I am not saying clarity isn’t necessary or that it needs to be reduced, no! I am also not saying that you need ambiguity and uncertainty everywhere.

I am saying that sometimes a leader’s job is as much to make space for the in-between and the undefined; like removing some of the logs in a fire so that more oxygen can get through to feed the flames. I am saying that ambiguity might be one of the most powerful leadership tools – it’s all in how you do it. (I was rereading a wonderful book by Anne Pendleton and John Seely Brown. The chapter on how architects and designers use ambiguity made me think there are so many corollaries with the work of leaders.)

Take the indisputable value of purpose for an organization. We know that a clear and authentic purpose can unite the organizational narrative, achieve cultural cohesion, and provide a practical shorthand that guides decisions. But if we want to take it to the next level, to achieve that illusive deep emotional connection with people, that purpose statement needs to resonate with everyone in the organization (and possibly beyond). Somehow, people need to be able to find themselves in that statement, to find their story in your story.

How do you tell your story and still enable everyone to make sense of it their own way? How do they get inspired by your vision of the future, while also seeing their role in it through their eyes? What memories do they have about the past and how do those memories fuel the organization purpose or suck the air out of it?

The answer? Put a bit of ambiguity in it!

What is ambiguity, really? Commonly defined as doubtfulness, uncertainty, or lacking in clarity. The opposite of ambiguity is usually expressed as clear, obvious, definite, explicit, unequivocal, and determined. You could say unambiguous means one answer only, and ambiguous means more answers are possible. But a deeper etymological interrogation leads us to understand that ambiguity means to “move around” or “to wander”. In literary prose or poetry, ambiguity serves a very important purpose – to increase the nuances of the language by infusing it with complexity that expands its original meaning. Hence, when used well, ambiguity is far from just being unclear. It provokes; like an exciting puzzle that challenges a person to see beyond the obvious, and to grasp ideas from many different perspectives.

Are leaders more like engineers or architects? A study by Eris & Linden from Olin College found that engineers seek impact first and foremost. Their main goal is problem resolution and they do it by eliminating all ambiguity so that cause and effect can happen predictably. Architects, they found, are skeptical of too much clarity. They often “force ambiguity” into the system so that they will have to “wrestle” with the complexities, and hunt down the nuances. Their goal is to surface a design that wouldn’t have appeared had they not done that.

Food for thought – when is it helpful for a leader to think like an architect vs an engineer? When might we become so focused on a solution, that we run the risk of oversimplifying and missing important layers of the problem for the sake of expedience and clarity?

How could leaders use ambiguity intentionally?

Ambiguity is valuable both as a process and as an outcome

Ambiguity as a creative process When working in complex situations or with complex problems, take a lesson from the architect’s book and “force” ambiguity into the system. Don’t get pressured into simplifying for a solution. Instead, make the time to look under the nooks and crannies to trigger the unnoticed, to expose the unsaid, or to surface the stuff that people are willingly blind to (borrowing from Margaret Heffernan). Test the counter-intuitive ideas. If all your ducks line up too quickly and a solution emerges too easily, test it! Poke the bear (pardon the animal metaphors!) a bit to see what happens when it's stressed, or when it has to function under different assumptions. Don’t get scared by things that seem illogical or incongruent at first. These are good clues that multiple solutions exist, and that they are more profound and less obvious than the ones your competitors can come up with. Also remember that if you, or the initial team, can’t see the possibilities/intricacies, you need fresh eyes/brain/heart. Big clue here for the importance of diversity.

Ambiguity as an empathetic outcome Shared ambiguity can lead to empathy by connecting people who are all experiencing the same thing, while being free to interpret it in their own personal way. This can result in a great resonance of collective openness, acceptance and empathy, in a diverse group with different needs. The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. by architect Maya Lin is a masterpiece in using ambiguity as a core design feature – ‘who the memorial is designed for’ is intentionally unanswred. Veterans saw themselves and those they served with who lost their lives; family and friends of the fallen soldiers; other citizens who lived through the war; the next generation who did not live through the war but have to make sense of it; every visitor who has no ties to the names on the wall but experiences the memorial in their own meaningful way; and all who have an opinion of the role or purpose of war. In this example ambiguity is an outcome, and a very intentional one. A good leadership takeaway from this – next time you design a celebratory, commemorative, or farewell event, ask “how might intentional ambiguity add empathetical connection for everyone?”

Ambiguity as a force of transformative insights Ambiguity can birth epiphanies and transformative insights. This is invaluable for innovation. By holding multiple opposing concepts at once, and maintaining their inherent contradictions over extended periods, teams can be urged into creative territory beyond what is typical. Some examples of opposing or contrasting concepts held together:

• Be a wall and a window
• Scared and happy
• Unique and belonging
• Strong and soft
• Predictable and safe yet fresh and surprising
• Enabling and constraining

When two, or more, competing agendas are held in productive tension, the value of each is heightened by virtue of being challenged by the other. A leadership takeaway could be – make time and safe space for teams to explore the “magic and the madness” of what normally would be considered impossible. It is the ultimate “yes AND…” exercise of building something from unintuitive combinations.

Ambiguity as a tool of strategic cohesion You can be strategically ambiguous and still create alignment among people with different agendas, motivations and goals, by evoking one powerful central theme, and then leaving enough doors open so they can all identify in their own way with your statement. A good example of where this can be applied is how we design organizations. It is clear that organizations are adaptive complex systems (full of adaptive complex people!), and as such, they don’t thrive on hierarchy, dictates, bureaucracy, or detailed instructions. A better way to achieve an adaptable and resilient culture might be to leave more things open-ended… loose… ambiguous. One way to do this is to be very clear on 3 things: Context, purpose and principles. Instead of spelling out minute details of strategic plans, do everything you can to ensure people have a shared and deep understanding of what game they are playing; why they are playing it, and the few golden rules that are inviolate. And then leave space for the rest to emerge.

