Enterprise Humility

Photo by Eric Ziegler

Enterprise humility is extremely important. But enterprise humility in many companies is very difficult. Think about it. How many people are truly humble? I know that I can show humility and be humble. But I know that I am not humble or show humility in all situations. I can think of many situations where people have come up to me and pumped me full of stuff that made my head 10x's bigger. While I might not be humble as often as I would want to be, I do embrace humility and the humility that I show has served me well, allowing me to listen to others, respect others, which has turned into others listening to me and respecting me. If individuals struggle with humility, what is the likelihood that enterprise show humility?

As an organization, enterprise humility is about respecting the employees, accepting that your employees will make mistakes and encouraging them to learn from the mistakes. Enterprise humility is about encouraging employees to share, work out loud (#WOL) and try "things" that are risky but within some defined set of rules. If an employee is able to make mistakes, it enables them to push the limits of what is possible. They will learn more. The will grow faster. The company will be more effective and be more successful. While there might be a step backwards when a mistake is made, think about how much faster they will go when things don't go wrong. And if that happens, think about the impact it will have on the company.

Leaders play a huge part in humility in the organization. Leader humility is about enabling others to learn, grow, and be independent. If a leader is humble enough to let others build on their ideas and to step in to fill in gaps they all will grow. Leaders must be open to allowing their employees to make mistakes and if a mistake is made, not put a new process in to ensure that mistake never occurs again.

An organization needs to embrace humility and encourage people to be humble. Humility in the enterprise is important to ensure diversity of thought and the refining of ideas by all employees. Humility is important for innovation. Humility is important for engaged employees. Humility is important for driving business value.

To put it bluntly, an organization that does not embrace humility, is an organization that is not as effective as it could be and has a higher chance of failure.

Working Out Loud Requires being Vulnerable

Photo by Eric Ziegler

I love listening to Podcasts. I listen to podcasts when I drive to and from work. I listen to podcasts when I am on a long drive - 6+ hours. I listen to a broad spectrum of podcasts: Football (soccer), Finance, Economics, News, Public Radio, Social business, etc. This weeks blog is prompted by a one episode I listened to recently from the podcast Shift, by +Megan Murray and +Euan Semple.

The podcast I am referring to is episode 21, about Vulnerability. As I listened to the podcast the first thing that popped into my head was that Working Out Loud (#WOL) requires you to put yourself out there and to be willing to be vulnerable. When I think of working out loud, I think of people sharing what they are working on, asking questions, asking for input on a project, takling about an issue you are trying to resolve. In each of these situations you are risking that someone will think less of you. You need to be vulnerable to do any of those things.

People are scared of putting themselves out there and working out loud. They are fearful that there will be negative repercussions when they make a mistake out in the open. They are fearful that people will think less of them. They are not willing to risk sharing because there is no benefit or that other people will not find what they are sharing as interesting or informative.

The opposite is true. Working out loud has so many benefits and everyone should be doing it within an organization. People will learn and grow quicker and faster by working out loud. Organizations are more effective when people share and are open with each other. The likelihood of finding a piece of information increases as more and more people work out loud. People learn from each other only when information is shared. People improve and innovate on ideas only when ideas are discussed openly. By working out loud, your chances of getting the best information, in timely manner goes up tremendously. Even if a conversation happened out loud months ago, finding that piece of information increases because it was stored for others to discover, read and learn from.

So be brave, take the challenge, work out loud and be vulnerable.