Time for a change? 4 things holding you back.

How are things going for your organization, your team, or your on personal career?

How comfortable is your organization or team with the discomfort of change? It is certainly a double edged sword. We have all heard:

“The only constant is change”

Yet, can you sit back and say that you thrive on it? Do you have enough clarity of where you are going, and excitement to get there, to overcome the discomfort?

If this resonates with you, even just a little, perhaps we should chat

A few mistakes I have seen

Everyone is not pointed in the same direction

Technology teams are notorious for this one. The industry and the tools around us are advancing so quickly that there is always a new way to do things.

To that end, getting technologists excited to play with the new tools is pretty easy! How many would answer the question:

“Nah, I would rather use this 10/15 year old technology”!

The problem arises because we have too many choices! As a team you could do one thing a number of different ways - E.g. Implement a Data Catalog. Some folks could be building a custom system, while at the same time 3 other groups are implementing 3 different vendor products. Maybe folks are actually maturing the SAME vendor product in different ways.

Everyone is running in a different direction and because of this, more confusion, complexity, and waste is created than value even though all efforts in a silo are convinced they are maturing the organization. Sure you may see small pockets of value team by team under this scenario, however as a whole I would argue it diminishes the organization‘s fitness overall.

If you reflect, where is your organization doing the same thing 3 different ways? Or 5? Or 10? Or even 2?

The mountaintop is clear however people don’t want to climb it - together

In contrast to everyone running in a different direction, let’s work through the scenario where you have been able to make the mountaintop clear. The whole team can see the peak and knows where you want them to go.

Similar to real mountain climbing, getting to the the top requires a SIGNIFICANT amount of effort. Some climbs require more planning up front, and full teams of people coordinated together to ensure success. The climb can become sidetracked, or even dangerous by unforeseen events such as weather.

I find this mirrors the real world to a T. If I asked my team at the base camp of a change effort - “Do you all want to do this together” - and the answer was no, I can assure you it will be much harder than expected. Every single person that doesn’t want to climb becomes dead weight, holding you back.

You need the plan on paper that gives people psychological safety on what is coming. Furthermore,there needs to be some level of excitement to embark on the journey ahead. Without it, you will likely stall our or sit wondering why you feel stuck in the mud.

Trying to do too much too fast

I fall into this trap as a leader. I am impatient. I want everything to be simple and often trick myself this is the case in my brain. Things are almost always more complex than they seem on the surface.

One unfortunate side effect of this is if you try to push an individual, a team, or an organization too fast, it may dissolve the effort altogether and I would say it is doomed from the start. Broad transformation is not made with home runs.

The key to transformation is progress, by the whole team, driving down the same side of the road together. A good friend of mine - Dean Furness - has told me:

"You just need to help people understand their own personal average, and ensure it gets better week over week, month over month, year over year".

If an individual, a team, an organization simply raises their personal average over, and over, and over again for a sustained period of time, towards a shared mountain top, I guarantee magic will happen. I have seen it with my own eyes. The fitness level of your organization will rise to levels you never thought possible, which creates a level of momentum that often is unstoppable.

My friend has helped me to personally temper my enthusiasm to move fast to truly understand that speed is not the answer - sustained progress is. With sustained progress eventually you will progress faster than you ever imagined.

No data to drive focus and/or gauge progress

No one will ever say:

"Being data driven is a really bad idea."

Extracting value from data has even become sexy in recent years with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the like. The problem is, many people, teams, and organizations are not terribly good at living by their data. Either people do nothing, measure items that truly do not change behaviors, or measure so much that they have metric overload. I have spent a lot of time working on large scale data transformation efforts, and VERY RARELY have come across organizations in this space that themselves, are data driven. If our data/technology teams are not data driven, what hope do we have for the rest of the organization!

I tend to subscribe to the theory that you should measure yourself on just a few metrics that have a significant halo effect on the way your team or organization operates, and are grounded in your quarterly or monthly goals.

If you do this right, the metrics should bring clarity to the current state - the good, the bad, and the ugly! The data needs to tell you more than how awesome you are. They should also have targets, and if they are chosen correctly should not change year over year. All you will be doing is shifting your targets to help infuse clarity of direction across your team.

In summary

I will ask again.

Are you ready for a change? Let me help you become one of the leaders at the forefront of building the future. People should look at your team and think:

“How are they doing that - I want to work with them!”

When I outline the steps of the framework it sounds pretty simple, and I will let you in on a secret.....come closer.....it is!