Strategic ambiguity may not result in the proverbial well-oiled-machine where all parts of the company hum along as intended, but it creates something much more precious – people who are all tethered by a deep resonating meaning while remaining free to win the game where they stand.

Where we DON’T want ambiguity Having said all that, there is one area where there must not be any ambiguity - and that is in everyone’s sense of belonging and psychological safety. People must be absolutely sure that when they take interpersonal risks (by experimenting, improvising, creating, challenging, being different) there is no ambiguity around how the organization will respond… that there will be no negative consequences directly or indirectly.

I believe mastering ambiguity is very much a leader’s job. If we think of this as 3 levels of mastery, the first level is to play with and respond to the ambiguity that emerges, but that alone is not sufficient. The second level of mastery is to intentionally create it, much like what this article discusses. The third level of mastery is to orchestrate it at scale. Orchestrating ambiguity at scale is a complex undertaking, guiding multiple realms of ambiguities into some kind of rhythm or harmony so that people feel free to riff, but not confused and lost. This requires practice, imagination, trust and guts, all important staples of good leadership.

(I highly recommend you read the full research report Women leaders are better fighting a pandemic. )

I read this research as a call for diverse styles of leadership. The context we live in today is highly complex, and the problems we face increasingly so. As such the best leadership style is usually one that has the fewest blind spots. This way of leading necessarily means the ability to source and use a diverse set of skills, perspectives and styles. Even though this research clearly shows a better outcome for countries led by women during the pandemic, I hope the message that we need more diversity in styles of leadership in general is not lost.

In reading the findings of this fascinating research, a couple of caveats are important to keep in mind. First, it is still early days in the pandemic life cycle; and second, we can only really measure one type of impact at this juncture - lives saved or lost. The economic impact will need to play out over time.

Two main findings in their research:

There are clear gender differences in risk taking behavior. Many earlier studies have reported more risk-averse behavior in women compared to men. However, what’s new here is that women leaders are selective in their risk approach. The women leaders studied chose to take less risks when it came to human lives, while being ok with taking more risks with the economy. And what that looked like is this - swift decision to lockdown in order to prioritize safety, while being ok with the possible unknown impact of such actions on the economy.

The researchers compared the women-led countries with peer countries (countries matched by similar population, average age, GDP, health expenditure, etc.) and the data show that the peer countries with male national leaders waited much longer to order a lockdown. Possibly using that time to weigh the severity of losses on both sides – human lives vs economy.

Interestingly, even though it is generally believed that women are more risk-averse than men, several studies show that the reverse is true when it comes to money! Men display much more risk-averse behavior than women when they have to make decisions in situations that are framed to highlight financial losses. (Schubert et al. 1999, Moore and Eckel 2006).

The other finding in Kambhampati & Garikipati’s research confirms what has been much discussed - which is that women leaders during Covid tended to be clearer and more empathetic in their communication.

The question we need to ask ourselves is this –

What if in the longer term, data shows that countries with women national leaders who took a more aggressive stance on Covid (locked down early), actually resulted in greater (or longer lasting) negative economical impact compared to the less aggressive actions of their peer male-led countries, BUT they saved more lives. What then? How will we judge their actions?

Although my personal assessment is that the economic result of clear and decisive early lockdown will be positive. Early lockdown means you get to “no new cases sooner” which means business and schools can re-open sooner. As already evident in New Zealand, which is the first country where life is essentially back to normal.

But just for argument sake – let’s say, longer term, we see more negative impact on the economy in countries with women national leaders who took an aggressive stance and locked down early, compared to the economies of their peer male-led countries. What would we conclude? How will we judge their actions? Will we do some slick calculus to weigh number of lives saved vs rate of inflation/deflation? Will we revert to the classical economic argument that the value of a person is measured in the goods/services they produce that can be exchanged for money and that the sum of that is the GDP (aka worth of a nation)? Will we continue to maintain that the value of any service or experience is only equal to the amount that we’ve been paying for them, i.e., low paid jobs such as childcare, teachers, community organizers, companioning and support for the elderly or others in need are of low economic value, while high paying jobs such as lawyers, investment traders, and business leaders are of high economic value? Will we then downgrade the achievements of these women leaders because even though they saved more lives, they slowed down the economy? Or will we be wise and bold enough to challenge our outdated assumptions and consider a different model for building a thriving society.

My hope is regardless of what the longer term data will show about the economic impact of lockdown, we will come to realize that we, humans, created the economy - which is an artifact, nothing more than a bunch of people behaving according to some agreed norms of what has value and what does not. If we were able to do that, then surely, we are able to create a new version that corrects the gross imbalances and optimizes new insights and values we now have. (There is a Forbes article about this research but it didn't focus on this central question of the potential to transform the way we think of the economy and value.)

Undoubtedly, COVID19 has had a significant impact on the HR / People functions in organisations globally.

Entire workforces have been transitioned to remote working with no prior warning and in many cases with little impact on productivity. This has demonstrated HR’s ability to “just do it” and push through a major change without total alignment and with less than complete clarity on the desired end product.

Will HR be up to the task of caring for overall wellness for the workforce?

The pandemic has also highlighted the importance of mental wellbeing alongside physical wellbeing, individuals have been faced with the challenges of the virus itself, as well as the broader impacts of living in lockdown. There has been a blurring of lines between work and home lives, with personal factors now playing a major role in work-related decisions more than ever before.

As we begin to emerge from this crisis and look to the return to the office, it is not helpful to think of versions of the past that many are unfortunately calling the “new normal”. HR needs to step up to its responsibility of guiding the organization’s future. COVID19 has created a (liminal) space for organisations to take stock, recognize what needs to be left in the past, acknowledge what we have learnt through this experience, and make clear choices to chart a new path in the organisational culture and ways of working. Don’t be in a rush to take action. The gift of a liminal space is that the past is gone but the future is not yet set. Take advantage of this to pause, observe and ask the right questions, for that is what will give us better answers, and better insights from which we can make bold and wise commitments.

