All aboard: how innovation feels, and why this matters for teams doing innovative work

Over the years, I’ve worked in a variety of industries - education, edtech, consulting, international development, insurance, and more - but an overarching trend of the roles I’ve held is that the work I’ve done in each of these industries has been focused on innovation. That innovation has looked different for each role, because innovation to build agricultural businesses in eastern Congo looks different than innovation in the edtech space, but the patterns of the innovation work across each role are remarkably similar. 

Since I’ve managed not just innovation work and projects but also teams focused on innovation work, the team executing the work and its dynamics is always top of mind for me because any innovation work can’t happen without high quality, bought-in teams. One thing that’s often overlooked when it comes to any type of innovation work is not just what it is or what we are doing, but what it feels like to the people on the teams making the work happen.

A good visual example of how innovation work feels to the people doing it is the video below, which demonstrates how the proximity you have to the front changes your perception of how fast things are moving. 

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Thinking of this through the lens of a team, I think the leaders of any innovation work are always closest to the front, leading the way and directing the vision. But as we can see, when you’re at the front things seem to be moving slower. I can recall talking to a leader working on a new strategic branch of a company and in a moment of frustration with the pace of progress on the project he said, “I just don’t know why it’s taking so long.” This frustration is normal because leaders in any innovation space know where they want to go and see the vision clearly, but the pace isn’t what they want it to be or what they expected it to feel like. 

The reality, though, is that things aren’t moving slowly at all, they’re actually moving pretty fast, it can just feel like things are moving slowly because as a leader, you’re at the forefront and your view is different, so the pace literally feels different and likely slower than you’d like.

As we can also see in the video, to the team and those not at the very front of the work, things can feel like they’re moving at breakneck pace, confusing, chaotic, or even disorganized. The pace is one thing, but so are the turns - pivots that are actually planned out and part of the path forward can feel like whiplash without the broad view afforded to leaders at the forefront. This is important to point out because since innovation work can’t happen alone but rather depends on the buy-in, energy, and talent of entire teams, if the team is left out of that forefront vision and momentum then the work simply won’t get done at both the pace and quality required to be successful. 

In innovation work of any industry or sector, what can happen is that leaders frustrated by the perceived slowness but who are managing teams frustrated by the perceived fastness will run into all sorts of issues due to the perception misalignment: burnout, lack of buy-in, turnover, all of which actually slow things down. So what are leaders to do?

In any type of fast-moving, innovative work it’s important to remember two things. First, as a leader, things aren’t moving as slowly as they may seem because your view and mindset are different than everyone else’s. Second, without the front-row view, your team may feel that things are moving more quickly or chaotically than they seem, and it’s important to show them what you see so they understand the big picture. Let them in on the vision, let them see the path ahead, align your perceptions, and build a shared understanding of where it’s all going so everyone is truly on board and ready to execute. Providing that clarity is so important for the efficacy of the work, but also the shared consciousness of the team. This is essentially what we mean by change management.

Take the team with you, because it’s the only way to both get things done and create lasting impact.

Beyond Assuming Positive Intent: What Organizations Going Remote Need Most To Thrive

This week, the company I work for announced that we will continue working remotely for the remainder of 2020. As coronavirus cases continue to climb at a disturbing clip, I’ve been thinking about the long-term effects of rapid remote transitions, and how culture is impacted by those changes. 

As we all settle into the reality that things may never fully return to the way they were before, I think it’s valuable to assess what our communication and problem-solving looks like in our respective organizations, particularly as we embrace remote work for the long-term and let go of the idea that this is temporary.

Remote communication is always more challenging. The most challenging remote communication I’ve navigated was when I worked for a nonprofit with offices in Seattle and Eastern Congo. Not only were we overcoming time zone hurdles, we were also constantly bumping up against language barriers (French, Swahili, English) and different cultural articulations of power dynamics, both of which impacted how we communicated and how we solved problems on an international level. It took a lot of effort, energy, and intention.

Why assuming positive intent can be problematic

One office platitude I’ve never been a fan of is assume positive intent. While I understand the gist of what the phrase is trying to accomplish - enter into this work with good faith that everyone is doing what they believe to be good and right - I think in practice, especially in a remote environment, it creates issues for a number of reasons:

• Being guided primarily by assumptions is never a sustainable way to operate for very long. Assuming positive intent unwittingly encourages us to communicate less, not more.

• It ignores very real political and power dynamics. For many organizations unwilling to candidly tackle problems, “assume positive intent” is often used as a cheap top-down substitute for real communication and problem solving. “Just assume positive intent, no need to dig deeper into real issues.” More often than not, by implying that real problems needing to be solved aren’t actually there, assuming positive intent favors those who wield power in organizations, not the other way around. When this happens, assuming positive intent is a thinly veiled way to enforce compliance and shut down meaningful debate.

