Author: Charley Kent

Are your teams high-performing or entrepreneurial?

collaboration, teams

Let’s look at collaborative team structures…

There are two collaborative team structures (and only two) that work well in fast-moving, innovative organisations. These are high-performing teams and entrepreneurial teams. Both have their place, and which one suits your organisation will depend on a number of factors. We can help you choose the right one for your context.

HIGH PERFORMING TEAMS
high performing collaborative team structures

High-performing teams don’t have dependencies and work with team members with the right skills. They also have the safety (guardrails or constraints) to work autonomously to deliver the outcomes for which they are responsible.

 

ENTREPRENEURIAL TEAMS
entrepreneurial collaborative team structures

Entrepreneurial teams take this one step further by defining and owning their budgets and outcomes. This kind of team is more innovative and acts more like a start-up within the larger organisation.

 

Collaborative teams are crucial to deliver value efficiently to your customers. However, creating teams like this isn’t easy. A mindset shift is needed in order to fully leverage the power of collaborative, customer-centric teams.

We trigger the ‘lightbulb moments’ for your team members to realise what’s possible. Through coaching, mentoring, and training, we help you overcome common challenges to realise the benefits that your new team structures bring.

Find out how we can help.

The four essential skills needed to make change stick

approach, coaching

Creating lasting change is often easier said than done. You start off with good intentions and high hopes, but struggle to maintain your efforts over the long term. However, research has shown that there are certain skills that can help organisations make change stick. Understanding and mastering these skills can help you create lasting change that can have a positive impact on your organisation.

 

So, what are the four essential skills needed to make change stick?

One, Training

Training is about learning and the transfer of vital information and experience. It ensures that everyone is aligned on vocabulary, has the building blocks for ways of working, and knows what to do.

Two, Learning

Learning is a vital part of any change initiative, and we have arguably the best change programs in the world. AWA Global, our partner, has pioneered not only the whole field of organisational change but also the ways that people are trained by putting the learner first and providing “learn by doing” experiences.

Three, Coaching

Coaching and mentoring are about putting what you’ve learned into practise day-to-day and making sure it’s done well. Coaching ensures that you’re ready with great solutions and a smooth path to success when new situations arise. Even ones that you didn’t cover in training!

Four, Facilitation

Facilitation is all about making the most of the time people spend together. Making decisions at the point of work with everyone involved is a key factor in devolving decision-making and enabling rapid adaptation and delivery. This can only happen when experienced facilitators are present. Big-room planning and decision-making always have experienced facilitators present to ensure that the right actions and outcomes emerge by the end.

You need all of these skills to make organisational change work. Our coaches bring these skills and transfer them over time to internal people, making change a normal and sustainable part of organisational life.

 

Get in touch to find out more about how BryterWork can help.

What kind of leader are you?

Why not use SCRUM, SAFe, Spotify, or any other framework?

approach

Most of the Agile frameworks are not actually frameworks (e.g., Spotify, Disciplined Agile, etc.), and even if they were, a framework for agility is an oxymoron.

Agility is a people-based approach to devolving decision-making to the point of work in a safe and efficient manner. Installing frameworks and telling people how to work is the antithesis of the culture that is required to make agility work. This is why so many people fail at agility and think it doesn’t work.

There is enough experience being shared in the global community to now know that the frameworks may provide some benefits but do not deliver enough change to meet today’s demanding needs. They are expensive, alienating, and don’t do what you expect.

Much of our experience with change has been rescuing organisations that have tried using the frameworks but failed. We are happy to help if this is the case, and we are happy to help you create a better way of working.

Get in touch to find out more about how BryterWork can help.

Restructuring Work

Is agile dead?

approach

The words “agile” and “agility” are met with mixed receptions these days, with some people saying it has been proven not to work, or even that “Agile is dead”.

Is agile dead?

What we do know is that work is not getting easier. 

  • Time to market is shortening, 
  • Product and service lifespans are decreasing
  • Building products/services is getting more complex
  • With more moving parts and deeper skills required than ever before

Staff are demanding meaning from their work and asking organisations to show how they are contributing to make the world a better place. People expect career growth, more challenging and responsible positions, and more decision-making power.

 

So, is Agile dead?

Well, perhaps the ‘old’ Agile is dead retired. Or perhaps it is evolving into something better and Bryter..?

Our approach focuses on outcomes, people, and risk reduction. If we follow these pillars of change, then we know we will succeed. We may use things from the world of agile, but at its heart, finding new ways of working is about changing what is in our heads. When we change how we see the world, each other, our products, and our customers, we have a chance of making it better.

Our focus is always on people over process.

Why a big consultancy might not be right for you

approach, coaching

Many of the consultancies have some good ideas, but the cultures that run inside the organisations themselves prohibit them from building people-based cultures inside their clients’ organisations.

Would you trust a company to build an inclusive and open culture when they do not have one themselves? The overheads of large consultancies require them to ‘land and expand’ and get as many junior people onboard as possible to make the numbers work.

