Lessons

Lesson Info

Job Crafting

What do you guys think? What is your ideal work environment? Have you had any "Ah-Ha" moments as we've been talking through here about what you do want to create for yourself, for your employees for that team that maybe one day or maybe tomorrow, you're going to start building? My ideal work environment is actually a physical location. Oh! With an office studio on the bottom floor where I would hire graduating art students and give them hands-on training And that's almost like a hands-on MFA. They would be paired with mentors they would do the work, I would get to be the brains of the business. Yeah! And they get to live upstairs as part of their compensation. And my success would be measured by how many leave in two years to go off to do successful stuff. That's awesome. Excellent. You've really got your wheels turning on what you want to create as opposed to the work you want to be doing. Right? Now I have to go "Okay that's the vision." "That's the big big picture." Ac...

tually there is a bigger picture beyond that. But how do I start today? And that's kind of where I've been stuck for like the last year. Awesome. Well not awesome that you've been stuck but awesome that you've identified what those next steps are. I think that actually pretty well leads us into the final piece of this culture puzzle this working environment puzzle And I want to talk a little bit about this concept of job crafting and I learned about this from another creative live instructor her name is Vanessa Van Edwards, mentioned a whole bunch of profit power pursuit interviews so far today and this is another one where in talking with her Vanessa is a behavioral investigator, she figures out why people do the things that they do. How we can learn about their sub conscience communication, and also just what makes people happy, what makes you happy. And one of the things that I found really fascinating about one of my last conversations with Vanessa was this concept of job crafting and that happier people make sure they're doing what they do best on a daily basis. That actually doing what they do best is baked into the way their job is crafted. Remember back to previous session when I asked you what you need to do differently to spend more time on your actual job in your business? This kind of is the same idea. What would you need to do? How would you need to change your job so that on a daily basis, you are doing more of what you do best. You would be a happier person if you did. Right? You'd feel more fulfilled at the end of the day Maybe you'd get into flow more often and you would feel really capable at your job as well. I'm going to I'm going to pause it, I'm going to suggest that we can craft jobs we can job craft, not just for ourselves not just for our employees, although that is an important part of the picture too but also for our companies. What does it look like for your company to spend more time doing what it does best? What does it look like for your company to spend more time doing what it does best? Because when your company does what it does best more often, you're going to have a better working environment, right? You're going to have a more positive company culture. People are going to feel more invested, they're going to feel like we're actually doing what we're suppose to be doing and not doing what we should be doing. Right? And so that comes back to this idea of capabilities, every business has a specific set of capabilities that is what they do best and what gives them an edge in the market. I talked about this a little bit in our last stand out business class on product planning, and thinking though what kind of company do you need to build to execute your product and to create, to deliver, to develop your product as best as possible but it absolutely applies to working environments as well. So I'm going to share our company capabilities and I want you to think about what does your company do best and how, most importantly, can you do more of that thing. So our company capabilities are, one that we utilize distributed expertise in other words, one of the things we do best is actually relying on others as experts. So that we're not just I'm not the only one with the responsibility of teaching, with the responsibility of sharing other people get to contribute and we get to highlight them build a platform for them, right? As we were talking about earlier. So that's one of our capabilities the more time we can spend creating opportunities or spotlighting the distributed expertise of our network the happier everyone is going to be at the company. Not the least, of which, is me. [Laughter] We're also a human powered network So as I was saying earlier, we really believe in the power of getting people to join our network and then guiding them through by hand with real human experiences Hey, you've got a question? I've got an answer. Let me know if you need a hand let me know if you need a resource and so again, the more time my company can spend focused on powering our network powering our community with that hands-on help the better our work environment is going to be the stronger out community is going to be and the stronger our company culture is going to be It'll be a better place to work the more we focus on them. We've got three more One, transparent operations, that goes back to that transparency piece, the more we share what works for us the better the happier we all our, the more purpose driven we all feel. Network- driven