How do we balance this difficult polarity?

• Employees need for stability and certainty increases, with
• Organisations’ need for flexibility and agility increases. With shrinking budgets and a smaller permanent workforce, will there be a need for more flexible workers/contractors?

Over the last few months, the pandemic has highlighted our need to adapt and be flexible in the highly complex environment in which we are operating. The impact we have seen in our traditional supply chains and medical services has demonstrated the weakness of seemingly robust systems which cannot adapt to changing needs.

Moving forward, organisations need to be even more agile and, in turn, more resilient. Many organisations have become over-optimized, often for the sake of efficiency. As a result, we have optimized ourselves to the point of fragility – rather like “over-inflated balloons”, which we have to handle with great care and which are too rigid to adapt and survive when conditions change. Organisations must learn to operate as part of a complex adaptive system, in which multiple independent parts can interact with, and impact, all other components, adapting as needed, in order to function effectively in changing conditions.

So how can organisations shift their culture to operate successfully in such an ambiguous and fast-moving environment?

The answer could be to strip away much of the rigidity we have developed around ourselves in the form of processes and structures.

If we reduce HR to its most basic level and consider ‘what is the most minimum version of HR - HR’s MVP (minimum viable product), that can still enable large groups of people to succeed as part of a team? What would be the minimum structure and people/management processes needed? The first crucial component could be a shared purpose – one that is truly used in decision making and can be felt in the daily lived experiences of everyone. In fact, in the face of so much complexity, purpose has never been more important. A clear purpose at an organisational, team and individual level is the fastest way to cut through the clutter and create autonomy and cohesion almost at a magnetic level, instead of relying on rules and instructions, all crucial in maintaining motivation and productivity.

We often see organisations go through functional transformation where the traditional HR building blocks such as talent acquisition, learning, employee relations, etc, are reorganized in various combinations. Perhaps what is required is to completely reimagine the function, stripping it back to its minimum viable version, and to ask what is the primary purpose of HR?

We discussed the purpose of the HR function with our guests and agreed that HR’s purpose was to unleash potential, creating an environment in which people and businesses can thrive. If this were true what would be the minimum set of HR practices? Where the constraints that exist are there to enable, empower and to create cohesion.

In a context of heightened uncertainty and instability, as we emerge from this pandemic, this will be a complex cultural shift to manage. Leaders need more than ever to instil a sense of stability amongst their teams, whilst encouraging a culture of flexibility and agility. This will not be easy to achieve, but those who bravely forge a new path at this juncture could be the ones to thrive.

In order to unleash this potential as we move forward, organisations need to be open to this type of thinking and be able to look at things in completely different ways in order not to be left behind.

I was sparked by a little post today by Trendwatching.com to write this article. In the post they stated that “the more time people spend in the virtual realm the more they will expect from them.” And I agree with that.

My goal here is to start the conversation of how we might create more joy and meaning from working (and living) in a blend of the virtual and the real worlds because I feel what we’re seeing now is a trend that will persist.

Even though most organizations are doing what is required as a response to this disruption, many, in my opinion, are not really embracing, the potentially permanent impact this virtual-real mash-up reality will mean for their employees and customers in the near future.

In their post, Trendwatching shared stories of how brands are providing innovative services to enhance experiences while they spend time in the virtual world. Olivia, a home decor place is providing interior design services for your virtual home in Nintendo’s Animal Crossings game. You can hire them for 40GBP/hr to turn your virtual home into a space worthy of envy:) Fortnite is of course known for hugely popular live events in their virtual world. The recent Travis Scott virtual concert, offered in-game, drew a record 12.3 million viewers/players.

And an example closer to home, Zoom’s popularity soared when they offered sleek new virtual backgrounds, solving the problem of help-me-hide-clutter-in-my-kitchen while on a zoom session with my team.

And this example from Tesla (I’m not sure if it is offering value in a virtual or real world… I’m going to settle for a mash-up world). Tesla has just announced that it will soon be possible to do video conferencing using the native in-car computer system and the cabin facing camera (standard on Model 3). So, I’m imagining a road trip with family members and friends, some of whom are not physically in your car?!? Or a flotilla of Teslas (motorcade?) with their occupants all chatting away using the 21st century version of a CB radio? Full disclosure: I am a Tesla owner and a Teslaphile so I think this is quite cool :)

Many of the above examples are in the virtual world, and might carry a bit of sci-fi tinge to them but they exist and real people use them. And since so much of the real world is now off-limits to us, how much is the virtual world becoming our real world?

Think of work. How “real” are our colleagues to us? With the exception of those who are veteran remote workers, for many of us, we had to switch to WFH this March. We know our colleagues are real people but our experience of them lately has been only virtual. What makes your friend Alice Alice, is now transmitted through the image of her face on the screen, her voice through the speakers/headsets, the texts/chats/emails she sends with the cleverly placed virtual hugs/gifs/emojis…and… the outline she started on Google docs for you to pick up, the tasks she checked off on Trello, the images she posted on Slack, and of course, the dog videos she shared. So much of what we do now is experienced and evaluated through this virtual lens. Are we able to show our best selves this way? Which parts of us are not seen?

In addition to that, our personal effectiveness has to translate across the mix of both these worlds. Even though the lock down will not last forever, it has most likely changed the world of work forever. Many of us will be returning to a work reality that is a blend of the real and the virtual with no way of knowing which half will be the greater. The way we work with our teams might have also changed forever, now that we know asynchronous working is possible and even desirable in many cases. How do we re-invent ourselves to be effective in this mash-up world? How might we learn where our strengths will help us? How might we get more enjoyment and meaning out of working this way? How do we show our unique gifts and discover new gifts?

My big takeaway is this - the more time people spend living in the different worlds (#InEveryWorld) the more value they will expect to derive from every world.

