ask fundamentally different questions

The most powerful use of digital tools is not to cut costs, create efficiencies, or even move faster and with greater agility, but to ask fundamentally different questions. It is through exploring these new possibilities that we can solve complex problems and make more meaningful impacts for customers, employees, and the communities we serve.

Effective Digital Transformation Depends on a Shared Language, by David C. Hay, Thomas C. Redman, C. Lwanga Yonke, and John A. Zachman. Harvard Business Review. December 14, 2021

find a what, a who, and a why

We identified three big buckets of motivators: career, community, and cause.

Career is about work: having a job that provides autonomy, allows you to use your strengths, and promotes your learning and development. It’s at the heart of intrinsic motivation.

Community is about people: feeling respected, cared about, and recognized by others. It drives our sense of connection and belongingness.

Cause is about purpose: feeling that you make a meaningful impact, identifying with the organization’s mission, and believing that it does some good in the world. It’s a source of pride.

These three buckets make up what’s called the psychological contract — the unwritten expectations and obligations between employees and employers. When that contract is fulfilled, people bring their whole selves to work. But when it’s breached, people become less satisfied and committed. They contribute less. They perform worse.

In the past, organizations built entire cultures around just one aspect of the psychological contract. You could recruit, motivate, and retain people by promising a great career or a close-knit community or a meaningful cause. But we’ve found that many people want more. In our most recent survey, more than a quarter of Facebook employees rated all three buckets as important. They wanted a career and a community and a cause. And 90% of our people had a tie in importance between at least two of the three buckets... We’re all hoping to find a what, a who, and a why.

Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, Brynn Harrington, and Adam Grant

"The 3 Things Employees Really Want: Career, Community, Cause"  Harvard Business Review. February 20, 2018

provide proof of life

If you are fortunate enough to be entrusted with leadership — that is, with imagination on others’ behalf — he is clear on what you are meant to do: “I am here to provide proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable ‘us.’”

I am here, in that line, is precondition for everything that happens after. Being there, in and of a place, is where leading begins. Then you must move. Songs need to get played, arenas to get filled up. But those are only means. A leader’s job is to embody identity for a community — to give words and flesh to elusive ideals. (Only inside a body does an ideal get to become a story.) A leader’s legitimacy, then, rests upon “how deeply you [can] inhabit your song.”

Gianpiero Petriglieri

"Bruce Springsteen, Artful Leadership, and What Rock Star Bosses Do". Harvard Business Review. 9/27/2017

the tremendous power of particularity

Appreciate the tremendous power of particularity. If your identity is formed by hard boundaries, if you come from a specific place, if you embody a distinct musical tradition, if your concerns are expressed through a specific paracosm, you are going to have more depth and definition than you are if you grew up in the far-flung networks of pluralism and eclecticism, surfing from one spot to the next, sampling one style then the next, your identity formed by soft boundaries, or none at all.

(Maybe this is why younger rock bands can’t fill stadiums year after year, while the more geographically defined older bands like U2, Springsteen and the Beach Boys can.)

The whole experience makes me want to pull aside politicians and business leaders and maybe everyone else and offer some pious advice: Don’t try to be everyman. Don’t pretend you’re a member of every community you visit. Don’t try to be citizens of some artificial globalized community. Go deeper into your own tradition. Call more upon the geography of your own past. Be distinct and credible. People will come.

David Brooks

"The Power of the Particular." New York Times. June 25, 2012.

communities... make change believable

There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they're by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief.

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For most people who overhaul their lives, there are no seminal moments or life-altering disasters. There are simply communities—sometimes of just one other person—who make change believable.

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We do know that for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible. The same process that makes AA so effective—the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe—happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.

Charles Duhigg

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House. 2012.

it takes a community to change

When trying to lead change, are we considering the power and necessity of communicating the vision and value proposition of the change not only to the target audience, but also to their community?

I recently read Alana Semuels’ Atlantic article, “The Town That Decided to Send All Its Kids to College,”, about Baldwin,  a small town in Michigan with significant economic challenges:

Baldwin is the county seat of Lake County, where 27.9 percent of residents live below the poverty level, according to census data. That’s the second-highest poverty level in the state of Michigan. Just 8 percent of people living in Lake County have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 25 percent of the state of Michigan.

A group of dedicated residents developed the Baldwin Promise,  a program providing "middle-dollar" scholarships up to $5,000 per year for 4 years to every single graduate of Baldwin High School regardless of merit or need. Raising the scholarship money was an obvious obstacle for the Baldwin Promise team, but according to Semuels, the key to the program was really about changing the story being told in the community. “The Baldwin Promise…  is more than just $5,000 a year for four years of college. It brought with it a complete change in how the town viewed education.”

Take a look at how the Baldwin Promise leadership team helped to shape and reinforce the vision of attaining a college education within the community:

• “When 5-year-olds enter Baldwin Schools, they’re tasked with creating an image of themselves, wearing a mortarboard, made out of construction paper. Those faces, black, white, and brown, are pasted onto a giant banner, “College begins with Kindergarten,” in the elementary school’s main hallway.”
• “In the past, elementary-school teachers wouldn’t really speak about college… But now, students learn about opportunities outside Baldwin from the time they start elementary school all through middle school and high school.”
• “Ayana Richardson, an effusive, put-together woman with two master’s degrees who runs the high school’s College Access Center… instituted Decision Day, a big assembly where seniors walk out into an auditorium and announce where they’re attending, to cheers.”

Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit writes, “There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief.”

Michelle Miller-Adams is an associate professor at Grand Valley State University who studied the promise scholarship movement. Her research indicates that promise scholarships can bring together a community and make it pull together in ways it never has before. She explains that, "The pool of money serves as a catalyst for a lot of other things.” “At least as important is that messaging: ‘We believe in education, we’re going to support our youth.’ That’s just as important as the money itself.” To some, the promise is just a “wrapper,” a way to simply market the idea of college. But in Baldwin, that wrapper is a big deal. That’s because it comes with the knowledge that the community is pulling for you."

There are powerful lessons from the story of how the Baldwin Promise team recognized what communications needed to occur, and how they helped to embed that shared vision into the community. Their efforts went beyond offering a solution ($5,000 scholarships to high school students), but reached to the heart of how these students and the community they live in can go from college ambivalence to a culture that values and supports higher education. In our own change environments, do we understand how to support the entire change community with clear, urgent and consistent messages?


Adam Dibble
"It Takes A Community To Change." leadershipYES. 8/19/2015

and make sure to read:

"The Town That Decided To Send All It's Kids To College" by Alana Semuels. The Atlantic. 8/18/2015

and

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. Random House. 2012