growth which means the more we rely on our members to spread the word about what we're doing the happier we all our because our members are great at spreading the word about what we do, how can we impower them? How can we spend more time on that? And then finally, member insight. Instead of guessing what people want let's utilize the data we have we have hundreds of members that we can consult, that we can ask, that we can research that we can just get into conversations with and use that to power our decision making. So we use these five capabilities to think there, where do we want to invest? How do we want to spend our time? What activities do we actually want to do? What do we want to get rid of? And the more we do things that line up with these capabilities, the happier everyone is. Now... I forget who's question it was like "Who do I hire first? Where" "Do I invest next in a new hire?" I'm going to say, and there are certainly exceptions to this, like evolved finance doesn't necessarily have a whole lot to do with our capabilities but that's fine, that's why their a contractor and why I don't employ a part-time book keeper. Right? But when it comes to hiring our employee team members, I'm looking to these capabilities to guide me Who I should offer or who I should hire next. Because I want someone who is going to contribute to what we do best, as opposed to just knocking some tasks off the to-do list. Right? So when I was thinking through hiring those member experience specialists I'm thinking about, alright more member experience specialists means more events where we can highlight distributed expertise. More member experience specialists mean better network driven growth because they are going to be reminding people to share the community with others that aren't in the community yet. More member experience specialists means more member insight, now it's not two people having conversations it's five. How many people? Four people ... [Laughter] Four people having a conversations with members. And so, that, the direction of that hire choosing who to hire, what they need to be able to contribute and what their position is going to be to me, is dictated by what we do best as an organization and how that gives us an edge in the market. Does that make sense? Any questions about that? Yeah. Which came first, hiring the people and seeing what the capabilities could be because of what they brought to the table or, sort of envisioning the capabilities and finding the people to fit into them? Yeah, so, "what came first questions?" make me really nervous because strategy is always cyclical and iterative. Right? And so, it's always a process of collaborating and re collaborating but I would say It was identifying the opportunity identifying the vision and identifying the mission, and thinking through what do we need to be best at to make these things happen the way I want them to happen I think yes our capabilities have been refined based on some of the processes and procedures and ideas that we've been able to create as I've brought new team members on, but these were largely dictated by the vision I have for the community and the mission behind that and then and then, yeah, refined as we've found people who actually fulfilled those capabilities. Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. Any other questions there? Yeah. When did you first launch like Ten Thousand feet? [Talking Simultaneously] Can we go back before? Absolutely, Of course. Back before Co Commercial and Choir Power? Did you kind of do a similar thing And then refine those over time which is how you which is how, I mean, you ended up with Co Commercial but when you were going through like that first iteration of expanding from you being at the time actually a business coach. Yes, absolutely. To then saying, I want a bigger I want a bigger ship and I want to bring on these people which is actually how I found you was through that apprenticeship program I'm just really curious how the vision started from you and how you got to that first vision of, okay I'm shifting gears how do I reimagine that vision, and mission and value statement. Yeah, so I was going to say I wasn't as smart back then [Laughter] but that would be not true and would be a disservice to myself I think. I absolutely had a very clear vision I maybe didn't have all of the pieces that I have now and all of ... But when I envisioned Ten Thousand Feet way back in the day, it was with the vision that I would eventually train other business coaches in the methodology that I had developed working one-on-one with people so the Ten Thousand Feet Program was the first step toward preparing my company, my business to be able to do that like we needed to iterate faster on that methodology and codify it better so that I could train someone else on how to do it. And we were working with that vision over the course of Five years before we pivoted this winter into Co Commercial. Okay. Does that answer your question? On some levels yeah I mean, I guess what I was... The second part to that question if you will, is really like, you going from you to you going to all of the sudden you went to this team. Right? Cause you brought in all these people underneath you to kind of help expand the vision, expand the business model and I mean this is all about hiring so it's kind of in a way like you training all of us to come in and kind of be able to, you know reiterate that experience and so I'm wondering like when you... When that nugget landed, right? When