Let Go & Lead is an online project dedicated to exploring leadership in the 21st Century. The project is a celebration of diversity and a genuine embrace of different points of view in an attempt to come to an unprecedented understanding of how the most powerful ideas come to life within the most complex environments and systems. I serve as the project's chief curator, architect and lead content developer.
4. 500,000 accounts
…created every day.
48 million people with mobile phones…
and no electricity.
$1,000 buys you the computing
power of a mouse’s brain…
By 2050, it will buy the power of
10 billion human minds.
6. How do I lead in a world where I feel
NO LONGER
IN CONTROL?
7. Questions ? ?
??
• Can we build a global corporate culture across
?
geographies?
• How do I create brand ambassadors inside my
organization?
• How can we inspire greater innovation?
• How can we increase collaboration?
• Why isn’t our strategy sticking?
?
• How can we motivate people beyond compensation?
• How do I attract and retain the best talent?
• How do I stay ahead and relevant in the digital age?
? ?
11. Insights
Capturing the Co-Creating Unleashing
Imagination Possibilities Capability
Letting go does not mean People emotionally invest when Authentic does not mean ideal
abdicating responsibility you involve them in co-creating
the solution To lead, you also have to follow
There’s a place for love in business
We are not doomed by our DNA; Technology is teaching us to be
People work for a paycheck, but our potential is not fixed human
die for a cause
It’s easy to get trapped in our We are moving from the
People are not motivated by fear.; stories traditional, hierarchical model of
they’re motivated by generosity authority to a distributed network
and love There’s power in not knowing model
How you act is who you are Life seeks order but uses messes Management is an outdated
to get there technology
Innovation is not just about
solving problems, but solving the Great ideas are usually found Influence is the new currency
right problems beyond the initial idea
The power of a group lies in how
Change your mind and you change strong individuals strengthen each
the world other
12.
13.
14. A paycheck drives compliance.
People’s sense of purpose, mastery and
autonomy drives engagement.
15.
16.
17. People want to connect to something bigger.
Ideas inspire action when they connect
to what matters and what’s real.
18.
19.
20. Technology is teaching us to be human again.
Social media is driving purposeful
and active engagement.
21. Lessons
1% 9% 90%
Active Occasional Voyeurs
Contributors Commenters
24. What do you think? ? ?
What else should we
be doing to make this
?? ?
more valuable?
?
? ?
Editor's Notes
This is what I’m going to cover today. But I’d like to spend the majority of our time getting your perspective on what you think the implications to our profession are.Start with what is LG&L? It’s an online community dedicated to giving a voice to different perspectives on Leadership in the 21st CenturyIt includes videos from thought leaders from diverse fields/ different walks of life; and a blog for people to lend their POV Really, it’s an experiment in its first yearIt was born out of the needs we were hearing from our clientsWhat were we hearing?...
The world is not only going, but it's going really fast. Leaders are struggling to manage increasingly far-flung, diverse and virtual groups of EEs.
The other thing we’re all experiencing is the rise of the digital lifestyle. Public and private divides are blurring. Changing relationship networks – more, loose connections.READ facts…CLICK TO BUILD – Twitter logo/500K accounts…CLICK TO BUILD + “created every day”CLICK TO BUILD – Phone/48M people with mobile phones…CLICK TO BUILD + “and no electricity”CLICK TO BUILD – Mouse with $1K buys mouse brain…CLICK TO BUILD + “by 2050 10B human minds”So when you look at this, you think about where we want to go. We have a very ambitious strategy in the context of a world that is changing right in front of us, around us, underneath us. It can feel really overwhelming. And you start thinking, "Well, how can I do all this?" The answer is, you can't.
There are significant demographic shifts. We have 4 generations working side-by-side in today’s workforce. Each generation has its own personality, is motivated by different drivers and has different expectations of employers.So how do you connect with one group without alienating the others?
So everywhere we went, we heard the same sentiment from leaders…How do I lead in a world where I feel NO LONGER IN CONTROL?
When I talked to our peers in Communications, I heard other questions that really flow out of those macro-trends and show up in our everyday work:Can we build a global corporate culture across geographical cultural divides? How do I create brand ambassadors inside my organization?How can we inspire greater innovation?How can we increase collaboration across silos?We’ve communicated about the strategy – why isn’t it sticking? How can we motivate our teams beyond financial compensation?How do I attract and retain the best talent?How do I stay ahead and relevant in the digital age?
