Working Out Loud Advocacy in Organizations
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This document discusses working out loud (WOL), which involves making one's work visible, sharing it openly, and collaborating with others. It advocates WOL as a way to build skills, relationships, and contribute value through generosity and a growth mindset. The document references experts who have praised WOL for developing digital skills and leading to positive outcomes through emergent results. It also showcases an example of how Bosch organizes WOL circles and provides additional resources for learning more about implementing WOL.
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Working Out Loud Advocacy in Organizations
- 1. Michelle Ockers | @michelleockers Advocating Working Out Loud in an Organisation Michelle Ockers #EduTECHAU #WOL
- 2. 2
- 4. 4 Elements Of Working Out Loud Visible Work Generosity A Growth Mindset Purposeful Discovery Relationships
- 6. 6 “What am I trying to do?” “Who can help me?” “How can I contribute to them to deepen our relationships?”
- 7. 7 Dion Hinchcliffe, digital strategist and author “Of all the digital skills that workers should be developing now, perhaps the one that most naturally is an onramp to most of the others and leads to both positive outcomes and compelling emergent results is the act of working out loud (WOL) in digital channels. …the push for organizations to create WOL circles to build skills around the technique is probably the best place to start.”
- 8. 8
- 9. SOCIAL PROOF
- 10. SOCIAL PROOF Source: How We Organise Working Out Loud at Bosch. https://wolweek.com/2017/06/04/how-we-organize-working-out-loud- at-bosch/
- 11. SOCIAL PROOF
- 12. 12 How We Organize Working Out Loud at Bosch, Katharina Krentz WOLWeek.com
- 13. SHOWCASE
- 14. SHOWCASE
- 15. SHOWCASE
- 17. STRATEGIC LINK
- 18. STRATEGIC LINK
- 19. 19 1.0 3.0 2.0 1.0 SOCIAL PROOF STRATEGIC LINK SHOWCASE MOMENTUM IMPACT SPONSORSHIP FIRST WAVE © Michelle Ockers, 2017
- 20. @michelleockers Michelle Ockers michelleockers.com 20 workingoutloud.com • Circles Guides • Blog • Other resources INTERESTED?
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to Working Out Loud Week. Ask for a show of hands: “Who is participating in Working Out Loud Week?” “Who has heard of Working Out Loud Week?” International Working Out Loud week is a twice annual celebration of the working out loud movement. Occurring in June and November each year, WOLWeek is an opportunity for the community of working out loud practitioners to come together, to share their work, to learn and to advocate. To join in all you need to do to start is share work in progress with a relevant community. You could start by tweeting during this session using the hashtags on screen. Today I’m going to talk to you about 3 tactics you can use to advocate Working Out Loud in an organisation. First, let’s talk take a look at what this term means and where it came from.
- I came across Working Out Loud in 2014 when I was working at Coca-Cola Amatil as the leader of the Supply Chain Technical Academy. At the time I was exploring social learning and improving my own practices to help me figure out how to utilise it more effectively across the organisation. I began using social media to connect with people I wanted to learn from around the world. I was participating regularly in a monthly real time chat on Twitter called Ozlearn. On 12th August 2014 we talked about Working Out Loud, and I was introduced to the idea of a ‘Working Out Loud Circle’. Circles were being pioneered by John Stepper at Deutsche Bank, who was writing a book about Working Out Loud. What I didn’t realise was that meeting John online and being introduced to Working Out Loud would transform my professional development, help me to become much more effective in my job, and to introduce an important foundational 21st century capability into my organisation.
- It’s like a superpower. Who’d like to have a superpower? Maybe some of you have already have this superpower. Ask for a show of hands: “Who is already Working Out Loud – even if only some of the time?” Speak with 1 or 2 people in the audience and ask “What do you do to Work Out Loud?” Let’s take at what this superpower looks like.
- First let’s cover the fundamentals. Ask for show of hands: “Who is familiar with these 5 elements of Working Out Loud?” It’s all about building relationships that can help you in some way as you purposefully work towards a goal. Instead of networking to get something, you lead with generosity. This allows you to build relationships that that help you to access other people, knowledge and possibilities. Part of the process is making your work visible and frame it as a contribution. Bringing the growth mindset that Professor Carol Dweck spoke about in the opening session of EduTech this morning creates an openness to discover new things and learn as you build relationships. Of course you can do all of this over coffee and meetings, but using the internet greatly increases your ability to reach and engage with people.
- A good way to get started is to join a Working Out Loud Circle. A Circle is a small peer support group that meets for an hour a week for 12 weeks. Free Circle guides describe small steps that you can take each week to build skills and a habit of Working Out Loud. The guides are easy to follow and Circles can self-facilitate. At the end of 12 weeks By the end of your 12 weeks in a circle, people have developed a larger, more diverse network and a set of skills and habits that they can apply toward any goal.
- There are three critical questions to getting started. The first is ask ‘what am I trying to do’ - that is, to write a goal. This should be something that’s important to you which you can achieve in 12 weeks. For my first Circle it was to learn more about social learning. Next you make a list of people who may be able to help you to reach this goal. Perhaps you know some people already that you can put on your list. Maybe you have to play internet detective to figure this out. People on my list included Jane Hart from the Modern Workplace Learning Centre, John Stepper, Simon Terry and Helen Blunden - plus others that I did not know yet. Then comes the most powerful question of all. What was it that John F Kennedy said about asking what your country can do for you? <pause> To paraphrase that - “Ask not what your network can do for you, but what you can do for your network.” Flip the old-fashioned approach to networking on it’s head. By contributing to others you deepen relationships and opportunities arise, including working towards your goal. The rest of the guides walk you through ways you can contribute to people to deepen relationships. I started watching and listening to others more closely. I showed appreciation (said thank you), liked posts. I read and shared people’s online content, and left comments. I told others about their work and contributions. I shared relevant resources with them. I introduced people to each other. And along the way I learned. That’s the thing about social learning – it involves others and happens along the way as you interact with others and deepen relationships. So you can see why as a Learning Practitioner you would be interested in Working Out Loud as a powerful approach to your own professional development, as well as unleashing social learning in your organisation.
