"Empathy" seems to be a misplaced word in most large enterprises. But imagine if it were a tool that was used to align fiefdoms, partnerships, mis-aligned objectives, or even interpersonal working relationships. If the Organism (aka the Organization) and its parts, actually "felt" something for each other, for a goal...for a cause, then would it be able to cure itself of common ailments like dysfunction, "rut-syndrome", or fear (of failure or success)? More over, could it be transformed into a high performance team tuned to accelerate growth through disruption?
Startups are typically ultra-focused on customer / user problems AND what the user is feeling. Empathy not only plays a huge part of the design, development and delivery of the solution, but many of the successful startups are highly tuned to the challenges faced with the execution phase to deliver something to market. In a strong "Hacker and Hustler" startup model, both roles feel empowered in their domains and have a tremendous amount of empathy for their counterpart handling the "other side". Because of this empathy, the ability to influence and have an impact is earned. Although difficult, this works really well with a two-person show.... Throw in marketing, engineering, legal, product management, operations, sales, management, governance, etc... Empathy somehow pulls a disappearing act. Unfortunately, most groups in organizations feel entitled to influence behavior or have an impact on outcomes WITHOUT any empathy of their teammates. If the objective is to impact outcomes, then being able to influence behavior and priorities will start with building empathic relationships. Consider introducing "Empathy" to your organization as you attempt the impossible as it may allow people to use one of their most powerful tools...their feelings. Perhaps "it can't be done" will slowly evolve to "let me see what I can do"....or even, "I think so...should we try?"
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Disruption...Innovation...TAM...Culture...Mindset...Growth...Hacking...Lean... It's a wonder anything actually gets done in the midst of developing a common understanding of each of these powerful terms.
So, what is "Visioneering"? Like any "buzz term", a simple web search will yield a bunch of different definitions. What's my take? Visioneering is the discipline of imagining the future and engineering a process to invent the imagined future. There are two distinct functions in Visioneering: Imagination & Invention. Before anyone can "invent" the future, they need to "imagine" it. In my professional travels as a software engineer, sales guy, hacker, biz dev exec, starving entrepreneur, consultant....I'm amazed how many really smart people I've encountered who can imagine the future...but rarely have the ability or desire to invent it. There are a bunch of reasons these folks don't or can't take that next step (I'm sure a post will come on that...;))...some of which are things like personal commitments or circumstance, market dynamics, lack of skill or resources, etc...etc. Fundamentally, the easiest part is to imagine the future. It simply requires you look at the world, society, market, technology, or whatever through an alternate lens. So close your eyes and dream...get pissed off at something...get drunk with some buddies....get distracted from your job and day dream....then imagine the future. Now when it comes to doing something about it or to invent the future, there are several base steps that need to happen:
But what about the large behemoth organization like a large enterprise? Many times, these organizations have institutionalized barriers to prevent mutinous activity. However, these enterprises can't control the mutinous activity outside of their organization thus large enterprises end up being the targets of pirates who are Visioneering an alternate future without them. With all of today's startup activity and energy, large enterprises are large barges that are mandated, generally by the financial system that governs the company, to stay the course and shield against disruption rather than participate in it. Any deviation would challenge the predictability of a financial model that drives operations. Many of these companies are also trying to be "growth" companies. This amplifies an internal debate that stresses the culture of an organization resulting in significant gridlock and inactivity. Ultimately, large enterprises suffer from that which makes them great. They have the ability to "move the needle", yet cannot execute on which needle to move, who in the organization should move it, or how to move it. For many years, startups were synonymous with disruption. But why should startups have all of the fun? Now, Imagine if we were able to activate large enterprises to participate in market and/or social disruption and participate in the natural order of disruption. This means that these organizations need the ability and desire to empower itself to Visioneer. In a series of blog posts, we'll explore what it means to enable organizations to build a Visioneering culture and "Activate Enterprise Disruption™". Stay tuned for more on what BIG Visioneering is up to and we'd love to hear your thoughts... |