Marcia Conner: Remove Obstacles, Introverts, Rewriting Rules | Turn the Lens #02

>> Hey, welcome, everybody. Jeff Frick here in the home studio. How are you? Hey. Unfortunately, the COVID news is not getting better, as you're probably very aware, and it's looking like we're getting closer and closer to probably having to get into increased lockdowns, and the travel bars are coming up, and it's looking like we're going to be back into a tighter work-from-home, work-from-anywhere type of restriction coming up. And as we're heading into that, I couldn't help but think about an interview that we did at IBM IOD 2013 many years ago with Marcia Conner. Marcia works for a company now called, what is it called? New to next, I think? Normal>Next, next is greater than normal or normal to the next. But Marcia is a really interesting lady and she was way ahead of the curve on the take about hiring people, the whole person, and really being a more human-centric or human-focused way of managing people, working with people, and really, being more human-centric, and we're hearing that a lot, coming out of the work-from-home, work-from-anywhere.  So I've wanted to go back and take a look at that interview 'cause I think it was powerful then, I think it's powerful now, and I think she had a lot of great things to say. So what I wanted to do is review a couple of concepts in Marcia's interview from way back then and really break it down. So the first clip I want to get into is pretty interesting. She talks about this weird phenomenon where we hire people for the whole person, for their unique attributes, their unique points of view, their perspective, and work history, that they can apply that knowledge and that expertise to the problems that we have at our company and to make the company do better. So we hire these individuals and then what happens, unfortunately, often, is then we jam that person into the HR manual.

And so for all the same reasons that we hired them, we suddenly start taking those things away, and it's a really interesting thing. She nails it, so let's listen to that clip. Marcia Connor on this weird HR thing.

>> For way too many years, decades, when people go to work they have to leave their personality, their heart, their cares, their relationships in the car, or in the subway, or however they got to work that day. And social business is really the first opportunity we have to be human beings at work. We're allowed to actually talk about the things we care about, to be able to bring our interests and our passions into the conversation, to be real trustworthy people. And what happens as a result of that is that for the first time ever, there is an acceleration in the workplace because people can actually be their full selves. It seems so simple, only because the backlash, or the way that we have worked for so long, has been so strong and so overpowering that we almost equate not being human with what business is. So the idea of social and business being together, it seems a little off, because we assume that business is inhuman, but the idea of bringing them together is a huge step in the right direction and opens up the possibility of actually doing great things.

>> But you know, that line that she talks about, leave their personality, their heart, their cares, and the relationships at the door, based on, you know, however they got to work that way, really insightful, and something to be thinking about and making sure that you're taking advantage of the reasons that you hired those people in the first place. Another concept that comes up quite a bit in kind of the new way to work and the new normal, and we talked about this a little bit with Darren Murph, from GitLab, excuse me, is you want to, as a manager, remove things that are obstacles for your people, remove obstacles, get out of their way and actually get other things out of their way so they can do a better job and get their work done. And Marcia really talked about this, you know, kind of thinking in terms of not necessarily adding more, but taking things away.

What can we take away that we should take away, that we didn't take away?

>> The idea is that we need to figure out what we need to remove, not add. So it's not that we have all this new data and we can actually be doing more stuff. But the question becomes, for me, in the organizations that I work with, is what can we remove? What are the policies, the nonsense that happens in work every single day that shouldn't be there? It's only there because we don't have a better way, a more trustworthy, a more human way of actually working together. So it's incredibly liberating or incredibly open, from our perspective, simply because it's less.

>> Yeah, yeah, very interesting take. Don't add, take away. What can you take away? What barriers can you remove? How can you basically help clear a path to make your team more productive? Great take. (laughs) The next one is really interesting, and this is really about communication and enabling people to make contributions to the company. And it sounds so funny, right? But in a lot of companies, and certainly historically, people were not enabled to tell things or to share their feelings, and in fact, it's a big management issue trying to get bad news up the chain of command to find out what's going on, 'cause people are afraid to talk. And so now with the advent of blogging and social media and companies basically encouraging people to be more proactive, again, with kind of their whole self, and bring that to the business, and then too, you look at that combined with, say, open source, which a lot of people get a ton of value participating in an open-source community that's not directly part of their job. And it's a really (chuckles) funny story that Marcia gets into when they were going through this process with a big company with an old employee who sat in the corner and said that she probably wasn't going to participate. Let's hear that clip.

>> We had a woman, for example, say, when we went to her, and we'd been told that she would not participate in something like this, and when we went to her, she said, "You know, I've been putting in my desk drawers, literally, for over 20 years, all the cool things I've wanted to do in this organization. And you're telling me I can now blog about those things or I can actually put them in micromessages?" And we said, "Yes," and she says, "Well, I really don't believe you!" So it wasn't even a matter of saying we can do it, but-

>> Will I get in trouble? (chuckles) You know what I mean?

>> Will I get in trouble? And will I not even get in trouble by the big police, but just, will I get, you know, looks from my peers? And so we actually started giving her examples of some of her peers and some of her colleagues who were doing different sorts of things and her being able to build trust that this was a workable system.

>> Good message there. It's really funny, right? So again, what types of resources do you have sitting all around within your company that you're not fully utilizing and making sure that you over-communicate that these are new opportunities? The next clip is really interesting, and she highlights the difference between introverts and extroverts. And we know that there's introverts and extroverts in the company, but what she's really highlighting is the fact that you need to enable and put a comfortable space for extroverts to contribute, and in fact, electronic tools, social media tools, things like blogs, enable people who maybe are not the first to stand up in the meeting or hold up their hand to participate and get contributions, 'cause your company has those people, too, and you need to empower them, enable them, to make their contributions in a comfortable way. And I think, again, based on some of the things that we measure, we don't necessarily talk about all the time. And so this is a good little piece talking about taking advantage and getting the value out of your (stutters) or excuse me, your introvert.