So my 2 questions to companies and the people who lead them:

1. What are you doing to create meaning and joy #InEveryWorld that your customers spend time in?

2. What are you doing to create meaning and joy #InEveryWorld that your employees have to work in?

And my second big takeaway is that we can't do the above by merely replicating what we do in real life in the virtual world. Moving your team happy hour to Zoom gets old for a reason. It does not add value to the work and time we are already required to spend in the virtual world. In fact, some might say it just takes an hour away from the real world. A friend of mine has a small fabric arts company and last year they started a line of animal inspired designs. Since COVID19 their great idea of creating new value and increasing meaning and joy while working virtually is to introduce the Wild Earth Virtual Safari video streams to run continuously showing real (many are live streams) animals going about their lives in their natural environments. This has brought so much joy and meaning to the designers and not to mention stirring creative juices in their design.

Let’s start this conversation. Share the hashtag #InEveryWorld. The mash-up world is here to stay.

This is just my humble musings on a Tuesday, stuck behind too many virtual sessions, wondering when I will find more joy in doing a version of what, in many ways, is work I love, but somehow is still missing that little je ne sais quoi.

It would be great to see what perspectives and ideas there are out there.

#InEveryWorld #Covid19 #WFH #innovation #futureofwork

Photo credit: Dave Webb

How many articles have you read about investments in leadership development programs not producing any real impact? Unscientifically and idiosyncratically I can recall well meaning colleagues forwarding these (often great) articles (McKinsey, Deloitte/Bersin, HBR — I’m looking at you) to the HR team at least 2 to 3 times a year for the last 10 years… And they were all well-researched, well-written articles, often full of strong data and practical suggestions to improve. So, I want to say a whole hearted “thank you y’all!” There is honestly no sarcasm in the above. The problem is not the articles. The problem is this. When we try to measure the impact of a leadership development program it is often limited to one learning event: a week long program (possibly even world class in its ability to engage and inspire!); a 2 day workshop; a 3 module virtual class, etc. Trying to capture real behavior change as a result of these events is like trying to measure how much we recover from our illness by going to see the doctor. The analogy actually works quite well, so bear with me. And there is hope!

Imagine this. One day you don’t feel well, so you go to see your doctor. During the visit you have a very helpful and illuminating conversation with your doctor where you learn about your illness, it’s relationship to your habits, your prognosis and the actions you need to take to fully recover. You leave feeling educated, insightful and well cared for. But after the appointment, you don’t fill the prescription, you don’t take the recommended medication, you don’t make any diet or exercise changes, you don’t communicate the doctor’s advice to your family members, and you decide not have the recommended surgery. A few days later you assess if your symptoms have subsided as a result of speaking to your doctor… and unsurprisingly, you find “no, I still feel sick”. Therefore you conclude that your doctor is not effective in making you better.

Many organizations make the same mistake when trying to measure the effectiveness of their flagship/hi-profile leadership development program. The main event by itself should understandably have limited impact in changing and sustaining the new behaviors and mindsets you were hoping for. The event may have been exquisitely designed and delivered to provoke, awaken, provide insight, inspire, spur action, and build a cohesive spirit of “yes we can!” But no matter how hot and bright that flame burned during the event, it will quickly subside without the right support and follow through. I have seen even the strongest personal will to change succumb to the vortex of BAU (business as usual) and SOP (standard operating procedure) within mere weeks, if not days, of that moving learning experience.

I’m reminded of this really great and practical article about how to develop leaders better and faster. 4 Things that Develop Leaders Faster, written by James Eyring from Organisation Solutions, a researcher and expert in leadership and organization effectiveness whom I think very highly of. He pointed out that Insight alone is not enough. Leaders also need practice, challenge and support if they are to really change and grow. Additionally, if we are to see real payoffs from efforts to develop leaders we need to look at the whole thing using a systems lens. The reality is never a simple cause and effect — increase leaders’ skills causes rise in share price or NPS scores.

In order for leadership development programs to produce the results we want (and were promised by the program designers) we need to think of leadership development as an integrated plan of linked actions that could be anchored or kicked off by one keystone event; but crucially followed by the long tail of really hard and meticulous implementation work to ensure that leaders get the practice, challenge and support they need for the new behaviors to take hold. To do this we need to identify other aspects of the organization that impact whether our leaders can (opportunity) and want to (motivation) practice what they’ve learned. This work is not splashy or sexy. It will be slow; often one person or one team at a time. And the rewards, though humble, in the form of small wins and minor breakthroughs, are truly meaningful. If we persevere, we might actually see meaningful returns from the huge sums invested regularly by corporations in shaping leader capabilities.

So the next time we plan to measure the impact of a leadership development program, in addition to ensuring the program provides the relevant Insights, always also measure ourselves how well we do the following things:

For Practice:

How much did we help the leaders to practice what they learned?

What did we do to change the environment so that it motivates our leaders to try out these new mindsets, skills and behaviors?

For Challenge:

How effectively did we challenge our leaders to take their skills to the next level on a regular basis?

How clearly do we communicate the safe-to-fail sandbox to invite brave experimentation by everyone?

For Support:

Do we provide easy access to a broad array of robust and personalized support mechanisms to help each leader continue to learn, reflect and make sense of their experiences in their own way and at their own pace (e.g., coaching, mentoring, feedback, job taster, unique/passion project, personalized learning plan)?

So to get an “all thumbs up” rating for your leadership development ROI, you’ll need an “all thumbs up” for your next leadership development main event, PLUS an “all thumbs up” rating for each of the questions above.

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

Q&A: Mandy Chooi We’re excited to be working with Mandy Chooi, a world-class expert in leadership development, to help put authentic and purposeful leadership at the heart of mission-driven businesses.

Mandy Chooi has spent over 20 years in global leadership roles, most recently as ING’s Global Head of Strategy & Innovation for People, where she helped the bank pivot to an agile, innovative and digital culture.

As a leadership coach and consultant, Mandy has partnered with Fortune 500 companies, including technology, professional services, manufacturing, banking and FMCG firms, to help their top leaders dare to be authentic, drive transformational change, build capability and bring out the best in their teams.

