Bold New Breed

See how Decathlon is living diversity and inclusion on the podcast website:
Diversity and inclusion.

Their philosophy: Start with yourself and include the world around you. 
You will see how teams around the world are making this happen. This is an outstanding example of global collaboration and local specialization.

Decathlon Belgium, where Sophie is based, is organized as a network, not a hierarchy and a group of employees decided to tackle the challenge of diversity and inclusion. They reached out to people across the global company, in particular Hungary and Italy and realized they needed to talk to other countries and find ways for the countries to talk to each other.

Sophie and colleagues organized international online meetings to trigger conversations and share successes as well as challenges. This grassroots initiative took off and it was discovered that different countries were working on different issues: Brazil on racial discrimination, India on women’s experience, Hungary on disabilities.

There's much more information on the podcast webpage: Diversity and inclusion.

For more information on the podcast website: Proactive resilience: A race with no finish line

Horizon scanning and a focus on skills

A resilient person or organization can get through a crisis, but making it through once is not enough. being resilient is a state of readiness. A way of acting a way of thinking. It’s proactive, not reactive.

Individuals need to focus on developing  skills more than being satisfied with job titles: skills versus labels, as one person told me. Another talked to me about “personal future security”.

Organizations (as well as individuals) need to get good at horizon scanning: being aware of the external world around us.

Rapid response to major events and crises is not yet common

Results from my research 2013 and 2018 in my research about organizations in the digital age were similar to what BSI uncovered (see data on website page listed earlier). I asked more than 300 organizations around the world over four consecutive years (from 2013 through 2018) to state their agreement or disagreement with this statement: “Our organization can respond rapidly to major events or transitions such as market changes, competition, economy, downturns, environmental or disaster events”.

The answers were not encouraging. Only 25% agreed or strongly agreed in 2013 and then only  another 10 percentage by 2018.

Four keys to proactive resilience through a gig mindset work culture

• Reverse leadership: possibly the key to all the rest
• Decentralization: based on freedom within a framework
• Improvisation: using what’s available in real time to solve a problem
• Learning fast: enabling people to take charge of their development 

I have a story about learning in the podcast and will have future episodes about the first 3 points later.

Thinking about resilience when there is no crisis is a sign of proactive resilience

D. Christopher Kayes says, “Thinking about resilience, when there isn’t a catastrophe going on is one of the hallmarks of a resilient organization. It’s not only about responding to problems, but also about how to get ahead of them.”

See more information on the podcast website: Velcro Management and readiness

This episode is about how to put on and take off your tennis shoes easily. And a new way of working with people. Seriously!

It's about Velcro management, a new idea for most of us including myself until I met Marni Johnson from BlueShore Financial.   She talks about what it is, what it brought to their organization, and how to make it work for you – if you like the idea.

Chris Catliff, president and CEO of BlueShore Financial, says that leaders need to “forget the individual’s job description and provide them with opportunities to create and contribute to things they excel at and are motivated by.”

For more information on the podcast website: Willful blindness: what and why?

Ignore, resist or embrace?

When people come across something new, they ignore it, resist it, or embrace it. How do we get to the 3rd stage?

The gig mindset is often resisted by management, but not only. In order to combat it, we need to start with first understanding what's going on.

Living in the past and living in fear are two underlying reasons.

People are blinded by:

• Pride in past success.
• Faith in best practices and benchmarking.
• Fear of losing power.
• Fear of speed.
• A false sense of safety in silos.
• Filter bubbles.

Positive deviance: a totally different perception

Gig mindset behaviors threaten the past and have little fear! Although they are often perceived as deviant, they are in reality positive deviance.

More information on the podcast website: The gig mindset and internal civil disobedience

Peaceful protest in a large organization

This episode is about peaceful protests in a context where people want to change the way they work inside a very large organization.

I talked with an engineer who works in a global industrial enterprise headquartered in Europe. He and his colleagues wanted to find a way to bring visibility to new ways of working and emphasize the importance of flexibility and not getting fixed on one method or another method they’d put into place, a large social network, and people were talking about their projects.

Two mindsets: Where do you stand?

I’ll tell you about the two mindsets – traditional and gig – to the background of a beautiful waltz and a dynamic boogie.

More info on the podcast website: Why is the bold new breed important?

"Thank you for giving me an identity."

The Bold New Breed of employee is driven by the gig mindset. The gig mindset is a way of thinking and behaving like freelancers and independent gig workers. Except, the gig mindsetters are employees inside organizations.

They are a NEW Breed because they work differently from traditional workers.

They are a BOLD new breed, because they come up against management resistance.

When I talked about gig mindsetters in conference keynotes, I had these reactions from people in the audience:

Why these reactions?

Gig mindsetters make management nervous, and feel threatened. They trigger strong reactions including getting sidelined or reprimanded. Three underlying issues:

• Gigmindsetters are here to stay. They make up a bottom-up movement emerging slowly in organizations around the world.
• They network intensively, cross boundaries and constantly scan the horizon. They detect early signs of change, take initiatives, operate with high autonomy and work to solve problems when they see them.
• But management behaviors have been stuck in a control and command mindset over several years.