Blog – Bloch&Østergaard ApS

How to read and understand an ONA

Line Bloch — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 14:11:51 +0000

How to read and understand an ONA

By Line Bloch, 19. February 2020

When analyzing a organizational network diagram, you look at both the overall structure, shape and density, but also on the roles people holds.Who bridges the gap between silos and who binds the units together? Do teams work together across the organization, or do they keep most to themselves?

At first glance, an organizational network diagram is often difficult to read and understand. Here’s a brief review of the things you can look for, to make sense out of the tangle.

What types of structures are we looking for?

We only use active data when we do the analyses. Active data is data collected through a questionnaire for this specific purpose. It gives the freedom to tailor the questions for the exact purpose. Since our focus often is on collaboration and culture, this is what we are asking questions about – but you can ask for almost anything else. Once at a seminar, we examined how good options the participants have had to network during the seminar, by simply asking who of the other participants they know at the beginning of the event, and then asked again at the end of the seminar. Another option is to ask for role models. By this, you might can gain insight into a possible talent port.

Learn more about active and passive data and the process of performing an ONA here.

But how do you read an organizational network diagram? Overall, we look for these parameters and structures:

The shape and density of the network
Groupings and any silos
Important roles: bonders, bridgers and peripherals
The difference between the social and professional networks

The shape and density of the network

The first thing we’re looking for, is if there is one connected network or several ‘islands’. The vast majority of network diagrams are coherent, in which all respondents directly or indirectly are connected to each other. Translated to the everyday life of the organizations, it gives information about if the units in your organization is connected, or if there are units, that work completely separated from the rest. We very rarely observe this. In organizations where you do work very siloed, most often there is coherence at management level.

An organizational network diagram usually has a round or elongated shape. The rule of thumb is, that the more around the more connected the cooperation in the organization. And vice versa: the more elongated the more distributed they work.

The density of the network also provides good information. In an organizational network diagram, the density consists of the number of relationships e.g. how many other people have each person chosen to point at. The simplest way to assess the density is using the average outdegree. Outdegree is the number of people, each person has pointed at.

If each person can point to a maximum of 10 people in the questionnaire, it gives a good insight if 3 or 7 has been selected. We see both. An organization that works closely together and has a strong internal network often has an average outdegree of over 7.

A thinner network is not necessarily bad. An organization made up of specialists who need to work focused, can be most effective if each employee has relatively few to interact with in day-to-day work.

Geodesic Distance

Geodesic distance is the shortest way from someone in the network to another. I.e. if you go from relation to relation to how many people do you need to go through, to reach a given person. The average geodesic distance therefore indicates how close the organization is. The lower the number, the closer related the organization. Translated to daily life it provides information on how well you know each other across the organization. The same type of number is called the Kevin Bacon number, i.e. how many handshakes are you from Kevin Bacon.

Groupings (silos)

Grouping is a closely related gathering of people in the network, visibly separated from the rest of the network. It can be employees from the same department, same location, or having same role. The extent to which a grouping is a silo or not, is typically determined by the homogeneity of the grouping. Is it only people from one department, or is it a mix of multiple departments? On the figure each color indicates a department, and here it is clear to see the silos.

Important roles in the network diagrams

Although an ONA is much about the overall patterns, people who play important roles in the organization can also be identified. We can point out bonders, bridgers and peripherals.

Bonder

A bonder is an employee who is centrally located in a grouping and has relationships with most of the people in the group. You can identify them by having many relationships, and therefore their dot is greater than the others.

Bonders are typically the ones who ties a group together. They have a supportive and coordinating role, and act as the “social glue”, i.e. it is them people gather around, often go to when they have issues to discuss.

If all employees in a group have equal numbers of relationships, there is no clear bonder

Bridger or connector

The people who interlink silos with each other are called bridgers or connectors. They are characterized by being the link between groupings on the diagram. A bridger often has many relationships on either side of the grouping and is located on edge of the grouping and never in the middle.

The function of bridge builders in the organization may be to be a communication link between two entities. They may have an important function as ” shield” for a department that needs not to be disturbed, but it may also be that they act as bottlenecks for knowledge or communication.

Peripherals

In some networks there are often people ‘floating’ peripherally on the fringe of the network. It’s employees who may be part of the organizational network on the paper, but not really in action. If the peripherals holds important knowledge, it is critical to have them attached closer to the rest of the organization.

If it is a newly hired employee, it is often input to if the onboarding is effective. If it’s employees who have been employed for years, insight into the person’s role and function can clarify if it’s ok or if he is about to leave the company.

A person can also appear peripheral, if she has strong relationships with people outside the organization. It can be customers, external project partners or collaborators. Often these external connections are important for the organization, so in these cases it is of course both positive and natural to appear at the edge of the diagram.

It is worth remembering that from the network diagram alone, you cannot interpret whether a pattern is positive or negative, it all depends on the context. We can only see that people play a role and that they have an impact in the network.

The difference between the social and professional networks

We often compare two different types of networks with each other, to spot the state of an organization. The professional network is made out of information about who works together and who uses each other for professional sparring. It tells about the cooperation, how good you are at sharing knowledge, and how good you are at using the relevant people in the organization. The social network is based on answers to questions about who gives energy and motivation, and who they are is talking about non-professional things. It gives insight into how much you relate to each other. Based on an organizational network diagram alone, we can give a pretty good idea of how good the mood is in a project.

Relationships beat skills when it comes to how good and productive a collaboration is. Is the social network much alike the professional it is indicative of an organization that works homogeneously and is more resilient. The reverse applies if there is a big difference between the two networks. If the social network is grouped according to where people sit and who they were in team with once a decade ago, it may be a sign that the cooperation in projects and teams do not have their full potential.

Interpretation and explanation

You can read a lot from an organizational network diagram. The full analysis and insight into if an observation is positive or negative, will always require insight and knowledge of roles and people in the organization. Therefore the organization and the management in particular, must always must be an active part of the dialogue on causation on the network diagram.

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The newsletter is filled with articles and tools for modern, future-oriented leaders. In this we strive to share relevant insights on stuff like the Future of Work, on transformation, on mega trends, on millennials, motivation and on how to create a happy, productive workplace. Not all in one newsletter, but now you know what to expect.

