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How To Avoid Becoming Irrelevant – Change is a’Come’n

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Face it: it is very likely the way you work is outdated and much less effective than your competitors – um, I mean your peers’.  Why?

We watch the rise and fall of businesses.  Each week it seems an “established” company is going under, is filing for bankruptcy or is being purchased for a fraction of what it once was worth.

In the book The Innovator’s Dilemma Clay Christiansen took a look at why businesses rise to glory and then fail.  (Fascinating book – it needs to be on your MUST read list.)  He points out that as the consumer’s values change a new business is there to take them on.  They fill the niche and in time they have a successful company.  But soon the customer redefines value – again – and the company doesn’t change with it.  They keep filling the original value (because some people stay there).

A great Forbes piece was recently written about this.  The author writes, “..with the rate that the tech world is moving these days, there are good reasons to think both (Google and Facebook) might be gone completely in 5 – 8 years.”  Web 1.0 is overtaken with Web 2.0 is overtaken with Social is overtaken with Mobile is overtaken by…?  What’s next?

So it is with the way we work.  The way we have worked in the past is not sufficient for today – or tomorrow.  It is mandatory that we change.  If we don’t, as our companies morph they will place a greater value on work habits we have not developed, styles we have shunned and strategic thinking we are not capable of.

It doesn’t matter how smart, how charming or how innovative you are.  If you don’t change the way you work to match what is needed, none of that will matter.  The companies that fail have incredible people in them.  But that doesn’t stop the company from the nose dive.  We have all seen brilliant people fail at business – all because they were unwilling to change.

There are four main possible outcomes for you:

1) You don’t change the way you work.  Others do, as does the company.  The company grows and your skills are marginalized along with your paycheck.

2) You don’t change the way you work and neither do your peers in the company.  The company is incapable of following the trends and the company suffers a less than pleasant fate.

3) You upgrade the way you work but your peers do not.  You find a company that is ready to move in the right direction.  You join them and sadly watch your former company fumble.

4) You upgrade the way you work, become a champion and influence your peers to the do the same.  That culture drives the company in the new direction.  You are the hero.

Be the hero.

Apathetic Failure – The Zero-Sum Danger

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So far I have outlined three kinds of failure: Intrinsic, Catastrophic, and Pandemic.  (A great podcast discussion centered around these three types.)

The fourth type is Apathetic Failure.

This type of failure can often be seen behind the statements, “I only neet to hang on a few more years until I retire,” or “Whatever they want, I will do.  I’m tired of fighting.”  They come from those who are unempowered, unmotivated, and lack care –  and they are often a product of their culture.

It’s not Pandemic where there is a lot of complaining but no action.  In Apathetic Failure, the evaluation to find something to complain about rarely happens.  Their unofficial motto is, “Whatever happens, happens.”  A “Hakuna Matata” attitude.  As was sung in the Lion King, “It’s our problem free philosophy.”  It is problem free because of the lack of evaluation.  And that happens because of a lack of caring.

Apathetic failure is quiet – hidden.  It may be visible to those close to the person, but not necessarily management.  They fly right under the radar.  Some come in exactly on time, take all of their breaks, leave exactly on time, and spend more time on nonproductive tasks.  They aren’t doing anything that will draw attention to them – for good or bad.  They will do the minimum and rarely much more.

Intel has a way to vet them out: R&Rs, or Rank and Rating (I believe they still do this).  A group of managers ranks the collective employees from most valuable to least.  For example, if I was a project manager, I would be ranked against the other project managers in the group.  Those who were at the bottom (I believe) 10% were put on notice.  Some employees don’t like the method as it forces employees to be put on a plan no matter how good they may be.  But one thing it does do is weed out the apathetic employees.

Law of the River

Why is this a failure?  It has to do with what I call the Law of the River.  I grew up less than a mile from the beautiful McKenzie River.  One of my most favorite things to do is just sit and listen to the river going by.  I would often see a drift boat float along with the current.  For them to do down stream they didn’t need to do anything (minus keep away from the bank).  The river took them where the river took them.

This is fine for drifting, but in the world we rarely want to drift.  We want to go up stream.  To do that, we need to exert some energy and row.  If we do nothing, we go down stream away from our goals.  Those who fail apathetically are not rowing, but they are not overtly trying to get down stream either.  They just float along.

These employees are zero-sum.  They neither add to nor take away from the organization.  They are being paid to maintain the status quo.  I don’t know any company who can afford this, especially in the competitive landscape we all work in.

