Giving Your Team Permission To Solve Problems

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Putting Creativity at the top of the management agenda. 

The ability to create something novel and useful is essential to the entrepreneurship that jumpstarts new businesses and keeps successful enterprises in business after they have reached global scale.

Why isn’t creativity then, at the top of the management agenda?

 

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) vs Creative Intelligence Quotient (CIQ)

In its purest form, creativity means connecting the dots in unique ways to solve problems.
When looking at how artists step into challenges, the artist sits back, observes as unbiasedly as possible, allows an idea of how things could be to take shape, and takes action towards shaping that reality.

Whether building a new social media interface, learning to collaborate effectively, or landing on Mars, being creative means, in a nutshell, being a problem solver pur sang, unaware of the existence of any box.

In Steve Jobs’ words:

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

Does IQ matter, then? IQ shows the ability to gather knowledge and search for solutions within that frame of what is known. Creativity, on the other hand, is the ability to go beyond the IQ frame, capitalizing on seemingly random connections of concepts.

Therefore, if innovation is important to scaling your business, deliberately creating a company culture that is fluid and creative will be key to your success as a leader today.

 

If you solve problems (you are creative), you alter existing power dynamics

So, if creativity means problem solving, just saying organizations need to become more creative is not really going to work. Problem solving is actually not allowed in many organizations, employees not being given permission to tackle actual problems.

Now that you have heard about the horsemen and power use, we can safely say, solving problems at work can be unsafe. You could end up being blamed when things go wrong. Or even if you do provide a brilliant solution, your boss or someone else around you, could feel disempowered by your contribution. You could expose yourself to risk if you alter the power dynamics in an organization unaware of its use of power.

 

Leaders! Safety is a prerequisite for creativity

A (development) team is an open system (a group of people in a relationship of interdependence among both themselves and outside variables) that eats information for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and produces innovation (novel and useful solutions). As I mentioned before, if innovation is important to staying in business and scaling your company, creating a company culture that is intentionally fluid and creative is key to your success as a leader today.

If you are seeking innovation and yet not getting the results you desire, could that be saying anything about the working environment you have or haven’t given shape to? Could blame be at blame (yes, I like puns, not blame) for the outcomes you are collecting?

In a blame-based environment, team members often resort to never trying anything new, doing the absolute minimum to get by, and waiting until receiving direct orders from you, so their tracks are covered and they can divert the blame towards you when results end up being disappointing.

For this reason, the first step towards building a creative culture that loves to experiment and solve actual problems, is to create safety. Safety is a prerequisite for creativity. It’s a powerful tool, fit for real business environments, that you can leverage to drive innovation, excellence, employee engagement and ownership.

 

Manager, in helping the team (and your customers), you help yourself

Contrary to widespread belief among most management cultures, a safe work culture is not something that is owed to you. It is something you as a leader are responsible for both shaping and upholding. It is your responsibility to ensure that your team is safe from your actions (that team members do not feel used as your preferred go-to emotional management tool), and that your customers enjoy safety when using the products you make. This mindset is not about others making you feel safe, but about you making it your mission to make others feel safe. In turn, you become protected too when this healthy mindset spreads across the entire organization.

I hear you say, hm…safety? Does that mean immunity, absolution when things go wrong?

No.

The thing you have to keep in mind is, it is how you handle failures and mistakes that makes all the difference. Every time something doesn’t go according to plan, you and your organization have an opportunity to exercise your learning muscle. Whether you are facing smart, accidental or negligent failures, start by ditching the blame, and focusing on the learning and different possible responses.

See here a short guide on different types of failures and how you can handle them:

  • Smart failures: you want to expand the limits of what you know, and you plan actions and experiments carefully, keeping in the loop those who might be impacted by your actions. These are the mistakes that could propel you into leaving a memorable mark in the market, turning you into something better than you were before. You celebrate the team members that are able to experiment, fail, learn and handle recovery swiftly, and see them as an asset to your organization.
  • Accidental failures: they are part of doing business. Review what happened, derive action points to prevent these failures from happening again, and move on.
  • Failures caused by negligence or even malevolence: create a safe space and have a talk with the person in question. This could reveal unaddressed issues playing in the background. There should be consequences, but not from a perspective of blame. You focus your efforts on shaping a healthy and workable workplace.

 

Blameless Innovative Cultures

In blameless cultures, the focus is first and foremost on fixing issues, then making sure they don’t happen again. Team members readily admit to their failures and mistakes, and they feel safe to be transparent about both their strengths and their weaknesses.

