Fit For the Future

As a leader, you can’t predict the future, but you still need to keep your eye on the horizon. This simple tool will help you identify potential disruption pressure points quickly - so you can be ahead of the change before it hits you.https://swiy.co/slow-bumpy-expensiveAs a leader, what are you doing to understand future disruptions?I was in Adelaide last week, at a conference for the mining and resources sector, speaking about how to think like a futurist.In this sector, time frames are often much longer than in most other sectors and industries. It might take 10, 15, 20 years or more from the time companies start exploration to the time they have a profitable mining venture.This isn’t true of every sector, but it’s not unique. For example, last month, I spoke at a Planning Institute of Australia conference, and they face similar time frames: Local planners often make decisions now that will have an impact in their communities 20 or 30 years in the future.Your time frames might be shorter, but because the world is changing so quickly, you must still look into the future.Of course, we can’t predict the future, but part of your role as a leader is to at least see what’s around the corner and over the horizon.When I work with leadership teams, I share many tools and resources to help them with their planning. I’ll share one here ...Our world is becoming “fast, flat, and free”. In other words:- It’s getting faster and faster.- We’re flattening traditional hierarchies.- Products, services, and experiences are cheaper – and sometimes even free.If that’s the future, think of the past as the opposite: “slow, bumpy, and expensive”.What are you doing – in your processes, workflows, customer experience, and other touchpoints – that’s slow, bumpy, or expensive?- What’s slower than it needs to be?- Where does unnecessary friction in processes, workflows, and boundaries slow progress?- What’s costly – internally to you or externally to customers?These are your disruption pressure points.Don’t get me wrong – “slow, bumpy, and expensive” can be good, but only if designed that way. More often, though, they are unintentional.So, to identify your disruption pressure points, start by asking what’s slow, bumpy, or expensive. And then determine how to make them faster, flatter, and ... err, freer.I’m going to run an online presentation very soon about seeing into the future, and we’ll talk about simple activities you can do as a leader to identify potential opportunities and threats in your team and organisation.It’s free, public, and open to all. So, if you’re a leader at any level of your organisation, register here – and invite others in your network, too.Register for the virtual masterclass:https://swiy.co/slow-bumpy-expensive

As a leader, you might think you know what drives the people in your team. But don’t assume! If you don’t ask, you might get it wrong, and gap makes it harder to keep them engaged, energised, and ready to embrace change.https://swiy.co/go-one-conversation-awayAs a leader, do you truly understand the motivation behind each of your people and the reason they’re at work?I was speaking a couple of weeks ago at a conference in Thailand. This was for an Australian franchise group in the food and beverage industry that took all their franchisees to Phuket for their annual conference.While I was there, I was thinking about the different motivation between the people who were there – the franchisees, the business owners – and the staff they employ.The sort of person who buys a franchise is buying a business, and for many of them, this is their retirement plan – instead of relying on super, property, or shares. They might also be planning to make this a multi-generational business, passing it on to their children.But, for many of their staff members, who are often young people, this might be their first job out of school. It might be a part-time job, they work casual shifts, for an hourly wage, in between studying for something else.These motivation are almost at two extremes!The franchise owner is building a business for retirement and legacy, while her staff are earning money while planning a career elsewhere.Even if you’re not running a franchise business, this applies to you as well. Your motivation is probably different from the motivation of each of your team members. It might be unrelated to their age, demographic, or even stage of life. Everybody is motivated by different things.If you understand that, you can give each person work that’s meaningful for them – which aligns with their personal passion and helps them achieve their goals outside work. When you do that, you’ll have a much stronger team, who are more willing to take on new challenges, manage uncertainty, and embrace change.On the other hand, if you don’t understand their motivation, it’s much more difficult to keep them willing, engaged, energised, and empowered. And that creates a challenge when you need them on board as you navigate change together.Fortunately, the solution is simple: Just ask them!Ask each person in turn what motivates them – for example:- What do you do in your work that feels meaningful to you?- Who do you most want to help through your work?- Is there a cause, problem, or idea outside work you really care about? How could we bring that into one of your projects here?- Is there a skill you’d like to develop to make your work more meaningful?- Is there a project you’d like to take full ownership of, start to finish?- How would you like your work here to be remembered?- What can I do to help you? How can we keep having these conversations regularly?If you’d like to know more, join my free, public, online presentation, “Keep The Change”, this week – and invite others in your team and your network as well.Register for the virtual masterclass:https://swiy.co/go-one-conversation-away

