Psychological Safety

What are the lessons to be gleaned from the sudden shift to work from home? My biggest takeaway, by far, has been the level of flexibility humans can exhibit when they have to. The work from home arrangement into which so many have been thrown during the pandemic, required flexibility from both organizations and their employees at all levels. The shift to home-based work by massive numbers of employees was a head spinning change accomplished in a snap. And, by all reports to date, it is largely a story of success.

The speed with which the workers and organizations adapted to a new normal has been nothing short of astounding. Not that long ago virtually all workers were paid to perform their jobs on site. Additionally, until relatively recently, many not only had to show up, they were also required to punch a timeclock when arriving and departing to prove that they were at their jobs at the agreed upon times. Of course, these employees weren’t proving that they were working, just that they were at the worksite. But still, punching the clock was what was required if an employee wanted to get a paycheck.

What Goes Up....

Something I learned early on as a leader was the idea of managing up. I remember my Harvard MBA spouse describing the idea to me after a particularly unproductive series of meetings with my boss at the time. It seemed I could never get my needs met, that she never seemed to notice anything that I did that I felt good about, and that she had a lot of needs of her own that I was unsure about. Fast forward through almost 30 years of leadership, working for one boss sometimes and working for entire boards of directors at others, to today and the work SmarterWisdom does with leaders facing the same issues. How do we collaborate best with our immediate supervisors? The advice my MBA spouse gave to me was to manage up, which meant to considering more where the “boss” or “the board” was coming from and work it. Is this effort really necessary? Does it pay off? How does it integrate into the whole picture of leadership success?

New Leadership Superpower: Super Systems Thinking

Thinking is hard. Planning is hard. Figuring out why what you are thinking and planning isn’t working is harder still. But in a fast-moving world, we are often doing our thinking and planning on the fly. We are taking action even as we are still processing important considerations, and we are regularly trying to remedy problems as they are happening—the proverbial changing-the-aircraft-engine in mid-air dilemma.

There are many reasons why this approach is often unsuccessful. A not unsubstantial cause is the pressure we all feel to be productive quickly. That stress can feel unrelenting and pushes us to want to “solve” or “fix” things fast. Because so few of the issues in our universe are “stand alone,” considering the implications of choices can be a time and energy consuming activity. Doing so involves generating sequences of if/then reasoning, often with many branches along the way. And that exercise produces considerable data which requires precious time for reflection. We’ve even given a pejorative name to how that can appear to others: “analysis paralysis” reflects both our penchant for rhyming terms and our bias toward speed.

Burnout, Resilience & Agility

Burnout, Resilience & Agility

While it was somewhat cathartic for SmarterWisdom to look in the rearview mirror at 2020 in our January Words of Wisdom post, as leadership consultants we are more typically focused on helping people look forward and plan for what is to come. There are, of course, many unknowns ahead; and, after a year of living and working in a world-wide lockdown, perhaps these unknowns are even more complex? My own recent doom-scrolling confirms many experts’ concerns about job loss (already showing up significantly with women and BIPOC communities) burnout and mental health issues—the latter affecting all ages, from young school-aged children through the middle-aged. It is not a rosy outlook at all, but as I look at the work of Jeffrey Hull, Jacinta Jiménez and Angela Duckworth, among others, I feel hope and see some preventative solutions that we might try, as leaders and colleagues.

Burning Platforms: Urgency, Change & Outcomes

What are the lessons to be gleaned from the sudden shift to work from home? My biggest takeaway, by far, has been the level of flexibility humans can exhibit when they have to. The work from home arrangement into which so many have been thrown during the pandemic, required flexibility from both organizations and their employees at all levels. The shift to home-based work by massive numbers of employees was a head spinning change accomplished in a snap. And, by all reports to date, it is largely a story of success.

The speed with which the workers and organizations adapted to a new normal has been nothing short of astounding. Not that long ago virtually all workers were paid to perform their jobs on site. Additionally, until relatively recently, many not only had to show up, they were also required to punch a timeclock when arriving and departing to prove that they were at their jobs at the agreed upon times. Of course, these employees weren’t proving that they were working, just that they were at the worksite. But still, punching the clock was what was required if an employee wanted to get a paycheck.

