The unimaginable benefits of giving and asking for help
The story Susan shared with us this week, introducing the topic “Leading with generosity” resonates so much with me. I will share with you some of the stories that had helped me to grow so much in the last year and a half.
I started an account in LinkedIn only after my corporate period, end 2016. I added all the people I had worked with, study with and some friends. I started to discover the LinkedIn world. I was fascinated that people were writing and sharing so many interesting things. I read and read, and discovered all around the future of work, and learnt, contacted people and shared my opinion. I was so curious, eager for learning and fascinated about all the work freely shared. I discovered so many like-minded people coming from a world where I thought my mindset was quite unusual. At the same time, I was co-creating the web page for the consulting company I wanted to found with an ex-colleague, Otra Consulting. We defined another level of performance in organizations through “increasing empowerment in employees”, among others. My belief in this “empowerment” and my curiosity, made me come across Doug Kirkpatrick, who had written the book “Beyond empowerment: The age of self-managed organizations” and had a TED on the topic. I found him challenging my firm idea on the value of empowerment and giving me a new perspective about it. From his TED, I quote: “empowerment implies one person with power is lending the power to a subordinate who has less power, and everything that is loaned can be repossessed”, “in self-management people have all the power they want since day one, self-management is beyond empowerment”. Of course I started to stalk him in LinkedIn, read him, and deep dive in self-management. Through him I discovered Haier Group, the biggest appliance company in the world with an exemplary disruptive business and organizational model. It was such an interesting case that after researching for a while and reading Bill Fisher’s book “Reinventing Giants”, I decided to do my first article in LinkedIn about Haier. At that point I had not even contacted Doug or Bill. I felt such a little grain of sand in those mountains of knowledge. It was only thanks to Dawna Jones, who had Doug as a contact, that I encouraged myself to write him. Some months after, I coordinated with Dawna and Doug to meet both of them in Milan at different events November last year. Following Doug and the future of work, I came across a video of an future of work event organized by Nobl Minds in Stockholm last November,, where I discovered James Priest and Joshua Vial, and could hear Susan first time talking. I was able to meet James and attend and Sociacracy 3.0 workshop in a meetup in Zurich this year, what a great evening!
Through another weak tie, I came across John Thompson. He was founding an organization in California called PCO — People Centric Organization Group . I found it very aligned with my principles for transforming organization and agreed to partner with them, offering my project management/coordination experience and the self-management knowledge, in the journey to found the organization. Another coincidence again, showing how small world is: Doug was as well part of the founders team. PCO brought me to Ian Borges and to Leadwise course.
You will be wondering how I came across Susan. Well, in my search of the new ways of working, I discovered Teal and Enliveningedge, where I read Susan’s interesting articles and asked her connection in LinkedIn, that she accepted. However, the first time having her in a conversation with me was 4 weeks ago. What a privilege. After some months since my discovery of Enliveningedge, George Pòr, mentor in this community, wrote a message in LinkedIn announcing that he would be in Zurich for an event, and would be glad with the chance of being hosted by any of the contacts sharing an evening. I was late with my offer for hosting but I offered to organize diner and was really enthusiastic about having the chance to talk to George. Finally, his host could not make it and I had the chance to share a wonderful evening. George gave me the opportunity to join a team with an ambitious target: to map the teal organizations not only geographically but through their common practices. Since last year, I am volunteering with this team where I am learning, offering my knowledge and co-creating.
I read Adam Grant’s “Give and Take” also last year. Inspirational, motivational. Since some week’s I got addicted as well to his podcast Worklife.
I find myself living an amazing moment where technology is allowing ways of connecting, learning, giving and receiving that was unimaginable only some years ago. Where people are expressing openly, supporting each other like never before. Did you notice how many people, organizations are offering free courses, free webminars, free presentations, free networking events (meetups)? There may be a “matchers” interest behind some of them, but for sure “takers” are overpassed.