Insight Night - March 2022 - Summary
Insight Night - March 2022
- Discussion Summaries -
We were lucky enough to get some of the Practicus Advisory Community back together for Insight Night in March 2022, over two years since we’d last done so due to the Covid pandemic.
Leaders from a broad range of organisations (Transport, Retail, Charities, Healthcare, Financial Services, Public Sector, Pharma) came together to discuss challenges that are affecting us all.
The diversity of thinking and ideas discussed, are summarised here as a resource for all our Community to benefit from.
Thanks to all of you who came and contributed to what was a fascinating evening.
Are leaders suitably equipped in a hybrid world?
Discussion based around whether the skillsets leaders and leadership teams had pre-Covid are sufficient in a more hybrid world. If not, what are the elements needing focus?
Skills
- Empathy & EQ more important now than ever
- Hybrid leadership requires MORE work
- Engagement by design
- Senior leaders need to seek feedback if they are to adapt to a new way of working/ managing
- Learning from others – nobody has this perfect – embrace improvement opportunities
- Question over technology capability in senior leadership generational gap
- Have good lieutenants who fill your skills gaps – vital to work as a complete team
- Really listen to what people are saying (verbally and bodylanguage)
Location
- Need a purpose for a physical office
- What do you want your ‘hub’ to be used for?
- While senior people would be happy working remotely, junior staff often need the office contact (for learning, mentoring, social)
- Peak days put pressure on the reduced footprint – be careful not to make situation worse
Performance
- Are people working harder / less hard?
- Does hybrid make work more difficult?
- Is it more difficult to measure performance? May need a different mindset
- Not the same for everyone
- Easier to do business anywhere
- Opened up working without boundaries
- Trust people even if you can’t see them
Working Practices
- Need space between meetings – more important than before
- Too many meetings – leaders’ job to protect their teams’ time
- Ground rules just as important as flexibility
- Does having better tools and techniques make it easier to involve wider range of people in projects/meetings?
- Can we be more agile, fleet of foot not having to plan around physical meetings?
Wellbeing
- Do we need new measures of wellbeing?
- Important to check in with people
- Meetings with no agenda – just to talk and see what comes out
- Switching off – not working 77
- Importance of offering choice
- Making space in the day to reset is important and often lost when working remotely
Tech Link Ukraine: How can a voluntary start-up scale fast?
Background:
- Voluntary social enterprise.
- 1 month old.
- Acts as a link between people, networks, employers, recruiters, tech companies and supporting platforms.
- Goal is to become the trusted central portal linking Tech organisations & professionals (impacted by the war in Ukraine) with those who can help.
- Since this discussion TLU have brought on board a voluntary Chief Communications Officer to help drive some of these elements forward.
Question:
What can we do to increase communications capability and better help spread the word to the people who both need and can offer help?
Specifically:
- Get the message to authorities & NGO ‘on the front line’
- Ge the message to Ukrainian tech organisations, leaders & individuals
Who can help:
- Ukrainian tech minister has been great for external partnerships – contact him
- Aim at national communications agencies for help
- Tap into companies’ social enterprise agendas
- Look at communications experts on LI who are ‘Open to Work’
- Possible collaborations with charities
- Look at universities - Students who will want to help and could add the work to part of their portfolios etc.
Thoughts and Ideas:
- Must be super clear on the messaging and concise in the content (which is hard given such a big topic and issue you’re involved in)
- You could either look at one person helping for 100% of their time, or 100 people for 1% of their time. - If doing this you do need a ‘guiding light’ setting and approving all the messaging so it’s not diluted and lost in a sea of noise
- Need something viral if going via social media (ice bucket challengeesque)
- Need content creation in English, Ukrainian & Polish
- The personal stories (hearts & minds) are what will get people galvanised behind this
- Look at downstream business impacts for the companies you’re looking to help – support those they’re already doing business with rather than just looking at new business support