Because no one is trying to save himself, learnings are shared across the company, and team members feel safe to share their weaknesses, employees raise their value to the organization as they go along.

 

A recipe for a creative environment

First, you sort out the safety issue.

Then add the following ingredients:

1. Darkness Principle (Watch my video)

The Darkness Principle says two things: 1. a single team member only has an incomplete model of a whole project, and 2. the best representation of a team is the team itself, with all of its parts, its members.

Besides, a team is an open system being impacted by a never ending list of external variables. For this reason, each team member will make you aware of a piece of the total complexity of a project that could otherwise go unnoticed.

The Darkness Principle is why you as a leader, want to be proactively interested in these 3 things:

  • Diversity – Think gender, race, ethnicity, personalities, styles, and different ways of perceiving and processing information.
  • Tapping ideas from all ranks – For the same reason. In a hyperconnected world in which employees have access to information from both within and outside of the organization, each team member will make you aware of a piece of the total complexity of the project that could otherwise go unnoticed.
  • Encouraging and enabling collaboration – Reality today is that most innovations draw on many contributions. Consider for instance the successful networked organizations of The Netherlands. They are not centralized and top-down. Team mates don’t do what they do because someone told them to do it. Contributing to an interdependent network is its own reward. And because each team member is exposed to different social networks, each one of them will bring an awareness of the total complexity of the project that is uniquely valuable towards the success of the collaboration.

2. Edge

Do you work out? In order for a workout to be effective, it has to hurt a little, it needs to take you away from your comfort zone. Do you want to master change, innovation and creativity? Become comfortable with the fact that discomfort is part of your success.

Providing your team with an effective workout doesn’t mean burdening them with insane amounts of work or unattainable deadlines. It means you want to provide your team with real challenges that are a little scary. As a leader you help your team find their edge by holding them accountable to big expectations while granting them a generous amount of autonomy to make their own decisions. The Darkness Principle will hep you create an atmosphere of resourcefulness that strongly supports creativity.

3. Reward risk-taking

Whether you are building your own company or someone else’s, you are taking a big risk. How about teaming up with mates who will take similar risks to help you further your vision?

Study the companies that inspire you. How many of them have achieved success by following tradition and sticking to the rules?

4. Encourage disagreement

Is the arguing in your workplace geared towards identifying the winner of a contest, or are you contesting to get to the essence of all the ideas present in the room?

Disagreement between team members is the foundation of debate and debate is exactly what you need to make sure your company is constantly putting its best foot forward.

5. Visually attractive environment

If you have worked on your safety and added the other ingredients in my recipe, splash with colour and personal expression! A drab-looking environment will not support your efforts!

How about costs? Experiments could be costly, I hear you think. Check my article ‘The Leader as a Service Designer: How to Deal with Uncertainty’.

 

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Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

Planning for Uncertainty: The Leader as a Service Designer

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Uncertainty is inherent to software development and our uncertain world is more uncertain than ever… What happens to planning when everything goes to hell?

When looking at the marketplace from the perspective of power, we have been experiencing an earth shattering shift: from power being in the hands of the seller, to it being in the hands of the customer. From companies making and selling products and services that customers were predicted to want, to customers holding increased leverage in the marketplace.

As a leader, this is your chance to shine as a Service Designer

In a time when we speak more and more about organizations without managers, it would be understandable for you to feel insecure about your future as a leader. Good moment for you then, to become aware of the different roles you can embrace, so you can help your organization in the transition towards present-day effectiveness.

One such role is that of Facilitator. Another, and the one I will be focusing on in this post, is that of the leader as a Service Designer. Regardless of your formal tag, by embracing this role, in helping your team and your customers, you will be also helping yourself, providing yourself with continuity of employment.

Scaling in the Digital Era

Many businesses’ management structures and development teams today still look like an assembly line from the previous industrial era: they exist of pieces that do not communicate among themselves or with customers, they continue to worship tools and contracts that make neither the businesses themselves or their customers truly successful, and they insist on efficiency-centric management practices as if still able to rely on predicting what clients want and reproducing it in large quantities.

The truth is, clients do not want those products anymore. None of that is an effective strategy in the digital era, and definitely not in a volatile world. Building scaling businesses today asks for a different management paradigm, one designed to help enterprises adapt effectively to what is actually happening, in real time.

Successful management practices today include the client in the production process, empower employees, and leverage adaptive technologies and processes. This is not the time for more binary thinking, power being either in the hands of sellers extracting value from customers or in the hands of potential buyers that remain exactly that, potential buyers. This is the time for a new paradigm with seller and buyer co-creating value.

