Rob: 00:00

Everybody, and welcome to another episode of here's an idea worth playing with with me, Rob Lambert from Cultivated Management. Now this is the first of at least 5 podcasts which are gonna be short sharp introductions to the model that we use called releasing business agility. Now baked into this model are all sorts of cool things that you could use actually in your own life if you really wanted to but also at work. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna introduce the model here today in this episode, then we'll tackle step number 1, which is painting a bright picture of the future. In the following subsequent episodes, we'll cover steps 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Rob: 00:36

Now my goal with here is an idea worth playing with is not to have super long episodes, so I'll try and keep this fairly short. What I'll do in these episodes is just give you enough that's hopefully super helpful for you to start with. And then if you wanna find out some more then head to cultivateermanagement.com where you'll find all sorts of different articles about releasing business agility. So what is releasing agility? Well, I used to work in companies that were termed agile, and agile is a sort of software development approach about iterative releases of value about, you know, really moving smoothly and quickly and getting software out into the customer's hands or onto the platform.

Rob: 01:14

Now what I, was tasked with doing after setting up an extremely well, a a team that was called Frightening the Agile team was to go and do the same thing in HR and then to do the same thing through consulting with big companies and enterprise level type stuff. The challenge is is that a lot of the agile techniques and I'm not gonna bash agile at all, but I don't use that phrase because it's loaded with so many different perceptions and ideas about what it actually means. I came up with this model after literally a week of deep thinking in which my hair turned gray and I lost all social contact for a week. And I extrapolated out what it was that we did behind the scenes as leaders and managers to enable these sort of more tactical things to happen. And that was the releasing agility model which I now use everywhere I go.

Rob: 02:02

It isn't an agile model, I'm not gonna say it is. It's a communication thinking model. It gets you thinking about whether you have the right things in place. Now the key thing with this is you can actually apply it to your own life and I actually do this. So as we go through today's podcast and the subsequent ones, we can think about how we can apply these things to our own lives as well as work.

Rob: 02:22

So let's break down what releasing agility means. Now the idea is that, you know, small companies generally start out with lots of agility. They tend to be able to move quite not necessarily smoothly but certainly quickly towards their goals. They kind of have to because they've got to they've got to find the market fit, they've got to get permission in the marketplace, they've got to get the processes stood up and their inventory loaded in or software released or whatever it is that they're building. Job descriptions and titles and responsibilities tend to be a lot more fluid.

Rob: 02:51

You know, people can do stuff and they just help out and everybody gets stuck in to try and bring something to life. There's also very few rules and processes and governance and red tape and bureaucracy standing in the way of a very small startup company. You just gotta get stuff done and I love that. But as those companies grow in scale there is a need for a bit more rigor. The problem is is that well intentioned leaders, managers and employees add far too much rigor.

Rob: 03:16

And therefore things start to slow down, decisions need to be pushed upwards or sideways and we start to, you know, break apart the organization into different functions and then we've got different processes and rules and politics creeps in. And depending on incentive models, you know, it's all after ranks and perks and people start fighting each other for promotions and it it just it becomes a very difficult place to get stuff done. So the word agility means moving smoothly and quickly towards your goals. Now, right there we have a clue that if we don't know what we're moving towards, there's no point moving smooth completely the wrong direction. We could be shipping really bad products and services smoother and faster.

Rob: 03:51

That makes no sense whatsoever. So it's all about moving smoothly and quickly towards your goals. And we're gonna talk about goals in this first particular podcast. So the word release means to set free from confinement. So this is the idea that, you know, we've slowed organizations or ourselves down by adding too many options, too many decisions, too much work, too many governance boards, lack of autonomy, and all sorts of different reasons why we can no longer go from an idea to value as quickly as possible.

Rob: 04:27

We can no longer go from an imagination, a dream, an idea, or you know a concept into releasing and getting it done as smoothly and quickly as possible. So we have to find those things that are stopping us and remove them. We have to release that agility. And as we do this, we uncover more opportunities to release and it's a never ending cycle of looking at what's stopping us from moving smoothly and quickly and working out how to remove it or mitigate it or work around it. Now this isn't a call for no process, no due diligence, no planning, it's not a call for that at all.

Rob: 04:58

We need those things still. Well, what we don't need is all of that nonsense that stands in the way of employees as they're trying to do something. And when we think about our own lives, sometimes getting really simple basic things done can be so difficult in our own lives because we've added complexity to it. It's really a call for simplification of getting down to being effective first and then efficient. So it makes no sense as I've said to move smoothly and quickly and to release agility in the wrong direction towards the wrong thing.

