3 Frameworks That Could Change How You Work (And How to Use Them)

0:01Get the ice cream, love.

0:03Helen:Big freezer. Oh, it's stuck. It's by the peas. Some things are really best not to put off. Mike defrosting the freezer. Or, if you're a landlord, sending a copy of the new government information sheet to your existing tenants. You must do this by the 31st of May or risk a fine. Make sure you're up to date with the new laws. Find the information sheet at gov.uk slash renting is changing. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs.

0:45Helen:Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast.

1:23That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

1:30Helen:You can get to the end of a day or the end of a week or even the end of a month and be like, have I actually done anything that matters most? If you don't do this, you're in danger of using the same skills with the same people. Sometimes thinking, what are my rocks? What are the pebbles? What's the sand? And am I doing the right work in the kind of the right order? But if you start thinking about what new skills could I use with the same people or what existing skills could I use with new people, you start to unlock different ways that you can use your strengths. I don't think I've ever thought about what helps me to do that well.

2:04Helen:Partly because it's a natural talent, easy to take your natural talents for granted. Partly because I probably haven't seen a when. When would that be useful? There is a difference between what you know and then your reality. I think a framework in isolation probably doesn't change much. But a framework that goes into a conversation, whether it's with a colleague or your team, is where good stuff can happen.

2:28Helen:Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we borrow some brilliance from a person, a place, even an object from time to time, and we turn that curiosity into useful action for your career. Today, we are borrowing brilliance from strategic models. I've never seen Helen look so excited. She's got her pen ready. I have got my post-its. I've got my pen. I am ready with frameworks. This is like my happy, my happy moment. also it is another one of our episodes that is in partnership with post-its so i just get to bring together all the things i love to help you learn and this is my dream i feel like they've just given you like another excuse to be like right okay we can just have more matrices okay so but i will say today's a bit of a combo day because we are definitely going to be using the post-its to bring the frameworks to life because i just find it's like a very useful way of thinking but we have also got some AI to just I think to connect to connect the two things so that you can learn a bit more from them and yeah my love of frameworks and models is I mean it's no surprise I think to anybody who regularly listens to the podcast I can't help it's not a surprise to the people who asked you to sign their book and you started drawing models in their book well it was well I did it for one person so when I was in I think was it Canada I think it was in Canada it was after I'd done a keynote and the company had like bought books to support the keynote and people wanted their book signed at the end which I'm always like it's always amazing it's always amazing and it's always like uh oh my gosh this is crazy anyway it's like a little little queue of people because I think once one person starts doing it everyone's like oh it's okay to ask I'll get my book signed and then somebody normally it's just like oh my name's whatever and I signed the book and then someone said oh well I've got you I've got a question and I'm like okay and someone so someone asked me a question and then I was like oh I do I've got a framework that will help that so I started trying to framework at the back of the book and then there were probably about another 10 people after this person and then they basically said can I have a framework too what's like any framework I was like bigger framework any framework like what's what's the challenge and but it was like I mean that would be quite a good quiz you know if I said to you on the spot here's you know like if our listeners said here's a problem like what's a framework to help you think through that problem we should at one point you should put me on LinkedIn and ask people for you know like something they like a dilemma a decision something they're stuck with yeah and then we should see whether you can come up with a framework for it oh my gosh i'm kind of like nervous about that but also like a little bit a little bit excited yeah yeah um well today three tried and tested frameworks that are i think they're quite old school yeah like one of them the last one we're going to talk about was developed in the 70s and we studied it when we're at university in 2001 this has been around for a while it's a good stress test have they have they stood the test of time yeah and also like can ai which wasn't around when we first learned about them can ai add any additional value to them i think is a useful a useful take on it so we've got three frameworks one is about time like your time um one is about your skills and one is about you and your team so kind of help you learn in different ways so plan is i'll draw them to bring them to life um if you are listening please don't worry i'll describe it in a way that's kind of easy to follow if you're watching i will hold up my lovely these are my favorite big notes she's got the big notes these are post-it big notes and these are the ones that people always always ask us about in sessions and we have them all over our office and our desk and we take them with us so i'm going to draw it on these and show it to the camera but i'll describe it for anyone that's listening and then i am going to use sarah as my kind of guinea pig to kind of let us know what you learn right so you've tried and tested all these and i've done all the ai prompts as well Okay.