Thinking and Managing as a Service Designer

In the role of Service Designer, you:

  1. Understand building a product and managing a team exposes you to a complex system, and managing complex systems is not a zero sum game.
  2. Co-create value with your customers, as opposed to extracting value from them.
  3. Know people interaction is the game, interaction both within your organization and with the customer. You want to provide your team with as much access to data and customers as possible so they can learn and adapt as quickly as possible.
  4. Happily provide access to data. Today, data is a utility!
  5. Manage for outcomes, not outputs, while being aware that you are successful when your customer is successful as well. Are you building an app for your client and is the aim of your client to increase sales in a new continent? Only when sales go up for your customer in that continent, can you call yourself successful.
  6. Evolve towards a new type of contract that includes both features and outcomes, while emphasizing outcomes are more relevant today. Obsessing about features and specifications is previous era thinking. Yet another role for you as a leader, that of educator!

The Issue of Uncertainty: A Page From Other Industries

They say, if we see it, we can achieve it. Stress around uncertainty often pushes leaders to seek even more detailed requirements and specification documents, intensify command and control, and perpetuate hierarchies of authority, all of them practices of the predict-and-reproduce industrial era. This is an impulse that might seem difficult to stop, but trust me, it can be done. Others have done it.

There are at least two sectors that know how to navigate uncertainty successfully. Sense and Respond author Jeff Gothelf refers to military commanders’ ‘mission command’, a system of leadership that specifies what needs to be done but leaves the decision making to the people doing the fighting.

The other is the contemporary music world in the Netherlands, where contemporary music pros use a model of leadership based on graphic music notation. Just as in ‘mission command’, this graphic notation specifies what needs to be done, while leaving the decision making to the people doing the actual performance.

Whether it is a battle on the field or on the stage, ‘mission command’ and contemporary graphic notation are flexible systems that allow leaders and composers to set goals and objectives while leaving the decision making to the military doing the fighting, or the performers doing the performing. In the Netherlands this system of leadership has been extrapolated by the same musicians in order to create markets for high tech productions of contemporary music.

Final Thoughts

What does this mean specifically for you and your team? Two things: you specify the outcomes you seek without fixating on features, while giving team members substantial space to make their own decisions, and you get comfortable knowing that it is ok today to adjust plans as they are pursued.

If this sounds scary, remember that you as a leader, can navigate different levels of authority. There will be moments when you push and decide, and moments when you pull and align. Be mindful about this, and be deliberate communicating to your team in which situations you do one thing or the other.

What does this mean for you and your customers? From a perspective of power, by co-creating value with your customers you can be in the driver’s seat towards creating a healthier market, achieving continuity in business, and having clients that are not just potential clients, but real ones.

 

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Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Team That Aligns Together Stays Together

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Yes, we may all be created equal, but no, we are definitely not all equals when it comes to the workplace!

Organizations may believe adopting consensus mentality humanizes the workplace, making everyone feel a reasonable level of comfort. Nevertheless, even if there could be some merit in doing so, groupthink in the office is looking for equality in all the wrong places. Building a dream team has nothing to do with equality or agreement, but with competency, collaboration, effectiveness and productivity.

 


Consensus and its cousin, Groupthink, from a perspective of power use and communication style

Most organizations don’t understand the danger of consensus mentality. Here are some of the behaviors I have observed in consensus-based organizations:

  1. Disdain for dissenting opinions. This is contemptuous.
  2. ‘Us versus them’, vertically and horizontally, contributing to stratification and silos. This is stonewalling, in effect not being open to influence.
  3. Dumbing down those who contribute brilliant and original solutions. This is defensiveness. Defensiveness geared towards a false form of empowerment that ends effectively marginalizing those who are ‘different’, are experienced as a threat by lower performers, or challenge the status quo one way or another.

This brings us to other issues around power:

  1. No decisions being taken or taking very long to be reached. This is misuse of power by underusing it.
  2. Continuous search for mutual validation. This points to a lack of personal power.

Right there, power issues, and contempt, stonewalling and defensiveness. Those are three of what John Gottmann calls the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Behaviours that are so toxic that they have a deadly impact on communication and a team’s effectiveness.

 

Consensus mentality and Groupthink are very dangerous practices for two reasons

1. They stifle true innovation and adaptability to ever changing business conditions, contributing to possible extinction from the market. Where brilliant minds are silenced, the dialogue between business and market stops. How is it to be stonewalled by the market?

