
- Leadership is critical to stop going back to how it was.
- We needed to change and digital now has a bigger voice as it is essential to solving some of the problems we had.
- There is a paradox in that we can find our authentic self through others and what they tell us but how do you do this in this environment? How do you create an environment that allows you to get a perspective on self.
- Need to focus on the opposite of ‘’look we are good at solving this problem”. Instead we need to be seen as part of the solution – tell us your problems and we will solve them. You have to back yourself. The bigger risk is managing the adrenaline – we need to look after ourselves. Be solution orientated.
- Referenced the book “Can you hear me? How to connect in a virtual world.” Takeaway message is that you can lose the context because of virtual communication limits – voice range is compressed so you lose the highs and the lows.
- You also miss many (most?) of the non-verbal signals. We lose the body language clues – which can be very frustrating for both sender and receivers and makes engagement difficult.
What didn’t happen as a result of the changes forced by COVID-19?
The issue: we were forced to be reactive but what should we have done if we had been able to stop and think? What didn’t we do because we were constantly reacting? Compared to Covey’s gap between stimulus and response we were more reacting than pausing and choosing how to respond.
- Some have been firefighting and others not – it is a matter of personal style and affects the type team dynamic you may be looking to build.
- We may be missing 2 opportunities from the kudos of managing the change to a virtual organisation. You see what happens when you get alignment focus and clarity of direction. Opportunity 1. Conversation around if you want sustainable change through use of an IT team these are the conditions that help us create change 2. How to get a bigger voice at the executive table. How do we capture these opportunities?
- Issue is that because it happened off site the senior executive team are not aware of the time and effort it took to get it done, the work from home is often invisible.
- May be a problem of being seen as great in a crisis but strategy sucks. We don’t want to be valued just for being good in a crisis. Much of the recent success was on the back of 2-3 years of continuous improvements but that forward thinking is not being recognised.
- How to get there? Key question.
- Share the stories. Utilise internal communications.
- How do you get people to listen when it doesn’t matter to them?
- Struggle to get the message across.
- Utilise lesson from Covey to first seek to understand and then be understood. We need to understand them as that then creates the environment where they can listen to us.
- The challenge around strategy is that it may not be as clear; whereas we understood what was needed in a crisis. Personality also comes to play – some like the bling and some like the substance. You need to position the message bearing in mind the personality of the person receiving it.
- Top teams succeed when they trust each other and know the person so you need to be interested in the total person and know more than what they bring to the business.
- People trust when they feel understood and listened to.
- You need an authentic connection to the executive and be able to talk about what it would have looked like if we hadn’t had these things in place as well as be able to present a plan to build on. These are tough non-tech conversations.
- Psychology – trust is leveraged in different ways. Do what you said you would do when you said you would do it is one way to build trust. You risk burning out introverts if they need to open up to all – but this is another (less threatening) way for them. Nb. Overselling and under delivering is the opposite of this.
Wrap up
- We need to remember that we are in a process that cycles and that there is still a long way to go – we are not even close to a new normal.
- The theory behind the number of people you can have close relationships with? 5 -15 – 55 – 150.
- There will be ongoing damage until you can open the borders and we will continue to struggle until then. We need to bring money into the country somehow and at the moment we have a closed economy.
- Organisations need to consider the mental health issues as we brace for more change and downturns.
- The other aspect of mental health to remember is that people need to take a break. We are a long way from normal and it is a long haul especially for those who have worked through.
- If we (IT) don’t have credibility at the executive table now then we never will have. Now is the time when we should have a strong cache. We need to convert the conversation along the lines that this is how we can deal with a more closed economy, ..this is the time to step forward and make a difference.
- We are in a resilience phase and need to be open to change. Look to provide solutions and remember that this (Covid-19) has a long tail.
- We all need to embrace domestic tourism.
- We all need resolve – this will get worse before it gets better. What does good look like?
- Remember the human element, leverage the face to face opportunities at level 2 too.
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