6:12So we're going to start with the first one, which is about time, which is from somebody, it's called the Eisenhower matrix. And people will probably know this one as like the urgent important matrix. So it's a two by two matrix. And so you want to think about your tasks in terms of what is kind of high urgency, needs doing today, like panic, panic, panic, got to get done. And that's the first one. And then you also then have high importance. So feels, you know, strategically important to the team, maybe valuable to the company versus low importance. Maybe this is kind of, I don't know, the territory of busy work.

6:51And so you end up with a matrix a bit like this and you want to think about your work on where it is in these different quadrants. Obviously, the aim is that we're working on the most important work. But I think it's quite a good thing to draw the matrix, maybe look at your last week or your last month and see how your work is fitting into these different quadrants. And whether you don't basically want too much that's over this side of the matrix. So kind of low importance work is not really what we want. You get into like busy territory here or not a great use of the time.

7:26Helen:Well, I guess the trap that most people fall into is low importance, high urgency. You know, like I think that's a familiar feeling for lots of people. Like firefighting. Firefighting, troubleshooting, responding to everything in your inbox or on your team's messages, like the minute it comes in. And then you can get to the end of a day or the end of a week or even the end of a month and be like, have I actually done anything that matters most? and so I think getting sucked into urgency and sometimes I guess also it's not even your own urgency it's urgency created by other people that might be like us right we send something to our team I actually think the team gave us this example recently where you know like if if we say oh could someone take a look at this please then actually everything else stops because people think oh they want to be really helpful and supportive of us yeah and you know if we've not signalled how important it is suddenly that that becomes the most urgent thing and someone didn't know that that was going to then really disrupt their day so I think that's often that's well I think people are starting from and I think the point is does this help move people to the important work whether it's urgent or not I guess I also think that's a good build on this model I think you can maybe once you've put all your work in the different quadrants um and you can kind of maybe kind of zoom out and see what is this what is this telling me about how I'm spending my time I also think you could potentially put an arrow on like what is the direction of that work like has it yeah come to you and who's it interesting because I could do it and I'd be like oh my gosh Sarah sends me all of my I don't know like hi this is not true like all of my urgent not important stuff basically comes from Sarah and then you kind of reflect on oh well why is that maybe I need to give that some feedback that that is taking me away from the like the more important work for me to do um so yeah maybe arrows um also you could do like little asterisks like am I creating this work yeah like that's probably one of my reflections is some of this stuff like I create the deadline I create the urgency because I've got to get this done by Friday but do I yeah that that's interesting are you creating the urgency the other thing you could map is uh how that work relates to your objectives or the outcomes so if you were looking at um you know if you were going I'm doing this task or that task this week how many of the things on that matrix then relate to what you're trying to achieve over the next quarter you know like zooming out to bigger priorities because i would guess if it's all high urgent low important you're probably not making progress on your like the big priorities so sarah's going to tell us what she learned from this in a moment but what i will say is if you want to get this like this framework and if you want the prompt that sarah's going to talk about because he's an ai prompt we'll put it all on the pod sheet and you can get that from um amazing if.com just go to the podcast page and it'll be there but sarah is going to let us know know what you learned by using this did it help you think about your time no okay thanks for that on to the next model um but but but um so the ai prompt was useful as a starting point so you'd written this it was it's along the lines of like act as a squiggly careers coach help me prioritize my work and development using the eisenhower matrix urgent versus important and start my asking me four to five questions to understand how i currently spend my time and what matters most in my career um and actually what I like so I use Claude because that's my favorite and the questions actually were kind of multiple choice so it did mean I could do it quite quickly yeah which I was like oh I've not really got time to like do really long answers right now and I'm I'm trying to get a fast feel for is this useful so I actually liked how the AI guided me through thinking about this um and then it did give me a matrix with um you know multi-colored like traffic like dots on around like, what should I schedule?

