Collaboration, communication, Decisions, Leadership

Get them to start talking

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 But more to the point, it was another suggestion, and the crowd in the reading room was breaking up into small groups along preferred language lines and starting to argue and discuss, to come up with ideas. Trying to help. I didn’t care that all the ideas were useless; we’d literally only just started thinking.

By Naomi Novik – The Last Graduate

Working with new groups, the important thing is to get them to start talking, sharing perspectives and ideas. Don’t focus on quality, reinforce the act of talking and listening. Each new group needs to learn  and decide how they want to talk and act. They need the chance to get to know one another both how people act and what knowledge, skills and experience they bring to the group. 

The biggest challenge to get a group going is not if people are quiet, it is if you have one or two people dominating the conversation. If they have more experience with the problem and use that to push their ideas forward too quickly then the group might get too dependent on them. I have often tried to identify these people beforehand and either talked to them and asked them to let people in or I divide the group into smaller groups where I either put all the talkative people in one group or try to place them in a group where there are people who can manage them.

Collaboration, communication, Learning, Personality

What are you passionate about?

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 But what if science isn’t your world? I admit, I don’t know whether people outside of my social sphere would care about this at all. I’ve spent my entire adult life embedded with scientists and the people who love them. I take it for granted that this sort of knowledge is cherished, is yearned for. And I am keenly aware that in order to tell you what we found, it required a thousand words of explanation before I could get to the crux.

by Becky Chambers – To Be Taught, if Fortunate

What are you passionate about? What have spent so much time thinking/working/reading/playing with that you know “everything” about it? I love to watch someone talk about their passions and what they find interesting. You can see how excited they get, and how they feel more alive. It’s amazing to see how a person or a group of people can get stuck in the small details that for outsiders feel completely irrelevant but for the people who care is the most important thing in the world.

It also has its downsides. If you are new to a group and just getting started. It can be hard to get in. You don’t have the history, the knowledge nor the language to fully take part in the discussions. This means that the group needs to work extra hard on how to include them. Let them make mistakes or say the wrong things without getting ridiculed. We all need to start somewhere. I think the language is especially important to teach to new people. Words have a history and a special meaning in organisations and they might not mean what you think when you get started. 

Failing, Learning

Learning requires failure

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“It might not be dangerous with this spell, but it’s a good habit to get into for future spell designs. Start with a fraction of the power needed to activate it and then work your way up slowly. Once you’re sure the construct is stable, you can test it at full strength.” “You knew that would happen, didn’t you?” accused Will. “It was a fair bet, but this was a safe spell for accidents, and accidents are the best way to learn.”

By Michael G. Manning –  Secrets and Spellcraft

In many cases it is better to let people learn from their own mistakes than to fix them before they happen. What we have to watch out for is how big the consequence is of the failure and if there is time to fix it. As a father when watching my kids jump, climb and play I often see them on they way to hurting themselves. If I feel they might break a bone then I will stop them but if it will cause some pain or a bruise it is better that they learn consequences and assessing risks. 

It is the same at work. As a leader or coworker you shouldn’t always stop someone from failing. Sometimes it is the best way to learn, both from what they did wrong but also from dealing and fixing the outcome of the failure. And if they can’t fix it themselves then they will have to practice asking for help.

Leadership, Learning, questions

But who will I ask?

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“You don’t happen to know what that was, do you?” Lindon asked hesitantly. “You’re asking me, but who am I supposed to ask?”

Will Wight, Soulsmith

Starting your journey as a leader or manager can be a lonely experience. Going from being a colleague to managing others, and feeling responsible for their success, can be daunting. To combat this, it is important to find new colleagues who are also managers or leaders. These peers can provide a safe space to discuss, ask questions, and learn together.

While you may have a great manager who can coach you, it’s not always the same as discussing with colleagues who are in the same stage of their journey. It’s important to consider what you’re learning, how you’re learning, and who you’re learning with. If you’re unsure about any of these things, take the time to find your answers.

Adaptivity, Complexity, Decisions, Organizations

Maybes and probablys

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‘Should?’ I asked. ‘The whole plan is built on a solid foundation of shoulds, maybes and probablys.

Mark Lawrence, Limited Wish

In many organizations certainty is rewarded. And people who don’t give a solid answer, but instead talks about uncertainty, probability, and assumptions are not listened to. Or they are asked to come back with a more clear answer.

We need to practice dealing in the maybes and the probablys. To become more comfortable in making decisions where we have weighed the risks vs rewards. And where test our decisions before we scale them up.

communication, Complexity, Learning, questions, reflection

Conviction kills

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Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills.

R. Scott Bakker, The Thousandfold Thought

When we get too certain of what is right, what we know, and how things should work then we stop asking questions and trying to learn. We need to question ourselves and our situation to grow.

When we try to understand ourselves, others and their situations then we start to empathize and connect.

It’s not about questioning everything, but to keep reflecting. Especially when we feel most certain or when someone says or do something that seems stupid to us. To ask ourselves, why does this make sense to them and not me?

As a side note: I had to check what begets mean before I understood what I read and maybe you do to: begets mean to cause or to produce an effect.

Adaptivity, Leadership, Learning, Resilience

Prepare to be spontaneous

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“One can never prepare for everything, but when one prepares for what one can, it’s much easier to deal with the unexpected.”

L. E. Modesitt Jr., Imager

Preparation and thinking about what obstacles might happen is not about predicting exactly what will happen and creating a plan that should be followed to the letter. It is about opening our minds to the unexpected and to create a culture in your organisation around adaptiveness, resilience, and learning. It is about accepting that we will fail, that things we didn’t plan for will happen and that we need to be able to act on it. By talking about obstacles and creating scenarios together for how to deal with them, then we are much better prepared when sh*t hits the fan and when there is no time left to think and you just need to act.

Uncategorized

Courage to admit it

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“He meant he lacked the courage, but lacked the courage to admit it.”

Joe Abercrombie, Half a King

One of the hardest thing there is, is to say no to your manager, coworkers, friends or your partner. To have the courage to say:

  • I don’t have the time.
  • I don’t think this will work.
  • I don’t know how.
  • I think that is a bad idea.
  • I don’t agree.
  • …

I think this is the reason that psychological safety has become so popular. We have been given a language to talk about what we feel and fear. It has made it easier to talk about it. Reducing the amount of courage it takes to admit it.

Learning

Keep learning

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“If you don’t feel like you’re going to die when you’re training, then you’re doing it wrong,”

Will Wight, Blackflame

It is easier for us to keep working in the same way as we have always done. Keep using the same methods, models, and tools. It is easy and we know what we will get. If we try something new, it will be harder, and we might not get the result we want. We might not get the result we want with how we did it before, but it would be easier.

It is easy to end up in this trap. And both we and our organisations are constructed to reinforce this: We strive for the simple and easy, and it is scary with new things and uncertainty.

We need to be persistent and focused to continue learning and developing. And we need to dare. Start with a small change tomorrow and see what happens, and then see what feels small the day after that…

Data, Decisions, Learning, questions

Too many dots

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“Too many dots,” Miller said. “Not enough lines.”

James S. A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

The last few years we have been given more and more data. Data-driven decisions is a buzzword in many businesses and people seem to trust you more if you say that you based your decisions on data. The challenge is that the more data we get, the harder it is to analyse. You need more time and more skill if you want to analyze large datasets, and it becomes easier and easier to make an error and come up with a wrong conclusion.

If you learn some basic data visualization techniques, then you will get far. And please stop calculating the average of all the data you get; most people have no idea what it means nor how dangerous that measure is.

Instead focus on a few dots, visualise it, and then try to draw some lines. Or try go talking to people…