Making sense of how we learn in the complex world of work

Working in complex environments challenges traditional ways of measuring personal growth. This article explores why this is the case and shares four practical sense-making tools that we are using here at Mentally Friendly.

We have been designing and building products for well over a decade. Since founding in 2008 we’ve had fundamental principles around being a learning organisation that believes in 1% better every day. Back then, we saw there was a lack of appropriately skilled talent to meet the needs of digital, so went as far as opening our own school. The world and our business have changed a lot since then, our teams now work across product-service, organisation and policy design, but those principles remain a constant.

Organisations are changing

As the pace of social and technological change in the world accelerates we are seeing organisations at every level, from start-ups through to governments, adopt new ways of working. It is at once, incredibly exciting to see what opportunities lie ahead whilst being extremely daunting as we all face the bureaucracy of legacy organisations and consider that the landscape we work within will shift in days, weeks, months, years from now. Truth is it feels like we don’t really know what the f**k will happen next, which is kind of cool when you accept it as the natural order of things.

From complicated to complex

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you how complex their work is, to the point of being too complicated — ‘I’d explain the complexities to you but it’s far too complicated’. It’s only recently that I came across Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework that I have come to appreciate the distinction between these words I’d previously used interchangeably.

I am going to simplify Snowden’s work slightly here but a complicated system whilst difficult to understand is knowable, clear lines can be found between cause and effect.

Most of us don’t understand the inner workings of our smartphones hardware and software but, with the appropriate specialist help, we could. It would not be easy but we could connect the dots to understand the system.

In contrast, if we build and launch a new product-service or make a change to our organisation we cannot reliably draw clear lines between cause and effect. We have assumptions and hypotheses we are testing but the result is unpredictable.

What human challenges does this create for personal growth?

As flatter hierarchies become more common and new ways of working are adopted a series of new challenges emerge as a result of the removal of traditional hierarchy.

I feel anxious, are we doing enough?

As complexity becomes the norm there is always a sense of anxiety irrespective of how far you are along in the journey of moving to new ways of working. As individuals, teams and organisations there is a feeling that we are falling behind or fighting to keep up.

How do I know if I’m progressing?

It is increasingly hard to make sense of what your personal growth looks like as traditional career ladders become a thing of the past. If there is no ladder what am I supposed to climb?

With endless opportunities where should I focus?

How do we focus on personal development when everything’s to play for? As we ask people to become broader in their skill-sets and blur the lines of their roles in cross-functional teams we offer more possibility for individual growth than ever before. With so much possibility and competing interests how do we create focus?

Where do I get feedback now?

How can leadership build trust quickly with individuals in a team of teams? Traditionally in a more fixed world trust was baked into your title. Within uncertain times and flat structures, leaders need a more collective approach to create that trust.

How we solve for this

Last year we spent a lot of time working to design and trial a series of tools to help people make sense of their growth. We work across many different sectors and styles of projects. With this, we work in small cross-functional teams with a high level of collaboration to the point that roles can blur. A developer may also help lead the visual design of a prototype or shape and present a strategy to a stakeholder group. Sometimes the outcome may be a product launched and live in the world others times it might be a collection of human insights and a strategy recommendation. All good stuff but all that variance can be confusing. Our tools are built for sense-making in our current context at Mentally Friendly — they have changed over time and we expect them to change again.

We currently have four core sense-making tools:

Personal Retro

A face-to-face workshop, founded on the Johari Window theory, to elicit feedback for an individual with their lead and a group of peers they have recently worked with.

Outcomes:

• Makes sense of soft skills progression
• Permits delivery of behavioural feedback
• Group dynamic makes patterns obvious
• Organically builds a feedback team around an individual
• Elevates and promotes a more candid feedback culture
• Promotes recognition and trust between team-mates

Skills Profiles

Frames a conversation with an individual and their lead on business critical skills progression. We’ve placed much of our effort in its design in focusing down to the fundamental skills required universally and at a discipline level. Designed with one simpled shared rating system unlike some of the more complex matrices and competency frameworks we looked at early on.

Outcomes:

• Makes sense of hard skills progression
• Provides clarity on skills valued by the business
• Informs consistent conversation with leads
• Can mould to an individual’s journey over time through ‘electives’.
• Makes sense of skills that are acquired outside of your core discipline

Personal Development Plan

The PDP identifies one strength, one weakness and one future goal for you to focus on. It is founded on the 70/20/10 theory and biases towards finding ways to develop on the job on projects. It is constantly iterated as individuals complete goals or change direction.

Outcomes:

• By being highly focused it allows individuals to feel progression
• Biasing to on the job development opportunities drives faster development as this is where we spend most of our time and where we deliver the most value to the overall business.

Missions–Actions Framework

Missions–Actions are similar to OKRs but support more divergent actions. OKRs worked well for us for a couple of years but we saw some repeating challenges. Due to our flat structure thinking in departments didn’t work for us — it felt like a forced hierarchy. Secondly, the speed things change at MF meant we often failed to complete results because in the interim we had changed direction and gone after something more valuable which created a sense of demotivation when reviewing OKRs.

Outcomes:

• Shared understanding as a team on our ‘true north’
• Promotes cross-team collaboration
• Deliberately open
• Makes sense of change over time, together

The business benefit

We invest in the constant process of iterating human development tools because we see it as essential to supporting our team members to make sense of their learning. Our growth and learning tools are designed people first by involving those teams in the creation and iteration of these tools.

Our teams are helping the brave organisations we partner with to deliver change in weeks and months, not years and decades. It’s energising to see change happening at such a pace. By supporting team members to make sense of their learning journey only helps to make all of us more capable of delivering that positive change we want to see in the world.

If you’d like to find out more please drop me a line at johnny@mentallyfriendly.com