Elements of Change

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve looked at the catalysts for change as well as the role choice plays in igniting the transformation process.  And though our failures often inspire us to make a change, motivation alone will not be enough to nurture and sustain our goal over the long-term.  Transformation requires more than just the spark of inspiration, it needs fuel, and this energy source must come from within.  No external source – whether family, friends, or institutions – will ever be strong enough, will ever last long enough, to see us through to the end.  This elemental fuel comes from within and when it is purposefully applied leads us from good intentions to meaningful actions.  These elements are courage, risk, and honesty.

Courage is almost always understood in the context of fear, and whereas courage is understood as a virtue, fear is usually regarded as a weakness.  Courage, however, is not the absence of fear and without fear courage has no value.  A. C. Grayling makes this point in his book, Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age.  “Moreover, courage can only be felt by those who are afraid.  If a man is truly fearless as he leaps over the enemy parapet or hurls himself into a rugby tackle, he is not courageous.  Because most people fail to recognize this simple fact, the true quantum of heroism in the world goes unrecognised and therefore unrewarded.  The quaking public speaker, the trembling amateur actor, the nervous hospital patient submitting himself to needles and scalpels, are all manifesting courage.  ‘This is courage in a man,’ Eurpides further said, ‘to bear what heaven sends.’  Actually he said ‘to bear unflinchingly’, but by this addition he spoils the sentiment, because if courage requires fear, then flinching is perfectly in order.”

Fear, I think, is a gift and like failure it is often a great motivator.  But motivation is not enough.  We have to act and acting requires courage.  Most of us fear change; but if lasting, meaningful transformation is our goal then we must stand our ground.  We must courageously – not fearlessly – face each new day.  We must act in spite of our fear and not make the mistake of waiting until we are unafraid.

Closely allied to courage is risk.  Risk is frequently associated with chance or with what we cannot see or anticipate; and I think the underlying emotion tied to risk is vulnerability.  Vulnerability, like fear, is often seen as a weakness.  It is something we work very hard to hide from others.  A thousand years ago this was part of our survival instinct.  Living behind walls of stone was far safer than dwelling in a thatched cottage in the middle of a wheat field.  But there’s also a positive, even necessary, side to vulnerability, which I only just discovered this past week while browsing through the presentations on TED.com.  Quite accidently I stumbled upon an inspiring and deeply insightful presentation by Brene Brown on The Power of Vulnerability.  If you have the time I encourage you to listen to this presentation.  In fact, if you’re short on time, I suggest you stop reading right here and just head over to TED.com.  The central idea in Dr. Brown’s presentation is that without vulnerability we cannot be whole, we cannot feel connected, we cannot ever fully be ourselves, and I would add, we cannot really change.  Here again failure presents us with an opportunity – not for shame, which is far too often the case – but an opportunity to be open, to be vulnerable, to risk taking a different path.  But if we shun this feeling, if we reject openness, connection, compassion and courage, then the opportunity for change will be lost.  We will remain stuck in the routines and patterns that lead us back again and again to the same failures.  Courage, then, is not only a friend to the fearful, but also to all those who would embrace vulnerability and risk change.  But courage alone will not be enough.

Vulnerability also requires honesty.  Self-awareness is the key to our ability to be honest, both with ourselves and with others.  What we do not know about ourselves we cannot possibly hope to change.  In the first act of Hamlet, as Laertes was setting off for France, his father Polonius enjoins him, “This above all: To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou cans’t not be false to any man.”  But from the day we are born we are taught the very opposite of this truism: Follow the rules.  Be like everyone else.  Don’t be different.  Go along to get along.  And sadly we do, without even realizing it, until we no longer know who we are or what we want.  And we spend our lives chasing only the shadow of our dreams because we have come to believe that our real dreams are too ambitions, to unconventional, too silly, too impractical, too whatever.  But coming to truly understand who we are, and what we want, and why both of these things are important, opens us to the possibility for real change.  James Hollis makes the following observation in his book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up.

Some of us, understandably, do not wish to hear even this message of hope and personal growth.  We wish to have our old world, our former assumptions and stratagems reinstituted as quickly as possible.  Most of us live our lives backing into our future, making the choices of each new moment from the data and agenda of the old – and then we wonder why repetitive patterns turn up in our lives.  Our dilemma was best described in the nineteenth century by the Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard when he noted in his journal the paradox that life must be remembered backward but lived forward.  Is it not self-deluding, then, to keep doing the same thing but expecting different results?

