A supply chain where no money changes hands

Rob Hughes of Live and Learn International prompted me to think about my professional understanding of a supply chain. My corporate experience taught me to think about supply as a series of requirements being defined, constraints being understood (timing, production, cost), contracts being negotiated. All resulting in a product or service being exchanged, often repeatedly for an end outcome. 

But how to consider this in the space of social change globally. In an environment where approximately 80 individuals hold more wealth than the rest of the world. How inequitable that those who most need the products that can improve their quality of life cannot afford to participate in our supply chain which has been developed in a capatilist world!

I have rarely heard social enterprise discussion where a non monetary exchange of goods is discussed. Rob used the example where in Vanuatu post cyclone families would cook a meal for a community who in exchange would support the family to rebuild their home.

I wonder how it would be possible to integrate both a monetary and non monetary exchange into the same supply chain. I believe the answer fundamentally lies in the definition and scaling of what constitutes value. 

It will take great skill to negotiate mutual value and have it defined by different systems; one monetary and one non monetary. For me this could be the fundamental reason why we should increase the value we place on emotional intelligence. To enable the world majority to participate through the value system defined by the world minority, one of money, there must be an increase in mutual understanding.

If both sides of an exchange, value what they are giving and receiving equally, does it matter what currency or scale they value it in? If the next step in the supply chain measures that value by a different scale again, does it matter? I say no, as long as value is reaching those to whom it can make the biggest difference. I think there is an exciting opportunity for non traditional thinking in this space.

A reflection on #ilooklikeanengineer

The #ilooklikeanengineer campaign prompted me to reflect on what it has meant for me to “look like an engineer” and how my concept of the relationship between my interests, the degree I hold and who I am has changed, and continues to change.

When I looked like a toddler, I would spend hours in my dad’s garage sorting a huge drum of random nuts and bolts he kept next to his work bench. Finding the ones that fitted together and those that didn’t. I enjoy working with my hands and I have always taken pleasure in ordering and sorting.

When I looked like a high school student, I was strong at maths and science. In my final years I  wanted to join the airforce and study through the Australian Defence Force Academy. I was also the type of person to be involved in a wide variety of extra curricular activities and took great pleasure in helping others succeed. I did not at the time recognise the strength of this as a leadership quality. It was unheard of for girls at my school to join the defence force, the type of engineer that I hoped to be did not conform to the engineer that my peers imagined.

When I looked like a university student I was one of five girls in a year level of 120 students. I found myself in an environment where I did not physically look like my peers. So I dressed like them, I spoke like them and I tried to take an interest in the cars and computer games which my peers enjoyed. We mirror what is around us to minimise the threat we feel when we do not fit in, these were a group of future engineers, but again I did not look, or feel, like them.

To me, the #ilooklikeanengineer campaign has diversity at its heart, and the unique value that we all have to contribute regardless of our physical appearance, demographic, interests, or qualifications. According to the Grattan institute, female workforce participation, only one element of diversity, has the potential to contribute an additional $25 billion to the Australian economy. Imagine what opportunity exists across the range of demographic features.

When I looked like a graduate engineer I again pulled my hair back and invested in dark coloured pants. It took me 6 years to be comfortable wearing a skirt in the manufacturing environment. Admittedly, an outfit of skirts, high vis, and safety boots is quite a statement. It was only when I left this environment that I began to appreciate just how the male dominated culture around me had influenced my dress, speech and leadership style. Particularly, I had continually told myself that I had not achieved success, because the qualities I was using as my benchmark - the qualities around me - were so far from my own.

While I now look like an engineer who has left the engineering sector, I do not consider that I have left. I am now privileged to work at Engineers Without Borders Australia, where engineers are directly involved in the type of work that the engineering profession evolved from; providing basic services in health, sanitation, clean water, energy and shelter to those who need it most. Everyday I use the logic, systems thinking, and change management skills that will define my career. These are the skills embedded in me by my engineering training - these are the skills that have enabled me to thrive in dynamic uncertain environments.