11:10Helen:What should I drop? What should I delegate? What should I do? But it was all things I already knew. And I think sometimes there is a difference between what you know, and then your reality. So in some ways, I was like, I just find that frustrating. Can I ask a question? Because you know, you're like, I already know this. Let's imagine I was your manager, or even to be fair, I look as a business partner, do you think it would be helpful to show me that you know if we were going to have a conversation about your time that thing that it's got and it's like done the traffic lights do you think that would help us to have if you were feeling like I'm not sure my time's being spent on the right things would that help us to have a constructive conversation about it I think having a conversation with your manager about together agreeing what's most important would always be useful especially because you know never assume I sometimes think you might think project A is most important and then somebody else might be like, oh, but I thought project B was.

12:08Helen:So I always think the more transparent you can make what you are working on and what you believe the priorities to be. Someone in our team did it this week. They sent us both a message actually and they were like, this is what I'm doing. And you really quickly replied and went, well, of those things, these are the two. And so it wasn't like you were in very different places, but you probably helped to create some extra clarity on this. like you know there's like important and then there's really important so I think I think it would help whether I would do it in the matrix not necessarily but I think the question about important and urgent is probably useful I then use it as a sort of uh springboard to think well what else so I was like well if that's if I don't find that that useful and I've actually asked people this before in workshops everyone I think a lot of people know this matrix yeah and then when I say, how useful is this matrix for you out of 10?

12:58Helen:Everyone gives it quite a low score. And I think that's because you just go, everything feels urgent and important. And it's sort of, you know, like you don't change, you don't do anything differently because of it. So I'm like, how useful is it? So I wrote, this tool doesn't offer me any new insights. What other tools might be helpful for me to consider? And then what I liked about it, then it starts to feel more kind of creative, because then it starts to say, well, have you looked at the wheel of work? Have you looked at energy mapping? Have you looked at horizon modelling, which splits your work into now, next and future, like different time horizons?

13:33Helen:It was talking about OKRs, objectives and key results. And then it prompted me to think about the rocks, pebbles and sand approach. And again, it described it to me and it's like your rocks are like your biggest, most important things. You sort of put those in first into like a jar. Then you put your pebbles in and then you kind of sand. and it's sometimes thinking what are my rocks what are the pebbles what's the sand and am I doing the right work in the kind of the right order so I think for this first one do you know what though just pause on that's such a Sarah thing you know like the reason I'm saying it is because they're like frameworks are I think or I find them frameworks are designed to sort of simplify and clarify complexity and then basically what you've got is going not this but it could be these other six and a combination of these and in the middle there's something new it's just I just think how to take a framework for simplicity and make it thoughtful and more extensive is but it's basically your brain action is like more complicated but I think it's because time management and productivity is always such a popular topic like whenever we cover it everyone's always really interested and I think if you try to get it's almost like too simplistic in the answers it's It's not that helpful.

14:50Helen:And so I don't think there is, probably because you're hoping there's going to be a silver bullet, right? You do this and you think, oh, help me because I'm spending all this time on this urgent stuff and it's frustrating. And you probably know it's not what matters most, but it's quite hard. It's quite hard to make that shift. And I think, well, when things are hard, probably an urgent important matrix is not going to be the big thing that makes a difference. But what I would encourage you to do I think it's a really good starting point. It almost doesn't matter whether the model works for you or not.

15:23Helen:What matters is then the critical creative process you then go through. And that didn't even take me very long. That was probably less than 10 minutes worth of time. And it's got me thinking, right? So you might do it and fill in the matrix and be like, done. I go in a very different direction. Doing a bit more. But helpful in different ways. Yeah, yeah. Okay. so maybe you're giving that in in of itself a usefulness score of one i'm gonna give the eyes and how matrix a usefulness score of three out of five oh oh i thought i was out of ten i was going one out of ten what are we doing it out of five i'll stick with one let's move on to our next one your scale was different to what i'd imagine which is all about The next one better.

16:12Okay, great. Great, everyone. We're on the way up. The next model, this is one of my favourite ones, and I think I've used this in lots of different ways in my career. So this is the Ansoff matrix.

