How to Cut Through Complexity: Using Compelling Purpose

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

Cutting through complexity and simplifying complexity is a key value proposition for organizations and individuals. That’s why good consulting or coaching is about simplifying complexity.

Purpose signOne of the most elegant ways of achieving this result is to find the organization’s or individual’s purpose, and let them align their actions and issues with their purpose. If the purpose is strong and compelling enough, the rest will be certainly simplified:

  • what’s not a priority will be easily abandoned in favor of what’s important
  • what’s a priority will be clear, compel action-taking and destroy all sorts of procrastination.

Are you doubting it? Well, remember the last time you were madly in love with someone. It was a purpose. Didn’t your life suddenly appear simple, and wasn’t action-taking made easier? Didn’t you do things you would never have dreamed of trying before?

It all comes down to the compelling factor. To passion. If, when you think about your purpose, you don’t feel emotion, it’s not your real purpose.

Find your real compelling purpose. It will simplify your life.

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Posted in Collaborative Age, complexity, K.E.E.N. skills, leadership, personal purpose | 1 Comment

Good consulting or coaching is about simplifying complexity

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

What is actually good consulting or coaching? As a professional consultant and coach it might be time that I ponder on that question!

Zen Garden

Focus and reflection is often what people expect from external contributions

Reflecting on my most successful and satisfying moments, I can relate them to AHA moments for my clients, who were discovering an entire new perspective on things. This perspective was in fact often a way to simplify their life (or their organization’s) by providing new focus. Of course, consulting and coaching are not the same thing: consulting comes with advice and solutions; while coaching takes an open approach and lets the client come up with its personal solution. Still, again and again, the key of the intervention was to simplify real or subjective complexity. It often got realized through finding purpose, or what the actual, real, objective of the endeavor is.

Often enough most of the value is brought in when the coach or the consultant simplifies complexity, letting a clear path readily visible and less confusion as to the way forward. One consulting firm (KPMG) even has the tagline “cutting through complexity”. It can only take a few minutes – but the external eye, sounding board and independent perspective is essential in discovering that new path. I love these moments where coming with an independent, sometimes irreverent viewpoint suddenly simplifies years of artificially added complexity layers!

How did the coaches and consultants you’ve used performed in simplifying complexity?

Hat tip to Patrick Laredo, President of X-PM, a leading interim management company, for the thoughts and discussions on consulting and complexity

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Posted in Career in the Collaborative Age, leadership, My entrepreneurial adventures, Organization in the Collaborative Age, personal purpose | Leave a comment

How to Really Being Productive in the Collaborative Age

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

“Being productive isn’t about wringing every last minute out of every day doing something or checking stuff off a to-do list and building a relentlessly efficient system that allows nothing through the cracks.” – Amber Naslund

Productive Ape

Is that the way you are productive?

Now that’s quite an interesting thought, which is further developed in this blog post “Rethinking Productivity“.

Amber Naslund is an entrepreneur and she’s working in social networks business. She’s quite advanced in the Fourth Revolution. So, no wonder that when she looks at productivity, she looks at it from the point of view of the K.E.E.N. (Knowledge Exchanging Enhancing Networker): productivity of the K.E.E.N. is very much about creativity, not about repeating tasks efficiently!…

Let’s leave the last word to Amber:

“We need time to float along on the breeze. Have a casual, spontaneous conversation. Enjoy some silence. Write a bunch of random stuff that we never finish, and be okay with that. Productivity, at its essence, means being able to bring things about.”

The good thing, is that it just killed our guilt of doodling around (next time you’re asked, say that you are growing your next ideas)!

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Posted in 'mutual learning' leadership, Collaborative Age value production system, creativity, K.E.E.N., K.E.E.N. skills, Personal Choice | Leave a comment

Focus means saying no. How often do you say no?

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

Here’s a famous quote from Steve Jobs about creativity:

no, thanks“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other ideas that they are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done.”

Again and again, in my coaching practice, when people develop plan to evolve and change their life, I encounter that one very fundamental question is:

“What are you ready to stop doing?”

It’s a tough question. It is hard – but necessary. You can’t just add up stuff to your life. Letting go of something you are doing shows commitment, prioritization, focus.

Are you as proud of the things you have stopped doing than of the stuff you’ve been recently starting?

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Is national investment in R&D a fallacy for economic growth ?

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

It is a commonly held belief that to create innovation, and hence economic growth and competitiveness, governments and companies should invest in R&D. R&D expenditure is an important indicator used at political level to evaluate the competitiveness of economies.