For those willing to stand in the heat of this transformational fire, the second half of life provides a shot at getting themselves back again.  They might still fondly gaze at the old world, but they risk engaging a larger world, one more complex, less safe, more challenging, the one that is already irresistibly hurtling toward them.

Paradoxically, this summons asks us to begin taking ourselves more seriously than ever before, but in a different way than before.  Such self-examination cannot proceed without, for instance, more honesty than we have been capable of.  Living within a constricted view of our journey, and identifying with old defensive strategies, we unwittingly become the enemies of our own growth, our own largeness of soul, through our repetitive history-bound choices.

Change – genuine, meaningful transformation – is hard and often requires heroic effort, which is why the virtues so often associated with heroes include courage, risk, and honesty.  Fear and failure may prove to be the motivation behind our efforts to change, but without these other essential elements we cannot hope to maintain the commitment – the fire – required over the days, weeks, months or years it may take to reach our goals.  Be courageous and stand your ground; choose risk over comfort – embrace vulnerability; and be faithful to yourself and to your dreams.  These are the elements that will sustain and nurture your transformation.

Your job is to make your boss look good

I’ve always believed that my job was to make my boss look good (but not to make his/her life easy ).

h/t to Patty for making it top of mind this week.

My team must believe this as well, as they are always all over this.  In my job there are an enormous amount of metrics to hit.  You can imagine, doing a large and ambitious project makes scorecards important.

Being a data company of tech geeks, makes metrics a bit promiscuous.

My team is so outstanding that I must confess, I rarely check my metrics.  I know they are great because my team is great and they will tell me if there is an issue I should know about.

Making my boss look good is a bit more complex than meeting metrics.  For him, that’s table stakes.  What makes my boss look good is delivering a set of products that make people take notice.  Products that deliver measurable business value. Products that inspire, amaze and highlight the unique value of his organization.

and so, this is what my peers and I do — we focus on getting it right and making it happen.

Some days this lofty goal seems completely out of reach — some days we surprise ourselves with our own success.

and then there are days when you achieve a grand slam –  an opportunity to make not just your boss but his boss and his boss look good.  Those days are great days. Those are the days you are reminded that it was worth the fight.

Those are the days that will pay off in much bigger ways than looking good yourself.

I wish you all the joy that comes from making someone important to you look good.

It rocks!

Feb 21, 2012 – Are you ready?

According to phonecount.com on Feb 21, 2012 (give or take a couple of days I guess…) the number of connected phones will surpass the number of people living on Earth. For everyone that doesn’t have a phone, someone will have two.
Just think about what people would have said if you predicted this 10 or 20 years ago!
I’m sure this already has a profound impact on most people’s life in many ways, but let me just focus on the possibilities for corporate HR programs.

Self Service
Lots of organizations have ripped the benefits of Self Service in their HCM program.
The administrative work has gone down; the HR data are more accurate; it’s easier for the users to get access to information; the user acceptance has gone up and the cost has come down – all well and good if the employees have access to a computer…
But with more and more people having a mobile, we will see the benefits of Self Service come to a lot of areas where people do not have access to computers like retail, production and transport.

Communication
With the widespread availability of phones the management has got a new direct communication line to all of their employees.
Want your employees to know about a new product; a new initiative; reward someone; tell everyone how it’s going… a message on the mobile is the answer. 

Surveys
It’s now possible to get feedback from your entire workforce whether they have access to a computer or not.

Education
Using mobiles for education for people who would otherwise not have access to education has enormous potential.
I would even go so far as to say that the right use of mobiles for education for organizations with employees without access to a computer could be THE competitive advantage that would define whether an organization would be successful or not!

Even if I find these possibilities very exciting, I’m sure there are other areas that could be added to this list.
I would love to see your comments on what other topics within HCM that could be helped or advanced using mobile devices!

 (Photo by Brandon Hall)

My Career Story gets interesting …

Amy Wilson: Risk-taker?

As Jason Seiden suggested long ago, I’m screwing my career path and living my story.

Today I say goodbye to TalentedApps and begin my new online life as Shiny & Useful.  In parallel, I am bidding farewell to Oracle after 13 wonderful, continuously challenging years (6 at Oracle; 7at Peoplesoft) to start my own research and advisory firm Wilson Insight and to join Constellation Research, a highly esteemed group of independent analysts.