We fail apathetically when we just allow things to happen without influencing them for the better.

Although they haven’t made the best strategic decisions lately, Netflix has a slide deck that impressed me.  (I am assuming it is official, but cannot confirm.  If not, I love a lot of what it says).  They will not tolerate Apathetic Failure and do all they can structure the company’s culture so that it does not affect their employees.

My Challenge For You

1) Evaluate yourself to see if you are failing apathetically and decide to either drop the cause or, if it is worthy of your attention, to step up your involvement.

2) Find those in your organization who fall in this category and take appropriate action.

Culture

Pandemic Failure – Failure Unabaited

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A couple weeks ago I gave a keynote speech at the Enterprise 2.0 conference entitled, “Embracing your E2.0 Failures” (watch the video here).  There I talked about three different types of failures, Pandemic, Catastrophic and Intrinsic failure.

At the beginning of the keynote I showed this video I created which exemplifies the most dangerous of the three failures: Pandemic Failure:

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSIMc4j5Sg’]

Pandemic Failure has three main characteristics:

  1. It runs rampant within a culture.
  2. It is obvious to most within that culture and it is often discussed and complained about.
  3. Rarely does anyone take action to make the needed changes.

This is the most dangerous because bad behavior becomes an acceptable way of working or accomplishing a task.  For example, when was the last time you were in a meeting you didn’t really need to be in, but felt obligated to be there?  You didn’t lend any real advantage to the meeting nor did you take away much.  Not that it was completely worthless – you probably did get some good information out of it – but what you did get was not an hour’s worth of your time.  You could have received it another way in only about a minute’s time.

But we too often work this way and it is acceptable.

Pandemic Failure leads to apathy and diminished effectiveness.  And this is why it is the most dangerous type of failure.  It allows for growth while at the same time stifles it and can bring down whole subsets of cultures.  It gives a false sense of security and at the same time an overall uneasiness.

Overcome Pandemic Failure

How do we overcome pandemic failure.  Like anything else, we first need to recognize it.  Then, we can’t just let it go.  We need to actually do something about it.  And it probably won’t be comfortable because it will be part of the culture.  It will take guts because you are challenging the status quo.  Everyone will be on your side, yet no one may back you.  It will be a very strange situation to be in.

Yet if you let it go, you become a victim of an annoying culture trait.  And I don’t know about you, but any time I become a slave to something that is ineffective, I feel I must change it.

So here is to all you Change Agents!

Age Decreases Usage: Social Business Failure #15

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Age: We hear it all the time.

“The young guys coming in – they all know how to use this stuff.  If we can get them on board we will have an easier time with people adopting our social tool.”

I agree.  And I fully disagree.

If you can get the younger workforce to adopt your tool, then (imagine this) more people will have adopted your tool.  But we can’t think that just because they are young means that they will use it – because that’s not necessarily true.

The example that sticks out most to me is a time when I was doing some analysis for a customer on who was using their social tool and who was not (back a few years ago when all of this was still young).  I found one fresh-out-of-college gal who never used it.  Why?  It didn’t have anything to do with her job.  On the opposite end I found a 55+ woman who swore by it.  She used it all the time.  Why?  Because how she used it was woven into how she did her job.

This can’t be said loudly enough: Age has very, very, very little to do with social technology adoption within an organization – it is age agnostic.  I have found that those who are younger are more willing to use it and those who are older (generally) are less willing to use it.  But when it comes to actual usage, I could not find a correlation.

The strongest correlation for adoption if it became a part of how they worked.  If it was an extra add-on responsibility, they didn’t use it, no matter the age.

 

Previous Social Business Failures:

React – Social Business Failure #14

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That’s right.  You want to fail right away?  Then react.

Why would reacting lead to failure?  Because you will be hit from so many different sides with so many objections that if you react you would 1) spend your time trying to clean up other people’s messes and 2) you would be so frazzled that you would not be focusing on your goal which leads to 3) a perception that you don’t have a clue of what you are doing.

And you do.

So what do you do?  When someone says, “This is a waste of time.  No one wants to be social!”  Or if they come up with any in the list of objections, do you just ignore it?  Yes and no.

Think of it this way.  If someone came to you with one of those objections, turn it around and pretend that it was a criticism of you.  When someone does that, you have to think:

1) Who is it that said it?
2) Are they right?
3) If they are not right, did they say it because they don’t understand, because of fear or maybe another reason?