The first powered flight by the Wright brothers

The first powered flight by the Wright brothers

However, there is plenty of substantial evidence, at least anecdotal, that the most impacting and most fundamental inventions were rarely created by government or centralized spending. For example, computers created in a garage; or powered flight invented by self-taught bicycle shop owners. Sometimes R&D spending creates something unexpected, not part of the original program.

The competition between the Wright Brothers and Samuel Langley, a well established academic with generous funding from government, is possibly the best example.

Samuel Langley

Samuel Langley (a true academic!)

It went to the point where the US government denied the Wright brothers recognition for forty years, so upset were they that they had succeeded and not the program the government had funded!

Some details on that story can be found here, here. On this link there are some interesting thoughts about the effect of government and bureaucratic funding, with reflections around this story.

(Centrally planned) government or corporate funding might not be the most effective way to foster innovation. Letting an ecosystem of innovators create, destroy, fail and finally evolve into suitable innovations is certainly a much better solution. But central planning and bureaucratic management is unable to support or control such an arrangement.

The issue is more about creating a social context where failure needs to be accepted as part of the search for innovation, and where innovation needs to remain nested in action. It is not certain that the huge push of China in R&D and academic research will be effective if there is no possibility to experiment and to fail in Chinese society.

How can we release the inventive potential in a society better than spreading centrally controlled funds?

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Posted in Collaborative Age value production system, creativity, Fourth Revolution, Institutions and Revolutions, Organization in the Collaborative Age | Leave a comment

What Makes Great Organizations and Individuals different?

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

According to Simon Sinek, what makes the difference for great organizations – and great leaders – is that they know their ‘Why”. It is from their purpose that they derive how they do things and what they do in detail.

All individuals and organizations know their “What”. Some organizations know their “How”, but very rarely their “Why”.

Watch Simon Sinek give a great explanation with fantastic examples related to the Wright Brothers versus the establishment, and other great examples in this TED speech (if you’re a hurry, watch from 1:20 to 5:50 – if you can stop then!):

(Here is the link if you can’t see the video)

“People don’t buy What you do, they buy Why you do it” – Simon Sinek

Simon_sinekSimon Sinek’s Golden Circle (Why-How-What) is an interesting approach. It triggers important questions for ourselves and for our organizations.

Is your personal “Why” clear and compelling? Is your organization’s “Why” clear and compelling?

If not, what are you going to do about it?

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Posted in Career in the Collaborative Age, Collaborative Age value production system, K.E.E.N., leadership, My entrepreneurial adventures, Organization in the Collaborative Age, personal purpose | Leave a comment

Stop blaming, and take responsibility for once!

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

Naturally, we almost always blame someone or something else for our powerlessness to achieve what we would like. And the worst is that we often don’t realize it because it has become so second-nature to us! It sometimes take someone else to pinpoint this awful habit.

The search for someone to blame is always successfulWhenever in a workshop or a meeting, for example in organizations, I instill the rule of ‘no blaming’, it soon becomes apparent how natural it is for us to find (good) reasons why we did not do what we committed to, or what we intended to. When you pay attention to it, you’ll find people fall all the time into the blaming mode. Not only blaming others, but also blaming the weather, the system, their family and/or their origin, and so on (our inventiveness in the field of excuses is truly fantastic)…

By the way, the higher ranking the participants are, the easier they will find excuses, which makes it even more fun to instill that rule of no blaming in executive or board meetings!

What if we would take responsibility more often? What if we would take responsibility for the delay, for the screw-up, for our incapacity to exercise more or eat less? Just taking responsibility changes everything. It makes us in charge of our own life. It stops creating this tyranny of unchangeable fate and destiny.

Once you are aware of it, you’ll realize each time you use blame and excuses. You won’t bear it any more. And slowly you’ll become more responsible. You’ll become more human. And you’ll change your fate and destiny.

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Posted in Career in the Collaborative Age, K.E.E.N. skills, leadership, Personal Choice, personal purpose | Leave a comment

What if we were all somewhat insane (and what we can do about it)

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

A nice definition of insanity is: to do things over and over again – and expect a different result.

How much of a creature of habit are you?

How much of a creature of habit are you?

It’s quite amusing to think that we are probably all insane to a certain point. In our lives we often repeat behaviors out of habit and still, expect that something different will happen. That, somehow, fate will overcome our lethargy. Look at yourself and ponder how often we tend to fall into this mode.

