Working in lava cars

I'm in a car, driving 100 miles an hour. Behind me is turbo lava, not the catastrophic kind, just relentless. It just keeps coming. Ahead: almost complete darkness as the ash from the volcanic explosion blocks out the sun. The headlights show just a few feet in front of the car. I can't see. Can't slow down. So I keep driving.

I suspect that's the state of affairs for a lot of us right now—work is moving faster, to the point where the speed is the point: just go; and even if you could look over the horizon at what might be coming next, there's really no way to see what those things might be because they haven’t appeared yet.

And if it all sounds a little disorienting, both my description of it and your actual work, that's because … it is. It's disorienting.

And so through our collective mess I'm here to remind you that, while yes … FAST is sort of the name of the game right now … what we're working through isn't all that much different than what it was before, it's complexity—where cause and effect can only be determined after, where the next best step can never be known, where the solution is uncovered rather than pre-determined.

In other words: "Work is learning and learning is the work." That's not only my favorite Harold Jarche quote, it's one of my favorite quotes about work from anyone of all time.

Amidst this speed, this urgency, this most recent so-called new normal, it serves as a reminder that even now, what we’re doing is learning as we go … which, in all honesty, is the only approach to work that makes sense in a work world defined by complexity.

Jarche’s Seek > Sense > Share framework is a way to formalize this in your day-to-day.

Seeking is gathering information. Yes, it's what you read, watch, and listen to. It's what you pick up from colleagues, from experience, from paying attention. It’s also what you do as you just figure out what the next step might be.

Sensing is the middle, and the hardest. But also human nature. It's where information becomes knowledge. It's reflection. It's noticing what's changing in your thinking and why. It's doing, and then thinking about the doing—before you move to the next thing. It’s making sense of the lesson.

Sharing is putting what you've learned into the world—in your work, with your team, and on LinkedIn, too (I'm doing everything I can not to visit LinkedIn these days). It solidifies your own thinking and opens you up to learning from others. You know how when you explain to someone about what you’ve just learned, you know a little bit more about the topic? You’re more confident and you have more conviction? That’s sharing.

When you're moving this fast, in this much darkness, learning feels like a distraction from driving. But it's actually the only way to drive well. Driving without the learning is just checking the checkbox, moving from one task to the next. That turns us into robots.

Already, and clearly even more so into our near future, work has enough robots to do the robot thing. What work needs is your humanity. And that means it needs your learning. Your seeking, sensing, and sharing.

That's the frame. Here's what it looked like when I recently needed it:

I've been in the middle of a stakeholder engagement push at work—establishing connection with senior people I hadn’t met, coordinating calendars, defining meeting purposes and agendas that weren't entirely clear to anyone yet, balancing what the organization needed with what our vendor was recommending. The whole thing was uncomfortable in that particular way where you're not sure if you're doing it right, whatever right might be, but you don't have time to figure that out before you have to do the next thing.

So I scheduled a few meetings. Pushed through the discomfort. They were helpful in the way that first conversations are helpful—not decisive, but orienting. We pivoted. Started showing dashboards in the program intro instead of leading with context. And now we have a coherent four-part engagement model for each scenario.

I didn't learn my way to that strategy and then execute it. The execution was the learning. I had to take the next step, see what happened, and respond to that. And then do it again. And again. Our approach will continue to adapt with each conversation we have.

That's seeking and sensing. The sharing in this setting arrives in the adaptations to the stakeholder meetings that follow—where we’re now presenting what the next few weeks will look like and the deliverables to expect.

If you and I had sat down for a consulting conversation where you shared this story with me, I’d have described what needs to come next exactly how it played out above. But I forgot how this works—to get to where we are now required getting over my own discomfort of not knowing the exact right approach before moving. A bit of encouragement from the team I’m working with. And trusting that the right approach would emerge from the doing.

We can't see very far in front of us in our lava cars. We're unlikely to for a while.

Yet your headlights still work. You can take the next step deliberately. Notice what happens. Let it inform your thinking. Share by putting what you've learned into the next thing you do.

That's the work.

Don't let the speed talk you out of learning.

Around The Water Cooler ⛲

My water coolers have been sparse. The next edition of How To Work may be entirely dedicated to the many saved links I’ve been collecting. Tune in to find out!

Thanks for reading. Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was. Here’s my take on what we’re working through.