How digital workplace teams can thrive in a VUCA world

[00:00:03.530] – Maureen Ennis 

You know, whenever I think about risk, I think of a tool that it’s a Six Sigma tool. It’s called a FMEA failure modes and effect analysis. Essentially what it does is helps teams slow down and have a conversation about what could go wrong. What are the breakdowns? I think it’s a critical conversation for teams to be having at all different stage pages of their work. So what could go wrong? How would we even know in this crazy, disruptive world that it was going wrong? And what will we do about it? 

[00:00:36.730] – Nancy Goebel 

Maureen Ennis, a chief change catalyst hybrid workforce expert and founder of Thrive, is someone to whom I was introduced by, of all people, her sister, Beth Gleba, who is a longtime personal friend, former DWG colleague, and current DWG member from BCD Travel. In case you haven’t come across Maureen, her mission is to partner with executives to build highly productive, cohesive teams based on trust using a heart, head and hands methodology, which can be a very powerful foundation for collaboration, productivity and transformative growth. She’s worked with leaders from such organizations as Amazon, Visa, Honeywell and Covanta, and it just felt like a really timely intersection point to bring together two ideas. One is that Maureen just published new research on big impact teams, which is the marquee topic for our studio chat today. And of course, we’ll include a link to Maureen’s research in the show notes for this episode. But you may remember that in my predictions for the digital workplace for 2024, I talked about the fact that digital workplace leaders would start the year’s chaos coordinators and finish as outriders, and it just felt like an important window of time to bring together those two elements. 

[00:02:27.150] – Nancy Goebel 

And so I was delighted to have a chance to talk with Maureen about some of the different frameworks that she uses to lead such big impact teams through what she calls a VUCA world. This is your host, Nancy Goebel, and DWG’s Chief Executive. As always, Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by Digital Workplace Group. Join me now in conversation with Maureen. Happy listening, 

[00:03:02.650] – Nancy Goebel 

Maureen. I am just thrilled to have you in the studio today. We have so much to chat about. But first, let me start by saying happy new year and welcome. 

[00:03:14.110] – Maureen Ennis 

Well, thank you so much. Happy New Year. I am very happy to be here today, kicking off the new year with this conversation. 

[00:03:20.850] – Nancy Goebel 

And so I know that you have tremendous insight and expertise. And in following you, one of the things that I often see you quoted as saying is today we live in a VUCA world, and I think that’s foundational to this conversation. So what does that mean? And why should digital workplace teams specifically care about that? 

[00:03:50.630] – Maureen Ennis 

Absolutely. Yes. 

[00:03:52.860] – Maureen Ennis 

VUCA is an acronym, and it surfaced about 25 years ago. It was developed by the Army War College, and it referenced the situation of the world, the world we now live in. And it stands for a world that is volatile. Things can pop up at any time, pandemics, world events. Change is more than random and frequent. It’s now popping up where we’re not expecting it. It’s uncertain, it’s complex, having many different levels and ambiguous. So as a change leader, in the beginning of my career, we would always use this phrase, we live in a rapidly changing world, and now we use VUCA more. It conveys more than that. It conveys the fact that where we are now is that change can be drastic and disruptive, and we need to be prepared for that. We need to live in a way that we know that’s coming. Some important keys for digital teams and all teams to be successful and thrive in a VUCA world is we need to be resilient and adaptive, responding to the circumstances while staying focused on things like the organization’s mission. And we really need to strengthen collaboration across teams, organizations and businesses. 

[00:05:15.030] – Maureen Ennis 

So a lot of the tools of the digital workplace and digital teams really help us with this. Part of the need is that we can’t afford to be constrained by location or traditional structures anymore. It’s really a space where digital teams are a bit ahead of the game. And lastly, we need new models of leadership, teaming and work. 

[00:05:37.850] – Nancy Goebel 

Well, I have to say this exploration couldn’t be more timely. In the fourth quarter, I released predictions for the digital workplace for 2024. And not surprisingly, I talked about the fact that when you look at the volatility around the global economy, when you look at the rise of generative AI, both for organizations on the client side and on the digital workplace side, we’re seeing lots of change, whether it’s clamping down on expenses or shifting from growth to profitability, or figuring out what to do when disruptive technologies like Gen AI hit the scene. And so at the heart of all of this, as you put it, there’s a lot of change. And digital workplace teams and their leaders are at the epicenter of facilitating change. And so I just felt like it was the right moment for us to have a conversation about what digital workplace leaders, and their teams in particular, need to be thinking about doing vis a vis being adaptive and ready for any future challenge. So with that in mind, where do we start? 