Two easy ways to measure employee well-being

Line Bloch — Thu, 13 Feb 2020 13:41:54 +0000

Two easy ways to measure the temperature of your team

By Line Bloch, 13. February 2020

Annual employee satisfaction surveys give at best an indication of the employee well-being at the point of time measured. At worst, the responses are skewed to avoid having to launch a lot of initiatives or making unnecessary noise internally.

Both employees and managers well-being are so important to your organization, that it should be discussed much more frequently than just once a year. Ideally it should be part of the ongoing dialogue both between manager and employee – and within the team.

How do you make it a integrated part of the team’s everyday life, besides the easy answer: “talk to your employees”? Here are my suggestions on two relatively simple methods.

Why not just measure once or twice a year?

The recurring annual or semiannual employee satisfaction surveys with 87 questions and associated action plans are still surprisingly popular. Probably because they give the feeling that we are doing something and that we are listening to the employees. And then they can be used to make nice reports for top management.

I don’t know any middle managers who find it very enjoyable to review the survey reports at department meetings or to define and document the follow-up initiatives.

Not that the employee’s well-being doesn’t matter, far from it. It is indeed important to ask if people thrive – and more importantly – to listen to what people say, but do we really know that the satisfaction surveys, and all the work that follows in the aftermath, is what raises the well-being?

The feeling of being heard is good, but often it resembles a theater show being played in honor of… who really?

But how do we then find out how people feel? The easy answer is “talk to people”. And yes, that’s correct, but how does the leader, who may not have the mental surplus or insight into daily work a feel with his people? And most importantly, how do we share with each other, how we feel? This is in my opinion one of the most important things: that the team knows how the team is doing.

There is many good and not so good tools for this out there, but I have not yet come across one that is as simple and efficient as the team temperature we even often use. I will share two versions here: the ultra-easy and the easy method.

The ultra-easy way to measure the temperature of your team

You will need: a whiteboard or a big flipover. A marker.

When: In the very start of a department meeting, project meeting, or team meeting.

How often: Every time you have that type of meetings. Preferably weekly.

How:

Draw a large table on the whiteboard having 6 rows. Type the numbers from 1-6 in each row.
Ask one by one: “How’s your week been on a scale of 1-6? And why?” If the meeting is not part of a fixed rhythm, you can put the question: “how are you feeling right now on a scale of 1-6?” instead.
Put a cross in line with the number being said.

People don’t have to explain their choices, but often does. It’s perfectly ok to say “3 because there’s been something private that’s kind of messy”. And also to elaborate: “2 because Simon from accounting has been busy with project x, so I haven’t been able to get my stuff done”

The point of having to answer 1-6 and not 1-5, is that the option “mehh” is not there. Either things are predominantly good, or predominantly bad.

Once you’ve asked everybody (including yourself), you say thanks, and get started with the meeting agenda.

Value: You get an ultra fast update on where each other is. As a leader, you get a hint about something that perhaps needs to be addressed outside the meeting. Each employee and manager get better at reflecting and putting into words how he/she feels.

The easy way to measure the temperature of your team

You will need:

A survey tool (e.g. MS forms, SurveyMonkey or the like), set up with a questionnaire asking about these 3 things:

How satisfied are you with your results this week? Scale 1-6
How happy are you about your relationships this week? Scale 1-6
How appropriate has the workload been this week? Scale 1-6

Preferably including a comment option. Some people prefer to add a few words on their answers. You decide together with the team if the comments should be shared or kept confidential. Often it will be a combination. Comments like “Hurrah, we reached deadline!” can be easily shared, but other comments may be of a more sensitive nature.

An Excel-spreadsheet
A printer or large screen

When: In the very start of a department meeting, project meeting, or team meeting

How often: Every time you have team or department meetings. Preferably weekly.

How:

Share the link to the questionnaire to let the team give their answers the day before your department meeting. It usually takes less than 2 minutes to answer.
Pull data out of the system you are using and make a graph that shows average for each question. You can also make one that shows the overall average if you and your team loves graphs and data. Once your excel-spreadsheet is designed, the graphs can be drawn in about 5 minutes.
Show the graph at the meeting and ask the team if they have comments. Often people will have to get used to the process before they feel comfortable with the open dialogue, so start by sharing your own thoughts and perhaps even what you scored. Everybody doesn’t have to comment on the graph, if they don’t feel comfortable with it – or have nothing to add.

We usually find that the team initially responds quite politely, meaning that they choose middle scores like 3 and 4, instead of using the entire scale. Once they feel more comfortable with the process and realize that its ok to go to the extremes if needed, the variance will rise.

When there are no more comments on the graph, you move onto the meeting agenda.

Value: You get a common weekly temperature measurement on the team. Each employee gain insight into how the rest of the team is doing, including those they may not work closely together with. This makes it easier to take care of each other or ask for help.

In addition..

If you choose to not make the questionnaire anonymous, you can use the answers for input to the 1-1 meetings with the employees.

The latter method would have been easier if it there was an app or an IT system for it. I have yet to find a tool that can make it as simple as this, but if you know of an IT system or app that does it – without it being a huge cost for businesses – please let us know!

The well-being of employees and managers are so important to your organization, that it should be part of the ongoing dialogue and not a once yearly measurement.

The above methods are two low-key ways to start and to hold on to this dialogue.

The GDPR notice: If the setup is completely anonymous in an online survey tool such as surveymonkey, there is no trace on who has answered what, and in my opinion, you need not be concerned about GDPR. The comments added write on must of course be free from person-related, sensitive information.

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What is an Organizational Network Analysis?

Line Bloch — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 14:42:00 +0000

What is an Organizational Network Analysis?

By Line Bloch, 4 February 2020

An Organizational Network Analysis, an ONA, is an X-ray of your organization. With this tool, you can see how people work together, who that has become a bottle neck or how much collaboration is going on across units. It is a mapping of the relationships between the people in the organization. What type of relationships, depends on how and what data is collected, but typically an ONA shows at minimum who works together on a daily basis.

But how do you carry out an ONA, and what can you use it for?

The intention of the organization of most companies is to create the best possible framework for work and cooperation. You typically gather professional skills in teams and units, and organize them so that hose who need to work together are as close as possible.