16:24Helen:Maybe we need the Ellis Tupper matrix. Oh, my gosh. Tupper Ellis matrix. Who's coming first? I don't know. You always come first in the book, so we have to be consistent. It's just alphabetical. It's not like an ego thing. Oh, that's because you're first name. Oh, yeah. I was like, that's not right, Tupper. I was like, oh. Took me a moment there. Oh, dear. see how fun frameworks are okay and soft matrix so traditionally this is a matrix that is more about products and innovation so I think that's where I've come across it in my career so again I'll draw it it's another two by two they're not all two by twos the next one is a spider diagram there's a bit of a tease for what's coming but this one so traditionally it's about thinking about your products like as a company and how you can like take them into new areas so traditionally you'd think about new and existing products and new and existing markets.

17:13But we are going to scrap products and markets and we are going to think about skills and kind of your context. So we're going to think about what new skills you could develop and what existing skills you've got. And we're going to think about what new contexts you could use them in and what existing contexts you use them in. So you'll end up with a two by two matrix that looks a little bit like this. And each of those has an opportunity for you to use your skills and strengths differently, so that they are less likely to stagnate. So I think that's the payoff here. If you don't do this, you're in danger of using the same skills with the same people, and it might slow down your development.

17:58But if you start thinking about what new skills could I use with the same people, or what existing skills could I use with new people, you start to unlock different ways that you can use your strengths. I have a question. Yes, please ask away. Is that okay?

18:12Helen:Yes, ask. I feel like you're like, no, because we're just trying to fill in the matrix error. So when I was thinking about this, because I do know that you're going to talk it through with me in a moment, should I be thinking about my strengths or my skills? Because I got to differ, sorry. You're like, oh no. No, it's an interesting question. Because I was like, oh, I could see this as a way of, we often talk about like no grow show your strength so I was like oh is this a way of thinking about my strengths the things I really want to be known for or is it broad I think probably broader would be skills because I do find them two different lengths.

18:46Helen:No no I agree I agree with you I agree with you I think so the distinction when we talk about strengths is what gives you energy what do you want to be known for so you filtered it yeah down. A shorter list is strengths in my mind. Yeah and the benefit of that is the the harder you work the things that you want to be known for the bigger the payoff there is for your career and impact in your jobs right but the skills is a broader set of things things some of which you might be good at but you might not want to be known for yeah um i think we should just decide what to do for the purposes of this conversation now however i actually think there's a benefit in maybe running this model through both and just seeing because there could just be some skills in there that you think well maybe that is an area for me to work on a bit more.

19:30I haven't kind of owned it as a strength now, but probably in the future. So I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to like block out opportunity by that.

19:38Helen:Might be a good thing to experiment with. Yeah, I think experiment. Do it once with strengths, the things you want to be known for, because that's probably got the most immediate payoff. And then maybe run it again with skills, things that you, maybe you're starting to develop. You don't even know if it's a strength yet. It could be some opportunity. Which one do you want to do for the purposes of this chat? Let's do strengths. Let's do strengths. crossing off skills. Oh, sorry. It's fine. I can cope with a messy, messy. Oh no, it already looks messy. All right, Sarah. Right. Okay. Let's start with, let's start with the bottom box, the one where people mostly get stuck.

20:13So let's go with existing strengths. Yeah. So things that give you energy, things you want to be known for and kind of your existing context. So this is like the territory of today. What's going in this quadrant?