[00:07:03.270] – Maureen Ennis 

The place to start with all change is the idea of embracing change as the new normal and being able to let go of the old ways of doing things and in a continuous mode and culture of adopting new ways of working, not getting stuck in the trap of not doing anything because we don’t know what’s going to happen or we can’t plan for any challenge. So the first one is to let go of that need for certainty and to be adopting new ways of working through experimentation and taking risks. That starts with leaders starting with themselves and then moving on to their teams, creating a culture of not only innovation, but the fact that it’s okay to try things out, fail and learn from those failures. I think sometimes some of the efficiency that our business and corporate cultures have embraced over the last couple of decades have challenged us in really creating these environments where failure is okay. So that’s a very important one for digital workforce leaders and teams. The next is really activating your team, having strong narratives to set things in motion, to get people motivated and clear on not only what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do things differently, but what you need for them to do. 

[00:08:39.660] – Maureen Ennis 

Mobilizing people, getting them into action, triggering employees and getting them to convene groups around some shared purpose and understand their role in what needs to happen. So organizing people for making change, and then the last one is to develop adaptive practices and strategies. If you’re going to be an adaptive team, we need to change the way we set strategies the way we did strategy years ago. Linear thinking doesn’t work anymore. We need to understand the different kind of processes for collaboration that will work when things are really changing often. And how do we align the idea that we could set goals once a year? That’s something that’s gone away. So we need new agile structures that teams need to adopt together and embody. 

[00:09:31.670] – Nancy Goebel 

So that’s a lot to take on for teams in a whole new way, just given the cadence and complexity of all the changes that are in flight. And in your research, you say that big impact teams don’t just pop up, they have to be developed with intention. So let’s talk a little bit about that as well. 

[00:10:01.070] – Maureen Ennis 

Yes, gone are the days of simple teams where everyone worked in one location for the same boss, primarily doing the same work year to year. Right. So when we’re talking about this environment and teams that need to be responsive and ready for anything, that there is some simple steps we can take to make sure that those teams are working collaboratively, together and willing to challenge each other that they are aligned, holding each other accountable. And I think most importantly, that the team itself is knowledgeable and is always learning about the art of leading change for other people, because many of these digital work teams and their leaders are bringing change to organizations. So the intentionality of bringing relationships to the forefront to make the team strong, to make sure that everyone is aligned and again, make it a place where people can challenge ideas and then bring it into the new organizations are very important. 

[00:11:06.710] – Nancy Goebel 

And I have to say, one of the things that really stood out for me is that your big impact teams framework really represents two sides of a coin. So on the one hand, yes, it’s a framework for team development, but it’s also a map for leadership, too. What more can you say about that, especially as it relates to digital workplace teams? 

[00:11:35.370] – Maureen Ennis 

The only pathway for leaders to learn to develop and sustain big impact teams is to actually work with the teams they have. The academic approach just doesn’t cut it for the work that needs to be done. So with our clients, we use this approach of taking a team that has a big challenge and a big goal to meet, and we pull them through together in the achievement of that goal. We walk them through the steps to being a big impact team, and it does indeed then helps to build the leader’s ability to do that again and again with other teams with core practices like building change narratives and convening people around a purpose and understanding what transformation and adoption takes, all those type of things, so we can work them through that. While we are taking the team through their journey and through the journey, we use a lot of progress assessments so we can replan and identify where focus is needed, what might be going wrong in that journey. But it’s not something that just does happen naturally. That’s something that’s a big change for leaders to understand. We often just assume that if we bring people together and get them working, the work will happen. 

[00:12:58.250] – Maureen Ennis 

The other piece of that is there’s a very intentional need to build relationships and build a team where everyone knows that their teammates have their back. It’s that situation when you get the best performance from a team. And again, seeing that as it happens, having it be an exercise that is actually moving a team forward so that they’re accomplishing their strategic goals while learning how to be great teams, so they can do that again and again. 

[00:13:30.360] – Nancy Goebel 

And of course, we’ve had the return to office in whole or in part, for many organizations. So the idea that distributed teams are equally changing rapidly is something to fold into the conversation. And so in thinking about this framework, the need to foster a deeper sense of connection, not just productivity within teams, is very much alive. And so let’s click down another level and talk a little bit about that. 

