Interview (in Polish): KRYZYS WARTOŚCI w nowoczesnym świecie - jak się ODNALEŹĆ? | Piotr Trojanowski

W dzisiejszym dynamicznie zmieniającym się świecie, gdzie technologia i biznes ewoluują w zaskakującym tempie, często zapominamy o podstawowych wartościach i równowadze między życiem zawodowym a prywatnym. W tym odcinku "Kryzys Wartości w Nowoczesnym Świecie", zgłębiamy tematykę holistycznego podejścia do życia i pracy. Rozmawiam z Piotrem Trojanowskim o tym, jak zarówno liderzy biznesowi, jak i każdy z nas może odnaleźć harmonię i sens w codzienności. Poruszamy kwestie sztucznej inteligencji, transformacji biznesowej i znaczenia pełni człowieczeństwa w nowoczesnym świecie. Dołącz do nas, aby odkryć, jak możemy razem budować bardziej świadomą i zrównoważoną przyszłość. *W filmie poruszymy tematy* Redefinicja Sukcesu: Jak nowoczesne spojrzenie na sukces wpływa na nasze życie zawodowe i osobiste. Rola AI w Biznesie i Życiu: Zrozumienie wpływu sztucznej inteligencji na decyzje biznesowe i codzienne życie. Zmiany w Edukacji i Biznesie: Jak adaptować się do przewidywanych rewolucji w szkołach i firmach. Wyzwania Transformacji Biznesowej: Przejście od status quo do innowacji i autonomii pracowników. Społeczne Skutki Technologicznej Ery: Dyskusja o nowym układzie społecznym w obliczu zmian technologicznych. Holokracja i Nowoczesne Organizacje: Eksploracja nowych modeli organizacji biznesowych. Równowaga Pracy i Życia: Jak znaleźć balans między karierą a życiem prywatnym w świecie pełnym presji. Duchowe i Emocjonalne Aspekty Biznesu: Znaczenie wartości, duchowości i emocji w podejmowaniu decyzji biznesowych.

Future of Work Talks S3E1: Janusz Leski: Focus on Collective Leadership Effectiveness

Focus on Collective Leadership Effectiveness

Organisations - including both corporations and start-ups - are usually established for a specific goal or purpose. Very rarely entrepreneurs want to build an organisation simply to have it. They want to accomplish something meaningful and important. Organisation’s purpose, more noble than to generate profits, is critical for its sustainability and for the impact it can have on its customers, employees and the society. We assess organisation accomplishments through its business performance or business effectiveness which should not be reduced to financial profitability. Organisation’s achievements can be assessed by the way it brings its noble purpose or vision closer to reality. This is also important from the point of view of the organisation’s sustainability. Business effectiveness is correlated with leadership effectiveness. Leadership Circle Profile methodology analyses leader’s effectiveness in relation to leader’s natural, protective or reactive tendencies, and creative competencies. Effective leaders have certain sets of both. The biggest impact on business effectiveness has not leadership effectiveness of individual leaders but, and this is extremely important, collective leadership effectiveness of the leadership team. I will explain why this is so important especially in modern organisations which are Complex Adaptive Systems. I will also analyse what it means to be a team - to be a good or effective leadership team. I will propose creation of a Deliberately Developmental Ecosystem (DDE) or Deliberately Developmental Organisation (DDO) as a way to build effective leadership teams. After describing the nature of DDE and DDO, I will explain why this is not an easy journey and what can help us to be successful on the way.

Janusz Leski (ICE-EC) is Transformation Leadership Coach, Enterprise Agile Coach, Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) and Collective Leadership Assessment (CLA) Practitioner. Janusz helps leaders to grow and transform their organisations. Currently he is Senior Agile Coach at Ørsted, a company with a vision to create a world that runs entirely on green energy. Previously Janusz led from the start an agile transformation in a large financial institution. He transforms organisation leadership and culture to make organisations more successful and resilient in the Volatile Uncertain Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. He assists organisations with becoming more value focused, increasing collaboration and supporting people development. He stands for being an authentic and integral leader. Janusz serves our shared humanity - we can be human only together.

A gift to welcome you into 2024!

Here is a gift from me to welcome you into 2024!

To celebrate the upcoming 1st anniversary of Good Companies book release I offer you a free copy of its kindle edition. Spread the word! #goodcompanies

I appreciate following me or resonate.company profile in return. Or simply visiting https://www.resonate.company website. Thanks!

