Month: June 2020

I’m sceptical of the core competency frameworks in general.  They often seem to me to be over-engineered lists of a mix of skills, behaviours, and other attributes.  Frequently there is little obvious link to the delivery of the organisation’s strategy or values.  Note I am less sceptical about specific technical competencies to indicate skill in a field (e.g. architecture, nursing, or UX design)

Take the OECD’s (2014) set which divides competencies into technical competencies: specific to a discipline or field of practice and core competences.  Technical competencies are the ‘requirements to successfully perform a given job’ and in their case ‘are defined in job vacancy announcements.’

Their core competencies, on the other hand – those everyone should have – are described in a booklet.  OECD lists and describes fifteen core competencies  grouped into three clusters: delivery-related, interpersonal and strategic, and 5 levels (related to type of role).  Level 1 is roles including ‘assistant’ and ‘operator’, level 5 includes Heads of Function and Directors, giving a total of 75 statements.  This form of competency framework is common.   I’ll take the OECD one as an example of why I am sceptical:

The OECD competency ‘Analytical Thinking’ at level 1 lists:

• Distinguishes between critical and irrelevant pieces of information.
• Gathers information from a variety of sources to reach a conclusion.

And at Level 5 lists:

• Is sought out by others for advice and solutions on how to best interpret and use information.
• Discerns the level of pressure or influence to apply in each aspect of the analysis in relation to the broader context.

My scepticism on this sort of thing is based on my view that the items on such lists are:

• Subjective e.g. a Director – Level 5 –  may not be able to distinguish between critical and irrelevant information(a Level 1 competency) and who is judging what is critical or irrelevant?
• Not relatable to role or level e.g. an assistant, Level 1,  may be sought out by others for ‘advice and solutions on how best to interpret and use information’. (A Level 5 competence)
• Not indicators of job performance as the context will influence the ability to deploy (or not) the competence.
• Not conducive to being ‘levelled’ by role. Any role may require different levels of competence so an assistant my require some of the competence listed at Director level.  For example, what assistant does not have to handle ‘difficult on-the-spot questions (e.g. from senior executives) listed in this framework as a level 5 competence?

But these frameworks have lots of defenders.  Take a look, for example, at the SHL Universal Competency Framework or the UK’s CIPD Competency FrameworkFactsheet.

(I notice that the SHL (2011) info says firmly that we need to distinguish between the words ‘competence’ and ‘competencies’, because ‘it is unfortunate that two very similar words have been used to describe two very different constructs. It is essential that there is a clear distinction between these two terms.’   The CIPD (2020) explains that ‘In the past, HR professionals have tended to draw a clear distinction between ‘competences’ and ‘competencies’. … More recently however, there’s been growing awareness that job performance requires a mix of behaviour, attitude and skill, and the terms are now more often used interchangeably.’)  In this sort of distinction you start to see the difference between core and technical competences.  In some cases frameworks mesh these.  See, for example, the Actuarial Competency Framework.

One person who does not defend core competency frameworks is Marcus Buckingham, who says:

• ‘Competencies can’t be measured. So, your scores (or the scores you give your team) and all the data around how much of a certain competency a person possesses are completely made up.
• No single person possesses all competencies. When you study people who excel at a certain job, although as a group they may have all of the competencies that are supposedly required, no one person has all of them.
• There is no data that shows that people who acquire the competencies they supposedly lack outperform the people who don’t. So even if we could accurately determine that you are lacking a specific competency, having you take a learning and development course to plug that gap will have no effect on your performance. Well-roundedness does not predict higher performance, and it’s better to be sharp in one or two key areas instead of well-rounded.’

The topic of competency frameworks came up this week as an organisation asked me for advice on them.  They had questions related to links between the framework and delivery of strategy and values, whether they needed core as well as technical competences, how to communicate the competences to the workforce in a simple and easy to use way.