2. They promote unhealthy cultures and disempowered employees, effectively contributing to employee disengagement and loss of talent. Where effective communication and colour are taken away, the dialogue between employer and employee stops.  How is it to be stonewalled by today’s ever leaving employee?

Consensus thinking is devastating to all things effective and productive. What if we replace this quest for consensus with a quest for respect and appreciation for the diversity of what each employee brings to the plate?

 

From Opinion to Intention: The case for alignment and diversity

In successful alignment-fueled organizations, ‘different’ is simply a piece of new information, and ‘difference’ the place where insight lies. This is why truly innovative companies leverage gender, nationality/ethnicity, differences in ability, and different styles of cognition, communication and personalities towards products and services that leave a mark.

If we define consensus as unanimity of opinion, and alignment as unanimity of intention, an organization’s consensus culture can transform into being alignment-fueled by shifting its value focus from opinion to intention.

 

So, what is alignment?

Alignment can be defined as ‘bringing parts into proper relative position’. When it comes to teams and organizations, it means proper relative position of vision, expectations, roles, and resources.

Successful alignment doesn’t necessarily involve co-workers liking each other or agreeing with each other. A team can align around the need to accomplish a job together, finding a bite of the situation that becomes the common goal or interest.

How about conflict?, I hear you think. A team that is focused on finding alignment sees conflict as a creative act. They don’t argue for someone to win a contest. They contest to get to the essence of all the ideas present in the room. Conflict allows them to achieve a more innovative solution than either team member alone could on his own.

 

Regardless of formal tag, this is your chance to shine as a facilitator

Conflict only gets out of hand when there is no facilitator in the room. External facilitator? Internal facilitator? Regardless of formal arrangement, if you trust your skill to move team members from positions and personal agendas to a shared intention, you can support and empower your team by:

  • Modeling the attitude of deep democracy. This is an attitude of curiosity and openness towards unknown and marginalized experiences.
  • Becoming the holding container for the ambiguity, tensions, and visions of all the different team members
  • Engaging in a creative process with your team, leading them towards new and fresh innovations
  • Using a wide range of tools depending on the needs of your team. Teams with higher EQ and SQ might move positions quicker, other times you will need more time and more powerful tools.

 

Problems and Solutions: Groupthink Issues, and what you can do instead

  1. Drowned-Out Voices
    Let’s say you are planning an idea generation session for a new initiative and you use traditional Brainstorming. The overly exuberant will most likely drown out those who are more thoughtful and deliberate in their contributions.Use Brainwriting instead. It has 3 major advantages:1. Ideas are recorded the moment they pop up in everyone’s mind, no ideas being lost while waiting for a chance to speak.
    2. Ideas are contributed in private, removing the fear of being openly judged by others.
    3. Everyone contributes equally, regardless of personality type or personal agenda, so you can truly leverage the diversity of those styles and personalities, while at the same time doing away with office politics.
  2. The dreadful ‘This is How We have Always Done It’, focusing only on what is known.
    Think for instance of blind commitment to best practices disregarding critical information that has not been explored.Instead, appreciate the power of the question rather than the need to rush to answers. Next time you’re in a group meeting, start with, What problem are we here to solve? Keep testing often with, Are we still answering the right question?
  3. Over Confidence In Own Decisions
    Everyone supports a decision, so it must be right, right? It could be, but you don’t want to leave that to chance. One major effect of groupthink is that it leaves a team deceived into thinking the right decision has been made.Instead, keep in mind, if everyone thinks the same, then no one is thinking… Teams and their leaders can avoid this by embracing curiosity, seeking actively for real expression to take place, and spending more time in the question-asking phase, inviting new and fresh information before deciding on a step.
  4. Employee Disengagement
    Toxic communication, stratification and silos in your organization? Talent exodus is at an all time high.Instead, go 360 and break through groupthink. Design a cross-functional, cross-vertical ‘innovation’ team and invite your employees to connect to your organization’s strategic objectives. They will feel heard, a part of the organization’s growth, and most importantly, they will feel appreciated.
    And empowered.


Closing Thoughts

Would you like to leverage the power of diversity? The capacity to align is a vital part of it. In fact, the capacity to align is a critical team skill.

Instead of focusing on who is doing what to whom, successful teams focus on answering 4 key questions: What do we have in common? What is the overall objective? Why is it important to align? What would happen if we don’t?

 

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Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

 

The Solution Architect as a Communicator

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Are you as a Solution Architect communicating effectively?

As a Solution Architect you are both a leader and a team player. You are simultaneously, an accomplished individual, and a part of a complex system, the team and organization you work for. Navigating the complexity of relationship dynamics that exist within teams and organizations can feel like walking through a minefield, and is often a challenge for even the most experienced professionals.