Harnessing the Wired World

In his book, A Sense of the Mysterious, (Vintage Books, 2006) physicist and author Alan Lightman includes an essay called: “Unwillingly Trapped by the Wired World.” Lightman’s piece and a New York Times (2010) article called "Growing up Digital. Wired for Distraction," by Matt Richtel caught my attention and prompted some of my initial deeper thinking about our connection to the wired world. While both of these pieces struck me as helpful to the high school students and their parents with whom I was working at the time, and, as I think more broadly about the world of work in my current leadership consulting role with SmarterWisdom, I see the need for us all to harness our use--and overuse--of technology. Ensuring that we have time for the reflection and learning that helps us access our inner wisdom is even more crucial at this moment. As we all cope with the myriad demands and changing landscape of our lives during Covid, finding a way out of our involuntary entrapment, and thus ensuring our continued potential to dream and imagine, is vital to leading a fulfilled life.

Perfect Partnership

In his excellent book WISDOM@ WORK (Doubleday, 2018), author Chip Conley lays out a road map for organizations to create lasting benefit for success by tapping into the wisdom of the ages. By creating partnerships and teams of both younger, frequently more tech-savvy professionals, and also older more work-wise individuals, he argues that we will build stronger and more agile places of work—and ensure a healthy teacher/student relationship that flips from one group to the other. He also tells his own story about his journey to become a “modern elder.”

Conley’s basic premise, which aligns beautifully with SmarterWisdom’s philosophy, is that people who have been on this earth for a while have amassed work and life experiences that are invaluable. He also makes a strong argument for “rewirement,” positing that open-minded, growth-oriented professionals have plenty of time and space for learning more. He acknowledges, as we all do, that younger people have grown up in a time where uses of technology, social media and other modern tools have become part of their lives—the intersection of the generations, then, provides an enriched source of learning and creative possibilities for organizations.

Embracing Uncertainty: Careers in Chaotic Times, Part II

Face it: in a non-linear world, it makes sense to expect uncertainty. While no one can predict how that uncertainty will manifest itself (Fuel oil crisis? Toilet paper shortage? Lockdown?) what we can know is that, in our globally interdependent world, we can’t anticipate exactly what will be coming at us in the future. What we do know, however, is that there absolutely will be curveballs that will not only change the way our world operates, but also what jobs and opportunities will be available to us in the marketplace.

Leadership, Team-building, High performanceMarcie Schorr HirschNovember 11, 2020workingfromhome, Pandemic, Flexibility

Generational Genius

Cross-fertilization of ideas consistently happens in good working relationships; openness to new thoughts from all sources tends to set effective leaders apart. For all of us, our arenas of work and ideas have necessarily expanded rapidly during the recent pandemic experience—there are so many external influences that we are responding to, and again good leaders see all of this as opportunity and pivot as quickly as they can from a reactive to an active, look-ahead stance. Internal influences are equally very present in our lives—they always have been of course, but right now might be the time to take advantage of what already exists internally. Opening up our thinking as widely as possible will enable us to take advantage of our strengths in different and imaginative ways. This is a time to be ready for completely new ways of doing things, using a growth mindset. For example, within your organization right now, there are likely five generations of people (the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen.X, millennials, and Gen Z.). That might be an untapped wealth of wisdom! Wisdom that we would do well to take advantage of.

Career success, High performanceJane MouldingSeptember 9, 2020Covid-19, Flexibility, Time-of-change

The Danger of Living on an Island

Does your organization claim to be “world class?” If the answer is yes, we have two important words to share: Be careful.

One of our clients was a newly appointed school leader who described joining an institution that considered itself world-class in every way. She reported being struck positively---at least initially---by the consistency of the culture of pride she encountered. Unfortunately, as she got to know the institution better, her initial response turned into uneasiness.

In addition to the omnipresent “we are world class,” mantra, our client described a pattern of institutional insularity: for example, administrators rarely belonged to professional associations, or attended meetings with their peers outside of the institution. Instead, they turned to each other for advice and, especially, for affirmation on any initiatives they considered launching. This in-culture review limited useful critical feedback. Of course, that made sense: without any kind of outside measurement and enveloped in a self-congratulatory ethos, new ideas nearly always got not only a thumbs up, but frequently a gold star or two.

Our client faced a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, she was hired with the understanding that she would both nurture and strengthen the reputation of the organization. On the other hand, she knew that unless she encouraged the enterprise to grow and change, its true positioning in the real world would diminish