New Ways of Working: Week #1

Purpose: to meet, to mingle, & to shine a spotlight on the things that get in the way of great work.

The Plan

• Purpose & plan
• Welcome, intros/check-in
• Pre-course work: what stood out? (Impromptu networking)
• What’s gets in the way of great work? (Circle)

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• Org & team challenges canvas (Mural)
• Experiment design in pairs
• Experiment shares (Jamboard)
• Course platform demo (Notion)
• Check-out (EasyRetro)

Intro/check-in

(one minute each)

• Your name & company

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• Where are you? 🌍

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• How are you arriving to our session today? 🤯 😴 😐 🙂 😃

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*Hand signals ∧ & 〇.

Warning #1 ⚠

• **You will only get out what you put into this course, so you will have the best experience if you make time for it and give it your all. It's not always easy, so I am here to help, on call anytime throughout the next five weeks.

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• There will be repetition in the course structure as this is kinda like going to the gym or learning any new thing. We gotta do a bunch of stuff a bunch of times in order to get better.

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• A little discomfort when experimenting is perfectly normal. It will sometimes feel like a new pair of shoes, writing with your left hand, or learning a new language - it takes time to master and feel comfortable. �
• Practice is the bottleneck with this work, so we learn by doing.

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What really stood out from the pre-course materials?

We’ll use impromptu networking to explore this question.

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• Before we begin, are there any clarification questions?

Margaret Heffernan

People get very caught in what I call the status quo trap…. They're very alert to what stands in their way. And very reluctant to do experiments.

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They think they can think their way to the answer. And actually, you can't. The only way you find a way to answer is by doing stuff differently and seeing what it gets you. And whether it gets you something positive or negative, you've always learned something.

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I think there is this reluctance to experiment - and in particular, on the part of a lot of senior managers - the tendency to require proof before the experiment… Well, if you could give a guarantee, then you wouldn't need to do the experiment.

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So I think people get stuck because if they have no freedom or imagination to experiment, they'll never get anywhere very different.

Aaron Dignan

The CIA sabotage handbook perfectly describes how we work today 🤯

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We have to bring the right mindset and the right toolset to org’s if we want to change the way we work.

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Traffic lights (control & compliance) vs roundabouts (trust & autonomy)

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Org’s are complex. “You can yell at the weather, you can yell at the garden all you like - that’s not how things change in a complex system”

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Start with the challenges teams feel & design experiments to help them.

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Did the experiment help? Did it hurt? What did you learn?

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Start small. Start by stopping. Learn by doing.

What gets in the way of doing great work?

We’ll use a circle discussion to explore this.

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• Clarification questions?

5 min break - leave your screen & move around! 🎷🎵

Organisational & Team Challenges

Head over to this Mural canvas.

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💡 It should give you some inspiration for designing this weeks experiment.

Warning ⚠

1. There is no one-size fits all approach.

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• We can’t copy & paste an approach from another organisation.
• What works for one organisation or team may not suit your context.
• There is no magic pill that we can swallow to become a great team and a progressive company 💊
• The solution is for each team to find out by experimenting to discover what works for them 🧪

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• This is hard, sometimes scary work! So expect fear & discomfort.

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• It's impossible to get better and look good at the same time.
• So allow yourself to be a beginner ❤️

Experiment design

What would you like to try this week? What action makes sense?

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• Have a think in silence for a minute
• Discuss & refine your experiment ideas in pairs
• Share talk time & help each other out
• Be ready to share your initial idea on an ‘post-it' in 15 mins

Experiment shares

Head over here please.

Course Platform

Quick demo.

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*Please be extra careful to do the right course materials.

The following stats are from a study by the Association for Training and Development, referenced in this article:

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• If you simply have an idea or goal, you are against all odds.
• Consciously deciding to achieve something increases your chances from 10% to 25%.
• Once you decide when and have a clear how, your chances of succeeding become 50%.
• When you commit to someone that you will do it, this stretches probability to 65%.
• When you create a specific accountability appointment with a person you are committed to, the odds are in your favour: 95%.

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Accountability Partnerships

Accountability Partnerships

So you will be holding each other accountable for implementing your experiment this week.

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👉 Arrange a Google Meet/Zoom/Teams/Butter session with your partner in breakout rooms.

Check-out /

Retro

You can help me out by feeding back after live sessions EasyRetro.

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I’ll remind you each week 👍

See you next week!

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