But how do we know it works? How do we know that the employees in Section A work together? If we want a network-based organization, how can we see if people are actually working across units, and haven’t split up in silos? How do we strengthen knowledge sharing across the organization if we do not know the as-is?

All that – and a lot more – you will be able to gain insight into with an ONA.

What does an organizational network diagram look like?

Let’s take a relatively simple hierarchical organization as shown below. There is a top executive, Y. She has an assistant, X, and three middle managers; A, B and C.

Figure 1: The formal organization.

Figure 2: This is what a network diagram could look like if employees work in silos.

Figure 3: If the relations in this organization is much more networked, a network diagram could look like this.

The dots on the chart indicate employees. The colors indicate their organizational affiliation. The size of the dots shows how many relationships the employee has: the larger dot, the more relations. The lines are relationships. When employees work in silos (figure 2), most of the the team members only have relationships with each other and their manager. Two employees in this example relate across teams (O and L), and there is no direct relationship between chief executive Y and the employees. If Y and her managers wants greater cooperation between departments, there is work to do.

If the relationships in this organization is much more networked, a diagram could look like in figure 3. The first thing you notice is the round shape, and that there are two employees that are particularly central to the organization: X and M. None of them are leaders. Did Chief Executive Y and her middle managers know that? Maybe not.

What is an ONA and how does it work?

So, how is an ONA performed? An ONA consists of four phases. Let’s go through them one by one.

Data collection: What data is needed to draw an organizational network?

Overall, there are two types of data that can be used in an ONA: passive and active.

Passive data is data that already exists in your organization. It’s data from email systems, calendar bookings, skype chats, HR master data etc. The advantage in using passive data is that it is already there. It does not take extra effort to collect, it just needs to be pulled out. In addition, changes over time can be monitored continuously without having to re-collect.

But then again; only the information you already have in the systems are available. Relationships that do not take place through an IT system cannot be measured.You can see who’s participating in the same meetings, but not if they interact at the meetings. You can’t see who meets at the coffee machines or who’s having lunch with whom, and You don’t get insight into who speaks in the hallway.

There might also be a GDPR-issue in using this type of data. You as minimum should ensure that employees have given consent, before data is used for this purpose. Apart from the legal obligation, I would say that there is also an ethical challenge in using data coming from an internal and sometimes informal communication to analyze the network. You risk exposing relationships that the organization does not need to know of.

Active data is data collected through a questionnaire. Input will be a snapshot of the organization when data is collected, but in return you can ask quite accurately, and thus getting a clearer answer. The downside is that it will require a smaller take time from the employees. Questionnaires must be designed and sent out, and employees must be informed. The latter part is important, since the quality of the analysis is ultimately dependent on a high response rate and honest answers. So, an open communication with plenty opportunity to ask clarifying questions is essential.

When using active data, a GDPR compliant consent can be obtained as part of the questionnaire.

What to ask? The absolute simplest is to ask people to name the 5-10 people they work with on a daily basis. It provides the basic insight into the professional cooperation of the organization. You can also ask for who they go to for professional sparring, who gives energy and motivation, and who one uses to talk about a little more private things like hobbies, children, etc.

Whatever you choose, it is important to think through what you want out of the analysis, so that the questions are precisely formulated.

How many respondents can there be?

You should be a minimum of 12-15 people before it makes sense to do a network analysis. In principle, there is no upper limit, but the result varies according to size. From 15 to about 100 participants, you get a clear picture of each person’s role in the organization. If you are more than apr. 150, the overview becomes more general. You will be able to see overall trends and movements but should zoom in on single departments or areas if you need to have all the details.

Computing: How to draw the charts?

An organizational network will always have a three-dimensional form, since relationships often cross-section between people. Imagine 5 people who all relate equally to each other. If you imagine the network floating in the air it will look like a ball.

If it is to be drawn flat, it will look like this:

Five connected people. The colored dots are the people, and the lines between them are relationships.

The network diagrams are drawn with use of specialized software using a mathematical algorithm that calculates the best possible visual representation of the network. That is, the distance between two points is determined in relation to all the other points they are related to and the strength of the relationships.

Analysis and interpretation: What information do you get?

The primary information is the degree of groupings in the network, the density of the network and who are the largest influents.

The shape and any groupings provide information on the degree of silo formation. Do people work together across the organization or are they divided.

The density of the network reveals how many relationships there are, i.e. how well the organization is connected. The lines in the diagram (i.e. the relationships) can be compared with rubber bands. The more there are, the stronger they are pulled together.

The specific information given to you by an ONA depends of course on the questions asked, but if you focus on the professional and social network, you will be able to get information about how people work together and how much you talk together on a daily basis. Is everyone connected to everyone, or is each employee connected only to a few others? Depending on the type of tasks, a thinner network is not necessarily a bad thing. Highly introvert employees often thrive best with few, strong, relationships.

As mentioned above, silos and areas where people work together across departments or projects will be identified. Keep in mind that silos are not necessarily a bad thing, it always depends on the context.

You will be able to see influents i.e. people who have many relationships or play an important role in being a link between two areas. You will also gain insight into if there are employees who are potential bottlenecks and whether there are people that needs help to get more into the community. The influents, which typically have contact with large parts of the organization, could be associated with high value change projects.

What do you use the information for?

An organizational network diagram itself is just data. The value lies in the interpretation and subsequent action plans. For some, the ONA is a temperature measurement and a status on whether the organization is on the right track, for others a starting point and, help to identify change agents before a major cultural change or change project.

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How to lead an ecosystem

Erik Østergaard — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 08:28:24 +0000

How to lead an ecosystem

By Erik Korsvik Østergaard, 25. November 2019

The term “ecosystem” keeps popping up in the sphere of descriptors for New Ways of Working. “The Power of Ecosystems” was even the theme of the Global Peter Drucker Conference 2019 – and I can clearly see why that word and pattern is emerging: In a networked business world, we need to understand the dynamics of our teams and the interactions between them. This has a superb analogy to the nature of ecosystems.

But, how do you lead an ecosystem?

