I’ve really struggled to write for the last six months. Whilst looking at my blog from an outsiders perspective there’s a big gap between this post and the last one way back in September, what you don’t see is the handful of post ‘stubs’ that will probably forever remain unpublished that sit in my WordPress drafts, nor do you see the flickers of ideas that have popped into my head that have never even made it that far. This post attempts to understand why – and how it relates to my third year at Flinders.At my writing peak, back around 2009/11, ideas and subsequently blog posts came thick and fast. The stats were high, the readership niche but engaged, and great big buckets of midnight oil were burned frantically getting ideas out of my head and into words and pictures.
But this last six months – nothing.
So what has changed, and what has that got to do with my three year anniversary at Flinders?
The last twelve months since I wrote my corresponding ‘two years on’ post have been some of the more challenging professional ones that I’ve experienced. The University during this time went through the culminating stages of what in formal Enterprise Bargaining Agreement terms is called a ‘major change’, but that the layman would simply refer to as a ‘restructure’. It was, to borrow loosely from Paul Keating, ‘the restructure we had to have’. The kind of change that many people I spoke to said was long overdue (although some would no doubt argue to the contrary on that one), but also the kind of change that a lot of the time isn’t overly enjoyable to go through, no matter where you sit in the process. I’ll include myself in that too – reading back to last year’s post I can sense the uncertainty in my own words about what the future might hold. I did, however, find my new spot in the landscape, with a much larger team, a broader scope, a more distributed physical footprint, and significant potential to ‘do good works’ within the Flinders community.
So why the writer’s block then?
The easy/lazy explanation would simply be to say that I’ve been too busy, but that doesn’t wash. When I look back to the salad days of eight years ago I was working crazy hours, travelling frequently and without a doubt busier than I have ever been (the joys of working in a rapidly expanding startup), and yet I still found time to write.
Could there be a correlation with a lack of alcohol in the writing process these days? True, it was around the same time last year that I more of less quit drinking (quit it as a lifestyle choice anyway – I still do love a glass of red from time to time) that the writing dried up, but this is almost certainly a case of correlation not equating to causation.
Could it be that I lack anything of worth to talk about? Whilst self-doubt and impostor syndrome have made brief appearances around this question in recent months, I’m choosing to not engage with either of them, because while they have their right to come knocking on the door, I’ve no intention of letting them in. They make for rotten houseguests and never lift a finger to help out with the chores, so they can stay outside where they belong. Quick thanks to Cassandra Goodman for giving me a reminder of this during her talk on Mindfulness at this week’s Chief Customer Officer conference too – specifically that negative thoughts are just that: thoughts, not realities. No, there is plenty to talk about, its just that none of it has wanted to come out in well-structured words.
I’m going to pin the tail on two donkeys in terms of probable causes for the writer’s block, one relating to psychology, and one to complexity.
Firstly, it is difficult to think creatively in situations of uncertainty. Common sense I know, but also backed up by theories like positive/negative emotional attractors – worth a read for any team leaders out there. An environment of uncertainty is distracting, unsettling and in no way conducive to penning anything creative, at least it is for me. There’s another whole blog post right there on the need for creativity during periods of change when the feelings of threat and uncertainty are also at their peak, but I’ll leave that to the organisational psychologists out there.
Secondly, the ideas I have to write about now are far more complex, and I’ll thank the wonderful Kahiwa Sebire for introducing me to the formalities of complexity theory late last year (embarrassingly I hadn’t come across it before). A lot of the stuff I wrote about back in the day was relatively straightforward – describe how to use an edtech tool to solve a problem, explain the structure of something that appeared opaque and confusing to most, apply a concept from one field to another to spark ideas, stuff like that. In this new role, the problems are far more complex, and bringing shape and form to these problems to even define them – let alone write something meaningful about them – is much harder, and takes longer. I’m getting there, but it takes more time these days.
This is where the connection really comes back between why I’ve not been writing and what has been going on in my third year at Flinders, as well as where I need to focus in the next twelve months. To sum it up, I’ve just not been in the right headspace to write much, and a lot of that has been because of the amount of change going on all around me, and the need for me to focus on much lower rungs on Maslow’s hierarchy, both for myself and my teams. Times of change can be exciting, and this one is no exception in terms of presenting massive opportunities for improvement, but before we could get to that we had to get through the most challenging times of the change – new structures coming into place, recruitment processes for new or modified roles, providing business-as-usual services to students as they commenced or returned to study for the year, physical moves of staff and teams, interim technology fixes to hold it all together – I could go on and on… All of the changes to date have been necessary, but in no way sufficient, to deliver improved outcomes – whilst the ‘formal’ elements of the change may now be over, we have only really just made it to the start line.
One thing which has come through in this week’s conference compared to last year is a shift in focus to the importance of creating a positive working environment for service staff as a critical success factor for delivering good service. Richard Branson’s well worn quote on this still resonates strongly with me, and it feels this year at the CCO conference that this has had a bigger focus alongside some of the other major themes like customer-centric design and the use of technology to enhance the customer experience. This has absolutely struck a chord with me as I attempt to lead a team out the other side of a major change and into a world that is still very much under construction.
For us to deliver a significantly improved student services experience we will need good technologies, good processes, a clear vision of what we’re trying to achieve and – most importantly – people who can deliver on their own potential to provide great service. For them to do this, they need an environment that is conducive to them wanting to do their best work (taking into account the factors in the SCARF model is a good starting point) as well as the resilience to cope with a world around them that is going to only get more VUCA (and that’s the broader world, not just Flinders), and of course they need the skills to do the job they are paid to do. For these people and teams to do this, I need good leaders to be guiding those teams – leaders who can help me create this kind of environment for their people. To make this happen, I need to be a good leader myself, and make sure that I am investing time in the people and culture as the first step towards positive outcomes.
Of course there will be a whole other body of work to look at how we transform the service experience, but one of the key messages from this week’s conference so far has been the need to get the conditions right for the most important people in the whole game – those who are at the front line interacting with the customer.
With that, the focus for the year ahead for me will no doubt be a real mixed bag (which is perfect for someone like me who gets bored easily), but a decent chunk of it will be about setting up the right cultural and leadership environment to let people do their jobs to the best of their abilities, and hopefully have some fun in the process. No doubt there will be some neat innovations occurring along the way, as well as a whole lot of ‘getting the house in order’ from a process perspective, but all of this will hinge on the kind of environment that we can create for our people.
Perhaps one indicator of success will be if I start writing more posts again – we shall see.