What I’ve found is that organisational values are a very good basis against which to judge employee behaviour, attitude and contribution – assuming that you have chosen values that support delivery of your business strategy.  And last week I listened to Yancy Strickler saying much the same thing.  He is the founder of Kickstarter, and he was talking about ‘the values the company created, which helps guide the way Kickstarter attracts and hires talent and constructs and operates its business’.

Marcus Buckingham is also of the view that core ‘competencies are simply values. They should be written on a wall, not attempted to be measured and learned. If you want your team to be goal-oriented and customer service-focused; express them as values, create stories around them, celebrate the heroes who demonstrate them – bring these values to life.’

The organisation who I was discussing competency frameworks with have five values on which to judge an employee’s contribution.  Many organisations are now ‘values based’ – Ben and Jerry’s is a classic example as is Patagonia

I suggested that those in organisation I was talking with re-think their core competences, instead focusing on the values – not as a measurement tool in the traditional sense but to gauge whether people are going to be, in Patagonia’s terms, not a culture fit, but a ‘culture add’.  Patagonia’s values-based approach ‘to evaluating potential hires [is one] that arises from the company’s unwavering and ironclad commitment to its mission. And it’s a reminder to every organization that they are hiring human beings, not skill sets or even experience.’

For other aspects of workforce management – career development, technical progression, management/leadership development – I suggested they introduce technical competences by job family.   For an excellent example of a technical competency framework for designers look at Jason Mesut’s approach.  (Note that it also includes some core competencies).

To recap – I don’t think most core competency frameworks i.e. items listed in progressive order by level achieve their intended outcome of supporting individual or organisational performance management or enabling, in Mesut’s words. ‘a clear way of objectively promoting or compensating people fairly …  or providing clarity of what a long-term career in the organisation might look like or giving scarce and fickle talent a reason to stay.’   A better approach is to develop technical competency frameworks based on job families and for core competencies do not have a framework by lists and levels. Use only the organisation’s values and give clear and engaging messages that employees are expected to live the values in their daily work.

What’s your view on a traditional core competency framework?  Let me know.

Image:  Global competencies

‘Black people need to be able to get into white spaces.  … Otherwise another four years comes and everyone’s doing another protest.’ (Aba Amoah, quoted in What next?’).

Reading this statement, reminded me of a book I read years ago by Geary Rummler and Alan Brache, Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space in the Organization Chart.   The blurb reads, ‘This was the book that first detailed an approach that bridged the gaps between organization strategy, work processes and individual performance.’

Two decades later came an updated version White Space Revisited: Creating Value Through Process.  This edition ‘goes beyond a mere revision of that [first] ground breaking book and refocuses on the ultimate purpose of organizations, which is to create and sustain value.’

The white spaces that Rummler and Brache discuss – organisation strategy, work process, and individual performance, can (and do) harbour racism, exclusion, and sustaining of value through exploitative or demeaning practices.

Neither book mentions or addresses these types of ‘white spaces’ that have come into even starker focus since 25 May when the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis sparked on-going anti-racism protests in many countries.

Power is another of these white spaces and last week I wrote about sources of power in organisations, but did not mention it as a ‘white space’.  @EmRoseBaz commented on this as follows: ‘Hi Naomi, I love your work, but writing about power structures in organisations without talking about race and white supremacy is a big omission (whiteness confers power). See @georgeaye ‘s post on power in design (and every western org’s diversity stats!)’

It’s a good challenge. I hadn’t read George Aye’s article, and did so.  It’s a terrific and rich read with resources, ideas, and stories of Aye’s experience of the intersect of power,  organisation design and social justice.

He asks – ‘what as a designer can you do right now?’  And answers, ‘Let’s start by understanding that power is an underlying hidden mechanism in any human relationship. Everyone has a certain amount of power, and there’s always someone who has more than you and someone who has less than you. Let’s start with 3 simple sets of questions.’ The sets’ headings are ‘check your privilege (as a designer)’, ‘what’s your role (in transferring power)’ and ‘fire up your curiosity (by asking better questions)’, each set has three questions.