I believe, we are too often introduced by the degree we achieved and subsequently defined by the stereotypes of the profession. A career as an engineer can embody so many different skills, qualities and outcomes - engineers should not look the same. Like many other professions, engineers are a diverse range of people of many races, both sexes, and many different backgrounds. We all look different.

I am Jane Hadjion. I live in Melbourne Australia. I care about reducing my communities’ impact on the environment. I value openness, thoughtfulness, people who are willing to have a go, I love wearing colour and high heels.

And regardless of where I am working, or what I am wearing, #ilooklikeanengineer.

Reflection: "Open" by Andre Agassi

Que lindo es sonar despierto

"Que lindo es sonar despierto...How lovely it is to dream while you are awake...Anybody can dream while they're asleep, but you need to dream all the time and say your dream out loud, and believe in them."

I was struck reading Andre Agassi's autobiography by how clearly, belief, in ones self, in the method and in the cause determined the outcome of Agassi's games throughout his career. Agassi repeatedly describes how lonely the game of tennis is "there's no where to hide when things go wrong. No dugout, no sideline, no neutral corner. It's just you out there naked." I couldn't help but think how a leadership journey is similarly lonely and fraught with a tenuous reliance on self belief. For if you don't believe then why would anyone follow you and how can you ever expect to be an inspiration to others.

Leadership puts you front and center. It is exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. I recently observed of myself to a friend that 'people seem to follow me even when I am not consciously cultivating a following'. This behavior is something I need to be aware of because the loneliness which comes with leadership needs to be conscious or you put the relationships around you at risk. The horrible feeling which comes when you have to discipline someone who is a genuinely good person who has made an error. There's potentially whole blog post on what discipline is!

Not only do you have to believe in yourself which is something that in my experience is constantly challenged but you have to maintain your belief in the cause or end goal. It took Agassi most of his career doing something he hated to even figure out what his end goal was, a school which inspires learning. I think it is so important to foster a goal and to speak it out loud. And most importantly to not be afraid to change it. I think it is a totally unrealistic expectation that we place on children and young people to know what they want to do and why they care about that thing. The definition of the goal itself is an essential part of the journey.

For our goal to be something that we can truly believe in and dream out loud it is likely to be something intimately personal. I believe it takes a serious dose of courage to put a voice to these types of dreams. In my experience I have been better at articulating the method not the dream....which means I have had to admit openly to finding a more appropriate method, thus an apparent change of my mind, many times!! Setting up my own consultancy last year and discovering that really my impact can be greater by working within existing programs and organisations is an example of this. In reality the dream hasn't changed but how I am working towards it has.

"Dreams are so damned tiring...I can't promise you won't be tired. But please know this. There's a lot of good waiting for you on the other side of tired. Get yourself tired Andre. That's where you're going to know yourself. On the other side of tired."

This quotation resonated with me because I have these moments, where I don't want to engage in the world I have built for myself. In fact often I want to do the opposite. Agassi built a team of people around himself to ensure that when he had these moments he had solid places to turn, not to have his dream shoved in his face but to have an open safe conversation about whether the dream had changed, what it had become and whether the path had shifted. I think in the world of leadership an equally strong and diverse team is critical. Identify these people in your life, cultivate a relationship with them and don't be afraid to add or tweak the team based on what you need at the time.

Thought of the day: Personal happiness as an eco-system

I had wine with a good friend who extended my eco-system analogy to describe his nirvana. 

I think the theory is contingent on coming from a place where everyone is well intentioned and good at the core of their person. As Robert Deniro says "I don't play bad guys. I play people who make choices that are different from other people's". So coming from a premise of good we must work to understand why each person in their unique combination of circumstances makes the decisions they do. And if we can't understand at least we have respect that that was right for that person at that time in that circumstance.

From there we theorised that, with so much available to stimulate us and so much expectation of a benefit on every experience, perhaps the answer to happiness is to build an eco-system where each experience or enagament is balanced or balances an element of another. And in this way create create an equilibrium for ourselves which is happiness. As such we should make decisions and choose to engage with people and experiences who positively contribute to balancing and maintaining our own personal eco-system. For example when I bought a new puppy recently my nephew said to me that he wasn't sure if he could love Mimi because he loved his cat, we discussed that there is no quota for love, we don't run out and it can be shared with out loosing any of its power. Do we forget this along the way? Do we apply it to all parts of our lives?