20:24Helen:Okay. So presumably first you've got to start with what those strengths are so if I was starting I would say okay let's for the purposes of this let's use like developing ideas yeah um creative thinking yeah that is my territory and so how I'm using it today would be coming up with ideas for um how we can be useful for careers like that's like the most zoomed out version but it might be things like okay what are we gonna what are we for a podcast topic yeah that's like yeah that's an idea um so a podcast topic it could be um an idea for something to run in a workshop with the companies that we work with um it could be an idea for a linkedin post so it would sort of be connecting helping people in their careers with like coming up with new ideas okay and how do you think you could do that better today um I think I could give myself more space to do that I think quite a lot of what we sometimes do in some of our work is we're iterating on what we've already got and I actually really like starting from scratch clearly based on the first matrix we talked about um and I think back quite fondly to when we first developed some things that we did develop from scratch together yeah and we don't do that as frequently anymore we probably don't quite have the space for it um and in some ways you don't have the need you don't have the need right because we've got things that work really well we know are really useful um so I think I could do that more by almost giving myself permission to like try out new ideas more frequently yeah um and I just think I just don't anymore I'm going to write as an action there more space to start from scratch yeah I was going to call it scratch space but that just sounded a bit more space to start from scratch okay okay so let's take those things that you know you're good at that give you energy that you want to be known for so like the ideas and creative thinking but now let's think about how could you use those same strengths but in a new context okay so by new context do we mean like new company so we could go new people we could do new places we could do new projects um I never help anyone else with how to do that come up with ideas um and often if I talk about that being something that I'm good at you know as an example people be like oh I'd like to get better at that and I I don't think I've ever thought about what helps me to do that well partly because it's a natural talent easy to take your natural talents for granted um partly because I probably haven't seen a like a when like when would that be useful you know we don't talk about creative thinking in our workshops we're talking about strengths and values um but that would be a different take on the strength i've got and we know by sharing your strengths you make them stronger so it's a good payoff for me maybe some people would find it useful and so just on the some people our team who do you think well i'm thinking new context new context new context so who else other than who you already work with yeah me the team who else do you think would benefit from having a sarah how-to on coming up with ideas well i guess people may be in our squiggly careers community yeah might might find that useful so we could maybe i could do a newsletter takeover i mean she's writing it down it's always dangerous equals idea takeover i could do a takeover of our of our own newsletter you could i'm going on holiday soon so if you're free to do it that week yeah to be fair i think i am doing that week i have when i do write the newsletter which is um few and far between i always get a very good response so i love the fact that you have to do it 80 percent of the time and then occasionally i come in and i'm like helen's on holiday hi everyone and they're like oh it's so amazing to hear from you so maybe i could do that okay um i guess i could also think about creative communities um because they will sort of more the worlds that we both kind of used to work in but I don't spend much time in that world anymore um and there will also be and maybe I could share what I do but I would also probably learn quite a lot from that I actually was at a marketing event this week um and actually I did stay for the whole event which is sometimes we can't always do you know you have to turn up and then do other things um but I heard quite a lot of people where creativity is their full-time job you know their job is to come up with ideas talk about their perspective on like how to do that and why that's so important and that was that I found that really kind of inspiring but also it kind of gets things fired up in my brain about like how I do that and kind of what I believe in also I was just thinking the squiggly students which is a new thing that we are doing we've launched this week we launched this week with Upreach and that is a you know that is a group of people who I think could really benefit from your ability around ideas because it can be applied to so many contexts also they've got some really good ideas right how we were doing experiments with them on um how to study and And they were just so good.

25:22Helen:They were so good at coming up with ideas. I picked up some tips. Yeah, right. I was like, I was writing that down for myself. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. So now we are going to go into new strengths. Okay. So this is kind of going beyond the things that you kind of already know that give you energy that you're good at into kind of things that you think, I want to get better at that. There is an opportunity for me to develop that further. Maybe it's something that you haven't even started yet, but you're kind of interested in it. And we're going to think about that from the perspective of how could you use those new strengths with the people that we currently work with?

25:54That could be me or the team or the companies. And then kind of the most out there is the new strengths with a new audience. So let's start with the one that I think is slightly, slightly easier, which is kind of your new strengths, but with the same in the same context. So what new strengths would you like to invest in?