In making this decision to take a giant career leap, I asked myself a few questions.  This being TalentedApps (a primary source of career advice for us all, let’s be honest), I thought you might be interested …

Am I risk averse?

The prospect of giving up a steady salary, a well-crafted organizational infrastructure, and the comfort of knowing how to do my job well may be considered “risky.”  I certainly thought so!  And so, my first question to myself was “am I the kind of person who takes risks?”  Chris Melching, of Power Camp fame, asked me this question awhile back.  I hedged, and said something about creating  opportunities for myself that allowed me to choose change.  I had indeed made major shifts in my career, moving product lines (Financials to HR) and moving functions (consulting to development to strategy).  But the thought of striking out as an entrepreneur on my own?  No … safe to say, I fell in the risk-averse category.

Is this risky?

Given my general risk aversion, I needed to determine just how risky this opportunity was.  As I thought about it, I realized just how much support I had – coaches, sponsors, friends, network, family.  In fact, I have huge support in taking a giant gamble – it’s sort of like playing roulette with bumpers.

All in all, not that risky – but I did need to figure out just how I felt about success and failure.

Can I imagine myself in the role?

It’s really important before you take on a new role or responsibility to imagine yourself doing the job – imagine the skills you will need, the kind of work to be done, and, of course, the feeling you’ll get from the work.  There are indeed huge gaps in my vision of what this is going to look like, but generally speaking, I had enough observational and experiential data to realize what my life would look like.  And, it felt good to imagine myself doing it.

Can I envision success?

Doing it is one thing, but being successful at it is another.  What does success look like for me?  Here, I find it important to strike a balance between specific goals and broader aspirations.  It’s almost like a Chinese menu of success possibilities.  I will feel successful if I accomplish a, b, and d or if I accomplish c, d, and e.  The important thing is to realize what a – e are, not necessarily to get my heart set on mastering every one of them.

But as Ken mentioned, success is just one side of the coin.  There is also failure.

Am I OK with failure?

If this just doesn’t work out, am I OK with that?  I realized that I was.  It is an experience from which I will develop, regardless.  I will learn; I will grow.  I will know more about myself and what I’m capable of than I did before.  I will still have opportunities and possibilities.  Ultimately, this answer was the most important.

Here is to failing spectacularly … or not (hopefully).

Cheers!

Amy

New beginnings

You all know that I’m a very lucky girl.

I have had the benefit of working with some amazing people throughout my career.   One area that stands out, as a professional winning streak, is strategy partners.  If you think I’m exaggerating, you should look at the list from the last decade: Jodie, Stacy, Yvette, Greg, Gretchen and Amy.

Serious A-listers.

Together we have built amazing products, that have covered a variety of business functions.  We’ve also shared important life experiences.  I have been lucky to have each of these people as friends and colleagues, and I realize that it is the relationships that I cherish long after the work is complete.

Today I face seeing a valued strategist moving to opportunities separate from my own.  Of course, I would be lying if I were to say I did not cry, or that I don’t wonder what work will be like without Amy, and yet I know that she will add so much to our community in her new role .

I’m so happy to see Amy start a new chapter in her own career, and I know that I will also benefit from the new relationships that I will develop professionally in this new beginning.

Best of luck Amy, we know WilsonInsight will be a huge success — I dare say both Shiny and Useful.

Catalysts for Change

Change most frequently happens for a reason.  Transformation is intentional.  The natural adaptations that take place over tens of thousands of years are driven by something external to the organism – new predators, alterations in the climate, dwindling sources of food – which compel a change and ensure the plant or animal can not only survive, but thrive.  The same is true in chemistry, where the application of a catalyst – reagents[1] of change – can be used to enhance or even accelerate transformation.  Agents that hasten a reaction are called positive catalysts; while those that hinder or block changes are called inhibitors.  In addition other substances can be used in combination with a catalyst to either promote or poison its effectiveness.[2]

Though adaptation and survival are common reasons for change, there are occasions when change is driven not by some external force, but from within – by choice.  We choose to adapt, not because we have to, but because we want to.  And more often than not our choices are fueled and energized by a catalyst – a force that accelerates our will and gets us moving.  The most common catalyst for making a change, I think, is failure.  But almost universally failure is perceived as a negative, something to be avoided, a source of shame and regret.  We laud success and shun those who fail.  We link our value as employees and individuals directly to our successes or to our failures.  But success and failure are two sides of the same coin.  We cannot have one without the other.  To succeed we must fail – at least some of the time.  This means failure too has value; we need to fail if we ever hope to succeed.