The links between organisational power – who holds the various types, how/where/when they deploy it – and racism are undeniable and yet, I feel racism is so complex and multifaceted, that looking at it only through this power lens won’t reveal other important aspects that organisation design could help address.

I’ve been mulling over and discussing this, not for the first time, with both organisation design and other colleagues – of various ethnicities, race and background – and with family members.

The conversations have covered power of various types, whether BAME (black, Asian and ethnic minorities) is a useful category, organisational language, recruitment and career progression, and performance management, societal treatment and day to day experiences.

The intersect between BLM and Covid-19 has also been part of the discussions.  That intersect offers a chilling illustration and some insights into black inequalities that organisation designers could/should consider.  For example, a 21 April 2020 New Scientist article notes that:

‘The most recent figures compiled by the UK’s Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre suggests that of nearly 5000 people critically ill with covid-19 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland whose ethnicity was known, 34 per cent were from BAME backgrounds. But people from such groups make up only 14 per cent of the population of England and Wales.’

The article suggests several factors for this, saying: ‘It’s not about people’s biological make-up. It’s about the conditions that are created due to racialised policies, and how that’s impacted communities over time. For example, poorer, more disadvantaged people – who are disproportionately from ethnic minorities – are more likely to have underlying health problems such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity that put them at increased risk of covid-19’.

The article also cites racially biased algorithms and the types of jobs people do that may preclude social distancing. ‘In the UK, 18 per cent of black people work in caring, leisure and other services that are either essential or jobs that can’t easily be done from home. In the US, less than 20 per cent of black or African-American people can work from home.’

Additionally.  ‘Studies have found that people from BAME groups may be treated differently because of healthcare professionals’ unconscious bias … This creates a system of advantage based on race.  We have to take that into account when thinking about why we’re seeing differential impacts of covid-19.”

So, in this one article you can see:  racialised policies, implied access to types of work (and education that allows/limits that access), biased algorithms, unconscious bias, wage differentials and environmental conditions.  Reading the Public Health England report COVID-19: understanding the impact on BAME communities  reveals more detailed info.

Back to Aye’s question,  ‘what as a designer can you do right now?’  As I said, his article has excellent suggestions.   And beyond his, we can pick up on five questions (four of them discussed in the Economist article, The Great Awakening):

• Where are the white spaces in our organisation? (This one is not in the article)
• What is the evidence that blacks and other Asian and minority ethnicities are disadvantaged in our organisation?
• How much can we do in our organisation to address this and how much do we have to encourage our organisational members to lobby in society as a whole
• What impact does racial disadvantage, as reflected in our organisation, have on our organisation’s performance, credibility, and past/current/future reputation?
• What can we do to improve matters?

As I reflect on these and continuing talking with colleagues on them, we will be working on our responses.  Meanwhile, this week I am reviewing the resource materials from a FutureLearn course I did last year Make Change Happen, considering again the tenth test of organisation design (the Equalities Test) that I proposed we introduce last year.  and listening to Afua Hirsch’s Audible podcasts We Need to Talk About the British Empire.

How will you answer the five questions above?  Let me know.
………..

Image:  Business and race in America, The Economist

The Johnson and Scholes cultural web is one that many in the organisation design/development field will be familiar with.  A full explanation of it is in G. Johnson’s chapter ‘Mapping and re-mapping organisational culture’ in V. Ambrosini with G. Johnson and K. Scholes (eds), Exploring Techniques of Analysis and Evaluation in Strategic Management, Prentice Hall, 1998.

It’s one that is well used.  Mindtools summarizes it, saying it comprises ‘six interrelated elements that help to make up what Johnson and Scholes call the “paradigm” – the pattern or model – of the work environment. By analysing the factors in each, you can begin to see the bigger picture of your culture: what is working, what isn’t working, and what needs to be changed. The six elements are:

1. Stories – The past events and people talked about inside and outside the company.
2. Rituals and Routines – The daily behavior and actions of people that signal acceptable behavior.
3. Symbols – The visual representations of the company including logos, how plush the offices are, and the formal or informal dress codes.
4. Organisational Structure – This includes both the structure defined by the organization chart, and the unwritten lines of power and influence that indicate whose contributions are most valued.
5. Control Systems – The ways that the organization is controlled. These include financial systems, quality systems, and rewards (including the way they are measured and distributed within the organization).
6. Power Structures – The pockets of real power in the company. This may involve one or two key senior executives, a whole group of executives, or even a department.’