[00:14:05.730] – Maureen Ennis 

Yes, I am a big proponent of digital teams and the work that we can do when we collaborate, and we have used collaboration tools and all that, and the involvement of our hybrid workforce. But one thing that we do need to address and understand is that it does cause people to be more in isolation. There is not as much room for that ad hoc people talk about it as like being around the water cooler. So this is again, another place where we have to act with intention to bring that back in. One thing I like to talk about and why important for digital teams and distributed teams is the idea of connection before content. That when we convene together to come together, even if it is on a simple Zoom that we have every week, we need to make the time to stop for a moment and do a quick check in. Our team poses questions every week on LinkedIn, just that you could ask so that you are having a bit of social connection, getting to know your teammates better and building that trust. That’s so important when we really embark on the difficult work of challenges that is changing often. 

[00:15:27.480] – Nancy Goebel 

And I would just add a postscript there to say that’s a powerful way to do things when you’re gathered as a group. But importantly, those check ins should occur on a smaller scale, one to one as well. 

[00:15:42.190] – Maureen Ennis 

Yes, Nancy, you’re right. So this applies when you’re on a large group meeting, making the time just to do a quick check in. And certainly is even more important when you’re in small groups, one on one. Asking a simple question is an easy way just to do it, to take a breath before rushing into the content, to make time for a reflective question for someone. But how is it going? What is something that they are working on right now to bring the person into our conversations and not just focus on work. 

[00:16:15.520] – Nancy Goebel 

And I think the other thing we have to think about in looking at the idea of big impact teams is the notion of navigating risk. We’re operating at a time when change is moving with velocity, and for me that means speed with direction. And I’m curious as to what your advice is in helping teams navigate that risk. 

[00:16:47.250] – Maureen Ennis 

Whenever I think about risk, I think of a tool that it’s a six sigma tool. It’s called a FMEA failure modes and effect analysis. Essentially what it does is helps teams slow down and have a conversation about what could go wrong? What are the breakdowns? I think it’s a critical conversation for teams to be having at all different stages of their work. So what could go wrong? How would we even know in this crazy, disruptive world that it was going wrong and what will we do about it? So it’s a bit of an action plan, simple action plan that you could do on a very simple level and just a conversation or for a big project. It’s a tool that you can go into much more detail and rank the different risks and what would happen and what’s the degree of severity of those things happening. So that’s my first practical advice about how to be ready for that kind of risk. The second is to digital teams absolutely need to be at the forefront here and reading the world and following what’s going on through organizations like yourself to see what is happening, what are the shifts, and believing that those things will happen to you sooner than you think they might, and bringing that back to the rest of the organization. 

[00:18:07.680] – Maureen Ennis 

I think digital workplace teams are very important in terms of helping organizations see where those risks as well as opportunities live, where you need to be on them. And the last thing I would say in terms of risk, I think one of the biggest risks I see with the teams in today’s work world is this busyness trap, right? That everybody’s heads down doing work and making projects happen, and not daily having the practice of saying, what is it that we need to do today that will have the most value or impact, instead of just like going on and on with what you’re doing and not having your head up to see what might be happening around you. 

[00:18:55.210] – Nancy Goebel 

That’s such an important point. And so we’ve talked about connection. We’ve talked about risk. One of the other things that you speak of with great authority is the need to balance the head, the heart and the hands in working through becoming a big impact team. And in the age of generative AI, when there are a lot of unknowns and a need to evolve, tell us how that balance fits into the mix. 

[00:19:32.990] – Maureen Ennis 

Yeah, from a couple of different perspectives. So we’ve been talking about in this conversation that relationships are growing in importance in this kind of world. And it is maybe for some people an oxymoron that in a world that’s more and more technology focused, that your ability to build good relationships with people and collaborative teams and things like that is more and more important and will be more of a differentiator for your success as a leader, as a team member. Right. So the heart piece I believe becomes even more forward in this age, especially with generative AI and technology that we’re seeing, the digital workplace, it becomes even more of a differentiator for those in key roles. Right. For all of us, really. Right. I think what AI will do to some of our roles is take away some of the hands work, the work that is tactical. Our team has already started to use that and sees some of these shifts over the last year. Our work of leading change in terms of developing key messages or video scripts or tools has been transformed by what we can do with AI, which leaves us open for more of that relationship work, as well as stepping into more targeted areas where a team might need help, for instance, managing the flow of information as it crosses the team. 

