Why Performance Lives in an Ecosystem

Speaker A: We know that when we get people right, we get business right. So I'd like to welcome you back to my podcast that focuses on three areas. I specialise in leadership, performance and culture. You'll hear my guests talking about their experiences and expertise and we'll be providing thought provoking insights around putting the human factor back into business. Each conversation will be accompanied by a free downloadable guide to save the strain on your memory and resources that will make it easier to put the great ideas we discuss into action. I'm your host, Lisa, uh, psychologist, psychotherapist and founder of It's Time for Change. And I thrive on conversations that, ah, make a difference. So reach out to me. My details are in the show notes along with the resources. Grab a cuppa, uh, sit back and enjoy. Hello and welcome back. It's just me today, no guest. And, um, that's because over the last few weeks I found myself repeatedly having the same conversation with different organizations. And so I wanted to share with you some important observations that might help you based on what I've explored with them. On the surface, they've all been talking about very different challenges. One organisation is thinking about leadership development, another wants to improve collaboration. Someone else is exploring coaching, another is considering assessment. Others are planning away days or looking at engagement surveys. Different organisations, different challenges. But underneath those conversations, I've noticed the same pattern. We're becoming really good at jumping to solutions before we've properly understood the problem we're trying to solve. One conversation that's coming up more and more often starts with organisations asking about assessments. Sometimes they've already got a particular assessment in mind and sometimes they're asking me which assessment I'd recommend. And I completely understand why. Assessments can be incredibly valuable. They can help us understand ourselves, understand one another and start some really important conversations. But I found myself asking a different question. What problem are we actually trying to solve? Because if we don't know the answer to that, how do we know whether an assessment, coaching, leadership development or anything else is the right place to start? Now, it's nobody's fault. Leaders are busy, organisations are under pressure. I get that. And when something isn't working is completely understandable that we want to do something. But I found myself spending more and more time helping organizations slow down just enough to untangle assumptions, challenge limiting beliefs and explore what's really happening beneath the surface before deciding what to do next. And that's led me to a sentence that I seem to be saying more and more often, and that's the behaviour we notice is Rarely the problem, it's usually a clue. Just let that sink in for a moment. The behaviour we notice is rarely the problem. It's usually a clue. Whether I'm coaching an, um, individual leader, working with a team or supporting an organisation through change, behaviour is rarely where I stop asking questions. If is where I start. Because behavior always makes sense when we understand the context in which it's happening. And that's led me to another belief that's become the foundation of how I think about leadership, culture and performance. And that's performance doesn't live inside individuals, it lives within an ecosystem. When I stepped back recently and reflected on the work I've been doing over the last few years, I realise this isn't a new way of thinking for me. Whether I've been coaching a senior leader or facilitating a workshop or supporting a leadership team or helping an organization navigate change, it's always about looking beyond the presenting problem. It's about asking questions like, what's really happening here? What's influencing this? What else might explain what we're seeing? We're not just looking at people. I'm trying to understand the whole system around them. Only recently have I found a name that kind of encapsulates that way of thinking. And I've started referring to it as the Better Work Framework. It's not something I've invented because organizations need another framework. Far from it. In many ways, it, it's just something I've uncovered. It's the clearest way I've found to describe how I've been making sense of organizations for years. And so today I wanted to share that way of thinking with you, because if we can get better at, uh, understanding what's really going on before we decide what to do, I genuinely believe we'll make better decisions, choose better interventions and create better conditions for people to do their best work. So one of the things I love about working with organisations is that no two are ever quite the same. On the surface, they often describe very similar challenges. Communication isn't working or managers lack confidence. Performance is dipped. People seem disengaged, relationships feel strained. But once we begin exploring what's happening beneath the surface, the picture almost always changes. What looks like a communication problem might actually be a trust problem. What feels like poor performance might actually be unclear priorities. What appears to be resistance to change might simply be exhaustion. After years of constant change, the symptoms often look remarkably similar, but the causes rarely are. Uh, and that's why I've become increasingly cautious. Whenever someone tells me what they think they need. Not because they're wrong. Usually that's not the case at all, but because they're usually describing the intervention rather than the challenge they're trying to solve. And that's why I don't think an assessment is usually the starting point. It's one source of information. It's not the diagnosis and it certainly isn't the intervention. In exactly the same way that coaching, leadership development or a team workshop shouldn't become the automatic answer simply because they're familiar. The real question is always, what are we hoping this intervention will help us achieve? Because once we answer that, we can start exploring whether it's actually the right route. Let me give you an example. I was recently asked to coach a senior leader because there were concerns about his behaviour. People were worried about how he was showing up. There was even some speculation that perhaps this was rooted in something from his past and that was now playing out in the workplace. It would have been very easy to accept that explanation. After all, the behaviour was visible. But rather than trying to assess and explain his past or assess him in terms of his personality, I became interested in understanding his present. What was his experience of work? What pressures was he under, uh, what was happening in his environment? As we explored those questions together, a very different