Discussing this model with colleagues last week, led me to suggest that instead of ‘Power Structures’ we consider ‘Power Sources’ as that enables thinking of power in the multiple ways Gareth Morgan describes in his chapter in his book Images of Organization

Morgan says, ‘Power is the medium through which conflicts of interest are ultimately resolved.  Power influences who gets what, when and how.’  He goes on to say ‘the sources of power are rich and varied, providing those who wish to wheel and deal in pursuit of their interests with many ways of doing so’.  He then lists and discusses fourteen sources of power.

1. Formal authority
2. Control of scarce resources
3. Use of organizational structure, rules and regulations  (On this one Morgan says, ‘The tensions surrounding the process of organisation design and resdesign provide many insights into organisational power structures’.)
4. Control of decision processes
5. Control of knowledge and information
6. Control of boundaries
7. Ability to cope with uncertainty
8. Control of technology
9. Interpersonal alliances, networks and control of informal organization
10. Control of counter organizations
11. Symbolism and the management of meaning
12. Gender and the management of gender relations
13. Structural factors that affect the stage of action
14. The power one already has (personal power)

When I’m talking about Morgan’s sources of power, I add in a fifteenth – ‘Reputation and credibility’.

Thinking about the context and events now and of the last few months.  I’m watching all 15 sources of power playing out in organisations and in society and it’s notable that the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have amplified some of them.

Three that caught my attention during last week are:

Control of boundaries – the clearest one, for those now remote working, is the boundary between work and home life.  A recent newspaper article comments:  ‘Six weeks into a nationwide work-from-home experiment with no end in sight, whatever boundaries remained between work and life have almost entirely disappeared. … Burnt-out employees feel like they have even less free time than when they wasted hours commuting.’

In our discussions on culture last week for some the feeling of work overload came up, for others – those home schooling or working in shared accommodation, there’s an anxiety, for example, about appearing unprofessional when a child or dog bursts into Zoom view, or having flat mates hear sensitive information.  There are endless tips on controlling  current work/home boundaries but as one article says, ‘Very few guides, though, take into consideration the nuances of home life and the barriers different setups can impose on simply getting the job done.’

Observing the amplification of this source of power I wondered who it ‘belonged’ to.  Does the employer wield it as it raises some questions around job design, design of performance management, design of wellbeing and duty of care processes?  Or does the employee wield it in controlling (or not) his/her calendar and domestic responsibilities, or is it wielded by both parties (or other parties?)

Control of knowledge and information.  On this Morgan says, ‘power accrues to the person who is able to structure attention to issues in a way that in effect defines the reality of the decision-making process.’  In the Covid-19 crisis ways of handling information and knowledge vary from transparency (about what we know and don’t know) to deliberate decisions to censor or with-hold information, see, for example, an article from the Brookings Institute, Knowledge is power: Lessons learned from Italy’s coronavirus outbreak and also Nicholas Christakis video, Covid-19: social networks in which he talks about how health behaviors are contagious through social networks and the dangers of using formal/positional power to force with-holding of information. Among other examples, Christakis’s mentions the example of the Chinese doctor who tried to raise the alarm on Covid-19.

In the current situation where decisions are being made in a context of extreme volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) it’s important to have access to, and use,  several trusted sources of data and expertise. (See Which Covid:19 data can you trust?’).  It’s also wise to exercise critical thinking on the information and knowledge you do have access to.

