Helping You Sew Seeds Of Goodness And Opportunity
We live in challenging times.
The earth burns.
Populism.
The mega employers of old being replaced by the mighty employers of today. And as the mega fall, so go the jobs.
You are likely in a market of intense competition. For your work, your product, your company.
Stand still and you’ll be left behind.
How to thrive in a world of flux?
Three Principles.
1. Always Understand The Context.
2. Mine The Periphery.
3. Resilient and Adaptable Wins.
We often get stuck in weeds.
The immediate is hugely compelling. It is distracting. It can be all consuming.
In our work, we win this project, we lose that client or job. Things go well, things go less well. We are addicted to short term fluctuations. They consume our time, our energy.
Yet broaden the context and things look different.
In universe time, we’re pretty insignificant.
But it doesn’t feel that way when we’re in the tumble dryer of our thoughts.
Understanding the context is key to getting out of our way.
Understand the context.
The businesses we live in, work for, or create - these are not separate from the bigger picture. I know we think business is somehow important and big and in charge. For many, business is simply somewhere to go and something to do during the day. It’s a place to go, to hang out, to chat, to make friends - or not, a place to practise and get better at something. A place where we can see our progress. Or not. This is true for the people you might work with, sell to, or employ, depending on what you do.
We are social beings. monkeys. work is our tribe place.
And work is part of a bigger context too.
Australia is on fire. Look at the map.
Orange tinted men run who countries.
Old institutions fray at the edges. Ask Brussels.
Money moves.
Companies, once mega and long standing, are now mighty and more fleet of foot.
3.1m people were employed by America’s 5 biggest companies in 1998. That’s 900,000 today.
All this makes for nervous people, people unsure of their roles, how they contribute, their value and place in the world. It makes people uneasy. And uneasy people do uneasy things. Like Brexit and Donald.
Change is somehow more visible than it’s been for a while. That makes us uneasy. We don’t like change. Even though its an ever present. We get jittery.
This perceived order > disorder is the context in which we live and work. That’s the context in which we create companies, make things, sell things.
Mine The Periphery.
Neighborhoods are (re)created from the periphery, outside in. Artists pop up, gather. They take advantage of cheap rents. They move against the herd. And then a place becomes bohemian. And then the mainstream seek it out because it is just the right amount of edgy, cool. And then the edgy becomes mainstream.
And so the cycle continues.
Change is constantly bubbling up on the edges, on the periphery. Some of this change, some of these ideas, will grow up to become mainstream. The periphery is where interesting happens.
Periphery is where value hides. And the work we do is about creating value for others. This value will hopefully be some part social, ecological, environmental, commercial and financial. Need to make money. Need to be profitable. Question is just how profitable and to achieve what?
We live in echo chambers of conformity. Value is created in thinking differently, thinking more broadly, in finding ideas and inspiration from the periphery. Find these ideas. Nurture them. And send them back to the mainstream.
This is about creativity and imagination and courage to trust in ideas beyond the fashionable. Beyond the crowd.
Ideas like Wabi Sabi.
Indigenous thought.
Ancient wisdom.
Marcus Aurelius.
The Dalai Lama.
We’ll come back to him.
Resilient and Adaptable Wins.
Most large companies fuss around agile.
Agile teams, methods, practises, tools.
As one client said however “we’re all supposed to be working agile but nobody knows what it means”.
Amen.
This is because companies kill language. Words a company use become jargon. And jargon turns us off. We ignore it. We erase it. Quite rightly.
But maybe all this talk of agile talks to something else. Remember above…?
Businesses are talking about agile because they, like us, all looking for relevance, for security. They are fearful. They are fearful of their futures. They are trying to hold on. They are trying to learn resilience, adaptability. They wish they could roll with the punches. To somehow sit atop the bobbing sea.
Agile is an attempt at resilience and adaptability.
Again, what is true for our companies is true for us individually.
We strive for resilience and adaptability.
So where does this come from?
From how we think, plan and do. From the ideas we have about the world operates. From having a system, a point of view, some principles to live and work by.
And what might these be?
Well, for me there are five which work equally for us individually as they do organisationally.
1. Less is More.
Make less.
Speak less.
Do less.
2. Change Not Growth
Shit is always on the move.
Wabi Sabi.
Challenge yourself to continually create new value, rather than hold on to old value. Companies are holding on machines. What if they were crafted in the opposite… as letting go machines? They’d create new value, shareholders would be pleased, but they’d constantly move on? They wouldn’t accumulate, which is essentially unsustainable, they’d shift and change.
3. Creative Destruction
Concept coined by Schumpeter. German economist. For him, it was an essential tenet of capitalism. That new and better makes the old obsolete.
It describes how companies should work. It describes how industries should work. But again we don’t people companies, we don’t teach adaptability like this. We don’t teach the creative confidence to roll with punches, to embrace failure, to actively let shit die.
But if we don’t let shit die there is no room for the new. This is true for people, ideas, companies, markets, countries and, thankfully, politicians.
We don’t create companies or our work in this way because we hold on. We fixate on the stuff of our time, on the stories we tell ourselves about the importance of this or that.
Embrace Schumpeter and actively let shit die.
4. Be On Purpose
The ancient, eastern traditions have a pretty useful common philosophy. Everything is fucked. So go with the flow.
When shit changes all the time, is in flux, when entire industries are wiped out in blinking eyes, when all the jobs are going away, when power is shifting and with it out perceived security, we have a choice. Get in the weeds and panic. Or take the longer view.
Where are we headed?
What is our intention?
What is important?
Who do we serve?
Why is their life improved as a consequence?
Purpose, in short. Clarify this and you build resilience and adaptability into your core.
Oh and clue…
If you work for a company where purpose is a product of the marketing department it's likely full of sh*t.
5. Improve Iteratively.
Like nature.
I am the product of an agile process.
Test, evolve and refine. Always. Work works, do more of. What doesn’t do less of. And judge it via the lens of the people you intend to serve.
Taken together, this family of five:
Less is More
Change Not Growth
Creatively Destruct
Be on purpose
Improve iteratively
… create a framework, whether individually or organisationally, for resilient and adaptable work.
To wrap up, we go back to this guy: the Dalai Lama.
These principles are not created by me but were pioneered thousands of years ago by an early management consultant. He traveled the lands teaching and talking, prompting and cajoling. He built up a following to rival any influencer of today. And his teachings to varying degrees remained on the periphery but influence how I think about the work I do and how I do it.
The buddha.
So I leave you with a wish.
Yes, embrace less is more, change don’t grow or expand. Creatively destruct or kill your darlings. Be on purpose and improve iteratively.
But most importantly…
Be More Buddha.