picture began to emerge. He'd recently joined the board of directors. He was hugely committed and, um, genuinely wanted to succeed, but. But nobody had really helped him understand what success in that new role actually looked like. He knew he needed to perform, he knew people were watching, but he didn't have a clarity about what was expected of him. So, like many conscientious people do, he filled in the gaps himself. So he set himself impossibly high expectations. He convinced himself he needs to have all the answers. He put enormous pressure on himself to prove he deserved to be there. And eventually that pressure became overwhelming. The behaviour people were seeing wasn't the cause of the problem, it was the consequence of it. Once we understood that, uh, the conversation changed completely. It stopped being about fixing him and instead it became a conversation about creating greater clarity. What did success actually look like? What did the CEO expect from someone at board level? What support did he need? As he stepped into that role, the focus shifted from changing one individual to improving the conditions around that individual. And that's such an important distinction because it's often much easier to locate responsibility inside one person than ask what the wider organisation might be contributing to, to it. And that's exactly what I mean when I say the behaviour we notice is rarely the problem. It's usually a clue. The behavior wasn't telling us who this leader really was. It was telling us something about the ecosystem he was working within. And, um, once we understood that system more, we understood the behavior. And that's a very different conversation, it's a very different starting point. So if behaviour is a clue, what's it a clue to? Well, that's the question that eventually led me to articulate what I now call the better work framework. As I've reflected on my work over the years, I've realised there's a consistent way I make sense of organisations. Whether I'm coaching one individual, working with a team or supporting an organization through change, I always find myself widening the lens before narrowing in on a solution. Because behaviour never happens in isolation. It's influenced by everything around it. And that's why I say performance doesn't live inside individuals, it lives within an ecosystem. When I'm walking into an organization, I'm not looking for who's causing the problem. I'm trying to understand what's creating the conditions for that behaviour to emerge. So what does the system look like? And I tend to think about that in five connected areas. So first there is the individual. What's helping this person do their best work? What strengths are they bringing? What pressures are they carrying? What might they be experiencing that we can't immediately see? And then I move to the team. So how are people working together? Where does collaboration happen naturally? Where do tensions emerge? What assumptions are people making about one another? What conversations are happening and um, perhaps more importantly, what conversations aren't happening? And then I look at leadership. How are leaders shaping the environment? What behaviors are they role modeling? What are they rewarding? What are they tolerating? What messages are people receiving intentionally or unintentionally? And then I widen the lens again to the organization itself. How the structures, systems, priority and processes influencing behavior? Where is there clarity and where is there ambiguity? What does the organization make easy and what does it unintentionally make difficult? And then finally, I think about the wider environment. Because organizations don't exist in isolation. There's economic uncertainty, growth, customer expectations, technology change. All of these things influence how people experience work. None of these five areas operate independently. They're constantly interacting with one another. And that's why I describe it as an ecosystem. Because if one part changes, then every other part feels the effect. People sometimes ask me what intervention I'd recommend and like honest answer is often I don't know yet. Because until I understand the whole system, I don't feel I've earned the right to recommend the intervention. Not because I don't have ideas and certainly not because I don't have experience, but because I haven't yet understood what's really driving the challenge. So if I recommend an assessment before understanding what's really happening, or if I recommend coaching or leadership development or team development, I might be trying to solve the wrong problem. I'd much rather spend a little longer understanding what's really going on than rush towards an action that feels right but ends up not, uh, being what's needed and isn't the right thing to affect the change that the organization actually wants and needs. And that's where I think we sometimes get ourselves into difficulty, because we become so, so focused on choosing the right intervention that we haven't spent enough time understanding the problem. And sometimes we jump to conclusions about what we need in terms of diagnosing the problem and that becomes too fixed in one particular part of the bigger system, and usually on individuals in terms of their own personalities and how they show up, rather than looking at the whole picture. The Better Work framework isn't designed to tell organisations what intervention they need. It's designed to help them understand the problem well enough to choose what's right for their context. Because once you begin looking at organizations in this way, something interesting happens. You stop asking, who's the problem? And you start asking, what in this system is creating the conditions for this behaviour? It's a subtle shift, but it completely changes the conversation. Because behaviour isn't where I stop asking questions, it's where I start. You stop asking, who's the problem? What do I need to know about individual traits? And you start asking, what in this system is creating the conditions for this behaviour? It's a subtle shift, but it completely changes the conversation. And once we understand that, we can make much better decisions about what needs to happen next. Sometimes the answer is an assessment, sometimes it's coaching, sometimes it's leadership development or team development. It could be about changing a process. There isn't one answer. Because every system is different. Let me give you another example, this time at, uh, an organisational level. So I was approached by a large organization that wanted management development. Their brief was clear. They wanted the managers to be more consistent, they wanted to raise standards. And understandably, the solution they were considering was management training. Now, I could have gone away and designed a management program. In fact, that's what they expected me to do. But before I started designing anything, I wanted to