Ability to cope with uncertainty.  Morgan suggests there are two types of organisational uncertainty – environmental uncertainty and operational uncertainty.  Most organisations are now in both types of uncertainty. Seeing some organisations being able to wield this power and others failing utterly (read Sinking, Swimming and Surfing)  begs the question of how to design for weathering uncertainty – on this take a look some of the plethora of advice on designing organisational resilience e.g. McKinsey’s Navigating to the next normal: The first 100 insights

---

Do you think that power sources would be a more useful exploration than power structures in working with the Johnson and Scholes model of organisational culture?  Which of Morgan’s power sources have you seen amplified in the current situation?  Let me know.

Image: Gary Klein, Mapping the Sources of Power, The knowledge and abilities that come with experience.

 

If  “the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do,” as Michael Porter famously said in a seminal HBR article, then the essence of execution is truly not doing it. That sounds simple, but it’s surprisingly hard for organizations to kill existing initiatives.’ HBR Too Many Projects

 What’s been going on in the last few months is a colossal disruption to strategies, plans to execute strategies and executing strategies.  As a 30th May 2020, Economist article, Lonely Planet, says, ‘The old rules have gone out of the window’ and new strategies are being developed and implemented but in an unfamiliar and unknown context.  The article is discussing the hotel, airline, tourism industries, saying ‘the shape of sectors from restaurants to hotels and luxury goods (which are often bought while people are on holiday), will depend on what tourism looks like when it is allowed to resume. Hotels and airlines are using the upheaval as an opportunity to rework how they function. Families are rethinking how and where they can safely take their holidays. Many of the changes will last only until a vaccine for covid-19 appears. But some will stick. How people start to travel in 2020—or 2021—will shape how they travel for years thereafter.’

The article describes the travel, hotel and tourism industry as ranging from ‘the abysmal to the apocalyptic’.  Industry leaders are trying to work with priorities such as, ‘making things easier to clean and reducing touchpoints that will change the economics of providing travel services’.  Other changes include what ‘Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s boss, calls travel redistribution: people taking trips to out-of-the-way places rather than the usual metropolises.’  Or ‘Even more striking, many people booking properties within 50 miles (80km) of where they live, with the majority within 200 miles. Being able to drive home is useful if lockdown conditions change suddenly.’

The Economist article points out that, ‘Not all these changes will be universal. People have diverse tastes, different reasons to travel and varying appetites for risk. … the in-flight experience may change much less in the long term. … Crucial things—such as the middle seat on airplanes—will not disappear. Airlines are clear that it would destroy their business model, which requires around two-thirds of seats to be filled to make a profit.  Observant travellers will notice tweaks.’

Not all industries and sectors are as massively disrupted as travel, hotel and tourism but many are operating in similar conditions of uncertainty.    This uncertainty means making choices and decisions on which existing projects to continue with which to stop altogether, which to put on hold, which to rein in and which to continue.  (It also means determining what projects to initiate and how to switch/allocate resources to do that).

There are no easy answers, but I was asked to provide formal guidance for people in the OD & D arena trying to make decisions on pre-Covid 19 projects – what criteria should inform their advice on whether to stop, hold, rein in, continue projects that were in hand.   What came out of my research and thinking about the situation is this:

………………

Introduction

Thoughtful and sensitive management of organisational change projects supports an organisation’s business performance, enables their staff to work safely, helps enhance the organisational reputation and makes the organisation a good place to work.

During this period of covid-19 uncertainty, project managers and key stakeholders need to carefully consider:

• The criteria for stopping or pausing a planned change project (and by implication the criteria for continuing with it)
• The methods for keeping the decision to halt a project under review
• The process for re-starting, maintaining a pause, or permanently stopping a change project

Scope

This guidance applies to all organisational design/development/change projects where OD & D practitioners are the key stakeholders and/or advising key stakeholders.  The guidance frames the conditions in which a change project should be continued, paused, or stopped completely.

It does not apply to major programmes or to projects and programmes that have no significant impact on the OD & D sphere of interest.

Guidance

There is no general suspension of planned projects at this point.  But many are changing shape/scope as they prioritise covid-19 response.   This is a time of significant disruption that requires careful judgement calls and a balancing of immediate needs with longer term goals and objectives.

