trust

The “office” space/s of your organization will determine its success

The office WAS a container where you would fit all your people. Now it should be a social space suitable for co-creating.
SIX useful QUESTIONS to CREATE/ASK FOR the best place to work #futureofwork and retention + attraction of #talent

1. A NETWORK OF HOTSPOTS?

Have you thought of hybrid workplaces, not limited to a single “let’s go to THE office” kind of space, instead allowing your people to choose between multiple locations where to be, an ecosystem of offices?

2. WHO CHOOSES WHERE TO WORK?

Do you allow your people to choose their meeting places?
Places that are better adapted to the location and needs of the specific team working on a project.

These diffused places may not be in the typical business centres of cities, but in better locations, closer to where the team members live / want to be. An increasing number of companies are using offices and coworking spaces in residential locations and not the usual ones in the city center.

Look at the concept of 15-minute cities to get a better idea of the possibilities and positive influence of your company in the dynamics of your city.

3. WHAT DO YOUR OFFICES ENABLE ?

Do your “offices” allow informal learning?
Do you have spaces to build social and creative relationships and interactions?

4. IS YOUR WORKPLACE FIXED OR ADAPTABLE?

Are your workspaces fixed, allowing a single use, or modular / flexible allowing more dynamics in the same space? Places need to be as open and flexible as the innovation you need so much.

5. DO YOUR LEADERS KNOW HOW TO LEAD THE HYBRID?

Do the leaders of your company know how to manage people in the best possible way in the new format of #hybridwork: do they know how to create and use #trust, an element never before so fundamental to get the best out of your people or do they continue with the old obsolete model of command and control and even creating fear-driven work environments?

6. HOW DO YOU EVALUATE YOUR PEOPLE?

Have you managed to co-create the best possible evaluation system or do you continue to measure only according to outdated metrics of attendance and being physically (not necessarily mentally) present of your people?

What is valued and encouraged in your organization: being present or the quality of work and results?

Finding the best way to evaluate your people has never been so important in the uncertainty that surrounds us where knowing what matters creates clarity, justice and well-being in your teams.

You do not need to meet deadlines, you need to create a team able to meet deadlines

In our daily rush to innovate, prototype, deliver MVPs … we feel constantly stressed out running to meet deadlines. We should actually not focus on meeting those deadlines, instead invest time in the people of our team, develop their capacity and innovation to make and meet their own deadlines.

It might sound counterintuitive but forget all three of those urgent deadlines you have today. Instead think well and deep about how you can have a series of sessions with your team, to develop their capacity, increase their autonomy, create a stronger trust amongst them. Because THAT is what will allow you to “sit back and relax” knowing that your team has it under control, can do it, can both meet those deadlines and also decide what actually is a deadline, an important deadline to be met, and what is one of the many fictitious targets we are asked to meet “yesterday” … which actually there is no rush to get to.

It all starts from rethinking people in your team, people you work with. From someone who has to get stuff done, well and quickly. To individual human beings, “mines of gems of inestimable value” , individuals with an infinite and mostly untapped capacity to make amazing things happen … if you let them and encourage them and accompany them.

So enjoy a stress free day (or week?), forget deadlines and enjoy rethinking the role of your people and their infinite capacity to deliver.

Remote vs Office working. What is the undetected and biggest innovation of the new “workplace”?

(you can read a longer set of ideas expressed here)

The most powerful innovation through the COVID pandemic has been the fact that we are mainly working from home. From HOME and not from the office. That is bringing about more of us, and will bring about more innovation and creativity.

As a direct consequence of our new workplace (our homes) our conversations have been more frank, our tone of voice, between one of the children shouting and the cat walking on the keyboard, has been more real. Moving from the bedroom to that place in the house where we work we had less of a journey to transform our behaviours from our home attitude to how we behave in places of work. Places that are not created by us nor for us, places that make us less of ourselves, that bring about less of ourselves.

We have discovered more of the human being that is on the other side of our daily conversations. These changes in relationships are fundamental elements to create a culture of creativity and unleash the full potential of people. More than creative processes / Murals / Miros / Postits etc, it can help us to develop relationships of trust, the full development of creative capacities and that allow a more daring attitude. 

So creating environment where each human being is more present, more allowed to be their full self is what will power creativity, innovation, and just as importantly implementation!
In this sense, very few leaders, even the most creative, are prepared for the future.

(more ideas on this topic expressed here)

the most important question in marketing

it’s not about price, about quality, about how many features it should have
“…the most important question in marketing something to someone who hasn’t purchased it before is,

“Do they trust me enough to believe my promises?”

Without that, you have nothing.
If you have awareness but people haven’t bought from you before, it’s likely they don’t trust you as much as you would hope. If you are extending from one business to another, it’s also likely. In fact, if your value proposition is solid but sales aren’t being made, look for trust issues.
Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest.”
from Seth Godin’s blog

Personally I believe that trust is something we should pay great attention to, but that it is ultimately not something that should be an effort. In fact it should be a natural, effortless attitude, a coherence between principles, words and actions that is lived in every minute of your and your company’s life.