A year after stepping through the looking glass into the world of full-time employment in a large company, I ask myself, “What was I thinking?”

I know exactly what I was thinking — the need to establish credibility, get a strong brand on my resume, support for my work, and opportunities to work on interesting problems. As I  re-read Part 1 of Through the looking glass I remember the apprehension I felt about going to work for a very large company. I remember being worried about how I would have to conform, change my identity and pretend to be what I was not. I remember thinking I would have to let go of my independent contractor identity as I accepted the rules of this new game. That was my main worry. None of that really came to pass in the way that I imagined.

• First, I did not expect my work to be so very virtual. Now, hear me out — I have done virtual. I love virtual. I’m a telecommuter. I believe that virtual is here to stay, and is the future of work. But whoa! Starting all your relationships virtually because you’re on a national team– now that’s hard. Not having any work reason to connect with people in my local office, that’s also hard. I realize now that I’ve always started face-to-face.
• But then it gets more interesting — I also am never on a consistent project team. That’s right – no intact teams. Not only are you relationships virtual, but you’re always remaking them as you move from project to project. That’s even harder. It means that on every project you are re-negotiating your role, understanding how others define their roles, and getting a good handle on their skills and capabilities. Most of the time, project teams don’t bother to do that “teaming” stuff because there’s too much work to do. They don’t bother to really understand each other as humans with 3-4 other projects going at the same time. Yet we come into these project teams loaded with expectations. At some point, always, you run into a snag, a bump, a wall of frustration.
• The work is lonely. I did not expect to feel so completely alone in my work. Yes, I’m on a project team, but as a learning designer/instructional designer — I’m suppose to be an expert, so all that “content-development stuff” or “working with SMEs stuff” is left to me. Very little collaboration. A lot of loneliness in the work. And even though I love working virtually, being a telecommuter, diving deep into the content, living in my introvert world — I deeply miss collaborating. To me, that’s the whole purpose of a team. Without that team collaboration, I might as well be on an assembly line. And you know what — it hurts. I miss it dearly.

That last paragraph was really hard to write.

Heres’ the good stuff -

• I do get to work on interesting projects and let my ideas run as wild — if I can convince others to run with me.
• I do have amazing people that I work with and for on a daily basis — I just don’t always get to collaborate with them.
• I am learning so much — about my capabilities, my value-add, what I do and don’t like doing, what I need to learn more about, about eLearning, and most importantly — about the dynamics of working in a large organization and the effort it takes to get alignment and stay on message.
• My identity has not been that changed — except that they require me to use my full legal name for my email – which sucks. And I have learned to filter my words and think about my intent in a given situation; and that’s all for the better, IMHO.
• I’ve also learned to appreciate the value of my past experiences — I’ve had incredible teams in the past, incredible mentors, incredible leaders. I deeply appreciate that I experienced those others in my life.
• I get to travel some, but not too much — so far.
• I meet incredible facilitators and coaches as a part of my work, and yes, get to work with them sometimes.
• I get the benefits that come from working in a large organization (yes, health, dental and a 401K are a nice to have). I never thought I’d say this — but I like that I have a number to call in case of a natural or other kind of disaster. It’s that paternalism of a large organization because it’s to their benefit that we are all healthy and taken care of. I’m a dual-citizen American/Canadian , so don’t get me started on who I think should really be providing that safety net.

As long as I’m still learning, and the good balances or even outweighs the bad, then it’s worth staying. But if that starts to shift, or if the work that I do is not longer aligned with my goals, then back through the looking glass I’ll go.

Here’s a story ..it happened to me…

Several years ago I was traveling to an client event in another country. I had been in my new position a couple of months at most. My boss was meeting me there, and  was to brief me on the details. I arrived a couple days early to visit with family — a good thing because on Day 1, the client called asking me to come. Boss was still in New York. So in I went.

Upon arrival I was told that a critical video that we created was stuck at the border.  I was to get it released ASAP. I smiled and said “yes, I’ll take care of it.” I had no idea what they were talking about. Couldn’t find my boss. Panic began to eat at the edges of my brain. I called everyone I knew to get the cell number of the one guy who could release the tape. He was eating dinner.  He apologized, and said he would take care of it as soon as the border customs office opened. Whew!

And then the real whammy happened on Day 1 @ 2 am (ok, technically Day 2). My boss called. She missed her connecting flight. She managed to get a flight to a city that was actually further away. Clearly geography was not her strong suite. But crazier still, they threatened to deport her because of something she said when she crossed the border: “work”. Never, ever, say you’re coming in to work in another country unless you have a work visa. I gave her this advice. Repeated it. To sum up, she would not arrive until much later on Day 2 — if she arrived at all. Me alone with the client (that’s plural client not singular) for another day. Didn’t really sleep.

Got up, put a smile on my face, and explained the crazy situation. Then volunteered to do whatever work they needed — and sure enough, they put to work. The tape arrived. Boss arrived. The rest of the event went swimmingly. We all survived.