• An uncomfortable truth about any organization is that some (hopefully not too many) people actually don’t act with positive intent. Some people are more interested in self-preservation and promoting individual agendas than contributing to the greater mission an organization is working to accomplish. We all have professional intuition that informs our awareness in these instances, and to demand the assumption of positive intent can actually cause harm. Ensuring actual alignment of values, mission, expectations, and so on requires more than assuming everyone is on the same page and moving toward the same goal.

How we view problems shapes the environment we create for our teams

It may seem like the opposite of assuming positive intent is to question every intention, but it’s not. I would argue that both assuming positive intent, and its inverse of relentlessly questioning intent, are two sides of the same paradigm that need replaced.

Both assuming positive intent, and its inherent inverse of questioning intent, are rooted in approaching problems as execution problems. When we view everything - communication issues, performance issues, organizational issues - as execution problems, we create environments that lack psychological safety. 

Put simply:

Psychological safety is an environment where teams and employees feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable with each other.

Amy Edmondson pioneered this concept, and wrote a wonderful book laying out how to create psychological safety in our organizations. Google’s research also found that psychological safety is the number one trait of effective teams (they researched over 300 teams to inform their conclusion). Viewing things through the lens of an execution problem makes everything about the individual person’s performance rather than the organizational dynamics at play contributing to that individual’s performance. Because of this, environments that view issues as execution problems, platitudes like “assume positive intent” spread in an attempt to address the issue topically without getting to the root of the issues.

A better way forward

Rather than view issues as execution problems, the better way forward is to view issues through the lens of learning problems. When we approach issues as learning problems, our organizations are able to address the myriad problems requiring our attention and effort in a healthier, more productive way. 

Interpersonal conflicts, missed deadlines, poor production, projects not meeting expectations, name any problem. When we choose to see each of these things as opportunities to learn, grow, and become better, our organizations improve because we remove the threat of personal attribution (and therefore the threat of “being on the chopping block”) and instead take a step back to address circumstances, environments, and dynamics creating those problems.

Viewing things as learning problems rather than execution problems is:

• The difference between a manager asking an employee why a project wasn’t done right, and a manager apologizing for not making expectations clear before owning miscommunications and creating new expectations together alongside the employee

• The difference between a company letting an unhappy but valuable employee quit, and a company unwinding the issues leading to that employee’s unhappiness to understand what went wrong and how to make changes where possible to retain them

• The difference between a leader telling a teammate “you didn’t do what I asked” and a leader asking a teammate about their current work/stress load and how they can assist in helping prioritize their projects to ensure success

It’s all about understanding

When we view the inevitable issues that arise in our work as learning problems instead of execution problems, we not only address problems in a healthier way, we actually solve them better. We are able to ask difficult questions, look at things in new ways to reach novel solutions, and reach a place of understanding. Rather than the bandaid of assuming positive intent that restricts real communication, leaning into learning and solving problems helps us know our work and people on a deeper level. In a fully remote environment, understanding is what we need more than ever. 

To be clear, this is much more difficult work that requires leaders to not rely on their titles and authority structures to get things done, but instead requires relationship, empowerment, and authenticity. Basically, leadership. 

There Are Only Three Mindsets: Which Are You?

In 2015 I stumbled across this illustration by the artist Joey Roth, and I instantly adopted it as a governing life philosophy. While it may seem reductionistic or brash, it’s a helpful tool for categorizing mindsets and behaviors. It’s a spectrum that we can jump between at any given time, and no state is permanent. At the end of the day, the mindset that wins out above all is that of the hustler.

Charlatans

We all know a few charlatans. These are the ones who always have their heads stuck in the clouds, dreaming of things without ever doing any of the work. They talk a big game but have nothing to back it up.

They have tricked themselves into thinking that they have already achieved something just by thinking about doing it. Charlatans are the easiest to spot because they are, to put it plainly, full of shit.

They are all talk, to the point that they could probably talk themselves into or out of anything. But when the rubber meets the road, they fail to deliver, and always have an elaborate excuse for why they didn’t deliver.

If vaporware was a person it’d be the charlatan, and organizations suffer when they entertain charlatans because nothing is ever built.

Martyrs

The martyr is the most common path in professional and personal life. We grew up watching movies that told us, “If you build it, they will come.”

This is simply not true in the vast majority of cases, so people fall into a rut by slaving away for companies, situations, and people who will never recognize their greatness because martyrs are missing the talk factor.

They become jaded, resentful, and the chips on the shoulder grow so large that they eventually topple over. Martyrdom is extremely selfish, because it keeps greatness hidden under a facade of false humility.

