Day 42: Wednesday 8 March
As I research and read I am struck by the thought,
“I am back at the start”
It’s not quite accurate, but it certainly feels like I’ve let go of the past work for unmeasured. Or at least I’m open minded to starting over. It’s inevitable there will be some bits that remain and other bits that will be difficult to let go of, even if unconsciously.
The other thing that strikes me is,
“Why didn’t I do this the first time I started?”
The answer of course is that I was open to experimenting to understand what worked, but based upon a pre-conceived idea of what unmeasured was doing or even looked like. I’m reluctant to say that was wrong. I did a number of exercises to identify and clarify what I was doing. Single page business plans, completing the Business Model Canvas, and a lot of writing trying to understand what I was doing and thinking. Plus work with others that tested some of my thinking. It wasn’t entirely pre-conceived.
The failure was in an over-arching strategy that was never really questioned until now. At least if not strategy, the intention that shaped the work:
To change the culture you must level up the skills.
Which of course I knew was misplaced, but I hadn’t identified was what I was doing. Instead I need to be working on:
To change the culture you must level up the leaders.
It’s harder and perhaps that’s why I didn’t see the direction of my work was misplaced. It’s easy to experiment with changing pitches, workshops, content and the the bits and bobs around skills. It’s much harder, scary and confronting to accept that it’s the leaders I need to reach out to. To find that right pitch, to enrol them in the work and to build trust in me, asking me for help. It’s eating a giant frog.
Now I see that, it’s harder to hide, but no easier to execute.
Frankly it was a blindspot. As I write I wonder if I could have done better to uncover it, to have someone help me uncover it. It may have been I needed to get to this point in order for it to be seen. Or not! There’s likely some hiding on my behalf that made that challenging.
So moving forward I need to commit to,
Finding help to uncover blindspots and call me out from hiding?
The future of work is… wellbeing
fascinating to read so much research from Deloitte, KPMG, Gartner and PwC all pointing to the one thing that the most important thing for employees right now is their own wellbeing. So much so that two thirds would forgo promotion to look after their wellbeing.
So much to be gained here in good leadership and looking after their teams.
I know this to be true already.
Feel a little like I’m on the back foot. There’s already many people doing great work here, but we can always do better.