The emergence of a new leadership paradigm

For at least four decades, the approach to management and leadership has undergone massive development, and a paradigm shift in leadership towards ‘leading people’ has been ongoing.

Now, the modern organization is shifting from a hierarchical structure to a sustainable ecosystem. The modern workplace with its self-managed teams-of-teams has precisely such characteristics: a community of living organisms in conjunction with the non-living components of their environment, interacting as a system. With the birth of the idea of more self-managed or autonomous teams, a new approach to leadership has seen the light of day: we are evolving from ‘leading people’ to ‘leading ecosystems’.

Running a command-and-control hierarchical organization is compared to running a machine, like clockwork with well-oiled gears and cogs. Everything is tailored, designed and fitted together, turning in unison.

Running an ecosystem is a fundamentally different task from running a classical, hierarchical organization. An ecosystem consists of many self-managed parts that flow to and from each other, bump into each other, grow or shrink organically, and are affected by the organizational surroundings and mechanisms. They move independently of each other in what looks like Brownian motion but with direction – autonomously but aligned towards a shared direction and a shared purpose. They collide with each other and move buoyantly in the fluid, they float in.

The analogy to the organizational ecosystem is strong. The teams move because of the interactions with other teams and with the modern organization that they exist in. The better you can design and lead that modern organization, the better you can affect the direction of the teams and your people.

Running an ecosystem is about:

Understanding all the moving parts: both the teams and the people, and the mechanisms that make them move and interact
Maintaining an overview of the health and maturity of the moving parts and the surroundings
Nurturing and growing the parts and oiling the interactions
Infusing energy and nourishment
Removing the garbage, pollution, and unwanted or poisonous elements

What is your role and tasks?

Leading ecosystems focuses on nurturing culture, organizational dynamics and building relationships, such that the employees themselves can get in the driver’s seat for their engagement with and commitment to the projects and customers.

In addition to leading people, modern leaders lead the ecosystem that the people live in.

Leading ecosystems is the task of:

Understanding the elements of the dynamic platform that the teams and people live in
Identifying how to design and develop the elements, and in what priority
Addressing the interfaces between those elements, between teams and between people
Constantly fueling and nurturing the dynamic stability of the ecosystem with energy, social capital, positivism, realism, ambition and humanism
Ensuring that the ecosystem is sustainable

All this must be done while still having a ‘people first’ approach and an orientation towards the future of work.

Here are your four capabilities and skills, that you must master:

Leading flow: Mastering the art of listening, providing transparency to information and decisions, nurturing proper and genuine dialogue, and creating feedback loops for people and reflection.

Leading interactions: Mastering the white space, enabling and insisting on rhythms, and understanding and growing the networks inside and outside the organization.

Leading cross-boundary problem-solving: Facilitating cross-pollination of skills, domains, people and technologies, including across the organizational perimeter, to create better solutions and solve problems.

Leading organisms, mechanisms and components: Being able to identity and nurture the elements in the ecosystem. Applying situational leadership of teams and components, designing and developing intercompany mechanisms, and ensuring relevant and highly personalized support for the individual employees.

The modern leader is Teal at heart

The modern leader is a polymath – that is, their knowledge spans a significant number of subjects, they draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems and they are masters of cross-pollinating those skills.

The modern leader is Teal at heart, is responsive and is a leader of an ecosystem. Modern leadership is deeply rooted in sustainability and connectedness.

Your role is to make the ecosystem healthy. Once you succeed, the people and teams will flourish, naturally.

This blogpost is based on an excerpt from Erik Korsvik Østergaard’s second book, “Teal Dots in an Orange World”.

The business world has changed. New kinds of organizations are emerging, and everybody is talking about sociocracy/holacracy, agile, lean startup, and teal. The challenge is, that these structures are extremely hard to scale to corporate businesses, with thousands of employees.

This book addresses exactly this: How do you create an organizational platform and ecosystem, so that modern progressive “dots” can emerge? And with that, what leadership is required for this ecosystem?

Teal Dots in an Orange World

How to organize the workplace of the future >>

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Special: Global Peter Drucker Forum 2019

Erik Østergaard — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 10:14:54 +0000

Special: Global Peter Drucker Forum 2019

By Puk Falkenberg, 23. November 2019

The power of ecosystems – managing in a networked world

Attending Global Peter Drucker Forum always sparks a lot of ideas and thoughts. It’s food for the brain! This year was no exception. Even though there weren’t as many “fire speeches” as last year, the talks did give insight on the power of different ecosystems as well as challenges, risks, problems and how you as a leader should lead your ecosystems to achieve greatness – and why.

Let’s start with the ecosystem and get some definitions in place.

A networked world: what’s an ecosystem?

Everything is connected. Your local ecosystem is merely a confined part of the world, with multiple parts interrelated and integrating with each other. The question is whether you create or discover your ecosystem. A place to start could be defining your “world” of your ecosystem as well as the actors in it. Then describe the mechanisms and interfaces within, how they interact, and why. View this ecosystem as your brand.

As Zhang Ruimin, CEO of Haier group told us, it’s about viewing the whole ecosystem and not only our own products. They are going from mass production to mass consumerization within the whole ecosystem. They move away from products to use case scenarios.

Digitalization is one of the underlying elements of the ecosystem, either as a premise for structure, communication, production or delivery. Digitalization can help companies to be flatter organized. Understanding data, can make it smarter. Technology, data and the ongoing digitalization have made it possible to flatten our organizations, removing layers of middle managers and creating a networked organization. Remember: Don’t digitalize for the past, innovate for the future. And related to that: Amy Webb said, that data collected has more value than the transaction itself.

Sure, there is a difference in a company being born digital rather than becoming digital. And a networked organization is easier to build from scratch than to transform into. But that doesn’t mean it is impossible. At the Drucker Forum there were many examples on this type of organization; Buurtzorg, Haier and Tencent were the ones that stayed with us the most.

Here are the one-liners and take-homes

We got tons of input on the conference, but here is, in one-liners, what you should do to succeed in this “Era of the Ecosystems”

Understanding why to embrace ecosystems – and what problems they solve

In a complex high-tech ecosystem, we need more human and high-touch skills to be able to go forward.
Ecosystems build a better society, as it creates value through relationships and dependability
Ecosystems focuses on stakeholder value rather than shareholder value.
Ecosystems put people at the center / people first.
Ecosystems focuses on social entrepreneurs rather than tech-entrepreneurs.
Ecosystems thrive when there is low competition and an abundance of collaboration.