Purpose caught up with Mandy to talk about how leaders can overcome the barriers to embedding a truly inspiring and transformative purpose in their businesses.

Q. Why do leaders sometimes struggle to make purpose work?

It’s very common to get stuck in the “know/do gap”. This happens when an organisation knows why purpose is important, but somehow can’t make it take root.

It’s all about context and opportunity. As a business, your purpose has to live in soil where it can grow. This means building an environment where people genuinely have opportunities to make decisions based on purpose: where your purpose affects whether you choose strategy A or strategy B, and whether you invest in X or Y. If your purpose isn’t part of that day-to-day decision-making, it’s not a real purpose.

The “know/do gap” affects individuals in the same way. You can learn something, but unless you have the capability, motivation and, most of all, the opportunity to apply it, you’re not going to change your behaviour.

Q. How do you help people overcome that “know/do gap”?

You really have to look closely at the systemic context. Are you building a work environment where people are encouraged to live and act according to the purpose? Are they being allowed the space to ask tough questions, to create healthy conflict?

Because if you put a changed person into an unchanged context, nothing will change.

Leadership is about setting the context and being the role model for what you want to see in others. The more the top leadership walks the talk, the more quickly the whole organisation starts to pull in the same direction. Leaders’ behaviour is a large part of the culture recipe.

Q. How do you create those opportunities for real change?

It’s a tough nut to crack — people are often reluctant to try new things, either because it’s uncomfortable, risky, or because they’re not already good at them.

Organisations need to create not only the right space and environment, but also the pressure to experiment. As part of the leadership development process, I try to push people to create behavioural experiments over the course of several weeks. It’s especially effective if they then invite people to observe that new behaviour and feed back (and there are some great digital tools for that).

Q. How did you develop purpose-driven leadership at ING?

At ING, we gave all of our leaders the opportunity to discover their personal purpose and create a life plan — a holistic, integrated plan that goes beyond work. Because if you want people to bring their whole selves to work, you in turn need to respect and support their whole lives, including all of their interests. Companies must start to embrace this — don’t just look at someone’s current role, help them develop holistically as a person.

Q. What do these life plans look like?

If you were to live your purpose for the next five years, what would that look like? Who would support you? What do you want to do more of, what do you want to do less of? What are the milestones in the years in between? That’s what the plan captures.

We’ve taken over 7000 people through a weeklong, offsite programme to develop their purpose and plan. And after that, we continue to support them with living that plan. The plan doesn’t just gather dust, we go back to it every couple of months, interspersing support, coaching, and establishing the expectation to revisit it within their own teams regularly, to keep it going.

Q. Do you ever encounter any resistance during this process?

Not in general. Although, there have been the small handful who struggle with the concept. If you’ve spent a long and successful career totally compartmentalising your life and your work, it can be a struggle to think and plan in terms of a single holistic purpose. And of course, since it’s an immersive, introspective process that you share with other people — this means that you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable and trust people.

Q. How do you achieve this?

The environment and setting design helps us get over any initial reluctance. For the first hour or two you sense some hesitation in a few people, but very quickly, people drop their guard and feel safe.

The key is really to design learning experiences that are experiential. People have to really feel it.

The experience takes people from “realise”, to “confront”, to “reframe”, to “commit”. If you confront people with their own assumptions and beliefs, you can cause a real paradigm shift in which people commit to doing things differently. But people have to feel that shift, they have to feel that reframing.

All of these needs to be carefully nurtured and reinforced by putting the right practices and systems in place. In other words, how people work, make decisions, collaborate, receive recognition, etc. must all be tailored afresh to nudge and strengthen this new purpose-led way of being.

Q. Let’s take a step back — what do leaders actually gain by focusing on purpose?

It’s three things really. First, today’s leaders are constantly being expected to make difficult decisions with very little data. When you’re confronted with unprecedented dilemmas in a fast-changing environment, purpose gives you that rudder and North Star.

Second, purpose de-clutters. It stops a changing business from drowning in new initiatives. A clearly articulated purpose helps you choose what you do, what you do first, and what you don’t do at all.

Third — to stay ahead these days, you need to constantly innovate. And to do that, you need to ask your people to create magic every day. You’re asking them to bring their whole self, their ideas and their passions to you. They simply won’t be prepared to do this until you foster a sense of excitement around a shared and aligned purpose.

I always believed that a good leader knows that who you are (and how you show up) is more important than what you know or can do. Especially in situations of increasing complexity and uncertainty, people need to know that they are following someone who is guided by a good purpose, one that feels aligned to their personal values.

Q. Just to wrap up — I know that everyone at The House is very excited about working with you. What are your hopes for the partnership?

When I met Steve at the THNK School of Creative Leadership and learned about The House, I immediately sensed that there was a natural partnership here.

The House has great expertise and capability in terms of thinking through a purpose-driven leadership development approach and communicating and embedding it into a company in a creative, immersive way. What I bring is the experience and ability to identify and drive the real business changes that come with that — helping organisations figure out the next steps towards building skills in their leaders and helping other parts of the company create the right context and systems change to support a purpose-led transformation. I’m looking forward to it.

Written by Elizabeth Lembke, a Fairlead collaborator. This is a great write-up of our journey in bringing other HR leaders into the Co-creator space. Many insights and lessons learned. Also lots of discoveries of how this is indeed an invaluable attitude and skillset for HR in being more in the front of leading organizational transformation. As two people-passionate organizational development femmes, Elizabeth Lembke and Anne-Cécile Graber, we set out on a journey to create a framework and a corresponding practical implementation to foster the spirit of co-creation within and across organizations. The end-game goal being empowered teaming to generate adaptive solutions that are not just quick patch-up’s but rather address users’s real needs. We joined together as it is our belief that the inherent potential of people in organizations is not being tapped into as broadly as possible but, rather unfortunately, many are increasingly taking a reductionistic approach to only looking at skills rather than social competence, expertise, learning agility, and technical prowess. These human aspects are key to thriving not only surviving in the new world of work. We saw this as our chance to offer up a different solution. This is why we launched the co-creator.space project. The co-creator.space project is now almost a year old and we learned many things when it comes to co-creation and launching a different approach into the world. As the year comes to a close, we took some time to reflect on some of those key learnings — perhaps by sharing these, we may help you on your own co-creation journey.