you start percolating on that idea how long? I don't even know if it's how long but how did that develop? How did you get from "I want to expand" to "oh, this is the model and this is the vision?" and I know it's not all super clear but... Yeah so I would say that was probably a two year process of identifying that that was that was what the model was going to... So the vision existed first, then the core offer, and then the model that would accelerate that core offer. Is that what you were? Okay good. [Laughter] Cause I don't know how else to say it. Perfect. Any other questions? No? Good. Alright. How could you ensure you get to do the things you do best everyday? How could you ensure that you get to do the things that you do best every single day? What needs to change? Silence. [Giggling] Barrel. I was going to say, by knowing the thing that I like getting super clear on what is that thing that I do best and what am I What is my role within the company. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm getting closer to knowing what that is, yeah. I think also really having a very clear sense of what are all the things that I'm suppose to be doing how long to those take? what are all the steps to do them? Laying those out, having a clear structure of what that looks like how long it actually takes me to do those things how much time I'm actually spending on them how often I should be doing them systems and organization. Good news, that's what we're doing in the next session. And Barrel I think your answer is just brilliant, I mean maybe the reason there is silence here is because you guys actually don't know what you do best yet. And that's certainly a process exploration but I think it also goes back to that question that we talked about in the very first session, and the difference between what is it you want to create vs. what is the work that you want to do, because what you've been doing all along may not actually be what you do best for your company. Yeah. In fact, it probably isn't. Megan. Well just like, I just when your first starting your business and you are you're those two things are the same you know? Or like that's the only thing you can pull out of your brain , is like is this what I want to do and I'll just do it. Yeah. You know, and so being, I kind of wrote down like clarity being able to tease those things apart and then really view it and I thought Nicole's, it's really reiterated what you're teaching us here is this idea that like when the very first thing she said was "You are not your business" and I think that's this like I think that's this big thing is starting to tease apart that You are not your business . Yeah, creating that detachment is so important for clarity. And that you are an employee of your business, that's self-employed like, oh yeah, okay, here's the business and here are the employees including me Yeah, and I think even if you identify more as a freelancer than a small business owner. Right? That still applies, even if you are selling your time, it still applies So if this is a place where you're feeling a little , I wouldn't say stuck but a little glued-up maybe this is something I want you to think about a lot. This afternoon, tonight, putting a pause the video and spend some time on it journal on it. What is it that you have to offer your business as your best self? And what would it take to spend at least three hours of your day , half of your day on those tasks every sing day. How much happier would you be? How different would that ... How would your work environment be different? Maya. What's interesting what I'm sort of distilling right now in response to this question ties in with things we talked about earlier about the role I want to have in my company in terms of value, creation vs. value delivery because I've had these two somewhat complementary visions which is me being a thought leader but at the same time I want to have more like minded people to do this work with, so peer thought leaders if you will. And to answer this question, I do see like that longer term vision is to be this watering hole for people who see the world the way I do and offer their expertise in a similar way. So as an immediate next step I need to just keep sharing this new body of work I'm coming into because it feels more comfortable for me to talk about it now and I just need to find more opportunities to share that with people so that more people can say, can raise their hand and say "Oh yeah, I have something similar to talk about " and "lets maybe find a way to work together" cause right now I'm feeling a little isolated in my thought leadership so it's something just percolating. I love it. Thanks for sharing. Yeah. So like I said, keep thinking about these things and as you do, keep in mind that the other opportunity here for you is to create jobs where your team members get to do what their best at every single day , if you're just hiring people to take things off your to-do list to get a little bit more space to have that relief of like "Okay" "Sue's got those three things taken care of" "And I don't have to work about that" You're not setting your team members up for their best work either. So this is your opportunity to not just recreate your working environment for yourself but to be creating a work environment where people get what they dream of, right? That meaningful work that allows them to do what they do best. Okay. So those are the things I want you to be thinking about as your homework for this session.