[TT 027] career pivot, female army pilot, holacracy, employee voicing, sculpture garden
Hello again Thrivers,
This past week I had the honor of a humble Q&A with Jenn Dulski at her home. She's a very accomplished woman (SVP at Yahoo, first woman to sell a startup to Google, COO at Change.org, lecturer at Stanford GSB, to name but a few) and yet was personable and present. Love the idea behind her newest venture Rising Team as well. So cool to have these opportunities.
I also published my updated Thriving framework that I've been refining over many conversations. As I begin conceiving of working with others, one of my next steps is to draft how the organization’s behaviors can Thrive even as it supports individuals to Thrive.
And on that note, let's get right to Thriving Thursday.
On the power of presence, reputation, and pivot
Two weeks I attended a workshop on "Career Pivot" taught by Allison Kluger. She is a master communicator who has had a number of career pivots in her own life, including her most recent transition to Stanford GSB professor. Perhaps most impressive was her natural and graceful balance of substantial power and genuine, quirky authenticity.
In her Communicating Our Multiple Selves podcast episode, I loved her framing of a reputation as "the echo before you enter, and after you leave, a room". Those ideas, and many many more, were in the Pivot workshop including insightful visuals, frameworks, and resources (like this Pivot book by Jenny Blake).
For one of her classes, Allison has students prepare a 90s filmed "Pivot Pitch" in front of a panel of teachers and collaborators. This includes a full style makeover, refinement of narrative, and a direct call to action. Challenge accepted! I'll work through the resources from the workshop and, before my year is out, record my own pivot pitch.
On the winding paths of professional development
Speaking of powerful women, I was very humbled to meet Amber Smith - a combat military helicopter pilot that wrote the book Danger Close. Amber was a champion gymnast who felt a deep calling to serve her country and took on one of the hardest Army aerial assignments. Since hanging her wings, she's transitioned to media work related to military and foreign policy analysis. I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to her book on my runs.
The caliber of the people I'm meeting is beyond inspiring.
On the hard to grasp organizational model of holacracy
Ever since the Sun Hydraulics case and nuclear submarine video (mentioned back in TT 025), I've been fascinated by what it would look like to run an organization that fundamentally trusts and empowers individual contributors. In a typical US firm, that's a radical notion.
One of the more well-developed and codified organizational frameworks in this vein is holacracy. There are many ideas in holacracy that sound lovely and meaningful, but there are also non-trivial costs. And 5 years ago, Medium veered away from holacracy to create their own version of similar concepts.
At the very least, the holacracy constitution offers a laundry list of best practices that the HolacracyOne team has distilled - a wonderful resource to see and iterate ideas for GIFT's management framework.
Also, and it's hard to tell from the outside, but given the price tag to train folks to implement and run the holacracy model seems like relatively good business ... I wonder if HolacracyOne follows all of the principles in their constitution. And, maybe just maybe, GIFT could one day have a Thriving business (and non-profit) governance model that we are exporting to other companies and countries.
On statistically valid models for employee voicing
How many of your daily meetings are useful and productive? If you're shaking your head, you're not alone.
In organizational behavior, we learned about ways to structure meetings to harness collective wisdom (while avoiding groupthink).
The key piece is to clearly delineate
- the purpose of the meeting
- the full set of relevant information
- standards to gauge meeting or outcome success
Ideally, there is a clear agenda with prep materials ahead of the meeting, and follow up notes with outcome clarity at the end of the meeting.
Oftentimes, meetings aren't actually the most efficient way to solicit, distill, and honor the ideas and experiences of employees. The company Waggl (recently acquired) used a clever statistical modeling trick to simplify idea solicitation and ranking. I was especially impressed with their work in healthcare and especially their Healthcare Consortium.
Of course, it's all about reputation and follow-through. The best run meeting, or the greatest list of ideas, isn’t worth much if leadership doesn't deliver on the awareness gathered. That said, given how much of our professional lives are in meetings, we stand to gain a lot by making incremental (or drastic) steps to optimize valuable time spent together with precision and focus.
On my favorite sculpture garden at Stanford
One of the absolute coolest places to hang out is the Papa New Guinea sculpture garden (short video). The stories are captivating and the works of art are just unbelievable in their technical wood carving prowess.
If you ever find yourself on Stanford's campus, do yourself a favor and check out this garden along with the Windhover across the street. Maybe walk the large labyrinth there and definitely check out the Japanese maple enclosure. My most cherished memory at Stanford (so far!) happened there.
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Whew, the weeks seem to be speeding up somehow. Maybe it's those exams right around the corner ...
Until next week,
~Henry