Evolutionary Provocateur

The Role of the Manager in Goal Driven Social Networks

Research done within Hewlett Packard by Dennis Sandow under the Knowledge and Innovation Network branch of SoL reveal that the social networks required to achieve goals extend far beyond the company rim to include those who bring passion and purpose to the task. Nick Zeniuk calls it follow the joy.

At the same time this raises the whole question of what the manager's role is. This is a question that Nick found himself facing with the Lincoln Navigator project. He realized that he was in a space of confusion over what he was supposed to do as the wildly creative team around him took off to create. Rather than step in, Nick chose to stop and reflect. This point of awareness is critical as it creates the space for conscious choice to be made rather then leaping first and looking at the results later...if that happens. Fortunately he was in a position to do so. it does not always happen that way. When Fujio Cho, President of Toyota was asked about the difference in culture between plant start up in the U.S. and Japan he replied that the biggest challenge in improving quality was to stop the line. Stopping the line had previously been a sign of doing a bad job.

It is interesting to note what we associate with action. Sometimes the best action is none at all. That opens the space for emergent knowledge by creating receptive space. Much of this rolls back to underlying beliefs and habits around how things work. The patterns tell you everything. It might work to do an organizational habit check every once and a while just to see how hard it is to let go of habits that no longer serve.  One tribe would regularly trade habits just to make sure they were overly attached to them. Not a bad idea.

Careers at the Crossroads - Personal Journeys Drive Organizational Achievement

For a long time careers were careers, nothing to get excited about. Everyone just did what they had to do. It was expected. For some, doing work you actually enjoyed was a bonus. For many, work was work and you made the best out of what was presented to you.

That formula for coming to terms with your career path is no longer functional. People have career paths with not one but many optional places to contribute their talent, particularly creative talent. Secondly, personal growth has become one of the most important values to employees. Your purpose in life, how it contributes, makes a difference to others through the expression of your creative gift unique to you is THE driving force behind employee engagement, behind the spirit of a business endeavor ... the energy that exudes from the company, which in turn, attracts customers and clients.

Which brings us to the crossroad.

Cellular biology explains that the limitations we hold in our subconscious belief system, drive our results 90-99% of the time. (A six segment audio interview with Dr. Bruce Lipton is posted previously). As you grow, remove your limiting notions about how the world works, you drive corporate or organizational achievement. It is as simple as that.

Would inventors have invented if they were convinced what they came up with would not work? Not so much. Companies are expressions of the talent AND the spiritual or energetic fuel that drives them. Companies who see themselves as victims of the marketplace tend to create that reality by missing all the signals. Companies who see themselves as survivors - doing what ever it takes to survive create ethical breaches left, right and center as that focus and message ripples through the communication channels. Companies who accept responsibility for who they are, what they produce, their relationship with their employees, and their relationship to the customers, community, society and the environment they function are powered by employees who have at minimum, accepted responsibility for creating the results in their life.

For people whose career is at the crossroads, this is the opportunity to ask: What gives me the most satisfaction in my work? What would i do if there were no limits? No yabbuts? To really assess the situation, head over to The Occupational Adventure and take the Career Quiz.

For the companies who pay these employees, this is the time to recognize that there is no such thing as talent management, IF management means control. This is the time to release that talent and support it in achieving more through collective endeavors. Much like a symphony where every note played creates a harmonic expression, companies who understand how to co-create with the talent and growth of their employees will create beautiful music.

The rest...well I am guessing that some of you have heard a symphony warming up? It is every instrument for themselves.

Feeling Safe About Being Unsafe

In a number of conversations lately, the idea of exploring conflict, blocks to progressive action, blind walls that prevent shifts to new levels all require going to the edge of learning. As my colleague and close friend, Jack Barnard puts it, creating the space where you feel safe about being unsafe.

What does it take to create that space? Mental thought won't do it. Mental thought is quite busy sorting things into valid-invalid; right-wrong; agree-disagree boxes. The trickiest competency in leaders of anything is to simply allow. Let the ideas in, take the conflict in - not by absorbing the dark energy, but by exploring what the whole thing mirrors back. What can be learned? What can be understood?

The magic of any space is partially the space itself and partially the energy brought into that space. Call it intention for lack of a better word. As a pro-facilitator, if i wanted to do creative work, taking the group outside on the patio was a much more productive venue than within 4 walls. Walls don't help creative thinking. Space does.

If i want group coherence to emerge then i take the furniture out of the room. The space that is left can be made round - this sets the intention of unity and provides the container for that to occur.

When you strip off the fear, feeling safe enough to be unsafe is about permission to play, not be perfect; to explore and not be right; to discover and not be certain. The security within the self that says you are OK to be you in this slice of time right now in the company of a group is platform for performance. Otherwise you might end up with one year's of experience 12 times. What is your relationship with being on the edge?