[00:21:07.480] – Maureen Ennis 

So I think the heart will take even more precedence. The head, we are all going to be able to get smarter, will be still useful as a navigator of that. And I think hands is probably a place where we’ll see, we will have more tools that can do that kind of hand work for us in terms of making things happen in tactical work. 

[00:21:28.540] – Nancy Goebel 

In a sense, degenerative AI is an extension of the team and allows for us to level up on the head and heart. 

[00:21:40.530] – Maureen Ennis 

Absolutely, yes. And this is an area where we really look forward to helping our clients integrate that AI or technology into their process to be able to help them to create more value, add in the roles they hold and the work they’re doing and how they spend their time. 

[00:21:59.190] – Nancy Goebel 

So, Maureen, we’re coming quickly to the end of our time together. So I have two final questions for you. The first is, was there a question you were hoping I’d ask you and didn’t as part of this conversation. 

[00:22:14.490] – Maureen Ennis 

So there’s one thing I think of that is a challenge for big impact teams and digital teams and digital workplace leaders, and it has to do with how much time we’re working collaboratively and balancing it with asynchronous work, the work that we do ourselves when we’re doing on our own thinking time. And I do think that’s a place where leaders need to give thought to not having full blown schedules that have meetings every moment, so people don’t have the time to do their own thinking and creativity. I see that in my work with teams as something that needs to happen, that people don’t have time to think or be creative because they’re just in meetings all the time. And so this idea of asynchronous and carving out time for people to do their work and do it in a way that they can contribute to maybe some live documents or maybe even do it in small group, but that have creative time, I think is really important. 

[00:23:17.870] – Nancy Goebel 

And more and more technology and ultimately Gen AI will start to challenge us, as well as us trying to do it for ourselves. I’ve already seen some early examples of digital assistants that are looking at someone’s calendar for the week and saying, do you realize that you don’t have any focus time? Let me reorganize your week with you. 

[00:23:43.830] – Maureen Ennis 

Yes, that’s exactly it. And then there’s a will there, though, for teams that you have to be smart. And it comes into even the zones when digital work teams are trying to figure out what days will we need real time together, that you do need to spend time to figure out a system that does allow for that robust time together as well as a robust time apart. It can be done, but it takes some time. 

[00:24:14.050] – Nancy Goebel 

And just to cap off our time together, any final reflections? 

[00:24:18.530] – Maureen Ennis 

My final reflection here is, as you prompted throughout this conversation, it’s about digital work, team leaders, digital teams themselves, and teams that haven’t gone digital or even hybrid yet. Right? It affects everywhere. And my final reflection is that really, it takes leadership from everywhere. The more and more we go to these collaborative, distributed organizations, leadership can happen anywhere. And building the skills for all of us that we understand what it takes to make a great team, what it takes to be a great teammate, what it takes to be a good business professional that can come from anywhere. And these are important skills for everyone in the organization to adopt along with resilience. Right? Building your own personal resilience so that when things do change, you have the energy and the composure and the optimism to be able to come up with what’s next for yourself. 

[00:25:24.440] – Nancy Goebel 

And I say this often to DWG members. I think generative AI is introducing a new level of natural curiosity which promotes continuous learning. So the better the questions you ask, the better the information you uncover, and then that prompts a different set of questions and then the list goes on. 

[00:25:50.110] – Maureen Ennis 

It is a great tool for teaching people to make good questions. I’ve noticed that as well. I totally agree with you. And in what we teach, that is one of our philosophies that we need to move from telling people to do things to asking great questions, being curious, as well as helping other people trigger their own reflection. And I do think that that is one of the maybe side benefits of AI, is teaching us to be better questioners. 

[00:26:19.370] – Nancy Goebel 

And so, Maureen, I’m really pleased that you had a chance to step away from a busy day and have a chat with me in the studio. There have been some fascinating insights and frameworks that you’ve introduced to us around the idea of developing big impact teams and the leaders around them. So thank you so much for coming into the studio today. 

[00:26:44.290] – Maureen Ennis 

Thank you as well. And to everyone out there, just keep on moving forward. 

[00:26:50.770] – Nancy Goebel 

Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by the Digital Workplace Group. DWG is a strategic partner covering all aspects of the evolving digital workplace industry, not only through membership, but also benchmarking and boutique consulting services. For more information, visit digitalworkplacegroup.com.