Reimagining Work: Notes from the Field with Mark Eddleston and Mike Dunn

Posted on April 18, 2020 by David Cooper, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

The Change Leaders is a community of change practitioners, created by the alumni of HEC Paris and the University of Oxford Saïd Business School’s specialized Master’s Degree in “Consulting and Coaching for Change.” As a global network of professionals, our mission is to help organizations positively address the human side of change. Environments are dynamic, needs vary over time, and adaptive change is necessary.

Mark Eddleston and Mike Dunn

The Change Leaders owe a debt of gratitude to Mark Eddleston and Mike Dunn (@reinventing.work), who shared with us their practical insights into new ways of working. Mark and Mike are co-founders of Reinventing Work, a global grassroots movement of ‘reinventors’ who want to learn and practice new, more human-centered ways of working that are perhaps better suited to the complex world in which we live. They organize meetups worldwide where people come together to explore trends found in progressive organizations and self-organizing teams. At these meetings, they share stories, practical advice, experiences, and they discuss with others how to put “reinventing work” into practice in their organizations.

Narratives, advice, and the experience of reinventing work — all of it sounded great to us.
But we had a particular interest in the changes they were witnessing in the workplace. Namely, what patterns of behavior waxed and waned as organizations successfully reinvented work and moved toward greater self-management, and what patterns or practices did they coach others to adopt on their journeys to reinvent work in their organizations. What old narratives got tossed on the trash heap in favor of newer, sleeker models, and how did these new models handle on the uncertain and unpredictable (read: complex) roadways of today?

First and foremost, the pattern that stood out among all others on the path to reinventing work was the trust leaders placed in co-workers. Like good writing, this practice is less about telling teammates they are trusted and more — much more — about showing them. Do formal leaders show co-workers that they believe their co-workers are capable? Do they give co-workers a chance to weigh in on the issues that affect them in their jobs? Do they allow co-workers to take part in decisions that will affect them? Do formal leaders encourage their teammates to take calculated risks? These are all behaviors or practices that reveal the degree to which leaders place trust in their co-workers. And these behaviors are surging in those companies that are exploring new ways to work.

How many of us, I wonder, say we value trust but then fail to be trusting ourselves? We all slip into this suboptimal practice from time to time, I suspect, and it takes a degree of mindfulness and self-awareness, or pointed feedback, to remind us that there can be no gaps between what we say we value and how we behave. More than anything else, our actions reveal what we truly value. To borrow a line from the annals of complexity theory, a complex adaptive system (i.e., a leader in this case) is known by its behaviors.

In complete alignment with what Lisa and Mary espoused in the previous article (see Reimagining Work: Self-Managed Organizations), another pattern Mark and Mike discovered is the distribution of authority to those with the information. Think about that for a second: Who typically knows best whether a given strategy is succeeding or not? In many cases, it’s the frontline troops — the client-facing, customer-facing people and teams. They have the information, and they need the trust and the authority to act on that information. That’s not to say that they need the authority to bring the business to its knees, but I’ve seen plenty of companies where managers have to ask permission to buy a pencil or a roll of toilet paper, while the core value of trust hangs neatly framed on the wall beside them. How cumbersome, not to mention ineffective, is it to know what needs to be done, to have the information (and the skill) to execute effectively, but not be able to because one needs three signatures before he or she can proceed? Can you imagine pulling up to a traffic circle, knowing which way the traffic is going (from the visual feedback you receive and/or your memory — a form of feedback) and knowing that those in the circle have the right of way, but then still having to stop and ask permission to enter, maybe wait for a signature? Most of us would say, “Duh! No, I can’t imagine that.” Yet, many a traditional business plods along and then eventually dies in this very way, a victim of, among other things, its own distrust and misplaced authority.

Transparency is another pattern Mark and Mike have seen in companies that have made, or are making, the leap to reinventing work. What is the value of holding on to task-relevant information or worse, concealing it? In most cases, I can see none, save trying to make oneself appear relevant, which is neither an ethical value nor a worthy goal. Effective decision-making at all levels requires good information — not perfect, just good — which necessitates transparency in the workplace. And that very transparency might also necessitate pointed questions from other team members who are attempting to clarify plans, intentions, and expectations. So leaders should be transparent with their intentions and expectations as well. And to make the most of those clarifying questions, leaders must be willing and able to listen. And when listening truly begins, so too does a culture of feedback — yet another critical pattern noted by the pair.

Finally, and as Professor Zeldin also pointed out in our interview (see Reimagining Work: A Conversation with Professor Theodore Zeldin), we might consider reevaluating our relationship to failure and embrace experimentation — not just on the technical side but on the human side of the business as well. Complex systems, like businesses and societies and cultures, resist control — we know this. Our recourse, then, is to engage with the system (and our co-workers), experience it in the now, and then seek to do more of what works and less of what does not, all the while testing for new strategies, structures, and behaviors that might prove fruitful in the future.

And, yes, that means some of our experiments in reinventing work, or in being a better human for that matter, might fail. But perhaps avoid framing those failures as a loss, as doing so is a recipe for never taking a chance on experimentation again. If anything, frame a missed opportunity to experiment as a loss. In other words, don’t waste the opportunity to experiment with new ways of working and relating to each other. Don’t miss the chance to set yourself, your team, and your organization up for a win.
This is tantamount to experimenting with self-management itself: start small, try it in one team first, then learn, iterate, and scale. And then share your stories, because we’d like to hear them.

Onward …

On the path to reinventing work and helping others do it as well, Mark and Mike have picked up some valuable “lessons learned” along the way. First, understand that there is no road map to successfully reinventing how work gets done and how we relate to one another. Each team and organization needs to work out the path for themselves (because the context matters, right?). And in doing so, or attempting to do so, timing will matter as much as anything else, perhaps more. I can think of a specific example from our complex world that highlights the importance of timing. Consider the stock market — it’s not the buying and selling of stocks that create change or “pockets of order,” it’s synchronicity. In other words, it’s not the buying and selling that creates a market collapse, per se, it’s that people all decide to sell at the same time. Their behaviors (selling) are synchronously aligned. So, can we learn to spot when our teams and organizations are ripe for change; can we learn to spot when all or most are aligned to intelligent change at the same time?

That’s no easy task, but one way to tell if the time is right, Mark and Mike suggest, is to simply ask co-workers: Do you want to try this? Is it time to reimagine the way we do things around here? Is it time to change our story?

Doing so — asking our co-workers what they think — is for some an experiment in and of itself. We should perhaps all try this with our companies and our clients. We might not like the answers we get, but then again, we might. (I tried this with my kids. It seems I’m a ball hog during family basketball games, and I don’t give rap music the respect it deserves. Hmpf!) And for those who say they are ready to embrace change and head down a new path to reinventing work, Mark and Mike suggest that the best teams persevere. No one, save the lucky, gets it right the first time. Embrace the failures, learn from them, and adjust your strategies as necessary. But one caveat: where you end up can indeed be a beautiful place, but getting there is hard — really hard.

No road map, timing matters, invite participation and persevere because what is worthwhile takes effort, lots of it. This is sage advice.