So we thought…we have great access to a lot of people struggling with the same issues and doing innovative things. Wouldn’t it be great if we could share what we’re learning from our clients and network. Initially we thought the best way to do that was a book. But we found the world was changing so quickly that we kept evolving our thinking. Then it became a case of stewing in our own soup.So we took a step back and said, maybe it was time for us to let go and open up the conversation to others so we can all learn more.And we thought it was important to get outside of traditional business circles and reach out to other disciplines to see what we could learn from educational theorists, mathematicians, designers and artists.We built the LG&L site as an online forum to give people access to these types of thinkers and engage people in the conversation.The first challenge was how do we get people to participate?…
Of course, we created a target list of potential interview candidates. But we learned a valuable lesson in trying to schedule people—the importance of letting go ourselves and opening ourselves up to the power of the network.There were a few people we just cold called – we figured swing for the fences…the worst they can do is say “no.” It was really interesting. We found that as we involved a few key people, they got excited about the project and connected us to others in their network. So here’s what that looked like…I had a good relationship with Bruce Mau, having worked with him at Coca Cola and having done some change work for his design firm. Well, Bruce was so excited about the idea that he reached out to his network. [BUILD]He reached out to three key people who really helped us get the ball rolling…Julio Ottino, Dean of Northwestern’s School of Engineering...and, Stephanie Pace Marshall, educational pioneer and founder of the Illinois Math and Science Academy…who both ended up being featured as interviews on the site.And, Randi Fiat…a woman who knows everyone and started working on our behalf to get more people involved.[BUILD] Stephanie was so excited about her experience, that she connected us with the Leadership Guru, Meg WheatleyJulio pulled through in a big way and got Dan Pink to join our project.Randi then worked her network to get Simon Mainwaring, and the founders of Bridgeworks, Debra Arbit and David Stillman[BUILD] Meanwhile, I was working with my longtime colleague and friend Rose Gailey.[BUILD] Rose reached out to her brother, who is CEO of Maiden LTD Insurance. Art happened to know the producer of Mitch Albom’s radio broadcast.[BUILD] And he connected us with Mitch Albom. Well, then something interesting happened.[BUILD] I really wanted to get Howard Schultz, but felt it was a far off dream.So I reached out to Starbucks’ CCO, Corey Dubrowa, who I had met through AWPS Future Leaders.At the same time, I reached out to Tamra Strentz at Edelman, who was booking Howard’s book tour.It turns out, Mitch Albom had a close relationship with Howard.[BUILD] So we all sort of triangulated and got Howard. I’m still really grateful it worked out this way.[BUILD] And the network keeps working for us. Simon Mainwaring is an expert blogger for Fast Company. He’s put us in contact with them and promoted LG&L on their site.We just trusted the process, remained flexible and tried to go with the flow. As a result, we engaged people with really interesting and leading perspectives on the ideas we care about…people we hadn’t even originally considered.
So I won’t spend much time here, but the work we created for the book did not go to waste.We created this framework to curate the conversations – providing our interviewees with topics for them to consider.[Touch upon the three buckets – how the model builds]
And we’ve learned a lot through the project. Here’s just a snapshot of some of our major insights from the project so far…Since I really want to get to the discussion, I’ll only spend time on a few of them…At the end of the deck, I’ll come back to this slide so we can talk about the implications to our profession as a group.
Dan Pink’s Video:“If you want people to do relatively simple, mechanical, algorithmic, recipe-based work, the classic kind of motivator we use in organizations – what I call "if-then" motivators; if you do this, then you get that – they work like a dream. You want people to stuff envelopes, pay them per envelope. For the simple mechanical stuff, those if-then motivators work pretty well. The problem is that they don't work so well once you ask people to do work that's a little bit more complicated, a little bit more complex, a little more conceptual, that requires creativity. Over and over again in the science, you see that those kinds of controlling if-then motivators – if you do this, then you get that – don't work very well for the creative, conceptual, complex work. Sometimes they even do harm. It's easy to dangle a carrot in front of someone. It's easy to threaten people. Helping people move toward mastery, infusing the work-place with a sense of purpose, allowing room for self-direction, re-architecting processes and systems and even the physical workplace so that people have more autonomy, that's hard.”