26:15Helen:I would like to invest in a new strength around converting technology into kind of taking some of the creativity that we've talked about. So it's not completely new, but kind of using technology to bring some of those things to life like faster, because I feel like there's untapped opportunity with some of the good things that are happening in AI. Not all AI is good and we shouldn't use AI to replace creative thinking. but you and I having you and I were even having conversations this week about things that Claude have launched um how it links to Canva and Claude skills and I sort of have a sense of I don't know whether strength is the right word that might be more of a skill now maybe I'm combining two things which you definitely probably shouldn't do but you know like the I feel like if I viewed some of that new AI as like a creative opportunity I would have a different relationship with it I'm not like naturally super interested in like tech generally you know some people are just super techy um but I'm really interested in creativity so I kind of go if I could combine sort of my interest maybe some of the skills and strengths I've got with that if I could get good at that or at least good enough I feel like there's value value to be had okay so let's just explore the value to be had so if like a new skill slash strength area of you is using tech to kind of create faster like maybe prototyping um how do you think that could benefit your existing your your existing context so me the team the people companies we work with well I think even like almost like every idea you come up with you could just create something really fast to show people what's possible and I I think sometimes people are surprised by what you can do in not not loads of time so I think if you can show that you've done it and if you can talk about you know if you can show your workings yeah I think that really helps people to feel confident that they could do that too so that's how I think it would help people because they would know oh she's an amateur like she doesn't you know she's she's not like she's so good at this but if I could say oh well I've not used clawed skills before I've not done any clawed code so this is how I've used it this is what it looked like this is where I got stuck I feel like that might be helpful love it nice role modeling I put um it would make ideas tangible and increase confidence yeah which is a nice announced outcome all right let's do this last one then so this is the kind of these new these new abilities it could be that one it could be this kind of ai to or tech generally to create faster but with new people complete so it's not team not me not companies that we work with maybe not even the squiggly careers community this is this is a really open area i think for development well i'm always interested in like how we could do more to support charities and that would be a new we don't work with loads of charities we have lots of free stuff that charities can use and I and I hope that they do but I couldn't name you know like oh um 100 charities that we work with or work that we do specifically for charities and I I and I used to do a lot of work with charities in my old job when I was like I looked after court responsibility um and I've got like lots of connections in those kinds of worlds and I always feel like I really want to support people who have also made that choice yeah you know to go and work in a charity and that's they're not always they're not easy jobs and lots of those charities you know their funding is so is so hard it's such a it can be such a tough place to be um so I do hope they're making the most of our stuff anyway but you know if you had that lens of like okay we're going to do something specific for charities um what would that look like and could you combine I don't know the best of some squiggly career stuff with some of that AI work and what charities need or what would be most useful for them um I feel like there might be something there that could be could be helpful I don't know what yet I don't know well that's I guess that that's the kind of unknown area so it's good to keep that one unknown um I just think I don't know if it's still going do you remember pimp my cause yeah um years ago I used to kind of get involved in that and I haven't done for a while I'm still going but I think you know using kind of tech to create faster that that could be a really good way that you could help accelerate maybe what a charity is thinking about doing you can say oh you know we've I've developed this skill in this context but actually I could bring that skill to yours and benefit you in a way that I find meaningful and you find valuable um okay so we've gone through an soft matrix and we we kind of we narrowed it down didn't we to do strengths rather than skills um what are your what are your thoughts having gone through that conversation together it definitely makes you think about often when we say to people do you feel like you know your strengths I think most people have a pretty good idea of at least some of their strengths but it's often the grow bit that people struggle with like well how do I make my strengths stronger where else might I use it who else might I use it with and my reflections is that is a bit harder so it's really helpful to have someone to talk to because it gives you just a bit of space to think and you could prod a bit or nudge a bit or if you were like well not quite what we're trying to do here you know you can sort of just keep asking a few more questions so I think whether you do it in conversation or you do it with AI and I also did do this with AI as well yeah um I think it is helpful not to sort of do this by yourself this is one where I think you do need a few prompts and I did actually feel like as I was going through I funnily enough I felt like actually just using my strengths was a bit limiting so it made me think having gone through it that way I started there thinking oh that's helpful because I want to stretch my strengths and then I was like actually, if I was going to do it again, I think I would maybe start with five skills, including a strength.

