Happy Friday,
This week's insights include:
How healthy is your organisation? 🍏
The only seven coaching questions you need 💬
How to be an antiracist 🖤
Enjoy!
How healthy is your organisation? 🍏
This week I attended "Designing Epistemically Healthy Organisations with Wardley Mapping
There were many insights across the three days. In particular, I enjoyed exploring definitions of organisational health.
An unhealthy system is where people within the organisational system are unaware of how the system works. So, therefore, cannot act effectively.
A healthy system is where people within the organisation understand the system and therefore can influence the system.
To give an example lets take promotion.
In a healthy organisation, employees would be aware of the criteria and how to get promoted. They'd also be able to influence this process and know exactly who to speak to for help.
In an unhealthy organisation, employees would be uncertain how to get promoted. The documented criteria may not be followed in practice. The employee would have no influence and would likely not know who to speak to.
How healthy is your organisation?
Wardley Mapping helps people understand how the system works and their place within it. The mapping helps as a way to increase organisational health.
Many more insights shared in my learning journal.
The only seven coaching questions you need 💬
Over the weekend I re-read The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stainer. It's the book I always recommend for busy managers who want to learn about coaching.
Michael shares these seven coaching questions:
The Kickstart Question - What’s on your mind?
The AWE Question - And what else?
The Focus Question - What’s the real challenge here for you?
The Foundation Question - What do you want?
The Lazy Question - How can I help?
The Strategic Question - If you’re saying Yes to this, what are you saying No to?
The Learning Question - What was most useful for you?
I use these questions all the time. They are especially useful in 1:1's with team members.
To help you become a better coach I created Switch.
A free 5 day self-led coaching program for leaders.
How to be an antiracist 🖤
This month is Black History Month in USA.
I decided to revisit one of the best books I read in 2020, How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi.
The book provides many helpful definitions which I've used countless times to help bring clarity in discussions:
Racist – One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.
Antiracist – One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.
Racism – A marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produce and normalize racial inequities.
Antiracism – A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas.
Importantly Ibram shares it's not good enough to be not-racist. You are either racist or antiracist.
Quote of the week
“Get out there on the goddamn front line and show them that you care, and that you’re not just in some plush office somewhere.”
- Elon Musk to CEO's (Source)