# Be aware of the wolf

In 2019, we met up with a lot of people who were interested in the co-creator.space and the energy we invested in it. Some of them absolutely passionate about wanting to work with us. Some of these folks, like the veritable Mandy Chooi, were amazing and the spices they added to the co-creation stew, made it better. Others, on the other hand, seemed nice, curious and ready to co-create until they were … oddly not. Luckily, we realized sooner rather than later that they were not looking for a balanced give and take relationship but rather wanting to grab at our “laurels” and hope we wouldn’t notice. In short “give us your IP, we will package it under our brand, and here are the tight contractual hand-cuffs in which you can continue to work.” They were ready to “take for free and give with conditions”. Ah, no thanks.

Lessons Learned: make sure that the spirit of win-win is shared and do not hesitate to step away from a win-lose transactional offering.

# You are more competent than you think

Many of us were raised with the idea that if you do not have 150% of the qualifications, you are not credible or qualified to do “it”. There is an aspiration for perfection and a personal judgement that we are not good enough. Stories in our head say: “We need a new certification, a new book or an add-on to be seen as competent” etcetera. This year of co-creation taught us that we are competent beyond our wildest dreams. We just never had digested the advice to look at our strengths and say “hell yeah, I can do it”. The adage: Just try, learn and integrate. Breathe in. Breathe out. If you do not try, you cannot know.

Lessons Learned: you will never be 100% ready. Instead of just sticking your toes in the water, jump in. Only then will you see how wet you really are.

# People who pay, tend to value the things you give more

We organized many online and offline events to present co-creation and let people experience it via action learning. Most of these events were not attended as “planned”. People registered to the events and never showed up. During discussions with other event organizers, we learned that this is quite common and actually increasingly normal. Which has led to organizers starting to have participants pay a fixed registration fee. They found — as have we — that the “show up level” increased as well as the quality and quantity of the interactions. They also told us that folks — ironically — tend to be more suspicious of one’s intention to sell if you offer something for free. Our take is that people invest themselves more when they pay for an event. They also think “if I pay for it I better go and participate”. When an event is free, often times there is a mental out: “if it is free, my attendance isn’t being planned on. So no one will notice if I don’t go. If they do, well…”

Lessons Learned: the events are meaningful — and a contribution can support the sense of co-accountability for the results. The amount does not have to be much — but for us it made a world of difference in the stance of “produce — do not only consume” when taking part in an event.

# You develop competences and skills outside work

We had many insights into the future of work and met people who have extraordinary after-work activities. As we spoke about their future in an ever changing world. The word fear came across many times. What would I do if my job disappears ? I only learned to be a X in school? I have had so many different types of jobs …The disconnect that we saw between their competencies developed outside work and their fear to not be able to face future endeavors surprised us. They already gained new abilities outside of work but they did not actualize it because it was during their free and fun time. It is important to recognize that we learn best while having fun and that competency development is not restricted to work. In fact, they are extremely transferable.

Lessons Learned: foster appreciation and awareness in abilities and talents beyond what is written in a job description or on LinkedIn. Collaboration, problem solving, social competence and teaming with dissimilar folks are key to success in the future — the proof is in the pudding.

# It is always a question of perspective

Whatever happens in your life, there are always many ways to look at it. You can decide to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and look at your situation from their perspective. You will never have access to all the information. It is one of the main reasons why exchanging with people with different expertise and backgrounds can help you to uncover new opportunities and offer insights. As we organized events, we realized that we sometimes did not have the same understanding of the outcome. It enriched our work because we took into account our differences to make our events even more colorful — and the learning insights more impactful.

Lessons Learned: great minds think alike — and often make the same mistakes. Make sure that plurality of a devil’s advocate hat enriches the outcomes.

# A two way relationship is the secret for a lasting one

Relationships based on mutual respect and a balanced give and take mentality are the ones that last. As co-captains, we are thriving as a duo but this also requires an open communication and the desire to understand the other person’s personality. We have different needs and expectations when it comes to executing our plans. We learned very fast that exchanging on our needs and expectations was maybe scary and uncomfortable but it brought us closer to each other. We know we can be vulnerable because we created a safe and brave space. One has to be willing to enter the brave space rather than be quiet for sake of harmony. Constructive collaboration means not being afraid of the fact that friction is conducive to better solutions.

Lessons Learned: mind reading is possible but not probable. Talking through expectations, challenges, priorities and hiccups makes for a stronger foundation. A relationship is much more than the project at hand.

# If you don’t dare to dream. It won’t happen!

It is important to dream about what we would love to see in the world. Using our imagination in this direction gave us the energy to take action. We tried, succeeded, failed and learned. If you spend your days playing the repetition monkey nothing new will happen. We learned to imagine the best case scenario and go from there in order to nurture our action plans. We dare to dream that one day we will have a full arena of people willing to participate not only in a co-creation event but that they will take the framework, the learning to support adaptive solutions in their communities, work, and practices. Our motto: let’s see if we land on a star while aiming for the moon.

Lessons Learned: ideas and inspirations are great — but you are the artist of your vision. Bring it to paper and then to life. Be brave. Be bold. Be vulnerable. Be learning.

# People will root for you — but you have to show up for yourself.

In life, there are people who support us, like our families, friends, and colleagues, but they are not going to work for you or not even necessarily understand what you are doing. They are not responsible for your success and failure. You are. It is your responsibility to take action and move toward your dreams. No one knows what is best for you except you. There is a famous sentence: “If you do not work for your dreams. You will work for the one of someone else”. We all are co-creators in space. Be the captain of your ship and find others who want to go in the same direction. Root for yourself and life will smile at you.

