The Testament of a Furniture Dealer

The Testament of a Futniture Dealer, by IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad. 

A skeleton of thinking behind perceived IKEA behaviors. 

A masterpiece. 

An appetizer quote to build your appetite: 

“No method is more effective than a good example.” 

 

The Source: here.

A brief recap of Stephen Denning's Leadership Storytelling TEDx talk

As Stephen Denning says: 

The most important role of leadership is to tell stories. Why? Because nothing else works.

Characteristics of a good story:

1. Share a True Story - not a Titanic story that hides important negative details
2. Be Positive in Tone - share a story with a happy ending, not to trigger the reptile brain of your listeners
3. Be Minimalist in form - let the listener imagine, envisage and discover how to implement details, because it's when s/he internalizes the idea as her own idea. And that’s what you want, that’s when you are off to the races. If it’s my idea only, says Denning, nothing much happens. Once it becomes their idea it is when they become champions).
4. Contrast pre and post change worlds - the story need to contrast the situation before the idea was implemented with the situation after the idea was implemented.

With big complex ideas you can easily get lost in the story and miss the point of the story.

For the full story one definitely wants to read the Stephen Denning's book: The Secret Language of Leadership.

Personal relation with "Your work is shit" leadership style

 I have a confession to make - I am a big fan of "Your work is shit" approach by Steven Jobs. It is so unpopular these days that I already feel guilty, passe and removed from your social media. Still here I am, making the confession to show my vulnerability in a hope to be understood better.

To understand where I am coming from you need to know that I am very demanding from myself. I have always been. As a result I am also very demanding from people I work with and live with. I reflected on this many times, asked myself questions how it influences my relations with others, how it influences my ability to co-create, etc. I explained to myself that I have the Achiever profile - I am fuelled by achieving. But I felt this explanation is not the whole story - that's only how it looks at the surface. Achievement is actually just a side effect of the real driver - the urge to become wholly embedded in solving a piece of puzzle. When I am solving a puzzle nothing else exists, aka the flow. This is how I engage in work. Till it's done. Then I can go out and socialise, eat pizza and drink beer. Until the next wave of urge to Solve comes. So more than an Achiever I am an Obsessive Solver, a Craftsman. Coming back to "Your work is shit" - this helps me produce better solutions - by challenging what I have done and my current approach. This helps me cross the boundaries and limitations and breakthrough to wider landscape of options. 

There is on more thing wrt "Your work is shit" - this frame is, in my honest opinion, very close to my favourite quote "The ABC of Business Decay" by Warren Buffet - Arrogance, Bureaucracy and Complacency. Especially the Complacency resonates between these two famous quotes. If I am complacent with my work it means for me that Complacency has reached me. And, as always, there are others working harder than myself while I am contemplating Complacency. 

I recommend starting every decision making, every option generating workshop by posing the "Your work is shit" frame - to open up discussion about how we can do it better. It is similar to another brainstorming technique by the Heath brothers - the Vanishing Options test. It goes like this: Imagine your favourite option is not an option given the situation. What are other options? It is also related to BHAG goal setting. BHAGs are goals that are not achievable by the current means and the current levels of thinking.

How all the above influence my desired identity of a Transformation Leader? Some will say, such confession crosses me out as a transformation leader. Honestly? I think there is a great match between being the Solver and being a Transformation Leader. A Transformation is a huge effort and it is supposed to take companies across a big river full of crocodiles to another bank. Such effort usually needs a BHAG goal to even risk it. And a realisation coming from the first attempts to solve it - that the BHAG is not achievable by the current habits, thinking and ways of working.

So here I am: suspected of being Achiever while actually being a Solver. Suspected to be a Toxic Leader while I feel a Radical Candor leader: I always care personally and yes I always challenge directly. 

Credits: Photo by Tamara Gak on Unsplash

Simple truths, episode N: Process is dead

Process is dead. When it comes to process everything has been said. Starting from theory of constraints, through Value Mapping, kanban, complexity theories, lead time & cycle time optimisations, dependency management, to the magic of incremental approach based on short iterations, incremental approach to delivery and product creation, goal and result oriented approaches, scaling, continuous improvement and operational excellence. 

In case of IT projects this knowledge shortened the software delivery live cycle from 3 years in 1980s to 1sec 2010s. 

