In episode 9 we explore how you, as a business owner or business leader, can lead your team to survive and thrive in today's economy. So buckle in and stay tuned. --- Hello, and welcome to another episode of "Weirdos in the Workplace". I'm your favorite weirdo, Erin Patchell, and we're on a quest - together - to turn business philosophy into business fact. Today we are going to explore how you, as a business owner or business leader, can lead your team to survive and thrive in today's economy. So buckle in and stay tuned. If you've been awake these past few years, you know we're in a business environment that is increasingly leaning towards leanness - less people, less money, less time, fewer resources. But the volume of work doesn't end. Even if your company hasn't experienced the stress of downsizing and restructuring, I'm positive you've felt the impact of the perfect storm of record low unemployment rates, record high competition for and shortage of talented leadership and upskilled technical people, record high levels of employee disengagement, stress and medical leave. All this in the middle of a cultural revolution that is pressuring organizations to make swift identity and behaviour changes at a breakneck speed in order to attract and retain the younger generation. These trends affect every single industry and every single sector. I hear the same stories everywhere I go. It doesn't matter if I'm working in a small business in the private sector or a large government organization. People are people everywhere and it seems like  the problems are essentially the same with very few variations. These are problems that I spend a lot of time thinking about and not only because I help clients solve these problems but because I've experienced them myself in my own work, with my own company and work in previous companies that I've belonged to as well. Some of them are tales as old as time, but it seems like the problems are ramping up and becoming more and more critical. These problems are the reason why I began researching different management frameworks and landed on agile and lean as the two, and for different reasons, as two of the best tools in the toolbox that can support managing and adapting in this - quote unquote - future of work. And if you taking nothing else away from the concept of lean and agile, it's two words that I want to talk about today. And the two words are incremental and iterative. Think of increments as the bite-sized, achievable steps on the path to your ultimate goal. They are the bricks - or the minecraft obsidian blocks - that will construct your vision, one piece at a time. Think of iteration as the process of refining and evolving each of these blocks or bricks, based on feedback, your own personal experience, and what you've learned. It's a cycle of continuous improvement, ensuring that each brick contributes to a stronger and better foundation for your project or product. And when we talk  about the future of work, I think it's really important to think about the concept of "learning how to learn faster". The future of work… we don't know what's going to happen. Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future, by the way… nobody. Søren Kierkegaard said "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." We need to learn how to learn faster in order to stay relevant, stay lean and adaptable, and to actually build something sustainable in a very unsustainable economy and unsustainable environment.  Let's dive into the psychological side of this. Increments and iterations serve as vital buffers against overwhelm and burnout. Each small success, each completed increment, triggers a hit of dopamine - the brain's reward chemical. Dopamine helps keeps motivation high and stress levels low, creating a sustainable cycle of positivity and productivity. Psychologically, we have a natural desire to see and reach for that  final result or destination. But wanting to reach big goals and finish projects is also socially engrained in us - it's not just how most individuals brains are wired but also how we're rewarded as we grow up. I can tell you that it's even that much more dramatic to people like me. I'm a person who until my late 20s, never finished a single project that I started without help, and trust me when I say when we are lacking this trait it can feel stark. This psychological tendency to focus on the end result or goal can be attributed to a concept known as "teleological thinking." Teleology is backed up by various psychological theories and empirical studies. Some recognizable names of psychologists and philosophers who have researched teleology include Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, Jean Piaget, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin, David Hume, Georg Hegel, Carl Jung & Sigmund Freud, and many more. However, research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that we humans are terrible at estimating the time, resources and energy needed to complete a task or reach a goal, This concept, called the "Planning Fallacy" can lead to trying to do too much at once, which can cause projects to be delayed or fail, people to become burned out, disengaged and disillusioned, and businesses to lose their competitive edge and bleed money. So I guess the good news is that if you've been wondering if it's you - it's not just you. It's literally all of us. The bad news is that if you think you're objectively great at estimating time and resources, studies have shown that probably only about 30% of you are about right… so chances are pretty good that you're wrong. Sorry. It's important to note that while teleological thinking helps us set goals and strive to achieve them, it doesn't necessarily equip us with the strategies to break down these goals into manageable, incremental steps. That's where methodologies like iterative development come in.  And when I say "development" I don't mean software development. While some of these agile management concepts did originate in the tech sector, it's been a while now since they've begun to infiltrate other functional areas. If you're curious about where to start your education into these topics, hit me up on Facebook or Linkedin, or by email at [email protected] and I'm very happy to point you in the right direction.   Like all those other skills that we're not born knowing (cough, everything, cough), getting good at this is a journey. Complexity arises from the social dynamics inherent in any group effort. If team members feel a pressure to perform, demonstrate progress, maintain appearances if they're afraid their job is on the line, the concept of producing an imperfect product or solution, even as a stepping stone towards improvement, can be seen as a sign of incompetence or failure.  This fear of judgment can create a significant barrier to embracing an incremental and iterative approach. Which is why it's so important to build it into the culture and DNA of your organization. We have to make it safe and OK to take an increasingly incremental and iterative approach, focused on the highest priorities that deliver value to our customers, and deliver a working increment that we can gather feedback on, before starting something new. Actually to put it more bluntly, we have to make it UNSAFE to take approaches that are not incremental and iterative. They should be avoided at all costs. If we're haven't planned with some clarity what the minimum amount of work to achieve an outcome that is functional and valuable, with a system in place for gathering, evaluating and integrating feedback, I'm not sure we should bother. I'm trying to think of a situation where this approach just doesn't work and I honestly can't think of any. But if you do, please, let me know. I love a healthy debate and I love to find out I'm wrong. And it wouldn't be an episode of Weirdos in the Workplace if I didn't leave you with some quotes from interesting human beings. John Locke said "The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others." Winston Churchill said, . "Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things." Ken Blanchard said ,"Feedback is the breakfast of champions." David Hume said, "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." Henry Ford said, "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." The coolest thing about starting to take this approach… thinking in increments and iterations is that it doesn't just affect your work - it will start to affect you as a person. Haruki Murakami said, "And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in." So, thinking and working in customer value-focused increments and iterations will discipline you and the people you work with to finish the projects that you start, reduce friction, develop a consistency within a stronger framework, all which will help you learn your way into better employee engagement, health and wellness, retention, a stronger culture, performance, but even better - longer term sustainability and profitability for your team and your company. That's all for now, if you liked the 9th episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, please share it with a friend. Until next time stay weird, stay wonderful and don't stay out of trouble.

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