A word of encouragement: If you are planning a sabbatical or hesitate to prioritize what has been on your mind, but you never had time, resources, or courage to do it, just do it!

For me, the time of writing the book and ever since it got published has been transformative. I have made sense of decades of my experiences, redefined my future trajectory, and rebuilt myself personally. Everday this experience brings joy and sense of integrity. I would repeat it with no hesitation!

The best things in life are not things. It is all about fulfilling yourself. I'm happy to help you! I'm happy to talk about Good Companies! 

And I am currently planning my engagements for this year - I am back on the market, #opentowork, happy to talk. Get in touch. I have never felt more ready to play a role of IT Director, or in general a role in a senior leadership of a technological company.


Time limits: 10-11 January. Available at your local AMZN website.
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSKH47LW

An epigram on Good Companies.

Hey, Product gurus! 

Help me understand: Have we been helping to build the wrong thing for the last 20 years? Have we been optimizing companies for the wrong metrics? Why haven't we seen the elephant in the room? I guess, apparently we were in the elephants stomach...

Why haven't we noticed the uber-container, in which companies reside, is flawed and needs rethinking? The economy, I mean. It serves the wrong purpose. And thus companies do.

We tried to play a good game in the wrong pitch. I have learnt it is called Agent - Arena mismatch. 

I shape this epigram for you to spread: 

Instead of optimizing companies within the current economy, fix the economy to let companies regenerate themselves!

Happy 2024! I have a feeling it will rock!!!

AI & Developer Productivity

The biggest impact of Gen AI I have experienced so far is its support in developer's productivity. Coding feels really friendly these days thanks to #pairprogramming with Gen AI ! It feels like a reincarnation of the #extremeprogramming concept, yet this time you partner with the accumulated knowledge of the whole software development community as your peer. Just amazing!

Now, how far is your organization from this Developer's Nirvana? #developersnirvana

p.s. yes, I remember the times of C++ coding without STL library...

p.s. A tiny helpful thing to check out too - ML support in Code Review process - https://blog.research.google/2023/05/resolving-code-review-comments-with-ml.html

Surviving service market collapse together!

When I (re)started my consulting career at the beginning of 2020 I was so pleased to be on my own again! The feeling of the wind in my hair, endless opportunities, and being a skipper of my own fate. After 4 years it still feels natural for me, it reflects who I am. However, these 4 years turned to be the most challenging period in my career. First due to COVID-19, and this year, 2023, due to the effect of "the most expected recession ever" when companies literally cut all budgets to their roots.

I have been working in IT industry for 20+ years: I followed a technological career path for circa 12+ years, then got involved in running teams and projects, then I evangelised all the best practices of IT, software engineering practices, starting from XP, ending at Enterprise Agility, to massive companies that were lagging behind the innovation levels of their competition. In a way similar to many IT people, I was pulled out from IT work to play a bigger, "societal" mission to help those companies catch up. And then the mission was exposed to the market conditions of 2023. 

Instead of doing purely the domain work I spent a significant portion of my time on pre-sales and marketing activities. (By the way, allow an off-topic here: this is why I claim that companies should replace hiring for positions with hiring to a distribution of roles, where, as in our personal lives, we play multiplicity of roles. Positions are oftentimes to rigid structuring limiting value generation and contributions).

Here are the lessons learnt that I feel I should share with my peers: advisors, contractors, small boutiques, expert think-tanks, etc.

1. You are still the same valuable (wo)man! Your knowledge and expertise are needed. It's not the right time of the cycle though. 

2. Don't panic. Understand and respect the market cycle. There are things you can control, things you can influence, and things that concern you (which you cannot change).

3. Invest in yourself - as countries extend their engagement in public service work during crises, you should also invest in yourself. Get ready for the new cycle! Refresh your value proposition - the market will require more in the new cycle as the overall body of knowledge grows and experiences from the past are processed and transformed into new ideas and needs. 

In my case, for example: I passed SAFe SPC certifications (never needed it - my experience was self-explanatory). I have caught up on th AI / ML trends and progressed on the Google Cloud Machine Learning Engineer Path towards Google Certified Professional exam. (it's been great fun by the way to see all the concepts that were "theoretically possible" when I was a student, implemented at an enormous scale).

4. In parallel - refresh personally: first close all open loops from the past. Process experiences, accept them. Look for what new qualities have emerged through your experiences. Find your preferred channel, reading, writing, physical activities, art, and leverage it to process the cloud of thoughts into clarity. 