Rob: 05:27

So that's where we start with the first step of the model which is to paint a bright picture of the future. In other words, we wanna be able to write a story about what our future looks like. Step 2 is then to ask the salient question, if this bright future is so interesting, so compelling, so amazing, so exciting, why are we not already there yet? What's stopping us from achieving it tomorrow or next week or even next year? Step number 3 then becomes making sure we've got the right people in the right place with the right behaviors to build the culture that we want and to get the work done.

Rob: 06:02

Step number 4 which is where a lot of people dabble around particularly consultants is processes, routines, and habits. These are super important and in our own lives we can think about this as well. Do we have the right habits and routines in order to to bring about a vision for our life? That's really what we're looking at here. And then step number 5 is really one that probably encapsulates everything.

Rob: 06:23

It's all about learning. It's about getting better. It's about developing more competencies. It's about better habits, better behaviors, and learning how to make the business better. So they're the 5 stages.

Rob: 06:34

Within each stage, there's nothing really prescriptive in this model because it's designed to get you to think. And the reason I call it a communication model is because all of the success of these 5 stages hinges on our ability to communicate effectively. To be clear. To get alignment. To get clarity.

Rob: 06:53

So let's jump in to step number 1, which is about painting a bright picture of the future. Now, this isn't about grabbing your paintbrushes and drawing and painting although you can if you wish. This is about writing a story about the future. Now, I have some not so much hard and fast rules around this but I have some guidance on how to do this. And this works in our own lives as well.

Rob: 07:15

If we wanna move from where we are today to where somewhere else we need to be clear about what that somewhere else looks like. And there's nothing more valuable I don't think than writing a story about what that future looks like. Now I call this a painted picture. We're gonna paint a rich, compelling, interesting, exciting picture of where we wanna get to. And this is so powerful in work and many teams don't do this.

Rob: 07:39

And we will talk about strategy because this isn't a strategy, this is bigger than a strategy. Some people call it a true north or a vision or sometimes even a mission. But it's not, it's really a story about the future. Now, I have some recommendations here. Write it in the present tense as though you've already achieved it.

Rob: 07:58

Ground it in the reality that we are living this, this is it, we're gonna go and do this. It's not something that's abstract and out in the future, it's grounded as though we've achieved it already. The second rule I would say would would be to paint this picture for about 5 years out. Now that might seem like a long way out but in a business and organization, that's actually gonna fly by and we actually underestimate how much we can get done in a year. So think about 5 years out.

Rob: 08:23

As a minimum, I'd encourage you to go no less than 2 years out because 1 year can fly by by the time you've even got yourself organized. Whereas 2 years feels about right, but for me it's always 5. Now when I'm painting a picture in my own life, it's usually 5 to 10 years out. So another rule is to let go of reality whilst you're writing this painted picture. We will come back to reality as part of step 2 when we ask, well, why we're not already there yet?

Rob: 08:48

And then we'll lean into the current reality. That's a really important stage. But there's no point leaning into the current reality and doing an order of the obstacles and problems if we don't know where we're going. Because in our own lives and an organization we're gonna have way more problems than we could ever realistically solve. So we wanna be sure that we're only tackling the problems that are on the path to our painted picture.

Rob: 09:11

But we'll cover that in the next episode in this mini series. So paint the picture for the future, 5 years out, write it in the current tense if you can. Let go of reality for now and think about awesome, think about Nirvana, think about utopia, think about what perfect might look like and write that story. And then another idea, another potential rule when you're writing this is to forget the how. Don't worry about how you're gonna do this.

Rob: 09:39

We'll cover that in the next stages. For now, what we want is this bright, compelling, amazing, exciting, brilliant future that if you were in that future now, your business would be super successful. People would be flocking around to join you. You'd be living the dream as a business owner, a leader, or a manager, or even an employee. And And in our own lives if we think about this, what would perfect look like?

Rob: 10:02

How much money would we be making potentially? What would we be doing? Where would we be? Who are we helping and how are we helping them? These are sort of big ideas to play with as you write this painted picture.

Rob: 10:13

Now the painted picture needs to be ambitious. It needs to be aspirational. It is aspirational. It's this thing, this true north, this painted picture that we wanna head towards. Now in reality, will you ever meet the painted picture?