The gift of failure is the opportunity to make a change.  As a catalyst for change, failure is unique because its transformative properties are only revealed when we make a choice – whether to persist along the same path until we succeed or to look for a new path because the one we are traveling has proven to be a dead-end.  Transformation – sustained, meaningful change – must begin with a choice.  If we fail and do nothing, then the opportunity for change is lost.  The catalytic power inherent in all failure can only be realized through the application of choice.

But choosing is only the first step, the spark that ignites the catalyst.  Change – true transformation – involves far more than just decision-making.  It requires risk, courage, honesty and perseverance.  Bigger, more important changes, may also call for promoters – like optimism, inspiration and collaboration – to increase the power of our actions.  And we must also be careful not to introduce inhibitors or poisons, like doubt, distraction and perfectionism.  Over the coming weeks I want to explore the reagents of change – risk, courage, and honesty – as well as the things that help to promote, inhibit and poison our efforts to change.  But as a starting point I would like to suggest that we must first begin to see failure not as the opposite of success, but as an opportunity for change.  Too often failure is used as a weapon, to demoralize and devalue, and we wield this truncheon against others and ourselves alike.  But we are worth so much more than the sum of our accomplishments; and even when we fail our value is never diminished.  Failure may be the end of an endeavor, or it may be the next step on the path to success.  The choice is ours.

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[1] In organic chemistry, reagents are compounds or mixtures, usually composed of inorganic or small organic molecules that are used to affect a transformation on an organic substrate.  Wikipedia, Reagent.

[2] Catalysis is the change in rate of a chemical reaction due to the participation of a substance called a catalyst. Unlike other reagents that participate in the chemical reaction, a catalyst is not consumed by the reaction itself. Catalysts that speed the reaction are called positive catalysts. Substances that interact with catalysts to slow the reaction are called inhibitors (or negative catalysts). Substances that increase the activity of catalysts are called promoters, and substances that deactivate catalysts are called catalytic poisons.  Wikipedia, Catalysis

How do your employees represent your company brand?

Awhile back, I attended a Bay Area Executives meetup panel moderated by Ray Wang.

The topic was  influence (interesting side note – I was thinking this but the panel was about this).

One thing that stuck with me, was a comment about how employees are one of the biggest influencers for a company.

In the HR space, I often hear corporate brand discussed as it relates to recruiting.  Referral programs are often used to increase candidate fit  (typically the fit is improved both for the job skills as well as the culture).

More advanced companies think about employees and brand far outside the recruiting space.  They realize that, their employees also impact the goodwill of their brand in the marketplace.

So it got me wondering about the idea of HR’s role as keeper of the brand.

Given the impact of social media, the reach of a single employee has grown dramatically.  What are companies doing to harness this trend, to benefit their brands?

What are the best practices you have seen in this area?  How has HR played a role in increasing the visibility and  reputation of the corporate brand.   What have you seen work*?

How are great HR departments helping to make sure every employee can articulate the value proposition of the company to their network?  Who is making this shift work for them, and who is missing an opportunity?

How big is the opportunity?

Thoughts?

_______________________

* I’m looking for examples other than Zappos

Choosing To Choose

As a rule I don’t make New Year resolutions.  Not because I have anything against making resolutions or because I don’t see the beginning of a new year as a good time to make a fresh start.  It’s just that I’ve come to see genuine, sustained change as something that requires a level of resolve that we renew, not with each New Year, but with every new day. The kind where you roll out of bed in the morning and remind yourself of the changes you want to make and the choices that will need to made in order to meet your long-term goals.  So when I made the decision to, um, resolve to make 2011 a “year of decisions” the irony of my high-minded thinking on New Year resolutions was not lost on me; but I’ve decided to hang on to what remains of my intellectual integrity and simply call this my 2011 goal rather than a resolu . . . well you get the point.

