It’s coming to that time of the year when most of us plan to do some reflecting and thinking. It’s far from an easy thing to do with new virus threats, economical and social conundrums and the holidays’ logistics upon us but I’m willing to bet everyone has at least the intention to be introspective and thoughtful if not even create those polarising new year’s eve resolutions.
Anyone reading this newsletter knows PeopleNotTech do nothing if not bang on and on about the importance of the practical, intentional and habitual human work and work tirelessly to eliminate its biggest enemy: empty rhetorics. We’re all about knowledge and learning if it then rapidly translates into data and action and doesn’t remain sterile or exclusively academic. That said, this is a time for thought and theory.
We’re all about talking if it’s to co-create and build not to hear the sound of our own voices. We’re all about musing if it is real, valuable, new insight-creating thought and not unexamined platitudes. And we are not shying away from repeating these things ad nausea and keeping it all uncomfortably real despite how we know they don’t endear us to some. As part of that, we keep a keen eye on how the communities we’re part of exchanges ideas.
Obviously, a big part of it is the conversation here on LinkedIn and then on Twitter. As opposed to yesteryear when professional forums existed everywhere, these days, these are the only two avenues remaining for interactive communication alongside professional events. This brings me to my point – conferences.
Over the past 20 years of my career, I’ve been part of hundreds of real-life and virtual gatherings, sometimes in the audience, most times on stage as a panellist or speaker, so I’ve seen my fair share of these events as I’m sure most of us have. The quality of the content has always fascinated me.
One would be justified to presume that, with Covid making 99% of all conferences virtual, that should mean that people are unencumbered by the physicality of networking and instead can do a lot more deep thinking and blue-sky questioning so said quality would be higher today than before the pandemic, I’m not sure that’s right.
For the past couple of years, since my focus changed from FinTech and banking to solely what matters, people, teams, Agile and psychological safety, it’s a common occurrence when I am asked to do keynotes “about digital and ways to win like Silicon Valley” to encounter some resistance when I say “Sure thing – in that case, we need to talk about the HumanDebt™ and what we have to do about it”. That makes most organisers pause.
This is because, even once they understand the definition – all the things we left undone that would have made our people happier and more performant- it doesn’t fit the keywords they are after when they seek me out for speaking engagements.
Conference organisers still seem to presume people gather round to hear either spectacular anecdotes from tech giants or a collection of terms that are trendy du jour in the respective enterprise or industry be they “innovation”; “human-centred design”; “metaverse”; “sustainability”; “culture”, etc.
They don’t believe they’re there to hear alternative points of view or innovative takes or to be challenged to think and apply themselves but that they are there to be potentially be soothed by the familiarity of the same message over and again.
Quite why that is, I can not tell you other than to callously admit that in most places independent thought, in general, is not encouraged. With the exception of TED talks (and there are even plenty of TEDx’s that don’t match that standard), there are few and far between mediums where new thoughts are acceptable and most events are not only cookie-cutter in terms of format but -sadly- in terms of eternally reheated content too.
It’s hard to blame it on conference organisers being out of touch with the reality of business either because, once Covid hit, there are far fewer events organised by them but instead companies hold their own Tech Days or internal conferences of all sorts.
It’s also hard to blame it on just the marketing or communications departments organising those being out of touch with the needs of the day-to-day operation of say IT because let’s face it if anyone bothered to be honest that the content is stale and unnecessary they’d change tac.
Or if they were open enough with their real feelings that they admitted that anecdotes of success can easily sway from inspiring to deeply discouraging when the listener feels the gap is too great to overcome and deepen self-loathing or even aid the Great Resignation instead of serving to push people to do great things.
Again – undoubtedly, it’s not enough to learn about a topic – we have to go beyond wooden language to real concepts that matter, and when it comes to them, beyond awareness and on to practical to-do’s.
So maybe make that a new year’s resolution: to not organise or attend one more “same old” event.
For my part, I won’t agree to one more keynote in 2022 that doesn’t focus on key takeaways people can translate into immediate actions so don’t contact me if you don’t want to hear me be brutally honest and terribly straightforward about:
- Audit and Lower your HumanDebt™ to have innovation, become truly Agile or have any successful tech project – The steps to do so;
- Servant Leadership and Autonomous Teams – how to reframe work paradigms NOW;
- The Connection between Hybrid/Remote work and command and control;
- How to lower impression management in the team;
- How to win back the trust of your employees with genuine organisational permission;
- What are the behaviours of Psychological Safety you can measure to affect it;
- Tips and tricks from the hundreds of high performing teams we’ve been working with;
- How to connect Psychological Safety to your KPIs and then reward the human work;
- How to rethink, redefine, measure and increase employee experience and engagement;
- How to reduce retention by focusing on the team;
- CBT for teams;
- Real steps towards true inclusivity and real belonging; and so on.
Let’s all become a team that has enough Psychological Safety to speak up against ever settling for “all talk, no doing” because 2022 will have to be the year where we translate the momentum around people topics into real change that we can all measure and feel and we will need this level of trust and honesty to achieve it.
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This Thursday on the Fundamentals of Psychological Safety Series: “Impression Management – the Dark Side of Psychological Safety” so make sure to subscribe so you have it in your inbox.
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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve
At PeopleNotTech we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- talk to us about a demo at contact@peoplenottech.com
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To order the “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” book go to this Amazon link