>> And the reality is that we have extroverts and introverts in our workplace. We have people who are comfortable talking in public and those who aren't. And so the simple introduction of online tools brings to our workplaces a way for people who are uncomfortable sharing to do that with a little bit more anonymity and to have a lot more comfort in being able to do that. They may not want to actually look people in the eye when they say these things, but it doesn't mean they don't have valuable things to say. I was asked by a journalist a number of years ago if I believe that the introduction of social tools would all of a sudden mean the end of meetings in the workplace. And I said, "Absolutely not, but what you're now going to hear is the voice of people who never spoke up at meetings." And to actually have a well-rounded workforce, you need to have the voice of all those brilliant people you hired.

>> Another great take by Marcia, and it's hard for people that are maybe extroverts, but we hear about a lot in education where you've got young kids, some just like to raise their hand right away, and some that are more quiet and they get stomped on, oftentimes, in kind of the public setting. So again, making that available to the extroverts is important, or excuse me, the introverts. Another really interesting take that she had that kind of ties to that is the measure of engagement, and how we measure engagement, and the value of engagement. And oftentimes, engagement is measured as goodness versus just consumption, and measured by kind of immediacy of response, whether that's a reply, a chat, a participation, in some type of forum. And Marcia's point is really, really strong, is that it's completely discounting kind of the long tail, or not even the long tail, but just the post-event impact of the communication of what is going on.

And don't discount the people that aren't the ones that raise their hand and have something to say all the time, because they're still important, they're still there, and in fact, they're going to leave that meeting, they're going to go talk about it with their friends, and they're going to hopefully have a chance to react to it. So it's a really interesting twist on how we measure value, if value is measured by engagement and engagement is only measured by kind of immediacy of people's interaction with the media, and a very different take on that, that that is not what you should necessarily be looking for exclusively. Let's listen in on Marcia.

>> What we know about lurkers is that traditionally, they are people who wouldn't raise their voice in a meeting, that they're also somebody who is just going to sit and listen. But what happens is that that person then goes to the restroom or goes to the cafeteria, or actually even on the bus that night or in their community, and they talk about what they've learned. So the idea of measuring people as lurkers or participants is a very shallow way of looking at it, because it only means that the value is in the conversation that they're having at that time, or that if they didn't comment or they didn't contribute, that that is what provides value. It's a skewed perspective on engagement. It's a skewed perspective of what brings value to the organization. If they can be listening, which is truly an untapped skill in most of our workforces, if they can be listening and then they can actually be thinking, also a crazy idea, and actually then be able to figure out what they are doing and then be able to do that, all the value there. But I actually am a little bit weary sometimes when I see the people who are commenting all the time.

>> Well, you know, it's-

>> Again, it's very, very powerful, this concept of the lurkers, you know, are lurkers good, are lurkers bad? Well, she says they're people participating, and just because they don't have immediacy of engagement based on time, doesn't mean that their participation is not important and that you're going to get value out of it down the road, more importantly. So I think it's a really interesting take, and you can tell by the passion in her voice that this is something she's really passionate, 'cause she probably spends a lot of time getting value from people on teams that have not been participating fully, 'cause they didn't feel comfortable. They didn't have the social setup, or really, it's comfort, if you will, to participate. The last thing, we'll just end on a high note, and I thought it was interesting. This goes, again, back to 2013, and this was in the context of social business, basically telling people they could be more active and social, whether that be blogging or Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever.

But I think it still has just as much relevance today, if not more, because as I said, COVID has often been pointed to as a catalyst for digital transformation. It's also a catalyst for, obviously, working from home and increasing the amount of time that people are working from anywhere. Let's hope that it's even more a catalyst to really rethink about changing the way that we manage knowledge workers and knowledge work, so that we don't kind of fall back into the norms of before, or systems that were built for a completely different type of workplace and worker, as opposed to knowledge workers, who are motivated by different things. And so I think she said it back then. We have even more of an opportunity now. So let's close out on a little bit more of a high note with Marcia.

>> I believe for the first time we had the tools and technologies to be able to do something significant, to actually be able to rewrite how organizations work, what work means, how human beings get to interact to be able to make change in the world. That has been cordoned off for way too long. And so as these systems, the systems that aren't working, start falling away, we have the opportunity to actually be able to lean in, to be able to live in, and to be able to say, "I want to be a human being 24 hours a day. I don't want to be a number or a chess pawn any longer. And I am going to actually make a difference in the work I do and I'm going to do that throughout my day, every day." So I'm incredibly excited about the prospect of what we can do. It requires us all to actually look inside, figure out who we are, figure out what we want to do, and actually be able to go do that.

>> It's an opportunity now to change things, to change the way that we work, to change the way that we manage people, and really, you can't afford not to, right? You can't afford to have people in your organization that you're not extracting the most value out of that you can, that they're participating and they're cooperating, and they're making contributions. And another topic that comes up all the time, especially in the context of AI, is getting people to do higher-order work, getting 'em off the rote, getting 'em off the stuff that can be automated. And so a big piece of that is in managing them that way, too. So I think, again, a nice look back to Marcia Conner. I'll put her link to LinkedIn if you want to reach out to her. She's a terrific lady, and I think she's just way ahead of the curve, bringing up these topics over seven years ago, but I thought they were worth resurfacing. I hope you enjoyed 'em. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Take care.