Good advice on mindset and concrete actions

Biggest challenges moving forward towards ecosystems are: 1) Isolation in teams, silos or as individuals, 2) lack of generosity, 3) meaningless work to talents as they will seek meaning other places, and 4) lack of learning important skills as how to create psychological safety, trust, collaboration etc.
We need to help a mindset shift and then educate in the new skills.
80% of leaders are reactive. – be proactive.
Be actors, not victims
Trust is the new “thing” now that we have purpose in place.
The critical dimension in creating and nurturing the ecosystem within the organization is psychological safety.
Make the least powerful person in the room feel safe to speak up.
The most powerful person in the room should speak last.
Establish a combination of opposites: both belonging and freedom, alikeness and uniqueness, alignment and autonomy.
Get/find clarity of your boss’s challenges and your own. Are you fighting the same fight?

About your leadership and your personal traits

Understand that “the soft stuff” is the hard stuff
Be teachable
Be human
Be together
Be present
Be curious
Be aware that you do not know it all
Remove fear
Remove power
Be in dialogue
Have social skillset
Have EQ
Listen. Ask: what do you hear?
Show empathy
Be selfless
Be idealistic
Be accountable
Lead and listen
Be you

On design principles

The ecosystem can be driven by challenges and problems. People gather to solve them.
Leadership is support of the teams when in a networked-based organization.
Leaders need to lead through influence.
Leadership is the art of harnessing the efforts of others to achieve greatness.
Ecosystems (and networked organizations) require us to me masters of teaming.
We must find quiet time to reflect and learn on how we are impacted.
We need to understand oneself to be able to understand our impact on others in our ecosystem.
Most important people skills: Curiosity, compassion, love, self-direction, capability to embrace interconnectivity.

And a great note on skills and learning: “I’m not worried about the young people. They will manage. I’m worried about the people in their 40’s and 50’s, that have worked as white collar all their lives. They need to learn new skills” – Tony Tan Keng Yam.

Go to the edges of your map

You are not alone. Many opportunities are hiding in plain sight and you don’t have to change everything. You just need a willingness to tap into the existing ecosystems around you, share and learn, and create values with those that choose to be in your ecosystem.

The pace of change will never again be this slow. And we must view our organization not as a map with fixed boundaries but rather as a map of exploration with empowered functional teams. As Rita Gunther McGrath closed this year’s forum with: “Go to the edges and see the weak signals. This is where the future starts to appear”.

Special: Global Peter Drucker Forum 2018 // Day 1

What is Global Peter Drucker Forum?

Global Peter Drucker Forum is a conferences organized by Peter Drucker Society Europe and always held in november in Vienna, Austria. We have been attending since 2017 and it’s the one conference that we always return to. The inspiration, insight, knowledge, cases and questions you get from attending is overwhelming. It takes a couple of days and weeks to process everything that’s been said and told at the conference. These blog posts are out attempt to translate and reflect on what we have experienced.

This years conferences was about ‘The Power of Ecosystems – Managing in a networked world’ and was held from the 21. to 22. november 2019. If you want to know more about the conference, see previous years content or find photos and blog posts, we suggest you visit the webpage druckerforum.org.

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Can a Game of Poker be a Conversation Creator?

Erik Østergaard — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 06:00:13 +0000

Can a Game of Poker be a Conversation Creator?

By Arbresh Useini, 21. October 2019

Husk at start med et uddrag, en appetizer om du vil, som skal kopieres ud i uddragsfeltet i sidebaren.

Not all in one newsletter, but now you know what to expect.In this we strive to share relevant insights on stuff like the Future of Work, on transformation, on mega trends, on millennials, motivation and on how to create a happy, productive workplace. Not all in one newsletter, but now you know what to expect. In this we strive to share relevant insights on stuff like the Future of Work, on transformation, on mega trends, on millennials, motivation and on how to create a happy, productive workplace. Not all in one newsletter, but now you know what to expect.In this we strive to share relevant insights on stuff like the Future of Work, on transformation, on mega trends, on millennials, motivation and on how to create a happy, productive workplace. Not all in one newsletter, but now you know what to expect.

Har du brug for mere plads, lave en overskrift H2 og mere tekst under

In this we strive to share relevant insights on stuff like the Future of Work, on transformation, on mega trends, on millennials, motivation and on how to create a happy, productive workplace. Not all in one newsletter, but now you know what to expect.In this we strive to share relevant insights on stuff like the Future of Work, on transformation, on mega trends, on millennials, motivation and on how to create a happy, productive workplace. Not all in one newsletter, but now you know what to expect. In this we strive to share relevant insights on stuff like the Future of Work, on transformation, on mega trends, on millennials, motivation and on how to create a happy, productive workplace. Not all in one newsletter, but now you know what to expect.In this we strive to share relevant insights on stuff like the Future of Work, on transformation, on mega trends, on millennials, motivation and on how to create a happy, productive workplace. Not all in one newsletter, but now you know what to expect.

Business Value Poker contain five set of cards, with the numbers 0 to 1000, a question mark and a trash can.

The game is originally invented by Ugilic, and Bloch&Østergaard has re-designed it for own purpose.

The picture shows a set of Bloch&Østergaard’s own version of the Business Value Poker.

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Why you as a Change Management team need to change too

Erik Østergaard — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 04:18:29 +0000

Why you as a Change Management team need to change too

By Puk Falkenberg, 14. October 2019

Recently I was attending a conference, where we had a small exercise asking each other questions as well as answering them. The guy to my left turned to me and asked: “Why change?” And the exercise was to only give him one answer, so I answered: “Because we need to stay relevant”.

He looked surprisingly at me, and just before the bell rang, telling us the exercise was over, he asked: “Isn’t that from a place of fear?”

The big WHY behind every change initiated – ever

The answer to the question about fear is: both and.

We need to stay relevant, and it’s both from a fear perspective and a search for opportunity and something better. You need both the fear and the opportunity.

