The What Goes Around Blog

Openings Unlimited

The world of work has a strong tendency to try and narrow options and close things down, too often with undue haste. From my experience, extra time invested in opening up minds and conversations with a broad range of stakeholders (or should that just say….people?) in the exploration phase leads to better decisions and time saved prior to and throughout implementation. For starters, if you take the initial paths that genuine dialogue create for you, subsequent communications are much simpler and clearer because you’ve involved those who have an interest in you and your people from the start – so there’s inherently less need for bullshitting, sorry I mean finessing that stuff later.

As technology increasingly helps us connect more easily, there is a shift in approach and increasingly I’m finding and learning about companies willing to try a more open approach. Thomson Reuters is one such company, and having run a successful unconference for their technology teams earlier this year – it’s now the turn of the Project Management community. Starting tomorrow, Thomson Reuters is creating face to face opportunities for its people to open minds, converse and look for opportunities together. You can read more about the lead up to this project and get a flavour for what is happening here, for the purpose of this blog post I want to focus on one particular thing worthy of note.

The event tomorrow is not only for Thomson Reuters Project Managers. It’s also for their fans, their customers, other colleagues who rely on their service, and people (like me even) who are simply curious about how to make the world of work….better. This inclusive method is something I’ve been fortunate to participate in previously and I’m very excited that such an influential community within Thomson Reuters is now taking up the baton (sorry I couldn’t resist!). So there will be more on this subject as the next few weeks unfold, perhaps once you get a feel for what is beginning to emerge you might like to get involved too?

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Ask Me No Questions…

…And I’ll Tell You No Lies, is an oft used phrase attributed to the Irish playwright Oliver Goldsmith. It’s been bouncing around in my head on and off for a few weeks now, courtesy of a recurring theme – communication, and specifically how do folks get better at it?

The Front Line

A lot of my work involves spending time conversing with and listening to frontline staff which is very stimulating because with apologies to all you shiny tabled, big desked, thick piled carpeted CEOs out there, the frontline is usually where the real action is. The edges of an organisation buzz, any place where one group interacts with another and dialogue is taking place offers great learning and great opportunity. And yet thanks to the multi layered effect of most companies that vibrancy often doesn’t manage to penetrate to the centre.

The Centre

But that’s OK – because the centre does its damnedest to communicate, frequently too often as it tries to compensate for the fact that so little feedback is received. ‘Maybe we’re just not shouting loud enough and often enough?’ ‘Well let’s send out more news more often then’, and so it goes on, and on, and on.

Ask More, Tell Less

So how does it feel to be on the receiving end of all of this? Let me paraphrase something I’ve heard many times in recent years which I think will help create that feeling: ‘All they do is tell us stuff. They never ask us any questions’.

Alas – all too often ‘they’ simply don’t ask questions or invite opinion, and ‘they’ also mistake their approach as communicating. Sure there may be times when you just need to get a message out, so go ahead and broadcast it. Most often though – if you begin the practice of asking for feedback and ideas and reflecting and responding, you’ll create an environment that’s less coercive and more open – more communicative.

Remember this:

com•mu•ni•cate: Verb/k??myo?oni?k?t/
To share and exchange information, news, or ideas.

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Spangland – 2012 Holiday Postcard #5

After spending over a week in Southern Spain both the gaps and similarities between the Spanish and the immigrant and holidaying population (overwhelmingly English people) began to give me a headache. It wasn’t the beer or the sun – honestly, thou…

At times I felt the Andalusian coastal area was confused. Spanish? English? Both? I painted this circular flag shape to represent the confusion. The border off the edge of the flag could represent some kind of solar effect, or perhaps the ring of condensation a cold beer glass leaves on the table?

Apologies for the heavy blue tint on the photograph – I took this one in fading evening light.