Organisational change is not a junior role. It requires specialists who have dedicated their life’s work to making other people’s working lives better. It requires people who live the way they expect others to follow. Why would your staff try new ways of working when the people teaching them don’t follow them themselves?

Most consultancies’ primary business is not organisational change. They are asked to do the work because they are already inside their clients’ organisation for some other reason. This does not make them competent or capable in this area.

We live and run our own business the same way we teach others to run theirs. This is a powerful message for anyone who wonders if our approach works or not.

If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.

We only focus on change, and we focus on large organisations and how to do it well. We have set the bar through certification, training, and coaching in this area, and we know how to make a difference.

Get in touch to find out more about how Bryter Work can help.

a strong company vision

Is your organisation lacking a strong company vision?

vision

Why is a strong company vision important in leadership?

Vision provides the inspiration and clarity that enable teams to understand what they are working towards, and to do it in a way that means that they are able to make more of the decisions themselves. Without a clear and inspiring vision, teams may struggle to connect to the day-to-day work, meaning that decision-making must be made by fewer people higher up in the organisation. This causes delay and frustration all around.

 

strong company vision

Symptoms of a lack of company vision

Lack of Vision in your company may show up in the following ways:

  • Staff need a lot of clarifying information to carry out day to day work
  • Projects mostly focus on maintaining the status quo or reacting to issues, rather than breaking new ground
  • Teams find it hard to describe what they do, or why they are doing it
  • Teams lack motivation and find it hard to get new initiatives moving

In conclusion, a strong company vision is essential for effective leadership. It provides inspiration and clarity for teams, enabling them to understand their purpose and make more informed decisions. Without a clear vision, decision-making can become centralised, leading to delays and frustration. A lack of vision may manifest itself in the need for frequent clarifications, a focus on maintaining the status quo, and a lack of motivation.

If you are experiencing any of these behaviours, it may be time for a new vision workshop and alignment for your organisation.

Talk to us about how we can help

What does it mean to build a coaching capability?

coaching

 

A coaching capability in your organisation means that leaders and managers have the necessary skills, personal development, and supporting infrastructure to grow transformational leaders throughout the organisation. Part of being a transformational leader is to have coaching and mentoring skills.  Leadership with coaching and mentoring builds the right cultural environment for teams to collaborate, innovate, and adapt to today’s changing marketplace.

Professional coaching skills are easy to master, however they require time to practice. In today’s fast-paced and busy world it is not enough for managers to go on a half-day training and hope that it is enough for them. They will need to change the way they see the world of work, relationships and the nature of delivery, the will need to grow teams, promote collaboration and innovation, and shift their own mindsets to a supporting rather than commanding role. This does not happen overnight.

A coaching capability builds upon the coaching training that managers will get and provides:

  • the internal supporting structures that enable staff to continue to learn and grow
  • reporting line or product-focused coaching and mentoring
  • a way to find the right peers that can mentor and coach them,
  • a way for them to take an active part in growing other leaders.

This results in happier, more engaged staff, that are more capable and able to adapt and exhibit the types of management and leadership required to run a product-focused and customer centric organisation.

 

What is a roadmap?

vision

We all need to have a level of certainty in our lives, especially in business, and stakeholders want to know what they are going to get for their money. A roadmap builds upon the vision and tells the story over time of what we expect will happen to make the vision real and when we are likely to see the results of the outcomes we are hoping for.

We know things will change, in fact we plan on it by taking and responding to feedback, and the roadmap also reflects this in its detail and focus.

A roadmap is a strategic document that bridges the vision, through outcomes, to the breakdown of work that the teams will use to plan the order on which they do things.

Together, the vision, roadmap, and OKRs define the strategic direction for the organisation, product, or service.

Bryter Values Lighthouse

What is a vision?

vision

A vision provides the inspiration and clarity that enables teams to understand what they are working towards, and to do it in a way where they can make more decisions themselves.

A clear and inspiring vision connects teams to the day-to-day work and is one element in building appropriate decentralised decision-making. Decentralised decision-making or decision-making closer to the point of value creation is a key element for an adaptable organisation.

Bryter Values Lighthouse

A vision can be for the organisation as a whole, the product, or even the product’s features. The vision is the top level for structuring work in a customer-centric product-focused organisation.

WHAT TAKES A VISION FROM GOOD TO GREAT?

Do you have a truly great vision?
Does it meet the following criteria?

 

    • It is aspirational. It takes you from where you are to a better state

    • You can test your decision-making against it

    • It is always phrased in the positive

    • It contains elements that evoke feelings (preferably positive!)

    • Your employees, colleagues and stakeholders can imagine themselves as part of that vision and the story it tells

 

When these markers are in place, transformational leaders can speak to this vision and increase the odds of teams aligning to a purpose. Individuals feel they are a part of and have the autonomy to work out how they make it happen.

A vision is a powerful artefact.