I believe that every change, every adjustment, every innovation project, every incremental everyday development can be traced back to my answer: Because we need to stay relevant.

The why behind every change is exactly that. To stay relevant.

Sometimes this is from fear. The fear of competition moving faster than you. The fear of missing opportunities in new markets. The fear of not reaching KPI’s or the yearly 3% increase in growth.

And sometimes, it’s from opportunity, learning or simple a wish to constant develop. It’s about staying relevant to the market, to the employees and to the customers.

If organizations should succeed in staying relevant, it also implies that the Change Management team need to be up to date at all times.

Sometimes Change Managers get so focused they forget to change practice

Being a Change Management unit in a large organization can sometimes be troublesome. Often, I’m left with the impression that Change Management teams consists of a bunch of passioned people, who want to do the best for the organization, but often forget to change themselves. A people first mindset and approach to inspire and drive change, creating the best circumstances for the organization to evolve, is not enough.

Let me explain why I think Change Management teams need to change, and how and what you can do to change your Change Management practices just a bit.

The evolutionary purpose of a Change Management team should be to stay relevant

Like every team in an organization, a Change Management team need to learn new tools, new methods and develop their processes to be able to stay relevant. If the organization are moving from a classic waterfall approach to an agile approach, the Change Management team and their methods needs to change as well. Even though it sounds logical, it’s is a difficult task to crack. How do you make Change Management more agile? Or what’s the newest development within Change Management? Are people still using Kotter’s 8 steps or ADKAR?

The Change Management teams I’ve meet, have a difficult time figuring out how to prioritize these types of changes within the team, navigating the need of the organization versus the need of the team itself. And even though it should be their evolutionary purpose to stay relevant, I understand why it’s hard to prioritize.

That’s why I’ll suggest starting practicing two things: 1) Making Change Canvases (in plural), and 2) Distinguishing between working IN the business versus ON the business.

The difference between working IN the business and ON the business

Making a clear distinction between when we are working ON the business and when we are working IN the business helps you prioritize your time and effort. Let me explain the two, in the context of a Change Management team:

Working IN the business is where you get your hands dirty, working on projects, helping the organization change, facilitating workshop and communicating change.
Working ON the business is where you go into helicopter view, asking yourself how the future might look like for your team. Do we need a strategy? Do we need to learn something new? Do we need to create a new change model? Stuff like that.

Often, I’ve heard that people have the ideas to work ON the business, but that’s not where the money is, and thereby it’s not prioritized. But it needs to be. Even though it’s only 10 % – or even 5 % – of your time.

This is what you need to do

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of whiteboards and big canvases. And my solution and suggestion is to make two big canvases about change. You should also setup a rhythm on how often you’ll meet in front of the canvas. Maybe every week?

Firstly, you make a canvas for working IN the business. Here I suggest a simple Kanban board with the columns; to-do, doing and done. The rule: If you find it interesting to share with the team, then it goes on the canvas. An example could be on how you are making a workshop next week in project X, which is a huge milestone for the project.

Secondly, you make another canvas for working ON the business. This could also be a simple Kanban board, but I would suggest you add your own sections to the canvas in addition. What do you need in order to work ON your Change Management team? What do you need to learn, develop or maybe even internally brand your team?

I suggest you as a minimum have the sections: 1) Purpose and direction, 2) insight and learnings, and 3) successes.

List your “IN” and “ON” tasks

If you’re like most Change Management teams, you’ll have an overweight of tasks you already do IN the business, and an overweight of wishes ON the business.

Last thing to do is having a discussion on whether your focus is right. Do you need to work more ON? How much time should be prioritized on each? Do you need a “head of IN the business” and a “head of ON the business”, to make sure you prioritize both?

In short, to make changes to your Change Management practices:

Make two canvases of working “IN” and “ON” your business.
List tasks divided to the two canvases.
Have a discussion on your focus and time.
Set a rhythm-meeting (e.g. every week) and keep updating the canvases.
And remember to use time and effort to stay up to date at all times.

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Delegating tasks and decisions to multiple hands

Line Bloch — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 05:00:01 +0000

Delegating tasks and decisions to multiple hands

By Guri Hanstvedt, 30. September 2019

In a world with increasing complexity and opportunities, where the amount of information is close to unlimited and where big data is getting bigger, decision making has become a challenging task. If you haven’t already acknowledged that you can´t be on top of everything, it is about time: You don’t have all the insights, and you can’t make decisions fast enough by yourself.

Distributed Leadership is a fundamental part of modern leadership. In short, it’s about moving away from one person making decisions at the top of his ivory tower, to delegating tasks and decisions to multiple hands. If you succeed in distributed leadership, you’ll most likely see that creativity and productivity increase in your organization.

But how do you delegate tasks and decisions, and why is it important to manage expectations when you delegate?

Get an overview of your tasks, then delegate

First step is to make a list of all tasks and decision points you have.
Find out if some tasks and decisions can be delegated.
Delegate tasks to those who have the willingness, time, and skills to run with them.
Get the spectrum of the levels of delegation, for example by playing Delegation Poker. This helps clarify who’s responsible for what and to what level and encourage employee engagement through controlled self-organization.
Make sure to catch misunderstandings or mistaken assumptions by having frequent touchpoints.
When three months have passed, evaluate.

Person + task + decision = a unique combination

Based on the seven delegation levels from Delegation Poker, it’s important to always look at the link between person, task and decision: Which mandate and decision level fits the situation? This is the whole premise of succeeding with delegation. It’s about balancing expectations; scope, time, cost, quality, risk and resources, and ensure that both you, as the delegator, and the employee are confident in how decisions are made. Depending on the employee’s competence level, experience and the context, you also need to balance the right level of support, guidance and motivation. In other words, it is about Situational Leadership.

Authority versus Authorization

A way to balance expectations, is to be clear on the distinction between Authority and Authorization. Having the authority to make decisions can be both confusing and stressful without the authorization – i.e. a clear mandate.

Authority

In a modern organization, the authority to make decisions can be hold by any employee. A good leader knows that there are people in the organization that probably have more insight, intelligence, experience and engagement than himself, and therefore are more likely to make better decisions in certain situations. It’s important to release the authorization to these employees, and accept that tasks probably will be executed differently from how you would have done it.