In my case, my natural channel is writing (check out my Good Companies book, available on amazon) and (amateur level) sports. 

Before jumping into new endeavors, you need to understand, refresh your understanding, who you are, who you want to be, where your skills are, where your interests are, where your values call you. As they say: start with the end in mind.

5. Take special care of and pay special attention to your relation with your life partner. They may not be fully aware of the sources of your changed behaviors. Put yourself in their shoes and see how this "infected" you infects them, their stability, their roots, so that they do not lose ground under their feet - they are used to relying on you, they have relied on you for years. 

For example: I took my wife on a trip to Paris that we have been postponing for years. This was the best trip ever!

6. Network heavily - during recession there are plenty of people who lost their jobs or contracts. It's not an easy time and you may not want to go through it alone. You also may not want your peers to go through this alone. There is a certain level of pressure coming from societal norms for those labelled as "unemployed". For me, historically, the network has been the most effective source of work. 

Again, what I did in this area: I promised myself to reach out to one person I used to work with in the past every weekday. It really feels great.

p.s. I am planning a separate post on what I did with the blessing of more free time that was usually the case.

Credits: Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

InfoQ article: How to leverage Good Companies to Fight Civilizaitonal Debt?

After my #XP2023 talk, Ben Linders led me through the process of publishing an interview article on InfoQ about my ideas from the Good Companies book (available on amazon). Not an easy task, but here it is. I learnt a lot!

Thanks Ben, I do appreciate!

Here is the link: https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/11/good-companies-civilization-debt/

#goodcompanies #infoq

Whole-Mind Thinking by Alan Seale and my renaissance of Human Integrity

One of the books that took me by surprise is Alan Seale's Transformational Presence. 

I may say I have a resonating relation with this book. The book first surprised me with novelty of its narrative, then gave me relief that I was not alone, apparently not the only one who thought this way, helped me make sense of what I had sensed yet could not name for a long time, equipped me with a frame and vocabulary to use, and gave me strength to talk about the new perspective I learnt openly. 

I am grateful to Alan for enabling all those above-listed personal developments of myself. 

I am also surprised what a strong mark the social formatting I received in childhood left on my mind. For years I was not aware of this transparent layer of norms through which I was perceiving the world.

Examples of my discoveries in the book are The Whole-Mind Thinking and the The Whole-Being Awareness. They are central concepts which put together define the mental frame presented. I pictured the essence of The Whole-Mind Thinking on the poster below while I leave it to you to find out what The Whole-Being Awareness is.

I used The Whole-Mind Thinking in my book Good Companies to illustrate the wholeness and architecture of human intelligence in the first transformation story: Story 1: Renaissance of Human Integrity. 

I believe Story 1 is the most natural place to start the transformation - in order to transform the world, we first need to be strong and integral ourselves. The mission we need to accomplish needs us strony and integral! 

The Integral Economy Framework

Transformative efforts in companies require a lot more than changing behaviors on the surface. Nothing new. Without a deeper change, new behaviors by themselves won't last long. Nothing new again. A more enlightened approach calls for understanding the invisible forces, principles and assumptions driving companies. They originate from the principles and assumptions of the economy. The why of the economy, in turn, originates from how societies understand the meaning of business. Finally, the meaning of business originates from our understanding of our needs as humankind.

Let this iceberg help you adjust the course. It will tell you why transformations struggle. It will open up a space to lead the dialog on the necessary change. I call this iceberg The Integral Economy Framework.

The Integral Economy Framework helps understand the visible behaviors of companies as a result and a consequence of the deeper / hidden levels of logic that we have created based on our wisdom.

Every existing model of the economy can and should be evaluated using the Integral Economy Framework, first as its validation, second to ensure transparency of all levels of its logic, not just the level of Business Behaviors of companies. Only full transparency allows to assess coherence and intentions of a particular economy model.

Conclusions. A transformation is required on a much deeper level. This transformation is not about how we do things, aka "Speed & Value", but why we do things and what the meaning of the things we do is. 

Once you can see through stereotypical biases and get it right, there is no way back. Once the deep shift happens, it becomes easy to build on the deep change, help it bubble up and manifest itself in behaviors of companies.

Throughout this year, 2023, I speak and run workshops about Good Companies Economics, based on my book, about the most important transformation, the one which is closest to my heart.