Reducing taxing interactions within teams and organizations can have a powerful impact, strengthening those complex systems by improving working relationships between departments, teams and team members.

John Gottman identified 4 behaviours that are so toxic, that he refers to them as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I am sure you are familiar with at least some of these behaviours:

Blaming/ Criticism: attacking the person, instead of the behaviour
Defensiveness: not owning own behaviour
Contempt: name calling, sarcasm, belittling, anything attempting to create distance with another
Stonewalling: cutting off communication, silent treatment, refusal to engage

Take a deep breath and answer the questions in my questionnaire with T (True) or F (False).

You can download it here: The Four Tech Team Toxins: #solutionarchitect

 

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Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

 

The Solution Architect as a Leader

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Are you aware of your power and its effectiveness?

Power is an internal quality that affects everything we do. Our use of power impacts others, and others’ use of power impacts us. When it comes to communication, team collaboration, and getting things done within an organization, it is critical to understand how power works and how to use it.

As a Solution Architect you have lead developers report to you, and you yourself report to a number of roles within your organization. Navigating the complexity of relationship dynamics that exist within teams and organizations is always filled with power issues. As a Solution Architect you find yourself having to both lead up and lead down.

We all have a personal Powerprint. This powerprint is constantly influenced by our personality and the variety of positions we hold within organizations and society. Each one of us has therefore different, and at times, conflicting ranks at the same time. I am sure having the positional power of a Solution Architect doesn’t necessarily translate to always feeling powerful. Understanding how your behaviour affects the people you lead and creating alignment between your sense of power and your use of it is the new core competency of the 21st century.

Whether you are already a Solution Architect or would like to be one, you can empower yourself and others to use power healthily and wisely. My questionnaire will help you gain greater Awareness of power so you can move towards a use of it that is ethical, authentic and effective.

Download the questionnaire here:

Tech Team Power Questionnaire: #solutionarchitect

 

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Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

33 Roses: Being Visible

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One of the things I love most about my work is all the traveling I get to do around the world. In between engagements I take every opportunity to visit interesting sites and mingle with the locals.

The other day while in Hong Kong, I finally came around buying myself a selfie stick (yes, a selfie stick!) and doing some pending personal homework. I visited the Hong Kong Flower Market and bought 33 white roses in honour of my grandfather, José M. Alonso.

A couple of months ago I had consulted a constellator regarding professional success. Constellations are powerful visualisations that reveal family patterns that hold us back, empowering us in our life journey.

Even though I have enjoyed success in life, I always felt I was somehow ‘hiding’, keeping myself from bigger success. I discovered my grandfather was ‘the hidden one’ in my family. Outwardly, he was a successful businessman who provided well for his family. Under the surface, he was a 33rd degree Freemason, a humanist and a freethinker working towards improving himself and making the world a little better. He did so under the radar, hiding from Franco, who brutally persecuted Freemasonry.

My granddad fled from Asturias to Havana and Caracas at a time when it was possible to build wealth in Cuba and Venezuela, and then settled in the Canary Islands where he became a successful entrepreneur. His humanistic work was a secret.

As a kid, his passing away was an excruciatingly sad day. His funeral was a multitudinary affair too, people came from everywhere.

Now that I’m putting all the pieces together I also realize everytime I have visited La Laguna (Tenerife), the older people have always treated me well, ‘Oh, Don José’s granddaughter.’

He was loved.

There was something about him, whether telling us about a good exercise routine, teaching us about astrology or sending us humongous baskets of Christmas sweets around this time of the year, the moment he entered the room one would feel abundance in the broadest sense of the word.

My task today is to feel connected to my granddad and to be visible. My work is important and I don’t need to hide. It is safe today to do ‘real work’ out there, without hiding.

How about you? Is there anything blocking you from achieving the success you desire?
I’d love to hear all about it. You can like this post and connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, and share your own personal stories.

And, by the way, as it turns out, my grandpa was an organizational innovator. More about that in an upcoming post.

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Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

 

Do, or Do Not: Solo and Team Performance

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Fundación BBVA, Madrid. With Willem Jeths

Have you ever tried to move a chair?

Exactly, there is something really odd about that question. You either move the chair, or you don’t. There is no trying. Trying is nothing.

Try it.

The similarity between moving a chair and performing a concert

Once the date of a concert has been agreed upon, it will not be changed, ever. On the day of the concert, there will be an audience, the curtain will go up, and you will be on that stage. There is no trying. There is only doing the performance. Period.