Authorization

What can the employee decide alone? When do you want to be a part of the decision – and is it as an advisor or a decision maker? How much empowerment does the employee want, and how much money can the employee spend on a certain task without your permission?

In many organizations, the hierarchy helps clarify the mandate e.g. by having different spending limits depending on your level. This creates safety as the employee knows exactly how much money he or she can spend on a certain project. Playing Delegation Poker can help you in situations where the hierarchy don’t answer questions about the mandate.

Responsible or Accountable? What is the difference?

When both parties have agreed on the level of empowerment, it can be beneficial to write it down in a RACI matrix, or an AUDI (Danish version). Why? Because it helps you distinguish between the process (executing) and the outcome (the final “product”).

RACI – briefly explained:

R=Responsible. Who is responsible for executing the task? This could e.g. be the employee(s) you have delegated the task to.

A=Accountable. Who is the one ensuring that the prerequisite of the task is met? Only one person can be accountable for the outcome – the owner. This is often you, the leader and delegator.

C=Consulted. Who should be a part of the dialogue around the task?

I=Informed. Who should be informed e.g. about the progress and the result? This could be different stakeholders or you as the leader.

Ready, Set, Delegate

You now have some concrete tools at hand that can be used to ensure that delegating tasks and decisions is something that can be mastered. Summarized, it’s about managing expectations and get a shared understanding of the roles and the mandates in the specific context. If both parties feel safe, you should expect that decisions are made faster and better and that the level of engagement rises in your organization.

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The not-so-obvious reason why long development programs are great

Erik Østergaard — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 05:29:24 +0000

The not-so-obvious reason why long development programs are great

By Erik Korsvik Østergaard, 23 September 2019

Longer engagement, say 6, 12 or 24 months leadership development programs, are rewarding. Challenging, but highly rewarding for the participants, the employees, and for the business.

I think that everyone can agree on that. Focusing long term on development is better than a one-time workshop or inspirational talk. But why is it so? Is it obvious that having a longer lasting focus on group-based development is beneficial?

Apart from the obvious goals for the leadership development programs (the goals that are mutually agreed and used for the kickoff, the flyers, and the campaign material), two often overlooked outcomes are reached (spoiler alert): A routine for reflection, and psychological safety.

The obvious reason

Every leadership development program is launched to solve a problem or to exploit a possibility. It has to – that is the business reason for it. From time to time, we run into requests for education or training projects that “just should give the leaders some new tools and better skills” without knowing exactly why. Luckily those cases are rare.

Typically, modern development programs are launched to approach business challenges like these:

To nurture innovation in the organization
To instill an agile approach to decision making and to technological changes
To adapt the organization to an updated business model
To attract and retain the right employees
To ensure that the leaders are modern leaders that can collaborate and encourage the employees to collaborate too
And more

There is always a business or cultural reason for doing it.

That also means that measurements and feedback loops can be created. We can observe the progress of those areas by either direct measurement or indirect perception.

1: Get inspired, from books, talks, podcasts, or social media – or your network.

2: Understand and document your reason for engaging in the development program.

3: Engage your organization.

4: Make a plan.

5: Translate it to context.

6: Execute the elements in the development program.

7: Measure.

8: Hand-over and agree on follow-up.

The iterative approach to development programs

Such development programs are by design created in iterations, as shown in the illustration. A hugely underestimated and overlooked mechanism is the iterative part: Make sure to establish the back-flow from “translation” to “planning”, from “implementation to translation”, and from “measuring to reasoning”. This is where the adaptability kicks in, and ensures that the 12 or 24 month program will have continuous feasibility.

When working with modern leadership development like this, being responsive to how the activities and dialogue are received is crucial for the progress, desirability, feasibility and viability of the investment.

As the motto for lean startup goes: Build-measure-learn

The typical challenges circle around grasping the future of work and leadership. That covers business agility, digital leadership, leading digitization and staying relevant to the market. It also looks at embracing gig workers, staying relevant to talent, collaboration internally and across borders, and employee engagement.

Business benefits that have been harvested from that include:

Updated and relevant business model (documented via financial data and customer feedback)
Faster innovation cycles (documented via qualitative interviews)
Lower hierarchies and tighter network (documented via Organizational Network Analysis)
Less sick-days (documented via HR data)
Higher retention (documented via HR data)
Higher happiness-rating (documented via weekly and annual survey)

The reasons are obvious. It makes the business and culture modern and healthy.

The not-so-obvious reason

During such a leadership development program, normal habits are broken. We have monthly full-day workshops, “homework” in the local departments and teams, peer-to-peer tasks or peer-to-peer mentoring, and organizational-wide cultural workshops. It’s a consistent work with an inertia that fits with the organizational change-readiness.

Most of all, it’s a facilitated setting for conversations, dialogue, and reflection. Yes, we work with modern thinking, the contemporary mindset of modern business and future work, and with specific tools and mechanisms, that are directly applicable.

But a strong focus is on the meta learning: The single-loop or double-loop reflection

What is your dialogue about?
How are you talking to each other?
What words do you use?
What tone-of-voice are you using?
Are you listening to reply or to understand?
Do you learn AND teach?
What makes you curious?
What do you appreciate about yourself and about your peers?
What will you keep, and what will you try regarding your dialogue – and your leadership collaboration?
And, how does that make you feel?

Massive, massive learning takes place here, as especially the double-loop learning is rarely facilitated in the daily and tactical life of a management team or organization.

And that has a spillover effect to the second benefit of leadership development programs: Nurturing psychological safety in the management team; Gradually establishing a conversation culture, that acknowledges questions, skepticism, mistakes and learning moments, being anxious, safety for taking risks, respect and accept, being yourself and showing your personal traits and flaws – without fear.

Those facilitated and intense dialogues combined with a modern approach and mindset towards organizational inclusiveness and fellowship paves the way for “pumping out fear”, as Richard Sheridan, CEO for Menlo, describes it.

How to approach the conversation

The building blocks for the conversations are centered around four questions, that are part of describing the framework for your leadership:

WHY are you here?
WHAT are your goals, as leaders?
WHO are your, as leaders?
HOW do you plan to get there?