Lessons Learned: no one will be more invested in your dreams than you. Make sure you make regular instalments in bringing them to fruition. Appreciate your cheerleaders — they will bolster you when you are doubting — but remember you still have to take the field in order to play the game.

We are happily continuing our journey to bringing co-creator.space into the world. We are glad to have you along for the ride. Co-Creator.Space

“Challenging the status quo” was the motto of the Fifteen Seconds Festival in Graz last week – a business conference gathering for all curious minds in the global community of leaders, creatives and innovators. Anexia is joining the wonderful event as a partner again this year. So first of all, thanks for the amazing input and enlightening discussions we were able to take part in. And of course, we want to share some of the input with our readers as well. One of the big issues this year was ‘talent’ ─ for the first time a special stage focused on keynotes regarding this topic. How can organizations be structured so that talents find their space to evolve and innovation can happen? One of the most inspiring speaker there was Mandy Chooi. Mandy is former Global Director of HR Strategy & Innovation at ING. She has just quit this job two months ago to start her own consultancy. On stage, she spoke about her idea, that companies need to be self-aware too, not just people. Before she went on stage, I was lucky enough to catch her for an interview. I asked Mandy about herself and her nomadic lifestyle, why disruption is important and how companies can provide and survive an environment of disruption.

Mandy, would you be so kind and introduce yourself briefly?

Sure. My name is Mandy Chooi. I have lived in seven countries, which I think is pretty amazing. I was born in Malaysia, grew up in Canada, and did all my university education there. Then I left Canada and my career took off pretty fast. I started at Motorola, where I did management consulting. And then I worked at Honeywell, and then at Johnson and then ING. Most of my career has been focused on human strategy, which means: how do you design an organization, so that you get the best out of people.

 
You already mentioned you lived in several countries. I read an article about you, where you say, the hardest question to answer for you is “Where am I a local.” Have you found an answer so far?

Actually, that’s a good question, that’s the question I would prefer to answer. The hardest question for me to answer is ’Where are you from’. I cannot answer that. There isn’t any one country where I lived so long that I can say, this is where I’m from. So that’s why I say, I would prefer it if people would ask me the question “where are you local,” because that way I get a chance to talk about specific places. There are certain parts of Chicago, in Thailand or in Amsterdam, where I feel like I am local. Even though I lived in China for a very short time, there is a particular area on the east bank of the river in Pudong, where I feel very, very much at home, and I feel like I’m local. So, that’s why I prefer that type of question, because then you start talking and have a nice conversation.

  You live a nomadic lifestyle. Did this lifestyle have an influence on your career?

It had a huge impact. I think it all started with the sort of person that I am. My parents are telling me stories of when I was five yours old and declaring to everybody that I was going to go to this country and that country and go to space and whatever. I was just never somebody who felt rooted in one place. I always wanted to see all the countries of the world because that’s the sort of person that I am. And then, when career opportunities started to show up, I always chose options that gave me the most maximum change. It would usually be different country, different industry, different language. It was always more important for me to get maximum disruption in every move rather than to go straight up the career ladder. I wasn’t even aware I was designing my career in the early stages, I just did what I loved to do, seeing the world. And doing so, I learned a whole different way of thinking, which affected my career. This was in the late 1990s early 2000s, when all the companies in the world were being globalized. And there were looking for talent, who were a) willing to go and work in different parts of the world and b) already have experience in this. I fitted in there.

 
You first started to study arts and then switched to psychology. Did this switch and the fact that you are an expert in different fields also affect your career?

Actually, that one is kind of interesting. My father was an art collector. He was always in the art world, a lot of his friends were artists. So, all the time when I was growing up, I had really good teachers, who were successful artists. Anyway, long story short, up until I was 17 years old, I thought I was going to be an artist. I had art lessons, I was painting every day. But my father being that Chinese parent he is, he decided, no, that is not a serious career. You need to have a serious career. So anyway, couple of discussions later, he won. I had to have a serious degree from a serious university. But in retrospect, I think both sides helped me. Without the serious degree, I would not have had such a wonderful career in large companies. But without the art I would be normal. (laughs) I think that was one of the things that set me apart. There were many people who did what I do, but they didn’t do it with the creativity, the ability to look at things from completely weird angles. Creativity and design matters. Whatever you do, you need creativity and you need design.

  Creativity and design matters. Whatever you do, you need creativity and you need design.

Did you realize that almost 50% of the speakers at the Fifteen Seconds Festival are women? Do you often meet women at conferences or is it still more a male dominated world you’re working in?

Ah, that’s nice with the 50%. Actually, it is often very different, if I meet other women and also the way I am treated as a woman differs. It depends on the company culture and sometimes it depends on the country and its culture, too. I can still see a big difference, even today, how women in business are treated. But in general, I can definitely say that now versus 20 years ago there has been a very big improvement.

Thanks a lot for the insights to your career. Let’s focus now a bit more on the topic you are speaking about here on stage. The title of you keynote is “Companies Need to Be Self-Aware too, not just People.” Why do companies need to be self-aware?

The world is changing so fast and it is forcing companies and leaders to make decisions very, very fast. We are making huge decisions that have implications on technology, on humanity with no precedents. You cannot point somewhere and see the best practice up there. That option doesn’t exist anymore. You have to come up with the solutions yourself. In addition, your decisions are based on very little data, very little certainty, and certainly on no promise of success. In this ambiguous, complex environment, I think the only thing that you can count on is your character as a person, and as an organization.

 
So, is this character formed by self-awareness?

