Charting New Paths to the Future

Charting New Paths to the Future

Guest post by Marina Gorbis

We are living in a moment of great transition. Some call it the Fourth Industrial Revolution, others refer to a Great Disruption or the VUCA world, the world of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. At the Institute for the Future (IFTF) we talk about a transition from the First to the Second Curve, from the world of institutional production to the world of socialstructed creation, in which many things are accomplished by aggregating efforts of large networks of people using online platforms and tools for algorithmically coordinating activities. We believe that we are in the early stages of this transformation but the impacts will be profound over the next decade. No organization, no sector of our economy and society will be left unchanged.

We are living in a moment of great transition.

So, how do you ensure that your organization is not only prepared for the future but also shaping it? To start, you need a deep understanding of the big shifts driving the transformation on the horizon. My suggestion is to focus on what my colleague, prominent investigative journalist Drew Sullivan, refers to as “tides, not waves.” This means a focus not on what’s new and ephemeral but what is underneath, what is deep and durable and may be an accumulation of multiple forces building up over decades. These tides are often a combination of myriad technologies, demographic, social, and cultural changes coming together.

The Larger Tides of Change

At IFTF, we are constantly tracking and making sense of the larger tides of change. Once you recognize and understand such changes, you can start asking yourself what do they mean? And informed by those insights, what can you do to future-proof your organization? What should you do to build a more desirable future for yourselves and for others? You can also place your existing efforts in this futures context to see how prepared you are for what’s coming.

This is exactly the journey that the California Community Colleges the largest provider of higher education in California recently embarked upon. Vice Chancellor of Workforce Development, Van Ton-Quinlivan wanted to place their recent investments within a larger future context, as an inventory of preparedness. To do this, we first turned to IFTF’s research map, Learning is Earning in the National Learning Economy, which maps the emerging innovation zones resulting from a world where working, learning, and living are blending together. We then used those eight innovation zones as a lens through which to examine the CCCs current innovation efforts. In which zones are they furthest along? Which zones need our immediate focus? The findings of our work together can be found in the newly released report, Charting New Paths to the Future in the California Community Colleges, now available for free download.

Every forward-looking educational organization should check its efforts against the larger tides of change. A place to start is IFTF’s rich archive of futures research available through our Learn and Work Futures Initiative. And for more inspiration, please read Charting New Paths to the Future in the California Community Colleges.

 

About Marina Gorbis:

Marina Gorbis is a futurist and social scientist who serves as executive director to the Institute for the Future (IFTF), a Silicon Valley nonprofit research and consulting organization. In her 19 years with IFTF, Marina has brought a futures perspective to hundreds of organizations in business, education, government, and philanthropy to improve innovation capacity, develop strategies, and design new products and services.

 

About Bob Johansen:

Bob Johansen is a distinguished fellow with the Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley. For more than 30 years, Bob has helped organizations around the world prepare for and shape the future, including corporations such as P&G, Walmart, McKinsey, United Rentals, and Syngenta, as well as major universities and nonprofits.

The author or co-author of ten books, Bob is a frequent keynote speaker. His best-selling book Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present was selected as one of the top business books of 2007. His latest book is The New Leadership Literacies: Thriving in a Future of Extreme Disruption and Distributed Everything discusses five new leadership literacies—combinations of disciplines, practices, and worldviews—that will be needed to thrive in a VUCA world of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

feedback

This Feedback Could Change Your Life!

My Love of Feedback

I published a piece on my love of feedback several months ago and I am back to introduce another method of delivering feedback that works exponentially well.

With all the talk about eliminating performance management processes, it’s imperative to have something else, a process, to provide feedback in place.  This is so employees know how they are doing, to repeat productive behaviors or eliminate counter-productive behavior.

Imagine for a Moment

Imagine for a moment that you recently gave some feedback to a team member. You told her that her meeting agendas looked great, but she needed to significantly improve her presentation and meeting management skills.

It’s time to follow up a few weeks later to find out why she hasn’t made the changes needed to be more effective in the areas mentioned. In your follow-up, you discover that she didn’t understand what she could do to improve and that your feedback generated more questions than the benevolent help to intended. She was left thinking “What’s good about my agendas that I can leverage again?” and “What’s wrong with my presentation skills?” and “How did I mismanage the meeting?”

Developed by The Center for Creative Leadership, the Situation – Behavior – Impact (SBI) Feedback tool outlines a simple structure that you can use to deliver more effective feedback. It focuses your comments on specific situations and behaviors, and then outlines the impact that these behaviors have on others.

[Effective] Feedback is a focused dialogue between a manager and an employee, a method of sharing information and perspectives about performance. The goal of ongoing feedback is to identify where performance is effective and where performance needs improvement.

Effective feedback helps the receiver understand exactly what he or she did and what impact it had on you and others. When the information is specific, yet without interpretation, judgement, or evaluation, there is a better chance that the person hearing the  feedback will be motivated to begin, continue, or stop behaviors that affect performance.