Rob: 10:26

I believe you will, And we'll come on to why that is the case in, the next few episodes of this podcast. But for now, we want to write that painted picture as though we're living it for 5 years from now. So when I was doing this for an organization that was, it was a software development company and we were releasing software every single year which was just way too slow to meet the market demands, to meet the customer needs, and frankly to remain relevant in that marketplace. So we painted a bright picture of the future. The picture went something like this.

Rob: 10:58

We are the most trusted and respected organization in this industry. We release software every single day or at least weekly so that we can meet the customer demands and we can stay competitive and stay ahead of the competition. We have a huge queue of people waiting to join our organization because it's fun to work there. It's rewarding. We have awesome management.

Rob: 11:22

We look after people's careers. People, if they do choose to leave, will become the most employable people in the market. We volunteer our time for local communities. We give back to the society that we work in. And we are building a community within the business that respects, trusts and empowers people to do the best job.

Rob: 11:42

People love working in our organisation. And as a side effect, we are hitting our goals and milestones towards that growth that we and the investors are aiming towards. So that's a very small part of what was a bigger painted picture. But what happens when you paint this picture is you create an emotional connection to it. You describe a world that people can connect to and go, yes, I want to be part of that.

Rob: 12:06

Now are we there yet? Of course not. We'll lean into that in step 2 in the next episode. But for now we wanna paint that picture. We've not codified in there how we're gonna do this.

Rob: 12:16

We've not lent into our current reality to see where we are so we know where we're starting from. But what we have done is painted a rich, compelling, bright, and interesting future for the organization. Now you can do this for your own life, of course. You know, I wanna be earning x amount of money doing this particular work, helping these people, living in this particular area. You know, but don't describe the how.

Rob: 12:36

Let go of that. Let go of the current reality for now as you write this bright painted picture. Now of course once we've got this bright painted picture, I like to describe this picture. Imagine, you know, we've written this out. It's in words.

Rob: 12:48

We've described it. But then try and imagine a picture, an actual painting on an easel. And in front of this vision that we've created, this painted picture, are some mountains. Now the mountains are goals. And what we're gonna need to do now is to derive some goals from that painted picture.

Rob: 13:05

So for example, we might have a goal that is to create a world class rapid, fast, and effective recruitment process. We could have a goal that says we are going to make sure our platform, if we're doing software, is the most reliable platform it possibly can be. We might have a goal that says we're gonna grow our team by a 100% by the end of the year and it's only gonna be filled with really high caliber people that add to the society of our company. We're gonna make it hard to get a job here. You know, and you can start to see how some of these goals will sort of fall out from that painted picture.

Rob: 13:41

Now these aren't gonna be the only goals because as we move into step 2, we're gonna add some more goals to this list because we're gonna lean into reality to understand where we are so that we know what to do to move towards this bright painted picture. But this is a picture. This is aspirational. This is nirvana, utopia. It would be an amazing organization to work for if we were living that reality right now.

Rob: 14:02

And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to create an emotional connection to this bright future, to this painted picture So that like minded people wanna join us and help us and wanna buy into that mission. There's something connecting them. We're not here just to make a profit. We're not here just to build 1500 widgets.

Rob: 14:20

We're here to do something bigger and that is the whole point. This bright painted compelling picture of the future. And that is step 1 of the releasing agility model. Obviously, I haven't gone into a lot of depth on that but there will be a blog post on cultivatormanagement.com where I include some more examples of painted pictures from my own experience. And also some more ideas on how to, I guess, write your own and come up with your own.

Rob: 14:46

Like I say, this works for your own life as well and it's something that I've been doing for years. I remember 17 years ago now when my first son was born, I did this exercise. And frankly before that I was just living life day to day with no direction, no focus, no goals, not a lot of drive and motivation to do anything more than play video games and drive around in Japanese supercars. That was about my life. And when my first son was born, I sat down and I created a painted picture for my life 10 years from then.

Rob: 15:17

And everything on that list, everything in that painted picture came about. And we'll talk about why that is in step 2. And it's got everything to do with focus and energy and attention and making a decision which we'll talk about in episode 2. So with that you might have heard in my voice I'm still recovering from that virus that shall not be mentioned otherwise this podcast wouldn't get aired. So I hope you've enjoyed that though.

Rob: 15:43

I hope that's been helpful and it really is a powerful technique. And in the next few podcasts what we'll do is we'll break down the next parts of this model. But in order to release agility to move smoothly and quickly towards your goals, you're gonna need those goals. But in order to drive those goals, you're really gonna need to know what it is that's bigger than that. And that is what the painted picture is.

Rob: 16:04

And with that, I look forward to speaking to you in the next episode. You take care of yourselves. Bye bye.