Yes. And this is what I define as self-awareness. It comes in three: Do you have a purpose? Do you know your sweet spot? And are you authentic? These are the three things, whether you are a person or a company, you need to be self-aware. So, do you have a purpose? This is what you stand for. As a person, when everything has been stripped away, you lost everything, you’re totally confused and you have no guidance, you still know what you stand for and what you will not compromise with. And it’s the same thing with a company. Discover your purpose, know what you stand for as a company, and then take a deep hard look at all the processes, all the decisions, all the practices, and policies you have in your company. Do they all line up exactly and support your purpose? The next thing is your sweet spot. Do you play tennis or golf? The sweet spot is the moment when you hit the ball just in the right spot. It’s beautiful, it is effortless, and the ball goes exactly where you want it to go. As a person, you need to find your sweet spot, which is that intersection of your strengths and your motives. When you find that spot, make sure you operate from that spot as much as possible, because this is where you are going to do your best work. And it’s the same with a company. Sometimes, because everybody is talking about innovation, innovation, innovation, companies lose their focus. They try to keep all options open, but that diffuses them. Failure in innovation is rarely due to good ideas, it is usual a lack of focus. So, find your sweet spot, know what your company does better than any other company does, know what you suck at and don’t go on and do that. Make sure your company operates from the sweet spot.

And the third point is authenticity. Show authenticity. To me that means having the courage to bring your whole self to work. It doesn’t work to compartmentalize. You can’t say this is my work person, but at home I am my home person. No. Being authentic is the same as being whole as being of high integrity. It means, everything from your thoughts to your words to your actions to your tweets to your blogs, everything has to be consistent. And same with the company. You need to be very clear, that this is what you stand for and this is what all of your practices are based on. So yeah, that is why I say a self-aware company is a company that understands its purpose, that understands its sweet spot and operates from there and knows how to show up authentically and bring its whole self there.

  Is failure and talking about failure a part of authenticity?

Yes, absolutely. When I designed the leadership program for ING, one of the major element of the program was ‘Showing your vulnerability’. Being OK with talking about your failures in front of the team is important, because I think sharing your story and showing the people what they normally don’t see will instantly create a new kind of bond.

  Why is innovation so essential for companies these days?

Well, I think innovation is so essential because the world is changing so fast. There are some of these megatrends that are hitting companies. The pace of change is so fast, that if you don’t keep reinventing yourself, if you just keep doing what you are doing, everybody will get ahead of you. Standing still is the same as moving backwards. So, that is why it is really important for a company to keep reinventing itself. And to me, innovation is a way of thinking and a way of organizing of working so that your company is able to come up with ideas that disrupt itself.

 
So innovation is a way to disrupt yourself. Why is it important to be willing to disrupt yourself?
The path to survival lies in innovation and the willingness to disrupt yourself. I have the example from ING, one where I am really proud of ING. It was a tough decision for me to leave, because I loved working there so much. One of the things that ING does incredibly well is, that it openly declares, ”we are willing to disrupt ourselves.” ING is a bank that funds several fintech startups, which are trying to find out how do you allow people to do their finance in a way that makes banks obsolete. It is just to have the courage to say, the disruption is going to happen anyway, but we may as well participate in the innovation.

 
Why is it so difficult to declare innovation in a company?
Because once you declare your path forward is through innovation, it has huge implications on the design of your company. Once you make that decision, you need to take that long hard look at everything. How do you do things in your company, the structure, the job titles? How you pay people? How you treat failure? How you build teams? How are projects funded? You might need to completely redesign all of these things. And it all starts with this choice and this attitude of, yep, we’re going to be an innovative company.

 
Thanks Mandy for the interesting conversation!

I was at a conference recently where easily half of all the speakers who spoke about leadership paid homage to purpose, authentic leadership and self-awareness; myself included. There was also some focus on context but mostly the interest seems to be on “how to bring out the magic in everyone”.

The question of what makes a good leader is complicated. In business, the question of what sorts of leaders will guide the business to success is just as complicated. We can all think of great leaders — Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau (I’m biased, I’m Canadian) and their achievements. But we would be hard pressed to come up with silver bullet leadership lessons from one leader that is applicable universally regardless of the situation.

I believe that the effectiveness of a leader depends on three things. The (business) context, the person, and the culture that either encourages or inhibits great leadership to have effect.

Context — It’s not only who you are, but when and where you are.

First and foremost is the context in which the business operates. This sets the stage for the type of leadership it needs. Often, when an organization looks at developing leaders, there is sufficient focus on the individual characteristics of a leader and not enough emphasis on the situation in which he/she must lead. Your industry, the competition, your legacies, the challenges, the vision and the aspiration define the playing field, which determines your purpose, your strategy, what’s your game, where you play, and why it matters. Achieving clarity and alignment on all these factors will allow you to pick the leadership style that will most likely succeed in getting your business to live its purpose and realize its goals.

The other important step in clarifying the context in which leaders need to operate is prioritization. This creates focus. It is tempting to be ambitious and try to design a leadership development approach to solve all the business’ needs at once. However, this will dilute the effort. Choosing the few places where you must excel, and deciding to play to your strengths are key to ensuring you harness your energy and focus the development. It is a fallacy that one can optimize everything and hope to eliminate all weaknesses. In a people analogy, this is like betting on someone with an absence of flaws to outperform a world-class specialist (who most likely has many great flaws, just not where it counts!). It doesn’t matter what the game is, the generalist will not change the world. In sports, an athlete who plans to compete in the Olympics must first choose the event. While many of the training fundamentals are common across sporting events, there is no substitute for honing the vital few skills to perfection in order to win at your chosen sport.

Like people, organizations must also choose their sport. There are various diagnostic and benchmarking tools out there that can help an organization “choose their sport” by doing deep dives into their practices, business outcomes and overall health. The data prove very useful as guides to identify the leadership practices that will make the most difference.

Looking back on my experiences of building leadership capability in many companies and industries I firmly believe that recognizing and responding to what the business needs is more important than trying to implement any great leadership lessons.

Which is NOT to say the person is unimportant. The business context comes alive only through the interpretations and actions of the people who live it. The person is super-important in this equation. The human beings on whom we place our bets to lead the organization, are essentially the secret ingredient; the wild card that will make or break us. Each one will bring their gifts and fallibilities to our critical projects and major initiatives.