Try it.

What? There are suddenly some hurdles to overcome. Putting on a performance implies quite a bit more than moving a chair, I hear you say.

Yet performers do it, because in their minds, there is no trying.

4 keys to the mindset of a top performing musician. And you too can get there.

Performing with the same flow as when moving a chair means exercising the three muscles of personal power. And then adding a fourth something else.

Yes, personal power can be trained. I did it, and you can do it too. Here are the first 3 keys:

1. Letting go of what is not useful: it means turning down irrelevant mental processes and turning up the relevant ones, engaging the brain to be precisely tuned to the exact task demands. It means a state of mind that is equal parts all-out effort and all-out zen. Isn’t this a nice want-to-have besides a musician’s interesting friends?

2. Controlling fear and managing emotions: it all starts by facing them head on, putting them in a place where they can’t interfere with you building your skill and showing up on that stage. Making a distinction between self-worth and performance works nicely too.

3. Taking massive action: it means seeing the big picture of all the actions that need to be taken to achieve the desired goal and how they interconnect, and then taking them. Practicing, memorizing, finding the best mentors, talking to the right people, choosing the music, picking the right clothes and even deciding who will iron them, and everything in between. It also means changing the emotional meaning behind all activities, tying it to a concrete and compelling goal: in 3 years I want to be the next Beethoven and play for 3000 people in Carnegie Hall!

And then the something else:

4. Continuing until the end no matter what happens along the way: whether a musician makes a mistake, forgets the lines, the instrument breaks down or the ceiling of the concert hall comes crashing down, once a performance starts, a musician does whatever it takes to solve the internal and external problems encountered, and see the performance through to the end. There is no starting over. There is only giving the audience something memorable they can take home with them. And the audience loves a musician for it.

Would you like to achieve transformation the way a task-oriented musician does? A coach can help you tune in to your our own inner voice and develop the capacity to take massive action towards different and desired results.

How does this work in a team? Solo performer goes ensemble and team

Theater Kikker with Electra New Music. Utrecht, The Netherlands

Let’s say a solo performer becomes performer within an ensemble of contemporary music. Does anything happen to the 4 keys to a top performing mindset?

No and yes.

No, because the 1-2-3-4 basic recipe stays the same. Yes, because the tasks involved do influence 3 and 4.

Besides playing an instrument, this kind of musician creates a market for a type of music for which there is no clear demand and supply. When it comes to taking massive action, the big picture of actions to be taken and how they interconnect will look different and it will include a lot more tasks: conflict resolution, selling yourself, aligning different musical parts, hiring personnel, attracting sponsors, being flexible with roles, the list goes on and on.

For this type of performer, continuing until the end no matter what happens along the way, means ‘No’ is never the end. During a project, ‘No’ is simply a sign that says, just take another road. The goal is what matters, there is no trying, only getting there. The product, the production, the concert, will happen. On the day of the concert, there will be an audience, the curtain will go up, and that ensemble-team will be on that stage. There is no trying. There is only doing the performance. There is only giving the audience something memorable they can take home with them. And the audience loves them for it.

Let’s be honest: if you are a CEO or executive manager, you want your clients to love you for your memorable products too.

imageSo, what the heck is a high-performing team and how do you get one?

A high-performing team is one that is:

  • productive = gets the job done because there is only do, or do not
  • engaged = has a purpose (a clear ‘what are we here to do?’), and a language and atmosphere that support the being together
  • aligned = puts personal positions aside by focusing on the ‘what are we here to do’, coming together around organizational priorities

How do you get one?

I have a wide range of frameworks for organizational, cultural and strategic problem solving. My toolbox contains Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching tools, as well as serious games, so I can help you co-create a high-performing team. Just drop me an e-mail.

Try it.

I mean, do it! ?

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Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

The Biggest Mistake Leaders Are Making Today

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Are you a CEO or executive manager and confused about the meaning of the word leadership? Are you wondering why it has become so difficult, exhausting and expensive to run your company, and why management practices that used to work do not work anymore? Do you find yourself wanting for the problem to go away, yet sensing deeply there is a cultural change that is here to stay?

The work floor has been shaken up by the arrival of Millennials and Digital Natives: a new generation with an entirely different set of expectations than the generations before. As it turns out, Millennials and Digital Natives are not interested in traditional career ladders. They want to be valued and take it for granted that this must be possible within an organization. They possess a wealth of information from inside and outside of the company, impressive skills to deal with data, and they want to be rewarded for their contributions, not for waiting their turn. And, when they see a problem, their natural allergy towards hierarchical models will make them go straight to the decision makers. Younger generations want autonomy and collaboration and will not fit in a company that sees employees as interchangeable parts of an HR machine. If their desired outcomes are not there, they will most likely change jobs.