Nowadays there exist multiple ready to use process governance frameworks that present enormous value and quality: Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, Nexus, Less, to name a few. They really do a great job.

What is more: everything can be done when it comes to process. Nobody has reached the process optimization end though. Not because it is impossible to optimize further - the options here are endless. Nobody has reached the process optimization end because on the way down this route companies discover issues on their way to their effectiveness that with time destroy the energy of the process improvement effort. Due to the attribution error, the issues are attributed to the process / framework itself and the framework gets blamed and accused that "it does not work for us". 

Yet the true reasons of not reaching expected effectiveness improvements lay somewhere else. The expected effectiveness boost is not reached because process is only one of a few elements of an effective company. It is usually the one that is explored as first. And it is usually the last one... Most companies begins and ends within the process optimization aspect. And if they try again, they try in the wrong way - they try to apply another process governance framework...

Given the above vicious cycle it comes as no surprise that the process area is the area of the biggest buzz and the best money for consultants, majority of which never needed to look and explore beyond the process frameworks. These guys will not make your organization effective in the long term. They are capable of setting up a delivery machine, but that is it. Where is human in this machine? This question remains unasked and unanswered.

Few companies and few leaders think wider. I guess you do if you are reading this. 

Process is the easiest piece of the organizational effectiveness puzzle for us humans. It is logical and tangible - natural food for our neocortex brain.

What needs to follow in parallel to implementing an effective process are the areas of 

• organizational culture - how we get things done here, 
• organizational design and architecture - how an organization supports flow of value, and
• leadership style - what mindset and behaviours leaders promote. 

These areas add ocean-deep and ocean-wide potential into the big picture. One can cross the barriers of the machine metaphor as the work in these areas is with people and for people. 

All four dimensions are complementary and all are equally important. They are also closely related - one cannot grow and reach higher levels of maturity without others growing in parallel. It was Michael Spayd who I learnt from the special name for this phenomenon - the idea of all four dimensions tetra-arising.

p.s. Thanks Maciej Rusinek for triggering me to articulate my thoughts!

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

Entrepreneurs that restore the common sense - Ricardo Semler

"The main thing I was looking for in the companies is How do you set up for wisdom?"

"We have come from the age of revolution, industrial revolution, an age of information, an age of knowledge, but we are not any closer to the age of wisdom".

With this classic from 2014 I am clearing my mind for a productive weekend. Absolute MUST HAVE for CEOs, HR and corporate middle classes. How much time you spent this week asking yourself how to set up your company for wisdom? Do you really need to follow the herd? Do you really have to accumulate first to give back later?

Clearly Ricardo Semler is our guru! His message restores the common sense and gives courage to free ourselves from the dominating perspective and status quo of the corporate world, and to hear and experiment with the natural intuitions.

Consciousness levels wrt Change

Whether it comes to a personal change, change of a leadership style or an organizational change - we all, or the leaders, or the organizations, spend our time at one of the three consciousness levels, ordered level of awareness from low to high:

Level 1: Ego Blindness - we do not see a need for a change. Characterised by self-importance, being ego-driven, inability to see at the situation from different perspectives, being in the comfort zone, arrogance, complacency, etc. No change is possible at this level.

Level 2: Denial - we believe a change is necessary, but it concerns "them" rather than us. Characterised by attribution error, confirmation bias, group bias, fear, status quo, being in the comfort zone, etc. No change is possible at this level.

Level 3: Humble Contribution - we understand that we are a part of the change. Characterised by systems thinking, responsibility, belonging, contributing to something bigger than myself, driven by a purpose, etc. Change is possible at this level.

Do not loose your chance to spend most of your time at Level 3! This is where you are most open for a change which and treat the change itself as an element of your personal growth.

Level 1 and Level 2 are comfy and addictive yet can become painfully disappointing in a long-term. But only for those who will be able to realize that by eventually free themselves from Level 1. Some "lucky guys" will never leave Level 1 and can still live a self-oriented life.