It is likely that as we move out of business continuity/crisis mode into recovery, we will be in a future that is different to the one the change was planning for pre Covid19.

Thus, we must consider the ‘fit’ of the change project in a future that we cannot currently predict or outline in the same way we felt we could pre covid-19.

Generally, consider stopping or pausing a change project if one or more of the criteria below apply:

1. The project’s objectives cannot be met within the budget and timescale
2. The project can be completed but it will not create or deliver the intended benefits in the immediate and/or possible future
3. The organisation/business unit’s assumptions have changed i.e. from ‘normal’ to covid-19 mobilisation and it may not be the “right” project to work on right now, given competing priorities for time, knowledge, skills, other resources, etc.
4. The context has changed and will continue to be in a state of change for some time and it is felt/decided that the ROI or benefits expectations will not be met either now or in the possible future
5. The schedule has slipped significantly or is likely to shift significantly and it will incur additional costs to bring it back to a completion schedule
6. There are delivery difficulties beyond the capabilities of those working on it to manage e.g. remote working complications, team member redeployments, team member sickness etc
7. Key people have left the project or are likely to leave the project through furlough or redeployment to other/covid-19 work.
8. There has been a significant change in the organisation/business unit’s interest and strategy and this is likely to continue for some time
9. The key sponsor has moved on leaving a sponsor vacuum
10. The impacts of the change on people could cause undue stress and overload as they may already be stressed by covid-19 conditions

—————

Think about your organisation.  What guidance would you give on projects that were in train pre-Covid-19 and may (or may not) be relevant currently and in the immediate future?  Let me know.

 

‘An explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored’  (Bateson, 1972, p. xvi).

Karl Weick in his paper Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situations says, ‘Crises are characterized by low probability/high consequence events that threaten the most fundamental goals of an organization. Because of their low probability, these events defy interpretations and impose severe demands on sensemaking.

The less adequate the sensemaking process directed at a crisis, the more likely it is that the crisis will get out of control. That straightforward proposition conceals a difficult dilemma because people think by acting. To sort out a crisis as it unfolds often requires action which simultaneously generates the raw material that is used for sensemaking and affects the unfolding crisis itself. There is a delicate trade-off between dangerous action which produces understanding and safe inaction which produces confusion.’  (Listen to a recent Talking About Organisations podcast in which Weick discusses ‘Disasters and Crisis Management’)

I’m noticing the increasing number of exchanges that seem to be around exploring and sensemaking in this current Covid-19 situation.  Some have been in conversations, others have dropped into my email in-box from colleagues.  This week the topics of exploration include:  psychological safety, journaling, physical and virtual worlds and trust. Here are some extracts from the email exchanges

Psychological safety

Email: ‘I am doing an online course on psychological safety and find the subject fascinating in relation to culture. I am keen to get the conversation going with leaders and managers with the support of a toolkit and resources.  Whilst I have found some material, are you aware of anything current on TED Talk or resources that I could draw on please?’

My response:  I guess your on-line course (whose is it?) mentions Amy Edmondson?  She’s done many articles – see HBR list here and TED talks – see this one on building a psychologically safe workplace.

I wonder if the Covid-19 context makes it even harder to feel psychologically safe?  See this NY Times article.  (Thanks to Asher Rickayzen for sending the link) and also another  Amy Edmondson piece, this time an audio interview on the impact of covid 19 on psychological safety,  and this info from Gartner on improving psychological safety in a time of coronavirus.

There’s another slant that argues that providing or seeking safety is not always a good thing.  See When Safety Proves Dangerous, which discusses the point that ‘Not everything we do with the aim of making ourselves safer has that effect. Sometimes, knowing there are measures in place to protect us from harm can lead us to take greater risks and cancel out the benefits.’