What is one to do about leadership in the middle of this all?
Just recently, President Obama clearly articulated what leadership is not anymore in 2016.

[huge_it_videogallery id=”6″]

President Obama on leadership 

During the 2016 Democratic Convention, President Obama clearly stated the current state of affairs regarding the word leadership: We don’t look to be ruled!

Just like that. What a breath of fresh air, I truly appreciate those who easily name the elephant in the room.

He went on to elaborate:

“We’re not a fragile people, we’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared saviour promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way […] Our power comes from the fact that all men are created equal, that we, the people can form a more perfect union… The capacity to shape our own destiny is our birthright”.

Obama’s words reflect a stance that is not only having an impact on our societies but in our organizations as well.

If you hold a leadership position in an organization, I could imagine the word “equal” in Obama’s speech possibly making you frown in disbelief, thoughts of anarchy racing frantically through your mind. But please, stay with me. A different way of doing things is truly possible, and luckily, it doesn’t involve any anarchy.

Schoenberg: And now… for something else…!

Did you know this exact leadership issue played out some hundred years ago in the classical music world when the tonality that had prevailed for centuries had, just like our current organizational models, reached a break down point? I am referring to a hierarchical way of composing (aka organizing sounds) that systematically made some pitches or chords prevail over others. Each piece of classical music was in fact a long marching of two recognizable chords in endless variations. If one of them, the dominant, made the listener feel “unheimisch”, the other, the tonic, rapidly provided a feeling of resolution. After uncertainty, certainty would always return.

If you are not sure what I am referring to, comedian, actor and musician Dudley Moore did a brilliant parody on the long standing tyranny of the dominant – tonic relationship. You can watch it in the video below. At around minute 3:05 you’ll most likely start finding yourself longing for that final tonic, except that Moore doesn’t give it to us. He keeps us in suspense for one and a half more minutes until he simply closed the piano lid. And when closing that lid, he opened a door, a dream door into new possibilities of organizing sound. Because, remember Obama?, sounds didn’t look to be ruled by the tonic, that self-declared saviour of the classical music tradition! [huge_it_videogallery id=”5″]

Somewhere around 1920 Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg, the “Millennial” of his time, showed up. He decided to treat all musical pitches as equal. With this atonal thinking he brought about an earthquake that changed classical music forever. From that point on, composers went on to treat other musical parameters in the same way. Stockhausen, one of contemporary music’s own “Digital Natives”, described it like this:

“Use all the components of any given number of elements, don’t leave out individual elements, use them all with equal importance…It’s a spiritual and democratic attitude towards the world. The stars are organized in this way…”

If the word “equal” in Obama’s speech had possibly turned out to be difficult to hear, I could imagine Stockhausen’s words “democratic attitude” simply adding insult to injury. How can we be putting the words equality, democracy and leadership in the same sentence? How do their words relate to our current organizational models?

The big mistake leaders are making today

The management legacy of the by now 100-year old assembly line was to compartmentalize information. Besides, information was power. In our current era of overinformation, this legacy has become obsolete. Employees have access to information from both within and outside of the organization, making it increasingly difficult for any single leader to possess all the information needed for success.

The biggest mistake leaders are making today is thinking they themselves need to have all the information needed for an organization’s success, when there is in fact valuable unknown new information in the system itself.

Does equality and democracy mean that anyone gets to tell what needs to be done?

No. The key to being able to put the words equality, democracy and leadership in the same sentence lies in the word “information”.
The information present in each member of a team or organization is equal in value towards the achievement of strategic, cultural and business solutions. Because of that, a democratic approach towards all the voices (sounds ?) of a system, including marginalized ones, is necessary today.

How about leadership?

Leadership today means to 1. incubate and initiate processes that reveal the information present in teams and organizations, and 2. orchestrate it towards the achievement of strategic, cultural and business solutions.

Are you wondering how to do that?

Just when everything that could be achieved with the dominant – tonic relationship in classical music had been exhausted, Schoenberg and Stockhausen were interested in making something that would work, instead of something that would be predictable. They were interested in results, and when the system restricted them, they broke out of the box.

If you are seeking for ways to break free from your own organizational box, so you can make something that works in our volatile and uncertain world, consider a systems thinking facilitator and send me an email.

