A Mistake or an Experiment Opportunity?

Talk about having to show a spot of agility early in the week while also admitting to a mistake. As many of you may have noticed I write two different Newsletters - this one on Mondays and Tuesdays and The Future is Agile on Wednesdays. I have some idea but no real clarity on the intersection of my readership and for all I know it could be extreme -i.e. most people in the 112k are subscribed to both- or non-existent -few people are reading more than one.

On top of that lack of visibility, I always thought of the audiences as very different -the former addressing the HR and Leadership business-y community, the latter the Agile, DevOps, tech-y community. A divide that my book was written to bridge so that we eliminate more of the HumanDebt.

Most weeks, the theme is the same for both newsletters, but the vibe is different -or so I like to think- and I do reserve the more academic and considerate tone to this one here while the rants and outrage are generally reserved to that other one on Wednesdays. When I post to each, I need to use a drop-down menu that LinkedIn provided me with. This morning I failed to drop down to this newsletter you are reading now, so the article I had written for here was posted to the Wednesday "The Future is Agile" one. A mistake.

I'll post it here as well so you guys read it but after the initial moment of "oh no no no no!" online-mistake-blind-panic it gave me a moment to pause and wonder what would happen if for a week only we'd switch tones, let them have the more academic, theoretical tone and let's get super real and slightly ranty here. An experiment.

Can we handle it? Instead of the video tomorrow - let me give it to you straight like I would have given it to the Agile community about how we don't have time to dilly dally and we will haemorrhage people and break the one we have if we don't do some things on the double.

Brace yourselves for near-swear-words-level of indignation because we can't keep pretending the emperor of work is not naked.

Let's see where this experiment leads us - whom all is listening and what we can learn together.

Here's the article you missed:

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Organisational Permission or Organisational Forgiveness?

Every time I write about the window of opportunity on bringing humanity back in the workplace closing, someone finds it in their heart to accuse me of scaremongering. As if there’s no clear and present danger. As if the figures on employee mobility and burnout are not out there for all to see. I’m not overreacting, you’re underreacting.

Some may not like to face it but here are some predictions I am willing to bet the farm on:

• Companies that will insist on a full return to the office are reckless and will -at a minimum- bleed talent if not put themselves on an extinction fast-track.
• Companies that will pretend remote working can be governed by command and control and attempt to overlay it to micromanage, will suffer tremendously.
• Companies that refuse to do rehumanizing, human-connection-building in-person meetings where people relaunch their sense of purpose and team are in danger.
• Companies that think the HumanDebt? can be ignored going forward and we can carry on as before the pandemic with people being put second after the process, technology or convention, and no human work are deluded and unsustainable.
• Companies that will still be doing "Agile-by-numbers" without a mindset change, as a process not a way of thinking, and without it coming from the heart of every employee, will fall far behind.
• Companies that won’t have capitalised on this window of opportunity of understanding why the people work (complete with exploring the “how”, “where”, “when” and “why” of work) is foundational and must come before the delivery and operational work would have missed a golden opportunity to compete with the ones who will.

That said, “companies” are probably not going to wake up and do anything about it. In fact, organisations won’t move fast enough to respond to this major shift we’re witnessing here, this moment when we reclaim been human at work - people will.?

For any organisation that history will look kindly upon, and where, in hindsight, this moment had been pivotal in a beneficial way, where their HumanDebt would have lessened with this complete tabula rasa redesign of the way they work and the way they care, we will be able to trace the changes?back to one or two extremely-courageous individuals helped by tens of others tentatively-courageous ones and then eventually joined by the reluctantly-courageous rest.?

These “superheroes” -as I like to call them despite how that too is contentious to some who take it as an encouragement of the wrong leadership model in lieu of the grateful recognition of valour that it is-?have always been bold, chances are they have fought many other cultural battles and have been long appalled by the amounts of HumanDebt around. That they’ve been trying to make a difference in their team, their department, or during what they perceived as a potentially perilous short tenure if they were higher near the top echelon. That they have been a quiet and efficient champion and more of a Don Quixote than their modesty allows them to admit, and that a lot of the good their people live, is directly attributable to some of their actions. So the fight is nothing new.?

Neither is the wisdom of having learned how to discern between the battles that need organisational permission versus the battles that need potential organisational forgiveness

Here’s the shred of good news in today’s article: even if the former is just as hard to come by, as usual, the latter is likely more plentiful. In the post-pandemic humanity window, there’s enough goodwill at an organisational level to tolerate experimentation, ideas, trials, open discourse on care, a need for the people work, and so much more. Is it outrageous that these have to be “tolerated” instead of "supported"? Of course, but that line of thinking is inefficient.

This goodwill may not translate into tangible results at an organisational level and the giant machinery may still be expounding stupendous amounts of effort deciding on plastic screen dividers, pens sterilisation and welcome-back bags and protocols of a partial return to the office to have time to check on their people’s feelings and thoughts, but it does translate into allowing employees themselves to do these that part of the work meanwhile.?

Most of the POCs and subsequent journeys and implementations we’ve had at?PeopleNotTech ?for our?Psychological Safety Dashboard ?have been devoid of a formal approval process and on-paper business cases and led by some of these courage-havers who all did it believing in their hearts of hearts that the possibility?of repercussions when the time comes to ask for forgiveness, is high. But thankfully, so far, none of them suffered any loss to their position due to making it their business to help teams focus on human work and implement a work tool that increases their performance and makes them feel connected, empowered and human. In some cases, the contrary is the case and to their surprise -and ours!- they saw the organisation thanking them for the work.?

Added to how their teams are throwing themselves into the work with gusto and seeing dramatic improvements in their wellbeing and an immediate increase in their sense of team-level trust and therefore higher performance and happiness, they are rightfully pleased.?

For every courage-haver who found a way to make everyone’s life better by putting the human work first -and again, we mean first-first -the first thing in the team meeting, before the “urgent” usual to-dos take over-, there are many, many almost-courage-havers who are too burnt out themselves to push this massive shift where we analyse feelings and behaviours and do something about them but that’s ok. Courage is contagious and asking for both permission and forgiveness will be needed long after this window closed. We need to all pace ourselves for the work ahead and take the time to get back in shape both emotionally and physically and then dust the cape off go again.

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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are:?Understand,?Measure?and?Improve

Read more about our Team Dashboard that measures and improves Psychological Safety at?www.peoplenottech.com ?or reach out at?[email protected] ?and let's help your teams become Psychologically Safe, healthy, happy and highly performant.