understand the wider system. So instead of Beginning with the managers, I began asking questions about the senior leadership team. How clear were they about the culture they wanted to create? What behaviours did they expect from one another and their managers? What did good leadership actually look like in their organization? How consistently were they role modeling those behaviours themselves for their managers to see and to experience? And as we explored those questions together, something became very clear. The managers weren't operating the system with clear behavioral expectations. The senior leadership team themselves hadn't yet reached a shared understanding of the values and behaviors and standards that they wanted to see across the organization. So without realizing it, they were asking managers to role model something that hadn't yet been clearly defined. And that changed everything. So instead of beginning with management training, we started somewhere completely different. The senior leadership team recognised that if they wanted consistency across the organisation, it needs to begin with them. And so together we developed a team charter. We explored what good leadership looked like, how they wanted to work together, how they would make decisions, how they would challenge one another, how they would hold each other to account. And in many ways, they realized they needed to become an example that they wanted everyone else to follow. And only once that foundation was in place did it make sense for them to think about supporting their managers. The intervention changed because our understanding of the problem changed. And, uh, I think that's a really important point. The quality of our interventions is only ever as good as the quality of our diagnosis. If we'd start with management training, would it have helped? Probably. Would managers have learned something useful? Almost certainly. But would it have addressed the wider conditions influencing those managers on a daily basis? Probably not, because the issue wasn't actually capability, it was clarity. The organisation didn't need better managers, it first needed greater alignment amongst its leaders. And that's the power of looking beyond the obvious is also why I don't believe organizations should start by asking, what intervention do we need? Or what assessment do we need? I think a better question is what are we hoping to achieve? Because once we're clear about the outcome we're trying to create, we're in a much stronger position to choose the right route to get there. And sometimes that route will include an assessment, sometimes it won't. Sometimes coaching is exactly what's needed, sometimes it's not. That's why I believe, um, one of the most valuable things we can do as leaders is become curious before we become certain. So where does all this leave us? Well, if you're leading a team, an organization or a change program, I'd encourage you to pause the next Time you hear yourself, or maybe someone else say, we need X, Y or Z. Fill in the gap yourself. Maybe it's improving performance, better communication. We need people to understand each other better. So we need some assessment. Maybe that's exactly what's needed. But, uh, maybe before deciding on that, I wonder if there are some different questions you could ask first. Like, what are we actually trying to achieve? What's making that difficult at the moment? What evidence do we already have? What assumptions might we be making? What else could explain what we're seeing? And, um, perhaps the biggest question of all, what in our system is creating the conditions for this outcome? Because once we start asking that question, something shifts. We're no longer looking for someone to blame. We're trying to understand we're no longer rushing towards the solution. We're becoming curious about the problem. And I genuinely believe that's where better decisions begin. You might still conclude that an assessment is exactly the right place to start, or coaching or development for leadership or manager team, or to change your processes. Better work framework doesn't tell you what the answer should be. It helps you ask better questions before deciding what the answer is. And in my experience, the quality of our interventions is only ever as good as the quality of our diagnosis. And that includes making sure we're diagnosing the right thing. So I'll leave you with three thoughts that I hope stay with you long after this episode. The first is that behaviour we notice is rarely the problem, it's usually a clue. The second is performance doesn't live inside individuals, it lives within an ecosystem. And finally, before asking, what intervention do we need, perhaps ask, what are we really trying to understand? And what's really getting in the way? Because once we answer that question, the right intervention often becomes much clearer. And when we begin to understand the whole system, we stop trying to fix people and start creating the conditions where people can succeed. And I think that's a much more hopeful way of thinking about leadership. Because while individuals have responsibility for how they show up, organizations have responsibility for the conditions they create. The two are inseparable. Thank you for listening. If today's episode has prompted you to think differently about what's happening in your own organisation, I'd genuinely love to hear from you. What behaviors are you noticing? Um, what might those behaviours be telling you? And what might happen if you widened the lens before deciding on the next step? Until next time, thanks for joining me. If you enjoyed listening to this conversation, there are three things I invite you to do. First, click the link in the Show Notes to download the resources for this episode. Secondly, help me extend the reach of this podcast by leaving a quick review on Apple or wherever you listen. And please share this episode with your colleagues so that you can discuss what resonates for your team. And finally, as usual, I invite you to reach out to me on LinkedIn or through my website so we can keep the conversation flowing. I know listeners often say they're keen to implement some of the key takeaways, but find it tough without guidance or extra support. If that's you, drop me a line and let's chat. Be sure to check out it's timeforchange.co.uk, where you'll find a whole heap more to support you to reflect on and develop your own practice. And while you're there, join the Leadership Lens to stay up to date with bespoke support services like my Retained Partnerships where, um, I'm by your side through all things leadership, culture and performance. Feel free to reach out if you want to know more. I'm a great sounding board for challenges and ideas for development, so grab all the details you need from the Show Notes. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you and to welcoming you to my next episode. Uh, coming soon. Join me then.