31:49Helen:That was where I got, that was like in a, in a chat was like, I think we could learn more if we put your skills through this. But I think one of those should be your strength. So I think, I think if you just did what I did, you kind of get to like, oh, okay. You know, it's still, that was still like helpful. You start to run out at the top. Yeah. Whereas then I was like, oh, but if I just done skills, like well how good is how good is my creating like new models in ai skills then you're like okay you can sort of have a play with that yeah yeah which is probably why they put skill well you put skills we've adapted it well i was open to the adaptation so yeah so the first one eisenhower good to do on your own maybe this one i think you've got to do it with someone good to do with someone like in a pair the third one um which is our third and final framework for today um i think this is a really good one to do in a team yes and so this is the mckinsey 7s framework i really remember learning this by peterson waterman do you remember that that sounds like a um you know like a record label yeah it does why does that was there some i don't know i think there are some that sound a bit like like the 80s maybe earlier gosh oh yes this is like from the 70s so there are seven s's which i will try to remember and if i can't i've got i've got i've got the definitions ready to go great great we'll do this we'll do this together um and this is more of a spider diagram so i'll kind of draw it and then I'll hold up the camera but as I said if you're listening I'll describe it and we'll put it on the pod sheet anyway so you can see it there um but it's effectively a framework for analyzing like I think like how effective your team is likely to be it's sort of like team effectiveness there are these seven things that contribute to team effectiveness and you're going to take a critical lens of these against your team and give them a score again you can pick what score you want to do but we'll just do like up to five where one is we're rubbish at this five is we're great and then it helps you to see you know where have we got some strengths in our team where have we got some gaps so sarah and i are going to talk it through to sort of bring it to life and we'll use our team as context sorry team if you're listening but we want to do this as a kind of a live way of reviewing it but i think i do think there's maybe a benefit if you're a manager maybe you doing this so you've got a view and then doing it with your team yeah and then just contrasting does your perception match their reality i think was useful so in the middle um we're going to put shared values what is the definition of shared values sarah the organization's core values ties everything together where all aspects of the organization operate under the same set of values so i think this would be if you were a team it's like well do you know what your probably company values are most teams don't have team values that are separate company ones so do you know your company values and do they I suppose impact or inform the work that you do as a team like are you connecting the dots between what you do as a team and the values of your company that's probably what I would be asking give us a score oh as a score yeah um yeah let's do it as we go so we're only doing out five yeah okay um Am I allowed like points?

34:52Helen:No, not for this. She's really out of patience with me. I'm like, how long? Okay. Four. Yeah, I went four too. Oh, there we go. I was actually going to do 4.3 before you said I wasn't allowed to. Okay, yeah, we're just going to stick with the actual numbers. Okay, so that's at the centre. Now we're going to start to build out our spider diagram now and I'm going to do strategy for our next S. What is the definition? uh do you know your organization's approach to the market what plans are actions to create growth and profit okay what are you giving us hmm it's a tough one so we actually don't really use the word strategy which is in that's an interesting reflection um like we don't we don't say here is our strategy for the year or here is our strategy for squiggly careers um so i think that would be part of the problem yeah for our team like and for us right because I was you know in your head you're trying to connect the dots to like I'm like well what what would you be pointing to yeah you're pointing to our strategy so I think it's not that we don't have a strategy because I think we actually put quite a lot of effort into why we exist the goals that matter trying to create clarity on objectives and things like that which all sit under the strategy but probably a three.

36:14Helen:I went three. Probably a three. Right, there we go. And I don't know if it matters that you don't use the word strategy. I don't think that necessarily matters. I think it could be better if we did, you know, because as a signposting, like this is our strategy. It's a bit like this is a career conversation. You know, the data shows that some people don't think they've had a career conversation because you haven't labelled it. And I suppose the purpose of strategy is you know why you're all doing what you're doing. Yeah. And I suppose I'd be like, oh, I would want everyone to know why we're all doing what we're doing.