The goal in its entirety is as follows:

I’ve decided 2011 is going to be about making decisions. So I’m already off to a good start. Decision #1 – I’m going to stop complaining about the things I can change and work to make some changes. Decision # 2 – I’m also going stop complaining about the things I can’t change, since this is mostly annoying, entirely unhelpful, and generally takes away from the time I should be spending on Decision #1.

Though the point of the goal is to do less complaining – something about me that really annoys me – I felt the outcomes needed to be more tangible.  Hence the “making some changes” portion of the goal, which I anticipate will be the hardest part of the goal, because the ability to achieve genuine and sustained change almost always requires tough choices.  Choices I’ve probably known for some time needed to be made but was unwilling or afraid to make before now.  I’ve also come to see that by choosing not to choose, I’ve actually made my choice and it’s probably the wrong one.  James Hollis in his book, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally Really Grow Up, makes the following observation:

“We all suffer from the lingering message of childhood: that the world is big and powerful, and that we are vulnerable and dependent.  Stepping forth into larger shoes, more spacious psychologies, remains intimidating throughout our lives.  Moreover, virtually all of us lack a deep sense of permission to lead our own lives.  We learned very early that the world exacted conditions that, if not met, could result in punishment or abandonment.  That message, overlearned and internalized, remains a formidable block to the ego’s capacity to elect its own path.  Yet it is clear that we cannot choose not to choose, for not choosing is a choice from which consequences flow . . .”

If the first part of my goal is the more challenging of the two, the second will likely prove to be more frustrating.  Coming to understand and accept what we cannot change is more a function of experience than willpower.  Moreover, while the intellectual and moral courage required when making a choice generally speaks to the integrity of our individuality; the ability to accept what is beyond our power to change speaks more to our maturity and understanding of our place in this world.  Though this understanding often gives us pause in our personal lives, in our vocational lives it can leave us feeling demoralized, angry, cagey, and unproductive.  The injustice or unfairness, real or perceived, of a bad situation at work can leave us feeling like little more than corporate capital – to be used as our “masters” see fit.  This can be especially true in Western economies, where our political ideologies strongly inform our corporate identities and where democracy and freedom of choice are sacrosanct.  But the truth is, unless we are self-employed most of us will never have the final say at work.  There will always be someone above us steering the ship or at the very least someone with the power to veto our decisions.  Understanding and accepting this situation, I expect, will significantly improve our level of engagement at work and may help us feel a deeper sense of contentment within our vocational and personal lives.

Which brings me back to the final part of Decision #2.  After committing to not focus on what I cannot change (actually I’ve only really committed to not complaining about it, ‘cause I’m all about setting reasonable expectations) I can rightfully return my attention and energy to making some important and possibly big decisions this year – choices that may lead me in a completely new direction or maybe even to a brand new vocation.  But more likely – and more importantly – making these decisions should lead to a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in both my personal and my vocational life, which now, in hindsight, may in fact be the goal I was trying to set in the first place.  I hope the same will be true for you.

What do you mean?

Seriously, what are you trying to say?

And more importantly, why do I care?

I coach on this topic a lot, but I’m always amazed at how few people get this right.   We seem so hard wired to give a lot of information about what we know or what we think.

Here is a clue — if I’m a senior executive, I don’t really care what you know or what you think.  I care about what it means to me and what I should think.

So when you are communicating to someone above you in the management chain, you need to write it from their point of view — not yours.

The higher up the management food chain, the more important it is to get this right.

[Briefly] Answer these questions :

• What they need to know
• Why they need to care
• What you want them to do

If you are not giving this information at the top of your email or presentation you are wasting their time.

Please do not be known as someone who wastes senior leaders time — that’s not a great personal brand.

How’s that working out for you?

If you have been reading our blog for any length of time, you know we are all about managing your own career.

Leaving your career to chance, or even to your company/manager is risky, at best.

Seth Godin went one further to suggest that as the boss of your own career you might suck.

Ouch!

But certainly a great question.

How are you doing managing your career?  Are you a good or a bad steward of your talents and your progress?

Are you stretching yourself, taking risks and growing to give even better results for your company and your boss?

or.. are you taking the easy way out and waiting for someone to notice your “good work”?.

So I wanted to ask.  How is it going?

Are you getting the results you expect? Are you a good boss or a bad boss of yourself?  Here is a hint, the evidence of being a good boss is what you are able to accomplish and impact.

If you don’t find those things happening, I suggest you might want to get a plan.