It is so prevalent that it is sometimes incredible. Is that not the dream of the average person to somehow become rich and famous (refer to all the relevant TV shows) – and still… not to change anything, not one detail, to their daily behavior and occupation?

So, stop doing what you have always done, stop blaming everybody and anything for the fact that things don’t happen in your life the way you’d like. Change, introduce new experiences, even serendipity if you can. In summary – stop being on the brink of insanity by repeating ever and ever again the same routine! Come back to sanity by changing something – or even everything if you dare!

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Being Open to New Beginnings is the Only Way to Grow

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

“New beginnings – professional, personal, or come what may – are always uncomfortable, but being open to them is the only way to grow.” – Marissa Mayer

Marissa MayerIn an interesting blog post where she describes her transition from Google to Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, the current CEO of Yahoo, describes the issues she faced in taking a key career decision. Her choice was to made in a personally challenging context as she was 6 months pregnant and that meant foregoing the long maternity leave she had been planning.

Big choices in our lives generally don’t happen when we are quiet expecting them – and they tend to happen in moments where we really would like to avoid them (and look significantly like additional worries!).

That’s possibly why most people don’t take those opportunities that come to them in those hectic times. Why most people don’t re-plan.

According to Marissa Mayer, “ In the end, we are all capable of so much more than we think.”

Whatever happens in your life right now, if it’s the right opportunity and the good decision… Go for it. And don’t look back.

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Why Conventional Organizations Are Not Adaptable

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

The basics of the ability of decision-making in uncertain environment is “confidence in the people and the flexibility of systems“. That’s the feedback from decades of military wisdom.

Did you realize that it is exactly the opposite of what large organizations do! They typically:

  • remove responsibility and initiative from the individual in the bureaucratic and hierarchical organization
  • build very inflexible systems (anybody has experience with an ERP system?) for the sake of ‘discipline’

Hands waterIt is amazing how much of my consulting work in the field of large complex projects can often be summarized in giving more confidence and empowering the people; and releasing them from the tyranny of complicated and inflexible systems.

I am almost keen to see a bit more of shake-up throughout the world to destroy those organizations of the Industrial Age that won’t be able to adapt because of these two basics principles which they have forgotten. Systems in particular are often used in such a complicated manner that organizations lose all agility to face unpredictable circumstances.

Maybe those organizations thought they could shape the world as a predictable world.

Luckily giving back power and leadership to people is what worked and what will continue to bring us to the next Age. Why did people forget such basic principles during the Industrial Age illusion of scientific management?

Quote from General Vincent Desportes in his book “Decider dans l’Incertitude” (in French)

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Posted in Industrial Age, Institutions and Revolutions, K.E.E.N. skills, leadership, Organization in the Collaborative Age | Leave a comment

A great sample of applied Fourth Revolution’s organizational culture

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

Lately, a deck of slides about culture from a company called Hubspot has been quite popular. And it reflects very well what the culture of Fourth Revolution’s organizations will be. There are 150 slides but they are quite worthwhile for you to take a few minutes to scroll through:

 

“Culture happens. Whether we plan for it or not, culture will happen in an organization. Why not create a culture we love?”

This reminds me that it is our responsibility to create the culture we love in our organizations. What do you do about it?

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Posted in Collaborative Age value production system, Institutions and Revolutions, leadership, My entrepreneurial adventures, Organization in the Collaborative Age | Leave a comment

What the World Needs is More People that Are Alive. How Alive are You?

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Jeremie Averous

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive” ~Howard Thurman

becoming aliveIn the Industrial Age, not so long ago, society wanted us to become a standard conforming commodity. A class of weird artists was (barely, sometimes) tolerated. It is now quite obvious that boring conformity is not the best solution, neither for society as a whole (its needs increasing innovation), nor for us as individuals (we need purpose for happiness).

Yet most people are still asleep and need to become alive in the Fourth Revolution. They are not connected with their purpose or whatever would make them enthusiastic.

While it is difficult to envisage an organized world where everybody would be following its passions (some compromise might be needed at some point!), there is certainly a huge leap that can be made to reveal our common potential.

As a coach, what I am achieving most of the time is to make people become alive around a burning passion that they discover within themselves and that they realize can do more of it in their lives.

How alive are you in your daily life? How about NOW for a good time to wake up and start living?

If you want to read more about coming alive, visit Manal’s excellent blog post “What Makes Us Come Alive“, from which I noted the quote that inspired this note.

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