Organizations suffer when martyrs become addicted to their victim mentality and stop contributing their high value.

Hustlers

The hustler gets things done. They are style and substance. They are all work and all talk. The hustler mentality has three features:

1. The hustler understands that the foundation of everything is quality work that brings value.

2. The hustler understands that the work will never speak for itself. You must speak for it.

3. The hustler is not shy or afraid to bring attention to work they believe in. The talking is about the work and its value, not getting attention for attention’s sake.

As opposed to the charlatans who desire influence for its own sake, or the martyrs who are too bitter to talk earnestly about their value, hustlers thrive as a natural outcome of their comfort in advocating for the high value work they believe in. Hustlers don’t have time to feel sorry for themselves because they’re too busy creating a new reality, nor do they slip into megalomania because their main focus is on creating high value first. It’s never about their own acclaim, but their undying restlessness to create and embody greatness that drives them forward, which creates positive natural outcomes for themselves and the organizations they serve.

I think of this illustration often (I see it every day actually, since I have the hustler portion tattooed on my arm) and use it as a gut check for my mindset. Being honest with ourselves about how we are approaching both our work and how we are talking about our work can help unlock potential that otherwise would waste away. Always hustle, because hustle always wins.

Why A Coaching Culture Matters Now More Than Ever

Preface

In March, I started a new project with my employer Spring Venture Group. I am managing the Sales Coach Program for the company, an exciting change that is a great intersection between my skill set and current business needs. In this role, I manage 64 sales coaches across two businesses.

One of the things that excites me about this work is creating a culture of continuous improvement among the sales force. A coaching culture is one where everyone is participating in multi-directional development regardless of title, and my work involves creating both systems and structures to support the developmental relationship between sales agents and coaches, while developing sales coaches as leaders even (or perhaps especially) in the context of remote work.

I have started a weekly leadership discussion with the coaches across all locations, and here is the content I presented from our first meeting with the sales coaches.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is defined as:

A cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.

When we are coaching new sales agents, they move from the Huh? stage to the I know everything phase as soon as they get their first sales. We’ve all seen the agent who isn’t quite sure about themselves be overcome with confidence after their first sale, which is what we want. We want them to feel amazing about this job, because being successful in sales is one of the most rewarding feelings in the world. 

After the initial high of that first sale wears off, new sales agents are confronted with a litany of situations they’ve never encountered before. They try what worked once or twice and it stops working, and they are suddenly facing the realization that There’s more to this than I thought, which quickly gives way to I’m never going to understand this. 

The Trough of Despair

What happens next is why sales coaching is so crucial. The space between I’m never going to understand this and It’s starting to make sense is what’s know as the Trough of Despair. It sounds dramatic, but it’s very real especially in sales. When you’re in the Trough of Despair, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. You keep going because you’re strong, but it’s really hard. The space between I’m never going to understand this and It’s starting to make sense is the difference between:

• Agents who quit and agents who stay

• Agents who thrive and agents who limp along for months without unlocking their potential

• Agents who are bought in to the vision and agents who become cynical

The Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity

Sales Coaches are even more important in a remote environment where new agents are experiencing the trough at home, alone, without the physical presence of a team. The trough is intense enough in its own right when in the office, but even moreso when working remotely. The act of guiding agents through this process and to the other side of the curve is of utmost importance. The role of the sales coach is to walk people to the simplicity on the other side of complexity. And once agents crest that hill, it’s much smoother sailing moving forward. Sales Coaches facilitate agents through this process more quickly, and their dot-line (no formal authority or reporting) relationship means that conversations are often more quickly “down to brass tacks” than they may be with more formal solid-line relationships.

Impostor Syndrome

The inverse of overestimating your skill is also true: highly-skilled workers often find themselves feeling like impostors or frauds because they realize how vast the knowledge landscape is and doubt their hard-earned ability. The more you know, the more self-aware you are, and the more prone you are to baseless self doubt. This is the Trust me, it’s complicated part of the curve, because we’ve seen it all. Sales coaches are sales leaders. And as sales leaders, this is important to remember especially since technical credibility is always top of mind.

A bad day, week, month, or even quarter aren’t definitive of our leadership abilities. Our potential, and our people’s potential, transcends such rigid boundaries.

Now, more than ever, a coaching culture is imperative for our remote organizations to succeed.

What Tiger King Taught Me About Remote Work and Office Culture

By now you’ve probably already binged Tiger King on Netflix. If you haven’t watched this epic mind bender about the owner of a tiger zoo in rural Oklahoma, I won’t spoil the ending for you because it’s something you have to experience to believe. 