- Why am I suggesting Working Out Loud Circles versus other approaches? It’s a quick and easy way to get started. A program has already been designed and has been through several iterations. All the resources can be downloaded for free. There are no special facilitation skills required. Circles scale quickly with a little support. Dion Hinchcliffe, a leading digital strategist, has described working out loud as an onramp to other digital circles, and has endorsed Circles as the best place to start building Working Out Loud Skills. Completing a Circle will give you the experience you need to figure out how best to introduce them in your organisation, and how to support them.
- I’m going to show you 3 tactics you can use to advocate Working Out Loud in your organisation using Working Out Loud Circles. First there is a pre-requisite. Don’t skip this step. YOU must do a Working Out Loud Circle first. You can’t be a life guard if you can’t swim – not a very good one anyway. How? It’s easy. Start your own Circle – find 2-3 others who are interested, download the guides and get started. I also help to put people together to get started and if you give me your business card at the end of this session with the word Circle written on it I will help you with this.
- The first tactic is Social Proof. To generate interest in Working Out Loud you’ll need to start speaking with people in your organisation about it. There is a range of resources available on the site workingoutloud.com that you can use to help you to have these conversations. When you have these conversations you can leverage social proof. You can point to the growing number of organisations who are now running Working Out Loud Circles in over 20 countries around the world
- You can talk about why these organisations are doing it and some of the results they’re getting, which we’ll look at later in this session. When you are speaking with senior leaders your goal is to see if you can find a sponsor early – someone who sees the potential and is willing to support you to run a first wave of Circles.
- When you are talking to individuals or teams, make it personal. Your goal is to generate grass roots interest and attract people to take part in a Circle. Help people to see how it works for others who are a bit like them. You can look on the workingoutloud.com site and Facebook Working Out Loud group for stories, or find them in your own network or Circle. Of course, you can talk about your own experience too. One example I used with some groups at Coca-Cola Amatil was Nikolay Savvinov. Nikolay is an engineer in Moscow who specialises in improving the performance of databases. Despite working in a large global firm, the only people aware of Nikolay or his work were his manager and the few people who had to call him for help. He set about to change that, to have people around the organisation know who he was and what he was capable of. He did this by blogging, contributing to an online community of database experts, organising a performing-tuning working group amongst other thigs. His profile as an expert rose and new opportunities opened up for him.
- Your intent in drawing on social proof and getting out and talking to people about WOL is to get enough interest to run your first round of WOL Circles. How many? As many as you can get interest for in a relatively short space of time. Then you support them. Refer to my blog post titled ‘Running a First Wave of Working Out Loud Circles in an Organisation’ to see how I set up and supported first round of Circles at CCA. You may also like to read the post How We Organize Working Out Loud at Bosch on WOLWeek.com (posted 4 June 2017)
- The second tactic is to Showcase results from your first wave of Circles – to generate both social proof and relevant data that helps demonstrate the value of Working Out Loud in your organisation.
- By the end of their time in a Circle many people are happy to share their story via video and encourage others to join a Circle. Here’s an example from CCA.
- Another way to do to showcase is via a survey. The results shown on the screen are from CCA’s first wave of Circles. I recommend doing a baseline survey of the kind of skills and benefits that Working Out Loud can bring. Do this before your Circles commence so that you can compare with participant’s ratings at the end of their Circle. Gather quotes in your survey as well. Showcase your stories, data and quotes in whatever way you can. On your Enterprise Social Network. In online and face-to-face forums. In front of leadership meetings. Most importantly get it in front of senior leaders so you can find a sponsor and legitimise continuing – moving from running Circles as an experiment to a worthwhile ongoing activity. Which leads us to the final tactic for advocating Working Out Loud Circles.
- Get strategic. Right from the outset seek to align Circles with strategic objectives. Look around at what is going on in your organisation and figure out how you could create a link to results that matter in your organisation. Talk to sponsors of initiatives in these areas to generate interest in trialling Circles as part of these initiatives or including them in change or learning programs. Perhaps these strategic initiatives will help you to identify target groups to speak to about participating in a Circle. Maybe they will give you clues about the kind of topics to include in your pre and post Circle surveys.
- For example, in this survey question we’ve asked participants about the potential for Working Out Loud to contribute to some key strategic objectives at CCA.
- You can also draw on external social proof to help make this linkage. Bosch have now run over 140 circles with over 500 participants. The data on this slide was shared on the WOL Week blog post referred to earlier. The value proposition has been generated based on surveys of Circle participants. The proposition for Bosch includes alignment to things that matter strategically such as becoming an agile, connected company, developing digital collaboration, and innovation.
- Let’s bring the 3 tactics and your goal in using them together. Start with social proof. Draw on examples of organisations that are using Working Out Loud Circles and tell stories about how individuals have worked out loud and the benefits they’ve received. Your goal is to attract enough interest to run a first wave of Circles. Showcase the outcomes of these Circles using stories, data and quotes from participants. Share the results in as many ways and places as you can, with the aim of attracting a senior Sponsor. Linking the practices and outcomes of Working Out Loud to your organisation’s strategy will help with attracting a Sponsor and gathering momentum to run more Circles and increase the impact of Working Out Loud in your organisation.
- If you are interested in trying Working Out Loud and would like a copy of John Stepper’s book I will give you one in exchange for your business card. I will give you a week or two to look at the book and online resources, then follow up with you.