System thinkers believe systems are intelligent and creative, and can help you reveal and channel the intelligence, creativity and pieces of truth held by every person in a team or group. I am such a facilitator and have many great tools: a battery of Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching tools, and organizational graphic constellations from the world of the modern arts like the one at the top of this post.

* * * *

Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

 

Modern Music is…Modern Organization

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Music is organized sound – Edgar Varèse

When I started my organizational design consulting business 5 years ago, I had just made a 15-year trip from the bureaucracy of the classical music world to the agility of the contemporary multidisciplinary arts. I attended every single networking event I could possibly think of and talked about my venture to everyone who would listen. In some instances, I even talked to those who would not listen. But that is an entirely different post.

I decided to use social media and word of mouth as the central marketing tools. Enthusiasm and perseverance were the only commodities in my hands to make it a success. Along the way I was being asked to blog and even write a book. I kept postponing it, there was so much to do.

It’s been an intense journey, and 5 years later, I can scream it from the rooftops, things are happening!

I have navigated the business optimization waters of Lean, I am a Senior Advisor Innovative Organization by the Antwerp Management School. I have dived deep into the relationship optimization waters of processwork, and to stay musical, I have a battery of relationship-oriented tools, including Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching tools, and serious games.

Within this spectrum of practices and experiences, I now use a wide range of frameworks to help my clients with their problem solving in a Design Thinking kind of way. I call myself an organizational design thinking consultant.

Today my clients are endorsing me, and oh yes, commodities have increased. I can now work on an entirely different kind of marketing with superstar Kerstin Hoffmann, the PR Doktor!

And here I am, excited to blog and share with you the many ways in which music connects to organizational development, facilitation and systemic coaching.

Today I would like to tell you something about graphic scores, the serious games right out of modern music performance. The prize is big. A graphic score is a collaborative framework that dramatically improves the quality of the collaboration with each iteration. The prize is continuous process improvement.

Did you know…?

Whereas classical music is notated making use of five lines with dots on and in between the lines (a score), some composers also make use of graphic notation when traditional classical music proves ineffective, the result being a graphic score. The example seen here (Hexagonie by Gaël Navard) is a graphic score of an ensemble piece. The aim of such a composition is mostly a research of new kinds of interactions between the score and the musicians. It is meant as a new type of ‘chamber music’ away from the chamber music played in traditional settings. Modern performers align around a purpose and remain engaged throughout its performance. Going back to Varèse, music is the organization of sound. When looking at graphic scores, we can also say that modern music is organized serious play.

Think for a moment about your teams

A music ensemble is in fact a team. Is the music your team is playing perhaps too traditional for the times we live in? Are traditional teambuilding practices unhelpful to your team? Are you seeking a different type of ‘sound’ for your organization? Stay, well…, tuned! Let me tell you more about graphic scores.

Hexagonie is a piece of music, a board game by Gaël NavardHexagonie

A graphic score is:

  • A serious game that allows expert musicians to develop new skills in real time while being care-free. Based on the instructions given in a legend, the players will be able to make different choices towards organizing the interaction. A symbol will trigger a gesture which will generate a new technique that in turn will generate a new type of sound. Graphic notation allows a musician to put aside everything he or she knows and to approach things with an open and fresh mind. It is a way of communicating that activates performers emotionally, allowing them to achieve that ‘something else’.
  • An iterative process of learning. There’s no such thing as a wrong performance. The first performance can be seen as a ‘minimum viable product’ (a ‘product’ that is not perfect but that somehow already works) and each time the game is played, the players will have a better understanding of the piece making each subsequent performance different and better.
  • A process to improve the enjoyment of work. The development of new skills and sounds fills experimental musicians with joy. The experimental musician yearns to go to places where he or she has never been before.

A graphic score:

  • Contains just a few rules that are clear, easy to remember (do not need to be repeated all the time), known to everyone through a legend, and easily accepted (no need for endless meetings to reach consensus). The responsibility for the end result lies within every player and everyone at the same time.
  • Allows everyone involved to have an overview of the whole process (most organizations are very fragmented, killing innovation)
  • Creates structure and a feeling of cohesion and coordination.
  • Is a flexible grid that says what needs to happen but leaves enough room for one’s own interpretation.
  • Promotes self-organization, self-selection and self-governance.

Graphic scores show that only two ingredients are necessary for self-organization: a clear purpose and a few restrictions or boundaries.

The principles of self-management were hammer-klaviered into me during my 15 years of serious play in The Netherlands. And not just self-management. I will be sharing my experience with this and other good sounding themes in my upcoming posts.

See you next time and until then, you can find my original paper on high performance HERE

* * * *

Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.