The “you” above must be answered both as you = the individual leader and you = the leadership team.

The conversations become focus points for the single-loop and double-loop reflections, that in turn lead to nurturing psychological safety.

Sustainable leadership is both business and people

Sustainable leadership focuses on the 4 P’s of the future of work, and New Ways of Working:

Purpose, People, Planet, and Profit.

A well-designed, well-facilitated leadership development program is great, as it supports exactly those four P’s.

It focuses on the challenges and opportunities in the business world, strengthens the culture, and facilitates a trustful conversation with candor. From that comes some obvious benefits, and some not-so-obvious. The first part is business related, the second part is human.

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When is a speedboat not a speedboat anymore and how to scale?

Erik Østergaard — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 06:15:02 +0000

When is a speedboat not a speedboat anymore and how to scale?

By Puk Falkenberg, 16. September 2019

For almost two years, we’ve been talking about speedboats as a modern and popular approach to radical innovation in large organizations. Speedboats are small experiments easy to test, and the opposite to large supertankers that’s hard to turn and navigate.

When making speedboats, you look at how you can scale a real problem down and make a small experiment in a set time frame. The question is then: when do you know, when a speedboat isn’t a speedboat anymore, and instead it needs to be implemented as an important part of your ways of working?

Start by evaluating your speedboat

Before you launched your speedboat, you (off cause) made a hypothesis log, a speedboat checklist or something like it. In this document, you wrote down: 1) the quest of the speedboat, 2) the crew, 3) a set time frame, 4) a learning objective and 5) secured freedom from sponsors and the organization.

The reason you wrote this down was to better evaluate the success – or failure – from your speedboat. If you need an example, take a look at my hypothesis log from Hacktober 2018. I wrote it down before we had the event and revisited the log afterwards. The hypothesis log gave me a better understanding of what we had gained from throwing Hacktober 2018, as a wrote the following quote under ‘Adaption – what did we learn’: “The group dynamic was magical. Everyone seemed to gain insight, inspiration and exchange experience. 35+ problems end up as 5 solutions. We should have more breakout rooms next time.” And in the next column I wrote: “See y’all next October!”

Hacktober 2018 was a successful speedboat. But it could have been a failure. We once made a speedboat on creating video content, but it failed. That speedboat never became a part of our ways of working. But Hacktober has – or is it still a speedboat even though it’s the second time around?

A speedboat can sail two ways: Failure or Success

If your speedboat is a failure, it’s easy to say this: You should stop your speedboat, your project, and let the speedboat rest.

But if your speedboat – as Hacktober – is a success, you have a couple of options deciding where to go from here.

Firstly, I would recommend you hold an evaluation with your speedboat team, including data of any kind that shows the level of success of the speedboat. Comparing your hypothesis with your result will help you determined the future of your speedboat.

Secondly, if it’s a failure, close it. If it’s a success, I suggest you go forth as following:

Gather sponsors, stakeholders or key employees in a short workshop session.
Present the hypothesis, the evaluation, data and explain the value and feelings your speedboat have generated. What did you learn? What was the impact? And how much did it cost?
Then, play Business Value Poker. Business Value Poker is a card game used to determine the business value in a tangible way. Is the value a 10 or a 1000? When you agree on a number, you’ll have a strong indicator on whether or not the process or product you tested with your speedboat is something that you will continue to follow or produce – but now as an integrated part of your business.

How do you then scale and implement a speedboat?

If you decide to make the speedboat an integrated part of your business, you’ll most likely face an implementation phase. To be able to scale a speedboat you must take “local cultures” or subcultures in different areas, departments or teams into account. Your speedboat might not be as useful in every area or be the holy grail to every department or even creating a feeling of meaning in every team.

That’s why I suggest you move from a speedboat phase to a change intervention phase focusing on local implementation and adoption. This can be done in two steps: 1) Mapping change, impact and innovation type, and 2) Making interventions and experimenting in the local teams.

Step 1: Mapping change, impact and innovation

You must know how big or small of an impact and change your speedboat will make when adopted in the organization. This first step will help you identify this, and thereby secure you level of engagement in step 2; laying the groundwork.

The tool Blast Radius will help you identify which areas, department, teams or individuals are affected by this implementation. Who are affected directly and who are affected more indirectly?

With that mapped out, I’ll bet you have a clear felling of where to start your implementation.

The next questions are: Is this changing the way we work? Are we making everyday improvements or radical pivoting with this speedboat? For this, I suggest you take a look at the Innovation Matrix and map out in which innovation square your speedboat is placed.

Be aware that to some departments or teams it might feeling like a radical innovation, and to others like everyday improvements. This is why you must map the blast radius before mapping innovation type.

Step 2: Create a rhythm of interventions and experimentation

These two mappings provide you with knowledge and insight on how to start planning your change and implementation efforts for rolling it out and scaling it up in your organization. It helps you answer questions on where to start and to whom you should go first.

Next up is making assumptions. Assumptions on how to implement your speedboat in this local culture and context. I suggest you do this by gathering leaders and key employees from the area or department (or the whole team). Tell them about your speedboat, evaluation and results. And then ask them if they see this useful in their context. You want to establish a connection and dialogue, having them as experts and ambassadors.

With a filled “backlog” of assumptions, your next step is to prioritize where to start. Which assumptions are easy to implement and create the most business value? After that carry out experiments deduced from your interventions. Set a rhythm – define sprints – to keep creating momentum. The last step is to evaluate and adjust; did we carry out the right intervention and was it a success?

Maybe you’ll feel like you already did this part when you made your speedboat in the first place. But remember, a large organization have subcultures and local contexts that might mean something new or different to your speedboat. So, if you want to scale a speedboat, being an integrated part of your business, you must make interventions to secure implementations and adoption.

Our own speedboat Hacktober have set sails and are on its way

We decided that Hacktober should keep sailing and be a part of our ways of working. This means that we are arranging Hacktober 2019 as we speak, and in addition have created a dedicated webpage, a workbook and also invitations for Hacktober 2019.

If you haven’t heard about it, you can read more here. It’s a fun concept where we hack future organizations, leadership and the future of work. If you are interested in participating now or in the future, don’t hesitate to send me a mail.