#WhatILearned from the Brave New Work Podcast
The following episode released on December 2nd, 2019. The title: “A way, for now, to try.”
I heard from Mary Ann Baynton that it’s not only about the work, it’s also about how we feel about the work we do.
Similarly, we must think as much about how we work as what we work on.
A short time later, John Oodyck recommended the book, and I spoke with Terri Szymanski about (both members of the OHCOW Mental Injury Toolkit group), Brave New Work. Without a doubt I then read this book, and began listening to the associated podcast. Here is a quick read on #WhatILearned from my favourite podcast episode thus far from Brave New Work.
The following episode released on December 2nd, 2019. The title: “A way, for now, to try.”
From my interpretation, the theme of the podcast episode is related to the way of working, a human-way of working, in which solely job descriptions are not enough/sufficient as employees can have many roles and ways of working. The antidote to this is the creation of working agreements, specifically service-level interpersonal working agreements.
It is easy to get caught up in the what, but forget about the how. McKinsey & Company reflects this concept in their organizational practice which emphasizes the balanced approach of performance [what] and health [how] for change success. Health in this context represents how an organization aligns itself, executes with excellence, and renews itself to achieve its performance aspirations sustainably in its ever changing external environment. The health of how can then be an accelerant for the what of performance.
At the end of the day, organizations don’t change, people do. Therefore, organizations must consider human psychology and capture employee hearts and minds in practical terms. Plans are just plans until people start behaving differently.
Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”
— Peter Drucker
Going about working agreements is balanced with employee ability, both complementing each-other in unison. Working agreements let employees know what to expect, guided by values and principles. Both, values and principles, extensions of beliefs and culture. The last consequence organizations want arising are employee assumptions and illusions towards an objective or project. What cannot happen is for employees to be evaluated, or evaluate themselves, on how good they are at guessing. Stated in the Standard, the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, Clear Leadership and Expectations is one of thirteen psychosocial risk factors for psychological health and safety at work. It is working agreements which can provide employees an elemental understanding of their work, amongst the increasing complexity of present day working conditions.
Here are examples of what to include in working agreements:
Meetings hygiene — when do we meet, for what purpose, with what design, and who is facilitating
How decisions are made — when we ask advice, when we require consensus, and when consent will do [where should there be liberty and unity]
Tools environment — where are we going to put stuff, how are we going to talk to each-other, on which platforms, and for which things
Further, does the team have:
Purpose — why does this team exist
Intent — what are we trying to do in the world (having it for the company may be so, but must also have it for the team)
Roles we play — “who answers inbound emails?” (in the situation of a start-up, the more people, more specialization, and more volume leads to the written job description not sufficient and not based in reality)
The first step? Start by having a space for the conversation on working agreement and charting work. Remember, proposals over politics. Don’t look at the violation of broken working agreements as interpersonal conflicts, but rather, as data that tells us about the system.
What to also add for your steps towards creating working agreements is remembering to obtain feedback from employees from the periphery of the frontline, not just the centrality of senior leaders. Doing so unlocks potential of the team (including the leader), without doing do, only unlocks potential of the leader. If the way employees in the team do their best work is different from the way the leader would do it alone then that is a worthwhile discussion to have and pull apart to figure out which way it should be done for delivering value, outcomes, and to please a user.
During such, leaders must acknowledge the differentiation in pleasing users/customers versus their personal please. The company with the happiest leaders aren’t necessarily the ones with the happiest customers and outcomes. Leaders who say ‘I am currently in the role of a CEO’, are different that the leaders who say ‘I am a CEO’, with the former representing the duty to find the truth and hint to servant leadership, and the later catering to egoic and power desires. Creating working agreements with employee feedback can in turn lead to more effective and efficient employees for the creation or implementation of their organizations products or services for customers.
All in all, a set of working agreements for the team to act as a set of defaults can help steer towards high, and higher, performance, is a business imperative and the right thing to do because of the benefit to employee psychological health and safety. With the dynamics of working being a moving target with competitive pressures, new technologies, and confounding variables, making working agreements lively and updating over time is vital for success and the future of effective and efficient work.
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Nathan Kolar
www.reachworldwide.ca