Your team members often know about problems, opportunities, and customer issues long before you do, and you won’t find out if you don’t make the effort to listen. But listening is only half the story – the way you do it sends a strong message about how much you value their opinions.https://swiy.co/go-whats-really-going-onAs a leader, what are you doing to understand what’s truly going on in your workplace – and especially to listen to your team members? They often know things you should know, and you would know if you listened to them.I was in beautiful Phuket in Thailand last week, speaking at a conference for a large franchise retail group in Australia. I was talking about leading people through change, because like many organisations, they’re facing a lot of change now, and want their franchise partners to know how to lead their people through change.After my presentation, a participant told me a story about one of the franchisees – an amazing story about how this leader listens to her people.Every Friday, they open the store to customer 15 minutes late. That 15 minutes is for her and her staff, and she askes,“What sort of things have come up in the last week?”Sometimes they’re positive things worthy of praise, and sometimes her team members tell her problems she doesn’t know about. By airing them in this short meeting, she – and other team members – learn about them, and can figure out as a group how to address them.This is an excellent idea – for two reasons.First, the obvious benefit is she’s listening to her team members, who are closer to operations and customer than she is. Every leader and manager should take a leaf out of her book, because you team members know things you don’t know – and you wouldn’t know if you didn’t listen.But I think the second reason is more important – it’s the signal and message she’s sending to her team. She’s explicitly willing to give up 15 minutes of valuable revenue-earning time to listen. In effect, she’s saying:“I care so much about your opinion I’m willing to sacrifice some of my revenue and profit to listen to you.”It’s a simple thing, and some team members won’t even realise. But they would realise if she asked them to come in early or stay late – on their own time.What are YOU doing for your team to demonstrate you care about their opinion?And then, do you actually listen to them?For more, join my free public online presentation “Keep The Change” soon, where I talk about building an adaptable team. Register here, and invite others in your team and your network as well.Register for the virtual masterclass:https://swiy.co/go-whats-really-going-on

With constant change and uncertainty, your people need to feel safe to speak up, challenge ideas, and take initiative. As a leader, you play a huge role in creating that safe environment. When your people feel safe, it’s easier for them to embrace change, contribute ideas, and come with you on the journey rather than just doing what they’re told.https://swiy.co/go-safety-in-uncertaintyAs a leader, what are you doing to make your people feel safe when there’s a lot of change happening around them?I was recently running my “Future Scenarios” program with a group of senior leaders, where they look at what’s coming up in the future and – just as importantly – plan how to bring their people along on the journey.In the program, I share Google’s “Project Aristotle” research about high-performing teams. Named after Aristotle, who said, ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’, Project Aristotle sought objective criteria for team effectiveness.Google expected the key factors were things like having the best engineers, the people with the greatest expertise and experience, and the people most qualified to do each role. But they found, to their surprise, that the real factors had little to do with expertise or experience. Obviously, that was important as a starting point, but the real factors were what are sometimes called “soft” skills.The most important is psychological safety, which is how safe people feel about taking interpersonal risks at work. You want your people to feel safe taking risks around their colleagues – even with something as simple as, say, asking a “stupid” question at a meeting.When you make it safer for them to fail, you make it easier for them to succeed.So, in my program, we discussed psychological safety and the leader’s role. Later in the day, a participant said,“Oh, yeah – that’s related to the conversation we were having about psychosocial safety.”That led to another conversation because psychosocial safety is different from psychological safety.They both relate to the employee experience and how safe they feel in the workplace, but they’re different – and that matters for you as a leader.Psychosocial safety is how your organisation has created a workplace to protect people from mental, emotional, and physical harm. This includes legal obligations, physical hazards, bullying and harrassment, working hours, mental health resources, and so on.The key is that psychosocial safety is broadly the organisation’s responsibility, while psychological safety is YOUR responsibility as a leader.Of course, everybody in the team plays their part in creating a psychologically safe environment, but ultimate they’re led by you.Your team members know whether they feel psychologically safe with you, and also whether you support psychological safety for the group when you’re in the room.So what are you doing to create psychological safety?As with many other things, it’s more difficult to create psychological safety in uncertain and volatile environments. Anxious and stressed people are more ready to criticise others, more insular, and less open to new ideas. They often think “Don’t rock the boat” or “Don’t make waves”.That gives you a bigger challenge. On one hand, you want your people to feel safe rocking the boat and making waves – but you don’t want them to capsize it in the middle of a storm!What are YOU doing to create psychological safety in your team?If you’d like to know more about this, join my free public online presentation “Keep the Change” about creating a culture of change and adaptability in your team.I’ll see you in the future.Register for the virtual masterclass:https://swiy.co/go-safety-in-uncertainty