Journaling

Email: ‘I’ve been journaling throughout and kept a bit of a journey in the first few weeks, plotting behaviour and what I saw and heard. What I felt and others said they felt.  Quite interesting how as a nation we moved through panic buying to clearing out, then baking to fence painting. Current trends I see socially are boxes at the bottom of drives offering items free to take away – maybe a result of too much clearing out and no charity shops open?’

My response:  I too am journaling and your mentioning of it prompted me to ask myself when I started, which was when I was still living in Chiswick and I left there in 2003.   My initiation into journaling was through Julia Cameron’s book, the Artist’s Way, in which she talks about Morning Pages (writing 3 pages every single morning, which I’ve been doing since then).

Coincidentally Asher Rickayzen mentioned morning pages in a piece on Anxiety he wrote, saying,  ‘What I’m not seeing much of in my day-to-day work is organisational leaders consciously and reflectively discussing and debating these larger questions (about what the future could look like). What I’m seeing is a bias to action …  I’ve noticed … the lack of conversation about the anxiety we are feeling and I connect this with the bias to action. … This is a peculiar lesson I have learned for myself about anxiety through adopting the process of morning pages; anxiety is not necessarily easy to spot nor are the ways in which we try (often subconsciously) to free ourselves from the inner discomfort it brings.

Trust

Info:  ‘One of the things that strikes me in a number of organisations I work with is that the crisis has trumped underlying assumptions about trust; suddenly call centre staff who pre-crisis couldn’t be trusted if out of sight from their managers have been completely trusted to work from home. The question for me is whether this shift in trust is reversed in future.  I’m also interested in how do we build trust in the Zoom world?’

My response:  Your question is great.  Trust is, I think, particularly highlighted at this point in the covid-19 crisis.  There’s an excellent blog by Charles Green that seems right for now, too – To live outside the law you must be honest. You really need to read all of it to get the full argument he makes but this section gives a flavour, ‘To live outside the law doesn’t mean you’re a criminal – but in Dylan’s meaning, it does mean you’re an outlaw. You operate in part outside the narrow proscriptions of the law; you find affirmation by others of your actions by grounding them in broader principles.  …  That’s ultimately what makes others trust you. We live our daily lives by universal principles that others recognize as legitimate as well. We don’t trust people whose ‘ethics’ amount to rote checkbox compliance.’

Jericho Chambers (a consultancy focused on purpose and trustworthiness) is running a series of webinars,  Business After the Virus,  each related to exploring aspects of trust and purpose, that I’m listening to.  They also do a podcast Trust Delusion.

Physical world and virtual world

Email: ‘These questions are on my mind:

• What is the impact of lack of communal physical space going to have on our creativity and innovation?

• How can we make the virtual world emulate the physical world in terms of community, serendipitous interaction, opportunity to read the social signals?

• How can we make the physical world emulate the virtual world in terms of distancing and personal safety?’

My response:   I don’t have any answers to these questions.  Most of us are exploring and learning as we go, trying things out and seeing what works and what doesn’t work.   For example, I’m intrigued to see how supermarkets have adapted their physical layouts and customer processes so quickly.  And lots of guidance on this has been generated equally quickly .  See for example GMB’s (a trade union) Social Distancing Guidance for Retail Workers or the British Retail Consortium’s advice.  The guidance doesn’t however cover the changes social distancing in shops may make to cusomer/retail assistant interactions or buying patterns. (Though I think the move to on-line shopping will contine).

Many culture journalists/article writers are musing on your questions too.  I enjoyed a March piece in the NY Times, which ends optimistically ‘it’s also possible that after spending years using technologies that mostly seemed to push us apart, the coronavirus crisis is showing us that the internet is still capable of pulling us together.‘  And the business press is similarly investigating your questions – see an FT article ‘How is the world’s mass homeworking experiment going?’

Other topics I’ve been exploring with colleagues this week are, resourcefulness, learning organisation, time, employee values, delivery models.

What topics are you exploring and trying to make sense of?  What impact this have on the way you approach organisation design?  Let me know.

…………………

Image: Exploring the Comfort Zone, Peter Dorey.