What might this approach do for the way you love, relate, play, work, travel?

Who are you mirroring when you lead?

Any parent can tell you that we are born mimics. It's how we learn, I acknowledge not the only way, but a very primal very inate method. So when attending a UN Women's breakfast entitled "Driving Gender Diversity in the Workplace" and listening to Julie McKay Executive Director of UN Women Australia I was struck. Julie commented that female leaders are told "don't act like a man you're too masculine, but don't act like a woman either because then you be perceived as weak".

I have personally experienced and continue to experience this dichotomy in my leadership journey. And I am far from alone. You only have to look to the media and their commentary on female politicians hair, shoes or clothing to see the effects of this in action. 

As to my personal experience. In my first professional leadership position as a front line manager I began as the only female manager in the factory, with approx 15 peers and over 500 staff of whom less than a handful were female. It was a unionised workforce with many of the old school union behaviours, aggression, swearing, heavy drinking, and a general dislike of any kind of authority still prevalent in day to day interactions. 

The dominant leadership style at the time was one of aggression and demonstrations of power. 

As my career progressed and because of my personality (I love a robust argument) I was perceived as too masculine and aggressive. It took me to completely remove myself from that environment to understand how I was missing any alternatives in the behaviour around me. There was no diversity in the styles I was observing. 

I am a stronger more confident leader as a result of those experiences and my style continues to evolve. We a built to mimic to fit in, for safety, it is a hard thing to teach how to reject the behaviour being demonstrated in your immediate sphere. This is exacerbated when those exhibiting it have stopped accepting their own style and see it as an afront when reflected in you.

I hope that by sharing my experience young female leaders can be encouraged early and often to expose tthemselves to a variety of styles in a variety of settings. Collect, treasure, analyse both what you are observing and your own reflection of see behaviours.

UN Women whitepaper 'Re thinking Merit'

Businesses as an eco system

Wikipedia Defines an Eco system as "An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system." 

Could there be a more succinct way of describing all of the living organisms individuals, business, customers, stakeholders and non-living components systems, policies, procedures, hardware to name but a few of the labels we attribute to running an organisation. 

So often in change management one or more of these is overlooked as minor or unnecessary. And yet I believe all of them are interacting in their current state for a reason. Not necessarily a good, productive or healthy reason but a reason none the less. Broken systems will create, hire, adapt, work around or show symptoms of the inbalance impacting its ability to function as an efficient system.

When managing change this thinking may seem overwhelming. My approach however is rather to keep my eyes, ears, fingers and mind open during the changes. In this way you maintain a high degree of sensitivity to the subtle but related changes as they happen. Just as an ecosystem will work to rebalance itself over time, if us humans don't push it too far to begin with and keep out of the way.

Regular small changes interspersed with major shifts in direction are therefore my preferred implementation method. This thinking is somewhat similar to agile development which introduces a product in many small rapid iterations which are as independent as possible but contribute to the whole. Independence is key to keeping the whole system moving towards the desired end state while removing what any excuse for inaction. Too often people I observe people paralysed by not knowing where the right place to start is. Taking no action is worse than a small mistake. And if you make no mistakes you probably should just have thrown the original out and gone with your vision in one foul swoop!

Finally a note on planning. As an engineer we were always taught to know, analyse then act. Unfortunately the reality of change management is in my experience you are almost always acting without all the information, in a time poor environment which cannot wait for the analysis but demands action anyway. Recognising the decision paralysis that this leaves many intelligent people in is key, as is that pesky thing called gut instinct. For this reason analysis paralysis and incredible plans but a complete lack of action are all too common. 

So my advice is take the information you can get, analyse what you can in the time and with the resources available and then act in small incremental steps with your senses on high alert for the shifts in the system you are tweaking. Then do it all again based on the change you see. 