Sometimes I envy those who stay on Level 1... but just for an eye-blink :)

Simple truth about a need for balancing codification of best practices and fresh innovation

For all these companies that grow fast and try to codify their best practice into some sort of DNA, or just a palette of processes and routines, here is a simple reminder straight from John Kotter that codifying needs to be balanced with spontaneous so that the whole spectrum of personal profiles is represented and thus the diversity necessary for continued innovation and growth is maintained. Otherwise codifying simply filters a range of profiles, e.g. entrepreneurial profiles, out causing bias towards what is known. Clearly entrepreneurs, aka Pioneers, aka Innovators need less rigid environment and more freedom.

https://vimeo.com/74875986

On the matter of organizational and human limits

In my experience companies, teams and individuals very rarely exhaust the full potential of a particular method or a particular approach - what they keep reaching much more often and much earlier is the limits of will. This is where enrolment breaks down and people disconnect. As the proverb says: "Do not tell me it cannot be done, admit it straight away that you do not want to do it".Where there is will, people will find a way. No need to worry about a method. Just focus on your goal. This will free you from the strongest limits of all - the internal barriers you got used to believe in.

And when it comes to methods the rule of thumb remains unchanged - choose the right method for the situation at hand. One does not caress her cat with a chain saw... (well, unless it is Stephen King's novel...)

Manifesto for The New Economical Order

This is another post under the umbrella title of #resonateSummerSeries. Hope you are enjoying your personal time! I did enjoy mine and came up with the Manifesto for the New Economical Order this hot afternoon.

Being a big fan of Agile Manifesto, back from 2001, I think we need to leap ahead as the world needs us more than ever. We need to re-focus to the threats resulting from the ever-growing debt of human civilization.

When I think about the rescue paths for the mankind, it turns out the path leads through re-defining the purpose of the economy itself.

See the Manifesto for the New Economical Order @ https://www.resonate.company/newOrderManifesto

9th August 2020.

Minibook: The landscape of Enterprise Agile transformations

Hey, this time I feel really proud - I have published a bigger piece the enterprise Agile transformations! It is a minibook really, so I do not want to put it here as a blogpost - it would be killing long to scroll down :) Instead please find it in the Resource library of the resonate website.

This minibook is the second of three pieces I have planned in a trilogy on Agile. The first one is The Evolution of workplace and Future of Work.

Brief

There is an ongoing discussion in the Agile community about the Spotify model and the rationale for copying it. The discussion goes as far as saying: “There is no Spotify model, there is only the snapshot Spotify culture”. This statement seems to have become the fragile consensus and the equilibrium state for many Agilists. In parallel, there also exists physical evidence that the entity called the “Spotify model” exists. Starting off from this widely known motif I share my personal experience with Enterprise Agile Transformations. 

Price

If you are willing to support me financially you can also buy the book online. Or you can decide after reading :) 

Feedback

Anyway, let me know what do you think as it is fuel for me to share more.

Evolution of workplace & Future of Work map assets made public

We have decided to publish the map under the Creative Commons license (BY+NC+SA) and open the map for your voluntary contribution. Our intention is for the map to become a living documentary of the evolving workplace. Let us know your experience with it. More information here.

The "Evolution of workplace and Future of work" online course

My course on "Evolution of workplace and Future of work" is online. Enjoy! The course provokes a human-centric view on evolution of work and evolution of purpose of work. It helps you out of the hamster wheel of the single loop learning and encourages a deeper reflection on the purpose of business. It summarizes the evolution of work in the recent decades and state of Agility at the end of 2010s. In parallel the webinar equips you with a set of tools that will be useful to design your own vision of the future (Wardley maps, double learning loop). The webinar is for all people-oriented leaders and practitioners, including CEOs, Agile Coaches, HR officers that sense a friction between how their companies function and needs of employees and societies. For leaders who see limitations in how we work these days and look for inspiration for alternative ways of working: alternative ways of engaging people in their company’s mission, but also an alternative purpose of work in the first place.

Enjoy the free time-limited access promotion till Thursday, 9th April 2020. Here is the link:https://www.udemy.com/course/evolution-of-workplace-and-future-of-work/?couponCode=56A60A058160CD56F7BC

The Leaders' first ability is the ability to listen

"You helped us foster a culture of listening" - this comes as feedback from one of my clients. Indeed, listening is the first step to empathy. It is like breathing - one cannot function without those! :)

Organizational change always starts within individual people. And one of people's deepest needs is to be heard and recognized as beautiful. For this reason leaders' first ability is the ability to listen. Listen to hear, not listen to know when they may proceed with their own agenda. This is why we place Marshall Rosenberg's teaching of Non Violent Communication as the cornerstone of everything we do. Both at work and at home. hashtag#nvc hashtag#dialogue hashtag#leadership