A majority of the time you can just let it go – let it roll off.  You can smile at them and say, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” without being condescending to them.  Nothing you can do right now will change how they feel – they are in an emotional state.  But eventually they will learn.

If it is someone with great influence, I might try having a one-on-one with them.  If they are right, then think about changing it.  There are so many possible situations, but you must pick your battles.

But if you react to every objection that arrises, you will let yourself be pulled from your goal.

Stay focused.  Help others on their journey to understanding and adoption.  But don’t react to every whim or you will overwhelmed.

Forget About the Human Experience: Social Business Failure #13

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Disney got the human experience right.  From the moment you walk up to Disneyland, you are in another world.  The environment is set to walk you through an experience.  From the layout of the streets, to the paths you walk, to the music, sights and colors.  There is a story behind it all and you are led fluidly from one experience to another.

Contrast this with a discussion I have had many times…

Me: “When employees log in to their computers, they should be able to open up this tool and automatically be logged in.”

Them: “We can’t do this. It is against policy.”

“If we don’t, they won’t use it.  If it is a pain to get to, they won’t use it.”

“But policy says, ‘blah blah blah.’  This is something we need to follow.  If they want to use the tool, they will follow these policies.”

“But the policies are based off of out dated assumptions.  The simple fact is, if it is not super easy to get to, adoption will suffer.  So we have a choice, either we change or ignore the policy or we abandon the effort.  Which is more important?”

This is one of many, many instances I have run across where we bang our head against the wall because what people want and what the company is willing to give them are very different.  We have all seen programs, incentives and tools go untouched simply because they don’t take the humans into account.

With software tools, we often talk about UX – or User eXperience.  When the user steps up to the tool, what kind of an experience will they have?

In a conversation on Google+, Rachel Happe and I came up with a new twist on UX, “HX  = Human eXperience, the art of creating, optimizing and enhancing experiences around ‘organizational identity, values and goals.'”

When we focus on the human and their relationship to the organization, everything else works out because we are focusing on that which changes – and we expect it.  In contrast, if we focus on the organization (something we try to optimize and keep steady) and try to mold the humans into it we find that it backfires.

In the end, what do we learn?  Remember the humans. Rather than viewing them as a necessary part of the organization, see them as the organization itself.

 

VIDEO: Dealing With Others’ Failure

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[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ptZMlwrEvQ’]

(The videos are being used in meetings to start discussion or as a brainstorm idea generator at the beginning of meetings.  I have created a PDF of questions to help you get the conversation going.  Visit this page for all the videos and PDFs.)

There are so many ways I could have approached this video on failure.

Why failure is good.  How to deal with failure. What failure really is.  Failure can happen in so many ways.

Instead I chose to focus on how we treat failure in others.  Yes, this is kind of touchy feely, but I felt it needed to be said.

I found a dichotomy in our behavior: we expect perfection from others and discount their worth when they make mistakes.  Yet at the same time we, too, fail, yet we expect others to give us a break.  To some degree we are all hypocrites in this area.  For us to create a healthy work environment it is imperative that we create a culture which allows failure.  Not on the life and death – critical – things.  But where we can, let’s do it!

One other point I don’t make in the video is that I believe most people really try.  And if they don’t, a lot of the attitude can be traced to the environment in which they work.  Granted, we can’t blame the environment, but it is a huge factor.

I find that, given the opportunity, people want to be awesome.  They want to flourish and grow and bedazzle others.  So when I find so many people who are in a state of stupor, in a state of status quo and mediocrity, I have found that the awesomeness is almost beat out of them.  Rather, they are told to conform.

After helping one group, I was repeatedly asked by many different people, “Have we beat your enthusiasm down yet?”  Of course my answer was, “Not a chance.”  But the sad thing was that they were asking me because it happened to them.  They were waiting for the Borg to take me over.

Never.  Yet I will always believe that people want to be great, it is our awesome responsibility to create the environment which will allow them to be great.  And this includes the freedom to fail.

Social Business Failure #12: “This Isn’t About the Tool”

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In complete juxtaposition from last week’s post, we can’t forget this is also about the tool.

When I first started working with NASA, there was a group sent out to look at tools. (Although this story is about NASA, there are others I have worked with which have done the same thing – this is a pretty common scenario.)  They went through the usual drill.  They gathered features, functionality.  They conducted a bake-off to determine which tool is the best.  They chose one and implemented it on a pilot basis.

