Working out loud
I’ve long been interested in the process of working out loud, as social media and connecting networks and communities of practice have been part of my previous jobs.
As I mentioned in my blogpost on online networks, my current job is my first post in eight years that doesn’t involve direct use of social media. This means that I’m working a bit harder to share my work online as it’s not a core part of my day to day job. I’ve been reading Working Out Loud by John Stepper to see what hints and tricks I can pick up.
The first part of the book looks at how working in the open fits with being successful as an individual. Having worked in both the public and voluntary sectors, I’m interested in how working out loud contributes to social good. It all came together for me when I listened to the Leadermorphosis podcast with Paul Taylor (tip of the hat to Neil Tamplin for the heads up) — that personal development is related to organisational development. Our organisations should be hungry to learn and improve, much like the people within them. It was fascinating to hear that it’s that hunger that’s kept Paul at Bromford. Here’s what I learnt about organisational change.
Start small
Public services are dominated by massive change processes because of our general reliance on PRINCE 2. This means that we have to predict unknowable things. Stepper suggests that people take a “lean startup approach” to how you work out loud — be iterative, amend your approach based on early feedback. Stepper shares a brilliant case study of how Ann-Marie Imafidon founded Stemettes:
“Ann-Marie continued to make mistakes, but they were new mistakes, a natural part of the learning process…. Success for Ann-Marie and for Stemettes wasn’t a neat line of carefully planned steps along a well-travelled path. It was purposeful discovery, each step producing learning, connections, and increasing the set of possibilities.”
This approach ensures that learning is at the heart of our day to day work, not something that takes place at pre-arranged times, which fits with this Think Purpose post on making learning the norm instead of an occasional event.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good”
Evan Jones shared this Voltaire quote at a Wales Audit Office seminar on digital public services, and it seems incredibly pertinent to share here. Public services still haven’t accepted that they make mistakes. Yet the idea that each change we make is perfect is incredibly problematic.
Organisations seldom make changes because they’re risk averse, yet that risk is all in the eye of the beholder. Is it riskier to stick with the status quo, where services seldom deliver what people want, or to take that first step on an iterative journey? I think that we really need to think again about what our definition of success is. This is something Stepper looks at as he examines the purpose of working out loud:
“The main benefit… isn’t popularity. They aren’t putting in this effort simply to chase views. Instead, with each contribution, they’re learning. Every time they write about a project or an idea, they think deeply about it and get feedback from others. In addition to that investment in their craft, they’re deepening relationships with the people already in their network and, over time, creating a portfolio of contributions they can reuse over and over again, unlocking other possible connections.”
Changing organisational behaviour
Stepper talks about structuring your life to help you attain your goals. Do we as public services work in ways that really allow us to work effectively? I’m not saying that we should be restructuring organisations, but we should look at our processes to see whether they really are aligned to our purpose. Do they facilitate our end goals, or do they make it more difficult? *Cough*…. procurement.
Stepper also looks at the value of creating positive habits. We value the things that we know (check out this incredibly useful cognitive bias cheat sheet), so it makes sense that repetition reinforces familiarity and kickstarts these habits. Stepper also encourages people to voice their plan in order to reinforce their intentions. This is something that we did through our call to action forms at Wales Audit Office events, and it’s something that I’m contemplating as part of the evaluation of our events.
What do we really value?
The thing that really stuck with me was that it all comes back to how we really view our contributions and our work. Do we see a public service as a node in a community network, or as something that we deliver to people?
“By paying attention to something, your mind becomes more attuned to it…. they start experiencing networking as something based on contributions instead of transactions”
We should see public services for what they really are, an enabler to help people live better lives. When we think about transitions in public services, it’s all too easy to think about that in organisational terms — the transition between child and adults’ social services for example. But we know that this is something that purely exists because of organisational structures. The transitions that are really important in people’s lives are things like leaving home and starting new relationships. Let’s start thinking about things that are really important. How can we make people’s lives better?
