RESOURCES in Change

Often there is a desire in teams we coach to reinvent the budgeting process early on. I suspect this is because it is so onerous and time consuming. On the list of what’s stopping us from doing the best work of our lives, it ranks highly. But my team typically cautions against this. The budgeting and planning process is one of the few practices that truly span the organization and, as such, requires a lot of consent to revolutionize. Even if leadership is fully on board, I’ll often start with new ways of working at the team level and come to resources later with more momentum and maturity.

Questions on Resources

The following questions can be applied to the organization as a whole or the teams within it. Use them to provoke a conversation about what is present and what is possible.

How do we allocate funds, effort, space, and other assets?
Are resources deployed annually, quarterly, or dynamically?
Do we use targets, forecasts, trends, and/or tolerances? If so, how?
How do strategy and planning influence resource allocation?
How do we balance resources across the short term and long term?
How do we balance resources across our core business and innovation?
How do we define and measure the performance of our resources?
How does our approach enable us to respond to emergent events?

What does it mean to be People Positive about resources?
Recognize that people are not resources, they are people – capable of directing their own time and attention to where they can add the most value. They are also capable of delivering performance without fixed targets or individual incentives. Let relative targets and a share of the wealth created by the business guide behavior.

What does it mean to be Complexity Conscious about resources?
Accept that you cannot predict the future. Choosing how and where to spend your money a year in advance is folly. Minimize long-term commitments where appropriate to maximize discretionary funds. Ignore annual rhythms and allocate resources dynamically based on real-time information.

Now that you are familiar with the dimensions of our theory, let’s discuss how we can apply it. Like many other tools, our approach can be used in different ways. It can be used descriptively to describe your own way of working or that of another team. It can be used diagnostically to analyse positive or negative patterns we have observed (e.g. why do new employees feel confused by the onboarding process?). In addition, some teams use our approach to envision how the organisation could evolve.

We use it primarily as an awareness-raising tool to capture stories, tensions and experiments that are happening in the real world. We ask the teams themselves to interpret what is happening. Regardless of the approach, our approach usually triggers a rethink in the teams as they begin to systemically rethink the way they work. A meeting is no longer just a meeting; it becomes a forum for belonging, an opportunity to share information, a chance for buy-in or even a potential waste of time. Our approach encourages such conversations, and these conversations will ultimately lead to change.

Every decision is associated with emotions. When you are faced with a decision, the subcortical structures in your brain are activated and trigger a cascade of emotions, instincts and bodily sensations. These elements influence a somatic decision or even bring it about before you are aware of it. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as a “gut feeling”. The interplay between our different thought systems happens so quickly and seamlessly that we often don’t even realise it. We may hold on to the belief that most of our decisions are made objectively and rationally, but this is not the case.

Therefore, at this point, you should have already made your decision. Somewhere in your mind or body, you know it. Either you believe that we need to change the way we work and are ready to take that step, or you don’t believe it and never will. Those who believe – the catalysts, the visionaries, the risk-takers – have understood that the future will not be a desirable place unless we change how we work together as humans to design and build the future in a way that employees will love coming to work.

So where do we go from here? The answer is simple; the implementation is a challenge. If you have some responsibility over others – in business, philanthropy, education, public service, your community or even at home – it’s your job to improve the humanity, vitality and adaptability of the current organisational system. If you are ready to do so, we can embark on this journey together.