Some related thinking:

- Agile development 

Another way for agriculture with more science not less

I was inspired tonight by Louise Fresco and Dan Barber and their views on agriculture. Too often those passionate about a better future are caught in blaming science and industrialisation without focus on celebrating.

I see little value in wasting energy on the errors of the past (there's multiple posts on my approach to waste to come), we will continue to evolve as will our knowledge, as will the planet around us. George Bernard Shaw wrote "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing" The Doctors Dilema 1913, for to me mistakes provide a wonderful platform for learning. 

Both Louise and Dan celebrated what we have achieved with our increased knowledge and called for us to do more of it...just to do it better.

Louise celebrated the humble but much maligned "wonderloaf" tasteless mass produced whit bread found almost ubiquitously in supermarkets across the planet. But what an achievement to have mass produced safe calories on such a scale. She reminded us that we live in an age where only 5% of the population produce the worlds food.with those statistics it is little wonder most are disconnected from its source.

All while us hippy yuppy generation are busy talking local and small scale and a return to doing things by hand. Yikes I agree we must have collectively forgotten what it was like in centuries past for most of our peasant ancestors. No time for blog writing back then!

Louise uses the term regional not local...bigger and more mechanised than the peasants we were but not so big we become disconnected and we loose sight of the impact we are having on our world.

Dan Barber spoke of his friend Miguel in southern Spain who works on a fish farm that doesn't feed its animals, measures success on the health of its predators and is a water filtration plant leaving a positive impact on the environment. All though what I believe epitomises Louise's concept of better science. An ecosystem so perfectly in tune that we all benefit. And as Dan points out it tastes great too. When asked how he got into fish, Miguel is quoted as saying "I know nothing about fish, what I know about is relationships".

So it got me thinking about the concept of smarter science both within the ecosystems of a business and more broadly. Building an ecosystem that is positively contributing to the world in such a way that it is greater than the sum of its parts is what I will continue to dedicate my career too and is a beautiful way to summarise my approach to leadership.

For those who wish to be similarly inspired:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish?language=en

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish?language=en

The cliché of wanting to change the world

So you're not a kid any more but you've held onto a deep seated desire for what you to do to have meaning. If you're feeling super comfortable you might even tell someone you'd love to change the world. 

Not in a major way, I mean you're not delusional! But you've done some reading and come to the conclusion you're firmly in the 50% of people who, want what they do, to have meaning.

The placebo effect has been shown to have positive benefits for peoples health. I wonder then if we get enough people imagining the world the way it can be. Sustainable, safe, equitable, fair. If we all shared that vision, then the actions to support that vision will have no choice but to follow.

Actions (or reactions) follow belief. So what if we were all to follow in the steps of Steve Jobs and create the 'reality distortion field' not around a product or service but to define the future we want.

What do you believe it should look like? 

Blunting creativity

Children are born with the most incredible aptitude for learning, ingenuity and creativity. They are not limited by which concepts should and should not be used together (eg. physics and jewellery!?) or where the boundaries of one concepts starts or stops and the next one begins. 

Engineers are taught to operate to the black and white ‘truths’ of mathematics and the laws of physics. In business  Within these boundaries and many more placed on a designer by the forces exerted on a project we tweak and pull, push and prod until we have a design that doesn’t impinge on any one boundary more than another.

But what if this way of teaching and thinking is fundamentally flawed. What if it is limiting to the point that we will never make the leaps of faith that Newton, Einstein and others made. For they did not know these boundaries and as such they were able to define their own boundaries.

By working with people, directly with people, and with their needs I believe we can see past and challenge the barriers we are taught to view as limiting. It its as if by talking about the solution and focussing on that we can see through the panes of glass that stand between us and it. And by working collectively, creatively and collaboratively I believe we can step around these panes of glass to achieve things like Tesla has with its electric car and battery.

So I challenge you to view the boundaries we have been taught are limiting as panes of glass. Through which the future can be glimpsed and around which if we are creative and audacious enough we can step.

This type of thinking is what has attracted me to the not for profit and purpose driven world of social enterprise.