In a fast-changing world, you don’t know all the answers – and you’re not expected to know them. Instead of dragging people along or expecting them to simply follow you, meet them where they are, walk alongside them, and turn the journey into a shared experience.https://swiy.co/go-dont-lead-from-the-frontAs a leader, what are you doing to inspire the people in your team?Yesterday, I took our cocker spaniel, Jasper, for his regular 20-minute walk – around the block, through a local park, then back home. Even though this is the same walk Jasper takes every day, he treats every walk like a new experience. He doesn’t walk in a straight line, and is always straying off the “straight and narrow”, sniffing around, stopping to examine something new he’s “discovered”, and so on.That walk reminded me of Back to Back Theatre, a theatre group in Geelong that has won international prizes for their performances. What makes them different is they only employ actors with disabilities or who are neurodivergent. These performers see, perceive, and act in the world differently – and that creates unique experiences for them, the organisation, and their audiences.When director Bruce Gladwin accepted an international award for Back To Back a few years ago, he described his approach to work like this:“I want us to walk the path while full of curiosity. It’s like going on a walk with a three-year-old child, not taking a three-year-old child on a walk.”There’s a lesson in there for all leaders.Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not comparing the people in your team to cocker spaniels or three-year-old children. But I hope you do have people with diverse perspectives, behaviours, and ways of thinking.As a leader, are you dragging them along – like taking them on the walk – or are you going on a walk WITH them?The best leaders know they don’t have the answers, and even the answers that worked for them in the past might no longer be fit for purpose.To succeed in a fast-changing world full of uncertainty and change, we must all tap into the diverse perspectives, diverse thinking, diverse behaviours, and diverse experiences of people around us.As a leader, you’ll be far more successful if you walk the journey WITH your people, not in FRONT of them.I’ll be talking about this in my next free public online presentation, “Keep the Change”, which is about building a culture of change agents. It’s open to everybody, so register here and invites others in your team and network, too.Register for the virtual masterclass:https://swiy.co/go-dont-lead-from-the-front

You can’t empower your people just by telling them to take more ownership. You need to build their judgement step by step, so you feel confident letting go and they feel confident making decisions. Over time, you reduce how much they depend on you, avoid becoming the bottleneck, and build a team that can act more independently and handle change more effectively.https://swiy.co/go-build-judgementAs a leader, what are you doing to be able to trust your people more?I was running a leadership workshop recently, and we were talking about trust – especially in an uncertain world, where nobody really knows what the future holds.Of course, to be an effective leader, your people must be able to trust you. Even if you can’t give them certainty, you can still give them confidence and clarity for the future.But, in this workshop, one participant said,“What you’re saying makes sense for my team to be able to trust me, but my problem is I often don’t trust THEM enough.”In other words, when she delegates a task to them, she doesn’t trust they have the knowledge, experience, or wisdom to do it well – especially if things change along the way.This is common, and she herself recognises it’s bad for everybody. It’s bad for her team members because they don’t get to develop skills and grow. And it’s bad for her because she is either overworked (taking on work she can’t trust delegating to somebody else) or a bottleneck (always having to micro-manage everything they do).Does that sound familiar? If so, what can you do?Well, the bad news is you can’t just click your fingers, send them on a training course, and hope they learn everything they need to know to gain your trust.The good news is you CAN do it – but step by step, not all at once.Instead of focusing on “trust”, think about building good judgement in your team.Part of the reason you’re a leader is because YOU exercise good judgement – that’s why your own boss trusts you. Now, it’s your turn to build that in your team.Here’s a simple activity that helps to build judgement – not in a training course, but in everyday work.The next time a team member asks you for your help, before you offer any advice, imagine saying:“I trust your judgement.”and then letting them do whatever they think best. You don’t have to know what they will do, but you trust them to do the right thing.Keep in mind you’re only IMAGINING saying this. If you can actually say it confidently, go ahead and do so. It will make your life (and theirs) better immediately, and reinforces your trust in their judgement.But sometimes you know it would be inappropriate – and possibly even negligent – to simply assume you could trust their judgement. In that case, of course you address their immediate need:Give them the answer.Show them the process.Pitch in and help.Even do it yourself with them watching to learn for next time.But don’t stop there.After helping them, ask yourself:“What do I need to do so that next time she or he comes to me, I CAN say, ‘I trust your judgement’?”Usually, you can’t trust their judgement yet because they don’t know what to do, don’t know how to do it, or something is getting in their way. So, you use this as a development opportunity, and work together to do what it takes to build their judgement for next time.This isn’t a perfect process. You might try something to build their judgement, but find that next time it still isn’t enough. That’s OK – you just keep doing this over and over again.Does that sound like a lot of work?Well ... maybe. But if you don’t do this, you’ll be stuck forever.More importantly, you’re building your CULTURE, which happens through consistent behaviour, not just one-off interventions.If you’d like to know more about building a culture of change, join my free online presentation, “Keep The Change”. Register here, and feel free to invite others in your team and network as well.Register for the virtual masterclass:https://swiy.co/go-build-judgement