Situation – Behavior – Impact

The Situation – Behavior – Impact technique of giving feedback is simple and contains three elements:

SITUATION: Anchors feedback in time, place, and circumstances and helps receiver remember and/or understand the context.

BEHAVIOR: Observable actions that can be recorded (audio or video) and allows feedback receiver to know exactly what he or she did that had impact.

IMPACT: Feelings and thoughts the feedback giver had, and how the feedback giver or others behaved as a result of the feedback receiver’s behavior.

In an organizational and work context, the impact of the behavior can include work outcomes, client satisfaction, work team, and/or the larger organization and business. It can also include the impact on the individual who demonstrated the behavior; in essence, the consequences or result of their behavior on their reputation, perceived professionalism, capability, etc.

Most often, a description of the impact will start with, “I felt …” or, “I was” or, “It appeared to me others were … “.  If you find yourself saying, “you were … “, you’re probably on the wrong track. An impact statement is not an interpretation of why the individual showed that behavior, and it is especially important not to label the behavior in a psychological way or to make a judgment about the person.

SO, before you jump on the bandwagon and eliminate your performance management process, contact us to help you and your employees give each other more effective feedback.  Getting this process in place first will help you make sure you make the right decision in the long term.

Who Are We

EDGE Business Management Consulting, a Network Partner with the Center for Creative Leadership, is a Human Capital Consulting firm, focusing on three primary areas to help you achieve exponential growth.  We can serve you in many ways, however our focus is in the areas of Talent Management, Organizational Development, and Leadership Development.

For immediate inquiries, contact Dan Freschi at (414) 301-3343 or email dan@edgebmc.com, and visit our website at www.edgebmc.com.

Leaving a Leadership Legacy

Whom have you taken the torch from?  What difference will you make?  Whose leadership legacy lives in you today?  Leadership is not solely about results, but how you motivate others to achieve those results.  Your success in leadership is not only measured in numbers, but also with those you lead and making a significant impact in their environment, making it a better place for them today.  A measure of your success as a leader will not only be the impact to the bottom-line, but the long term development of individuals in your organization, and their ability to adapt, grow, and prosper, leaving your legacy for others to carry forward.

Leadership is hard work.  If you took on a leadership responsibility thinking it was going to be easy, you may need to re-evaluate your willingness to see beyond your own needs.  To be a leader you must be willing to do the hard work, demonstrating you are not in it for yourself, sending the message you have the best interests of others at the forefront of your actions.

Building a leadership legacy is leading the development of others, planting seeds of greatness, and cultivating them to grow.

Tip:  Cultivate others, and build your leadership legacy by:

  • Providing opportunities for others to develop through challenging and growing experiences
  • Allowing a strong direct report to be in charge and make decisions while learning from both their successes and failures
  • Cultivating the abilities and strengths of your direct reports in order for them to develop.  Talk to them, get to know them and determine if they have the desire to grow and take on a leadership role
  • Maximizing your efforts of developing others, through the use of targeted experiences
  • While you focus your efforts on the development of others, you must continue to be a coach, a mentor, and a catalyst for their growth. As a leader, to pass the torch for others to carry forward:
  • Guide your people without taking away their responsibility for and power over their own learning
  • Create a learning partnership by providing support and feedback
  • Help to remove obstacles, and inspire your people to test their abilities

Now, we all want to be remembered for something.  The question still remains, what is that something?  If your development efforts are done right, the long term impact will be priceless to your organization.  Regardless of how turbulent your industry, economy, or globe becomes, our organization can and will endure.  How?  By a catalyst leader to leave a legacy.

Tip:  To be a catalyst leader:

  • Bring out the best in your people, plant seeds of greatness, care for and cultivate the leadership in others
  • Lead with the emotional intelligence, influence others through personal power, and create an environment of developing others
  • Trust their decision-making and provide support

Within your organization your leadership legacy is built moment-by-moment, and will influence the future of the people you lead.  Leaving behind a leadership legacy is one of the most important factors for the sustainability of our organization.  Capital can be acquired, but leadership must be developed, cultivated, and passed on.

It takes courage to build a leadership legacy. It takes courage to lead and influence with personal power and in doing so, you will have a far greater impact than anything you can achieve through strength of position.

Tip:  To lead with personal power:

  • Define your leadership imperatives and conduct yourself accordingly
  • Live your leadership values by being authentic, genuine, and honest
  • Inspire loyalty and trust through creating personal and emotional connections

Consider some questions first posed by the late Charles Schultz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip. Schultz’s questions helped people reflect on the truly important things in life. Schultz asked people if they could name the last five winners of:

  • The Heisman Trophy?
  • The Miss America contest?
  • The Academy award for best actor or actress?

For most people, remembering just a few of these past award winners was a challenge—even though each of these award winners had been popular names at one time.

Schultz would then ask people a second question:

What are the names of five?

  • People whose stories most inspired you?
  • Teachers who most influenced you?
  • Friends who have helped you most?

Think about it, leaders, leave their fingerprints behind.  Who will you pass the torch to?  How will your legacy live?