An authentic and slightly irreverent blog on the applied dimensions of leadership & change...

• My Crap

• Your Crap

• Our Crap

• Everybody’s Crap.

Have you ever slipped outside the office for a stress-shedding walk in the sunshine, to look at the trees, the blue sky—wide open open before you, and the birds singing to encourage you, and wondered what would it be like to work for people…

• Who cared about me?

• Who helped me plan and shape my career so I could activate my potential?

• Who created opportunities for learning what does and does not work, and for whom, within our organizations in real time?

• Who created avenues so others in my organization could learn from each other so we all could grow, learning from each other’s knowledge and expertise, not just borne from their current role, but from their career to date?

…The world of work would be such a beautiful place…

Until your concentration was broken because you slipped, lost your balance, looked down and realized…crap…that’s right…you stepped in it.

You slipped out of the dream and stepped right back into reality. Break time is over; time to get back to the crap. But you can’t help wondering why the dream had to end. Why does it have to be this way? The good news is it doesn’t. The bad news is it is. Scrape off your shoes and I’ll explain this mess.

Learning organizations are about helping employees grow and evolve so the organization itself can grow and evolve. They create a culture where it is safe to admit your own crap. In most organizations we hide our crap from others so much we can no longer see it ourselves. We lose our ability to recognize our own participation in the problems around us.

If your work culture feels empowering, chances are you work in a Learning Organization. If your work culture is disempowering, you definitely don’t. How can you cut the crap and start leading change?

Focus on 3 things:

Learning…

1. Acknowledgment

2. Alignment

3. Accountability.

What’s in our way? Our crap, of course. Let’s break it down.

Essentially, my crap works like this: if I don’t feel like my own learning (to include insights and ideas) is acknowledged as useful, valued, and contributes to the success of the organization, I’m not really positioned to make others feel that way. Oh, I'll try. I really do care and know others need it; but let's face it, I’m going to lose steam. It's hard to pour from an empty pitcher. You can cut this crap by speaking up and teaching your supervisors what they need to learn.

Okay, you know that we all want our effort acknowledged. We’ve discussed that. So before you run out of steam, look at your management system (processes, policies, procedures, performance review instruments, and problem solving approaches) because these things shape your organization’s culture. Are individual and collective learning regularly incorporated to make them living, breathing, realistic, and adapting to the world around them? If they are not aligned with organizational learning, you can cut the crap right here and now by incorporating feedback loops and start discovering what others need you to learn.

There is nothing more disempowering than a lack of accountability in those things we are told matter to the organization. Organizational crap is heaped up here. When our individual and collective learning is not assessed in performance appraisals, leadership appraisals, improvement planning, and goal and objective setting, we receive the message that what we discover on the job means nothing to the organization; what we know isn’t valued; that the organization doesn’t want to learn, grow, change…no matter how much it may need to do so. You can cut the crap here by revising these instruments to fit what you really need to achieve. Start looking at the questions you ask and if the answers make any difference.

The communities in which we work, both local and global, are learning about us and about all kinds of things that impact what we do and how we do it at a collectively rapid rate. Whether that impact is direct or indirect, now or later, we miss out on learning about our customers’ and stakeholders’ points of view by not acknowledging this learning and including them in our culture. We can cut the crap by opening avenues of learning from and service to our communities. We will all reap long-term benefits.

© 2019 Stacie L L Morgan. All rights reserved.