Global Source of Labour- Global Mindset Required

So i am cruising the web googling labour shortage blogs expecting to see news on how the strategies for handling the situation are moving along. What i find is news that is about 2 years old.

Interesting. The problem of filling the shortage of labour is complex i grant you but by now i was expecting to see some progress. This is not news.

So why the delay in action? I think it has something to do with mindset. Case in point, yesterday i attended a labour market forum sponsored by the Burnaby Board of Trade One of the speakers who places disabled employees in jobs interviewed an employer who hired one of his candidates. He had contacted 80 employers before he got to this one, who shockingly hired on merit and character, not on how they looked. Her paralegal employee was hired to type and file all of which she does incredibly well, only she uses her feet where most of us would use our arms. She fits into the workplace perfectly.

Closed mindsets will block out opportunities to hire youth, aboriginal, immigrant and the disabled quite simply because the ability does not look like it always has. Employees coming in with different world views demand a different work place. If you can't provide it, they can leave for one that does.

This makes employers must have an expanded way of seeing the world and an ability to be flexible, as Roslyn Kunin put it. Flexible training, mentoring, age, hours, how work gets done, location. Employers are not the only ones who require a wider mindset. Mature workers who seek to stay in the workplace must also be receptive to fitting into a different way work gets done. With technology the tool and virtual drafting boards the creative platform, the idea of being in control of everything is being replaced by the idea of co-creating with team players.

It will take a conscious effort to explore and dismantle outmoded beliefs to open the workplace to diverse perspectives so it works as a strategic advantage.

Do what you love and the money will follow.

We have all heard this at one time or another but when my regular email from http://raintoday.com landed in my inbox it had some interesting research that backed up the cliche. Check it out in the articles section here..Money or Fulfillment: which value should guide your business decisions? There are tons of useful articles on this site to help you market your business or work. The ebook that comes with the newsleter subscription has a great article on it about writing proposals from the talented Alan Weiss at www.summitconsulting.com The same message on the research is also posted at www.executivethink.com in an article called The Ambition Error: How it holds you back from success.

Back to Doing What You Love and the Money will Follow...the interesting thing about the research cited in the article is that the core basis for making the decision: money or fulfillment seemed pretty cut and dry but there are some nuances to that decision making process. There are also situations where making money to do what you feel is fulfilling at a deeper level, is still fun and interesting and feeds your heart and soul. It is about the fuel you receive from doing the work as much as it about the motivation for doing the work itself. When the situation is either money or fulfillment you have a good chance of burn out, stress, or a build up of anger and resentment. Employees suffering from burn out have simply given too much heart to a situation that has not returned their investment. I suspect road rage has a lot to do with anger from doing what you don't love to do being taken out on drives on the road.

More than ever it is important for employees and individuals to be guided by what nourishes their spirit: their sense of control, outlook on the world, and drive or initiative. I invite those reading this blog to share their stories on what happens when you follow your heart's passion to doing work you love.

Bungy Jumping and Innovation

Over at Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes are some excellent tips for stretching your own comfort with personal innovation. Simple stuff: like Eleanor Roosevelt's 'Do something that scares you'. It is where innovation starts...with each individual. The talk about innovation is somewhat distant from the climates that create it. Peter Fuchs, former Chief Strategy Officer with Accenture has an interesting article on Blast Radius's website entitled 'Selling Innovation to the C Suite-8 Rules for Successfully Championing Innovation in Mature Organizations'. In it, the point is made that mature organizations have more trouble innovating because they are carrying accumulated cultural baggage. 'Conventional Wisdom' gets in the way of possibility thinking. Conventional wisdom really amounts to beliefs that have become ingrained without questioning. As beliefs are taken apart to explore their origins, most are released and let go as they no longer serve any value. Taking this one step further Dr. Ehin from the Gore School of Management, captured 'fossilized mindsets' as one of the hazards of leadership limitation in several recent articles.

So what does all this point to? Personal innovation is driven by desire to be more, do more, push the envelope and the edge. Rigid belief systems and old baggage about how the world is or should be, pretty much have to be jettisoned for an open space of possibilities. The idea of stretching translates into morning exercises of committing to getting real comfie with uncertainty, flexibility. Rigidity of opinion, mindset are walls to creatively going where no one has gone before. Innovation is perceived as risky, yet in calculated measures is quite acceptable.

All this makes sense. What is interesting is that the spark behind innovation is as much about being able to 'see' the potential, the application, the value as it is about creativity. It is the eye for possibility that feeds the idea which in turn cranks the creativity wheels into full realization mode. NO matter how you slice it, personal growth and innovation are closely linked, otherwise how will you ever noticed that you are limited by belief, blocked by rigid thought, or trapped in the fabric of 'conventional wisdom'. Makes you look don't it!