When I got back, I was treated as a hero — if they could have given me the consultant equivalent of the purple heart they would have.

END OF STORY.

I can’t help think I could have been better prepared.

Is it possible to train for the unexpected?

YES, YES, YES!!!! Except I wouldn’t call it training…

• Step 1: Tell people the unexpected will happen.
• Teach them the power of negative thinking (book I read once). Have a team brainstorm about all the things that could go wrong and how you could prepare for them. What are the backup plans? This lesson I learned in radio — some technology will fail, some tape will break (yup, good ol’ analog days), some interviewee will *not* show up. Be prepared. Have a plan. Rehearse your plan.
• Who will answer the “red” phone at 3 am? The hardest thing is feeling that you are alone in a situation. The one thing that made a difference to me was connecting with one person who was still at the office at 7pm. Hearing a friendly voice tell me that she would do “everything she could to help me” made all the difference. Thank you team mate!
• Focus on the work that needs doing. I did my best to stay focused on the work that needed doing (get video, get boss, help client) It helped keep most of the anxiety at bay.
• Stay positive & stay focused on the needs of your client. It would have been very easy to fall into victim mode (“I’m not good enough”, “I can’t deal with this”, “I’m an impostor”, “it’s his/her/their fault”, “it’s not my job!”). Look it’s not about you, it’s about the client. So get over it. Put your “game-face” on, and as trite as it sounds, go out there with a positive attitude. What can you do to help?

Ambiguity, complexity, and the distributed expertise of teams creates “black swan” events. How can we deal with the unexpected, emergent behavior of systems? I think there’s a  game to be created here (or maybe several already exist?)

This isn’t training — it’s strategy.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

• In extremely complex situations checklists can solve many problems
• The working world is deep expertise in based in teams
• The volume of knowledge exceeds what one expert can provide
• Don’t turn complex situations into cookbooks, focus in on crucial items
• Create pause points where you can check in
• Allow people to create scripts to follow and share, not recipes
• Have people think about ways things go wrong, and are they prepared for them
• In fields where we think expertise and experience are enough, running up against limits of what we can do (example of lawyers) large volumes of knowledge and we’re making basic mistakes
• We are fundamentally fallible and make mistakes
• In situations of complexity, understand where power should lie – it’s not command and control
• In situations of complexity (i.e., Hurricane Katrina) give power to the peripheries and focus on communication from peripheries to HQ and out again to quickly spread good protocols and ideas (example of Walmart in Katrina)
• Example of VCs and how they make their decisions – different styles of decision making – gut decisions vs. analytical VCs (used checklists). Checklists VCs have higher success rate.
• Goes against our idea of what expertise is suppose to be.

Can’t wait to get it so I can review it in fuller detail.

At the halfway  point I thought it was a good read. Being an innovative company requires changing the way we work – can most companies do that? Letting go of authority and creative, “hot”, teams is essential. The descriptions of the work environment and culture at IDEO had me thinking about where I wanted to work next. If you want to imagine a place that is hardworking and respects creativity — read this book.

After finishing the book I think the best parts are in the first half — descriptions of how to do brainstorming and how to create hot teams. A good read for those 2 sections.

A couple insightful quotes:

• “too much square footage, like too large a budget can dissipate energy and discourage more immediate emotional connection.” (p.82)
  
• “success at innovation is like putting together the perfect golf swing” – there are 17 things to get right, each one simple on its own, but it’s complex to put together in real time.(p.293)

Overall I enjoyed reading this book, though I found many of the stories repetitive — as if they were cobbled together from many different essays and presentations. It needed a good edit.

Brainstorming Rules:

1. Sharpen the Focus – ask edgy, tangible questions that focus on the customer need
2. Playful Rules – don’t critique or debate ideas, go for quantity, encourage wild ideas, be visual
3. Number Your Ideas – help to set a goal for quantity (i.e., go for 100)
4. Build and Jump – keep the energy up, jump back to an earlier path, encourage small variation
5. The Space Remembers – power of spatial memory, process of capturing ideas (facilitator whiteboard), physical movement around the space
6. Stretch Mental Models – warm-ups, content-related homework (background lecture, toy stores)
7. Get Physical – sketching, mind mapping, diagrams, stick figures, bring in objects, build things, bodystorming

Hot Groups: groups at IDEO are often ad-hoc, often come together on a project-basis and availability. Below are listed types of characters that can be key to “hot” teams.

1. Visionary
2. Troubleshooter – doesn’t suffer fools gladly, fix-it person
3. Iconoclast – contrarian
4. Pulse-Taker – heart person, making a personal connections
5. Craftsman
6. Technologist – a maven
7. Entrepreneur – often goes off and creates sub-teams or companies
8. Cross-Dresser – self-educated, self-motivated, enthusiastic

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