HELP … our worlds are dominated with new technology and devices that are trying to control our lives! Well, at least that is how I feel sometimes … just ask my daughter Meaghan who helps me with most of my technology related questions and issues.I hope you each have a Meaghan to help you in your challenging technology worlds.
Over the past year, mostly at Meaghan’s behest, I finally crossed over from the PC world into a fully MAC ecosystem. I already had an iPad and an iPhone … so making the complete transformation to a “seamless” technology world made sense. In doing so, I had to learn another language and discovered the need to set a whole new lexicon of default settings and “preferences”.
As I worked my way through this learning process, largely by trial and error, I would regularly have to search for solutions and would periodically discover new gateways to answers to reduce the frustration associated with learning a new operating system. It recently dawned on me that this is very much like what many people in organizations today … especially those entering new employment ecosystems. Their changes are much more significant than simply moving from PC, Android or Mac operating systems but make no mistake – each organization has it’s own operating system. Some are highly effective and efficient …. but some are like VISTA which had many flaws and kept breaking down at inopportune times.
As we explore the nature of organizations and shape how they operate in today’s faster paced VUCA world, some are adapting and thriving but more are struggling to recognize the right issues to address. Last week, Nick Horney, one of my partners and the founding principal at Agility Consulting, shared a good roadmap for how to make sense of your organizational climate and priorities in his article BUSINESS AGILITY DEEP DIVE.
We all have been learning about how to find and set the default settings and preferences with all of our technology devices. For example, what channel do you want your TV to be on when you first turn it on? What font color, size and style do you want your emails to use? What ringtone do you prefer and do you want to set different ringtones to differentiate your callers? The list of possibilities is endless in our burgeoning “have it my way” consumer world.
The question is … are we learning to discover and set the right “default settings and preferences” in our operating systems at work? These factors relate to how our leaders and team members behave, how our business teams interact and how our organizations succeed … or not? It would be nice if could have a table of default settings and preferences we could click the switch and set our preferences.
Even more important is understanding the right modalities in the operating system. Your TV modalities include picture, sound, connectivity, etc. Some of the right modalities to consider in organizations include the workforce personality profile – much like what we describe in our Agility Personality Profile dimensions. Are we selecting and developing our team members who are focused, proactive, confident, optimistic and inquisitive? Are we building organizational capabilities to make agility a competitive advantage as guided by The Agile Model® to anticipate change, generate confidence, initiate action, liberate thinking and evaluate results … all better and faster than others.
Question remains – what are your default settings and what are the important preferences to help you and your organization be successful. Our assessments and tools provide you insightful frameworks to examine, diagnose and discover whether there are key inflection points in your leaders, teams and business units along with HOW to accentuate the modalities that matter. Love to hear your feedback and invite you to participate in discussion – what has been your perspective and experience?