What stuck out to me most about the series was actually the last line in the entire documentary. Joe is reflecting on everything that has happened, the choices he’s made, the outcomes of those choices, and what it all meant. With a broken voice he says, “I was just wrapped up in having a zoo.” The screen goes to black and the credits roll.

Rewind two weeks to when everyone in the United States who was able to do so frantically packed up their offices and went to work from home. What has happened with the emergence of remote work during the coronavirus pandemic is a radical reimagining of what it means to live and work in America, and one that will define a generation. What does it mean when an entire workforce that has worked, managed, and been managed in a physical space suddenly retreats home and continues working?

An office can function very much like a zoo - obviously one without all the drama of Tiger King (hopefully). There are roles we all play, boundaries visible and invisible enforced, ways of being we assume are the best way to operate, and assumptions about what’s best that take root over time and grow into the structure of our bureaucracies. In any (and possibly every) office regardless of the industry, there are many unspoken rules that can manifest as a compliance-based, top-down culture, when what is needed now more than ever in today’s world is a culture of empowerment, autonomy, and commitment to quality outcomes.

We now have the ability to have an arms-length view of our respective office dynamics. Working remotely, we can hold up the culture of the office like a prism and reflect on the refractions of light in an honest way. From a safe distance to honestly assess, we can weigh what works, what doesn’t, and what our cultures teach us about how to treat each other based on our titles and roles. We can ask ourselves what really matters most - about the work we do, about the power dynamics baked into every culture, about how we work, how we interact, how we structure our days.

I was just wrapped up in having a zoo.

After the credits rolled, that statement stuck in my mind for a few days. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is possible if we question our assumptions about the way things have to be. New problems require new solutions. What ways have we lost out on human potential by being more focused on compliance with the way things are rather than imagining the ways things can be if we stopped being so wrapped up in the zoo?

Wherever possible and fortunate enough, Americans are now working from home and getting the job done. This time has shown us that a company is so much more than the physical space we occupy - it’s a shared consciousness. It is made up of you and me building something amazing together.

Hopefully someday relatively soon, this pandemic will be over and America will be fully back open for business. What if we trusted each other, relied on each other, and empowered each other all the time as much as we are right now in this unprecedented moment?

8 tips for working from home

This week my employer Spring Venture Group took the unprecedented and proactive step to migrate all company operations to work from home to combat the potential spread of COVID-19. This was feasible because, thankfully, our industry and technological capabilities make the company perfectly primed to work from home. 

This was an incredibly impressive feat, as nearly 1,000 employees were mobilized and set up to make the transition within the span of a single day. Our IT department is full of rock stars.

I have worked remotely in various contexts for years, so the work from home lifestyle is something I’m accustomed to. Working from home has its own nuances, stressors, and opportunities. Now that everyone is settled in, I wanted to offer some tips for anyone who is working from home for the first time. 

1. Stick to the same schedule that you would work in the office. Keeping a consistent schedule is key to setting yourself up for a smooth transition. Start at the same time each day. Routine is extremely important when working from home.

2. Overcommunicate. Ensure you are being proactive in your outreach to managers and teammates. Respond to emails and chats in a timely manner. One of the best leaders I’ve ever worked with once said, “If you feel like you’re overcommunicating, you’re almost there.”

3. Assume positive intent. Tonality is already harder to gauge over email and chat, and probably even moreso during a shift as big as this one. Remember that we are all working through this together.

4. Have a dedicated work space, preferably a desk or table in a room with a door. The quality of your work will be higher if you do so because you will have fewer distractions.

5. Dress for success. While it can be tempting to want to work in your pajamas, you will feel more confident and capable if you get dressed as normal for work.

6. As much as is possible, maintain quick check-ins through video chat or a phone call. It’s much easier to get complex ideas or temporary issues sorted out by setting up a quick Google Meet than a back-and-forth text or chat.

7. Avoid the temptation to remain “always on”. One of the pitfalls of working from home is the difficulty to pull yourself away from the computer or phone notifications, and you can end up working more than you normally do in a typical office setting. Create boundaries for yourself to make sure you are still keeping a work-life balance.

8. The most important thing to do when working from home is to maintain a bias for action. Complaining and working from home are incompatible. Whether it’s communication, IT issues, or collaborating on projects, working from home requires extreme proactivity. 

In uncertain times, things can start to feel shaky and we can worry about our place in the world. Not only am I confident we will be okay and things will work out, I think our company will be better and stronger than ever when we come out the other side of this. Continue to focus on bringing value every day and doing great work.

If anything, this change should make clearer than ever that a company isn’t just the physical space we share, a company is made up of you and me, building something together. Let’s keep our heads held high and lead through this change!