Wroclaw, Poznan, London, Amsterdam and Warsaw. Next is Scotland, and then Copenhagen.

I am thankful to these who help me spread the news.

Role of Leadership Teams at Scale

The role and nature of leadership differs depending on the size of a company.

In small companies, everyone is a leader. People have direct access to the Source - the primal purpose of the company. Oftentimes, they were among the initial cohort that founded the company, or were hired as the first after co-founders. In such an environment, it is natural to be driven by purpose and play multiple roles. Thus, it is natural for everyone to be a leader and participate in the organic dynamics of peer leadership and situational leadership, stepping in and out of this role based on skills and interests. I call this leadership dynamic, an organic leadership.

This is by far my favorite environment, which mimics life dynamics very closely. Notice that in our lives we play multiple roles, e.g., fathers or mothers, husbands or wives, shoppers, chiefs, renovators, taxi drivers for kids, romantic lovers, etc. Also notice how we share the leadership role with our partners, neighbors, and local communities.





What about leadership in big companies, a.k.a. leadership at scale? To some extent, big companies can copy the blessed dynamics of organic leadership from their smaller cousins. The divide & conquer principle is a mechanism to achieve this via tribalization and delegation.

As long as big companies understand the natural beauty of organic leadership, and would like to copy the dynamics, there are limits to this copying. The vertical structure is a clear limitation. As long as organic leadership can blossom on a single level of an organizational structure, it is difficult to replicate it across levels. Leadership at scale enforces intentional leadership - senior managers need to assume they will not be able to interact with every individual and every team directly. The techniques and tools of communication need to take this landscape characteristic into account.

Hierarchy and structure introduce containerization and divisions, which define boundaries for organic leadership. The further up the hierarchy we take into account, the more pressure and ego are at play, and the more individuals are expected to impose their will and control to deliver the results expected by shareholders. Inevitable division between the powerful and the powerless starts to play a dominant role in defining the style of leadership.

In parallel, as another limitation of structuring, big organizations are simply addicted to imposing strict and narrow roles & responsibilities, fixing the scope of their expectations of individual contributors to be experts in one or few disciplines. This is already visible during recruitment processes, which are usually focused on hiring individuals possessing specialist skills ready to be exploited here and now. A talent-oriented approach to hiring is, in my experience, a myth. Conformance to the existing culture and leadership style is oftentimes a non-verbalized requirement.

All the circumstances above act as filters that narrow down and weaken the will and opportunities for individuals to use their organic leadership.

Accepting, for the sake of this discussion, that these aspects exist as a part of the reality of big companies, the question about the role of leadership in big companies remains relevant. Senior leadership teams still have a key role to play. It is a part of their responsibility towards each single individual who spends their irreversible time trying to contribute to a company.

In my opinion, the key role of leadership at scale is to tell a compelling story. A story of why it is important that we are all here and of what it enables in the future. The compelling story opens up and enables employees to build their identity as employees of a particular company.

Identity is one of the highest levels of the Dilts neurological levels model.

Employees driven by their identity are attracted to the goals of a company with unmatched strength. They are able to go through daily burdens and systemic crises much easier. In fact, to some extent, they are liberated from focusing on what’s not working and focusing on what needs to be done. Such reframing makes their lives easier and makes them see the meaningful goal and not the obstacles. The story enables them to grow.

Identity bonds individuals with organizations, makes it easier to socialize, to feel needed, and, in the end, to contribute. Identity is born of a compelling story provided by a leadership team. If you are a leader, start your day contemplating what story you offer to the people you lead. How do you express the story, and most importantly, how do you live this story?

The task seems simple, yet it gets obscured easily without proper attention, reflection, and action. Maintaining your ability to be consistent and persistent in sticking to the story you share requires a dedicated effort. Make sure you devote proportionally relevant time to this task individually. Make sure you devote proportionally significant time to this task as a leadership team. Invite HR people into this conversation. Make it a habit. Etc, etc. I am sure you can handle the how and have plenty of your own ideas by now.

As an executive coach or advisor, make sure to prioritize maintaining the leadership story on the leader’s agenda. It has a higher chance of paying off in the long-term than many of operational activities you need to support, like performance optimization, urgent interventions, crises management, etc. Establishing the mechanism propelling a compelling story will make your work more fulfilling, not to mention - easier. I argue that a compelling story is a necessary condition in the journey of creating a healthy organization.



Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

This article was also published on my LinkedIn page.