Video plays
The insight: A paycheck drives compliance. It’s purpose, mastery and autonomy that drives engagement.Implications:How we think about communications strategy and engagement campaignsHow we work with our colleagues in HRHow we structure positions and create opportunities for our own team members
Howard Schultz video:“And unfortunately we are living at a time when there's been such a fracturing of trust, because so many institutions and people have let us down, and people are more cynical that ever before. And I think one of the reasons why we've done so well the last year and half is because we literally try to put our own feet in the shoes of our people and understand what they were dealing with, both in terms of the cataclysmic crisis and what it was like to be a Starbucks person. And I think the leadership of the company had to answer in the affirmative: what's in it for our people? We're not only trying to transform the company; we're trying to do it in a way in which we continue to share the success of the company with our people. And I think people want to be part of something larger than themselves if they believe in it. And I don't think you can prescribe that or push people. There has to be an emotional connection that I think is based on truth and authenticity, and obviously trust.”
Video plays
The insight: We have a saying—people will work for a paycheck, but they’ll die for a cause. People want to connect to something bigger. But that something must be authentic to who the organization is.Implications:Role of CCO and Corp. Comms function – help define the company, not just communicate itRole of values in driving strategyMulti-stakeholder perspective – how you think about challenges, build teams, develop competencies in the function
Simon Mainwaring video:“For a long time I feel like the corporate experiences depersonalized our experience of work. We have been very considered in how we present ourselves to our peers. We now have these channels to talk directly to each other. I do not need to be told by a media outlet what to think. I can talk to you about what I think. Suddenly this freedom to communicate is allowing us the ability to express ourselves and to empathize with each other. Whether you are marketing internally to your employees in a sense, or out to your customer base; you are trying to make an emotional connection with them. These tools just allow you to do it on the other side of the world with your employees, or in real time in the case of Twitter. Nothing has changed otherwise. It is still timeless in that sense even though the technology is timelier. I look at it and go; well technology is teaching us to be human again not just in a sense of awakening our empathy for each other. It is allowing us to relate in new ways. It is allowing us to re-stitch this network of connectivity within our organization. That is an opportunity for us to give more permission for input, a license for a little more humanity, and a little more creativity and collaboration. That is what you need in this marketplace….”
Video plays.
The insight: Technology is not de-humanizing us – it’s helping us relate in more timely ways. It’s become the engine of the new social business marketplace—driving a different type of engagement, a more targeted, purposeful type of engagement.Implications:Educating leaders to address fears head on Developing a social media policy for your organizationEmbracing pilots to test collaboration platforms – to learn and adjust. It’s ok to fail, but fail quickly an move on
So we’ve learned a lot, but we’ve also run into a lot of challenges—which is expected given this has been a big experiment. We know from the analytics that people are visiting the site and watching the videos. But people are not actively participating in the blog as much as we’d like.We also learned how online communities work…walk through visual of 1%, 9% and 90%
In a moment, I’m going to put the insights back up on the screen and open this up for group discussion on what you think are the implications for our profession and where we go from here. But before I do that, I also wanted to preview where we’re going with the project in 2012… First…we want to expand this community from idea to experienceA lot of people asked us how they can put this into practice with their leaders…so we created a three-day leadership experience to make it tangible for leadership teams.We also have a number of professional development workshops for communicators to practically apply elements of the framework to their work. We’ll also continue the community online…The next series of interviews will focus on C-Suite perspectives from leading companiesWe’re going to make the blog more informal, post more frequently, include more short video blog posts and get more guest bloggers And, we’re going to improve the functionality to make it easier to share content
So I’m happy to answer your questions, but I also have an ask of you. I’d like your help as my community. Here are two simple ways you can get involved:Forwarding: Share the site with your network. Encourage your team members and leaders to check it out.Join the conversation: Offer your opinions – either by commenting on the posts or being a guest blogger.If you have executives that you think would be open to being interviewed for our blog, we’d love to work with you!
So let’s start the discussion here.What do you think? What else should we be doing to make this more valuable?