Category: Uncategorized

“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.

There, as he leveled out his ship and sucked in cold gasps of oxygen, he was struck by a revelation: He was a better flier than Yrica Quell. But she was the better starfighter pilot.

Shadow fall by Alexander Freed

Just because you are great at a certain skill does not mean that you will be the best at getting the job done. Today, being great at one thing is not enough, we need many more skills to be successful in our work. We often look for the person who is the best at what they do, when we instead should search for the people who is best at applying their skill together with other people.

In this complex and messy world that we live and worked in today, we will never be able to create something meaningful by ourselves.

The rotten thing about having Mum as a mum is, I know how to stop being angry. I’ve been taught any number of ways to manage anger, and they really work. What she’s never been able to teach me is how to want to manage it. So I go on seething and raging and knowing the whole time that it’s my own fault, because I do know how to stop.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

When we want to change behaviors, we need to consider both if people want it, and if they have the ability to do it. Just because we can do it, we might not want to do it. Or in other cases we are highly motivated to change but we don’t know how, or we don’t have the resources. BJ Fogg has created an extremely simple and useful model for understanding and talking about behavior change. He says that behavior change comes from motivation, ability, and prompts. And if any of them are lacking we will not get the new behavior.

What I have seen in most organizations that I have worked with, is that in most cases what we lack is ability and prompts. Most people want to change their way of working or how they act, they just don’t have the skills, time, nor resources to do it.

Wu Ying gulped, realizing he was walking along the cliff’s edge of failure. Yet, perhaps the knowledge he was likely going to fail freed him. Knowing he would fail meant he had nothing to lose, and the fear of failure disappeared. There was no fear in certainty—just freedom.

A thousand Li: The first stop by Tao Wong

One of the key factors in psychological safety is that it is ok to fail, and this is also a reason that agile has become so popular. It is a way to break big projects down in small chunks where it is ok to fail each part, but in the end, you have created something bigger.

I think one of the worst things you can end up in is the organization’s most important project that must not fail. Then the stress kicks in, the worry increases. And then flexibility, innovation and creativity disappear.

I have given some presentations around the analogy between skateboarding and working in an organization. When you practice skateboarding you fall a lot. More often you jump off the skateboard when you realise that a trick will not work. But you rarely hurt yourself. Because you know how to judge if something will not work, and you have practiced falling.

Good managers need to train themselves and their teams how to jump off when things are not going to plan and how to fall without hurting themselves and the organization.

I love reading science fiction and fantasy books! This blog combines two of my biggest interests; reading fiction and thinking about collaboration, learning and adapting to change. I’m Marcus Degerman and I work at Incredible mess as an organizational developer, I also love reading science fiction and fantasy books. The quotes that I like or made me think ends up on this blog with some thoughts.

“… it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal.
Well, fuck them.
Make it personal.”

– Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

–

I think many organizations are starting to realise this simple truth. That we need to make it personal for people to be inspired and motivated.

This is true for marketing. If people feel that you just do business, then they will not be inspired. If they feel that you care about your product and your customers, then you can start a movement.

This is true for organizations. If your employees feel that you just do business, then they will not be motivated. If they feel that you care about your product, about your customers, and them then you can start a movement.