It failed, which is why they asked me to help.  It didn’t work for a number of reasons, but not the least of them being that although they were looking for social media, what they were evaluating were tools that were not “social”.  They thought they were social tools (indeed, the tools marketed themselves as such) but they were not.  They lacked some of the more basic requirements needed to pull it off.  They were looking more at content management tools, not social tools.

Then, when we got on the right track, there was a tendency to go with the cheaper solution.  But this solution did not have what was needed. (Cost and convenience are odd things.  They lure us to a decision we know is not worthy and we are caught between the two – what is right and what is more convenient or cheapest.  But that thought is for another day…)

Too many times we try to jump in with the tool first.  RESIST THAT TEMPTATION.  But when it is time to choose a tool, it is a very important decision, one not to be taken lightly.  Although social is not ABOUT the tool, the tool is a heavy component and should not be discounted.

For example, the number of clicks it takes to get to information, the flow in which that happens and the ways users are notified of new/changed content are often overlooked or glossed over points by a novice when choosing a tool.  There are many attributes that have a hidden importance and until you understand the social element you very well may not uncover those needed features.

So what to do?  1) Make sure the person who evaluates potential tools has experience in this.  There are enough people out there that finding someone should not be a problem anymore.  2) Listen to them and weigh their advice heavily.

And then know this: No tool (or set of tools) will give you everything you need and want.  There are gives and takes, many of which won’t be discovered until you have purchased and implemented the tool in production.  Just go with it and enjoy the journey!

Social Business Failure #11: Being Social is About the Tool

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Social technologies have become wide and varied making the landscape confusing.  “What product should we use?”  This is a question I am asked all the time.

A number of the organizations I have worked with have come to me and said, “We want to be more social so we thought we should use SharePoint / Jive / IBM Connections / Yammer / Drupal / etc…”  But there is a fundamental flaw in that sentence.

“We want to be more social” is not solved by buying a tool. It can be aided, but it does not solve the issue.  Although slight in semantics, the different is huge in application.

When I talk to these organizations they want to see how they can be more social online.  It is for this reason that I rarely bring my laptop to these type of meetings – I don’t want to talk about technology. Social Technology will happen when you have all the other pieces in place.

What is business problem you are trying to solve?  What are your purposes / goals?  Who is asking? What is happening now and where is it you want to go?  Why are you not there now? (And don’t answer “we don’t have the technology.”)  What is your culture like?  And there are SO MANY more questions.

Once you have the answer to these in place, the social technology piece will be so much more clear.  It will also be a side note as you work on the real issues of your business.

 

Social Business Failure #10: Assume This is About Being Social

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In preparation for a meeting, I came in early and set up the computer and projector with the organization’s social networking application.  My job was support a team lead as she rolled out how they will use the tool to totally revamp and streamline their on-boarding process.  The first two ladies came in.  As they talked among themselves, one of them looked up at the screen and said, “What is that?”

“Oh, its our social networking site.  I don’t know much about it.”

“Social networking?!  I don’t have time for that.  Who does?  I don’t have time to waste.”

“I don’t know – neither do I. I have been in a couple times, but haven’t done anything.”

I sat back, silently, smiling, knowing that they are about to be asked to use it and wondering what their reaction will be in an hour.

After everyone arrived, the meeting kicked off.  The team lead talked about the current process and how difficult it was.  They all agreed: it was a real pain and had been for some time.  Then the lead talked about how she found a way to decrease the frustration and at the same time create more accountability, more visibility and decrease the time to bringing a person on to the payroll.

All sat and listened and gave input.  At the end she asked, “Is this something we can all do and commit to?”  Everyone agreed – this was going to be far better than what they have now.  They were all ready to adopt this new process.  This included the ladies who wanted nothing to do with the tool an hour earlier.

It’s Not About Being Social

Why did the lady’s attitude change?  At first, for them, it was all about “social” and they wanted nothing to do with it.  When they realized it was about getting work done and the word “social” was never used, suddenly they saw the benefit.

Social technologies within organizations are about working differently to get the job done better, more efficiently and effectively than could be done before.  It is about improving business.  When we approach the workforce from the standpoint of a business consultant, focusing on integrating it into their workflow, helping them to transform the way they work, and they see the benefits, it is hard not to give it a try.

Social is a byproduct of the work and the environment, not the product itself.

Questions:

  • How can we help others focus on working differently?
  • What can we do to show that this is about getting real work done?

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