36:39Yeah. Okay, let's do another one. we're going to do systems what does it say about systems processes and workflows carried out as part of work responsibilities and tools okay how good do you think our processes and workflows are you can just go you'd have to explain everything one oh i went two okay i was like okay so we're giving that a two yeah um let's do another one which is structure what does it say about structure

37:05Helen:how we organize resources capitals budgets workforce equipment very mckinsey um yeah what do you think oh i know you want to do a point here because even i want to do a point here two okay i was going 2.5 so yeah i was going 1.5 okay on average though i always like to think you're one point more optimistic than me in life you're always one point more optimistic than me I like that. I might put that on my LinkedIn profile. One point more optimistic than Sarah. That is true, though. I love it. Just out of interest, McKinsey says that those top three are like the hard S's. So strategy, systems and structure.

37:46We didn't really find the differentiating between hard and soft to really, really contribute to anything. But they're the first ones. OK, so now we're going to talk about some other ones. So let's talk about skills. What does it say about skills?

37:57Helen:Skills of individual employees and like the skills that you've got almost like as a team or organisation as in what are your core competencies? I actually do remember talking about this, like the core competencies of an organisation, which might be, oh, you know, you're brilliant at like engineering. You've got lots of like data engineers or whatever. Go on, then give us a score.

38:19Four. Oh, I went three. Okay. Okay. So I'll put that down. Now we are going to talk about staff. What does it say about staff, which is our next S?

38:31Helen:Basically, like, how each employee develops and grows in their role. Okay. Give us a score. Three. Yeah, I was like, oh, three to four, but I'll go three. And then the last one is style. This is a funny one. What's style? You've read it, stylish. You don't have to worry. The informal rules of an organisation, like the culture, how we do things. Okay. Right. I guess on this one, it's not how good the informal was. I guess it's how clear, how shared, consistent they are. What do you think of our style? What would you rate us on? I find this one a kind of funny one to score. We are, I suppose, I think we have some quite strong cultural things like mistake moments, what worked well, even better if.

39:14Helen:And we sort of take those things quite seriously. You know, links to learn from. There's things that I could point to, I think. we use clarity creators you know we've I think we have got a strong identity so I'm going to go for I'm going to go for I think I think working in amazing if feels different I think it's got its own like little little kind of uh like blueprint you know to work okay so now what you want to do is you want to draw um like a little you can join up on your spider diagram to kind of see where you've got strengths where you've got gaps so just I'll just kind of I'll show you the camera yeah lovely little spider and it helps you see where you've got some strengths so for example we've got some strengths around style and also where you've got some gaps so actually our biggest gaps are on systems and structure so some according to them some of the hard stuff and the insight would be that is making us less effective as a business and would be potentially an area for us to find focus so without going into the kind of warts and all of our business but how on their kind of usefulness scale how useful do you think that would be as a team exercise um to talk about yeah how we can improve so i think the content is useful as a team i think some of the words and the phrases are out of date and feel very formal um so like some of it feels quite disconnected from like how we run our company yeah but i think as long as you can get over that um which actually i could as i was going through i was like i mean i don't want a diagram that looks like the mckinsey diagram you know it does look something like something from the 80s or 90s with all the little um icons that look like they were done in clip art or whatever um but I think actually the questions and the conversations even like us going oh we don't really use the word strategy and deciding does that matter and deciding why is strategy sometimes helpful and you know part of strategy is making sure that you're all you know rowing in the same direction it's like are we all have we got that kind of shared sense of like what we're trying to do and what we're trying to achieve that is really important to me so then that might just be a gap that we've got that I almost didn't appreciate that we'd had and I do sometimes think there's sometimes a difference between you and I and everybody because you and I might be like well we feel really confident in our strategy but does everybody feel confident in the strategy so I did find it useful yeah that's not as useful as the second one I think the second one was my most useful I quite like this one I I would really like to do this and then do it with the team.

41:38Yeah, I think probably you've got to do it as a team, which we've not. But that contrast between my perception and the team's reality, I think could be really, really, really insightful. But yeah, hopefully this has been useful for you in thinking about, I guess, ways of creating clarity, how frameworks... I think the main insight from our reflections is that these are a good way to get started, create clarity, and then have a conversation. I think a framework in isolation probably doesn't change much, but a framework that goes into a conversation, whether it's with a colleague or your team, is where good stuff can happen.