Complicated Vs Complex
Why Navigating The Modern Workplace Means Understanding The Difference
Hello, and welcome to this week’s newsletter. Thank you to our new subscribers. If you’re new, drop me a line and tell me what you are working on these days
This Week’s Newsletter:
Career Development Philosophy in Action
Complicated Vs Complex
Mindsets and Language For a New World of Work
Career Development Philosophy in Action
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the importance within companies who want to retain their talent and need to align and create a career development philosophy.
Before launching into any career development program, buying any internal mobility platform or starting any training for managers around career conversations and career development, you actually need to articulate inside of your organization what career development is, what career growth means, and maybe even what it is/isn’t. And fortunately, I found a company that has done a pretty good job of bringing this to life.
This week, I had the chance to interview Melanie Naranjo, VP of People at Ethena. Ethena is a startup that is reinventing compliance training and has grown to have hundreds of employees over the course of the past few years.
One of the challenges in startups is that because things are changing so rapidly and quickly, it can be difficult to manage or even forget about career development because by the time you put a leveling guide or set of “career paths” in place the company has already outgrown them. Some would argue this is a feature not a bug, but when it comes to helping people feel confident that they have clear opportunities for growth, it can be problematic.
After reviewing their employee survey scores, Melanie and her team realized that clarity around career growth had room for improvement. For them, the business case was clear - if people don’t feel like they have opportunities to grow, they’ll leave, which will cause a lot of pain, cost and pressure on a growing startup.
To counteract this, Melanie and her team did a few key things:
Defining Language about Career Development - Melanie and her team took a stab at developing definitions around terms like career development, growth, etc. They quickly came up with these through their own brainstorming and research, and then shared them with others in the company to collaborate and get feedback.
Defining Development Paths - From the conversations with employees, it was clear that most people defined one specific path: vertical (promotion) Taking the time to spell out the other paths, and examples of what those looked like was the next step. Those were A) expanding the scope of your role, B) stepping into leadership opportunities and C) building and gaining new skills
Defining Metrics - Developing measurements and guidelines and making them transparent when possible to help employees understand expectations
Providing Scaffolding and Support For Managers - Once all of that was defined, they put together programs, training and support to enable managers to work 1:1 with employees on career growth and development
In six months, Ethena went from employee satisfaction for career development being at 72% to being at 90%, a full 18 points in a six month change. Not bad!
This is a great example of how before launching into any type of programming, training etc, articulating and aligning around a career development philosophy makes a difference.
Make sure to listen in to hear more of Melanie’s story here
Complicated Vs Complex
As a proponent of systems thinking and how it intersects with the way that we work, something I’ve been exploring lately is the difference between complicated and complex.
Something that is 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 is hard to solve, but ultimately, knowable.
It might be hard to build a watch, or a house, but ultimately, we have systems and people who can follow steps and do that repeatedly and consistently.
Something that is 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐱 is hard to control, and hard to predict. So complex is not simple and never fully knowable - there are too many variables that interact.
The way to solve something that is complex is not through analysis, or following a set of repeatable known steps, but rather, through small actions, experimentation, and learning.
All systems that require human interaction to function correctly are complex, a la companies. If you want to build a company from scratch, you can study all the companies you want, and learn a lot from that, but ultimately, nothing will be able to tell you exactly how to build and grow a new company.
Similarly, managing people is complex - yes, there are certain norms and behaviors that we generally accept best practices, but there is far more out there that requires you to explore and interact with the system to find the answer, not to mention, each individual you manage is in fact unique, and thus requires a different set of tools.
And finally, I’m inclined to think that in today’s world of work, careers are becoming more complex than they are complicated. That’s why simply building and executing your “complicated” checklist of yearly career conversation + individual career development plan + leveling guide probably won’t help all your employees find their unique path for career growth inside your company. (Note: you should still do many of these things, they just won’t be a silver bullet solution…)It may mean that a career isn’t a checklist to be solved for, but rather a complex system to be curious explored.
So what does this mean for you, as a manager or leader?
It means that the best thing you can do is to empower your employees to be curious, to experiment, and to help them develop the mindset and practices for exploring their careers, and spotting opportunities they can pursue.
It means giving them context about how they are interacting with a complex problem through feedback and coaching, and it means putting them in spaces and positions where they can take small actions that get them toward their goals and growth.
It means that instead of encouraging them to follow steps or a playbook, you could instead take the approach of enabling conditions that enable learning how to navigate a complex system. Instead of trying to have them figure out their career, enable the conditions for them to get curious and through habits and practices, really explore it.
Mindsets and Language For a New World of Work
Albert Einstein once said, “You cannot use an old map to explore a new world.” Since our world of work is different from the past, it's my belief that it’s time to update our maps. Language can be a powerful tool, it helps people who have thoughts in their head articulate and associate those into real feelings and beliefs that can be acted upon, and it gives permission for people to expand their thinking beyond what’s possible.
In my view, we need a heck of a lot more language and mindsets to help us navigate this new world of work, in the meantime, here are some writers, thinkers, researchers and people whose language and frameworks I think are worth checking out to help us navigate this complex world of work:
Steve Cadigan - Steve actually gave me the idea for this section in his podcast about reframing language about the employee experience. Steve is the author of a book called Workquake and was the first CHRO at LinkedIn during its period of high growth back in the 2010’s. Steve will be a guest on an upcoming episode of The Edge of Work where we’ll explore this idea more in depth, but in the meantime, you can check out his book here.
Christina Wallace - Christina is currently an Author and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School. Once described as a “human-venn diagram,” Christina has built her career around understanding the diverse and nuanced parts of herself and connecting them into her work and her life. Her upcoming book, The Portfolio Life, explores this multidimensional framework of building a diversified and integrated life and work. She will also an upcoming guest on the Edge of Work Podcast.
Simone Stolzoff - Simone is a writer and former Ideo Consultant, and has an upcoming book coming out called The Good Enough Job. In his book and his writing, Simone explores our (collective) relationship with work and takes an alternative perspective of many of the traditional advice of “doing what you love” and ‘finding your passion/purpose” in your work. Simone will also be a guest on the Edge of Work podcast.
Paul Millerd - Paul left the corporate world and has gone on what he has described as a “pathless path.” Since then, he’s traveled the world as a self-employed solopreneur and tried to craft a life and work that truly fits him. Along the way, he started a newsletter writing about his journey and his general curiosities and last year, published his book The Pathless Path. Paul has sold more than 10,000 copies of his book, and his message and story has served as an inspiration to others who are looking for guidance to find a new way of thinking about work and life. Check out my interview with Paul
Ann Helen Peterson - Ann’s newsletter is one of my favorites, as she studies culture, inclusive of the workplace. Her book on remote work studied remote work before remote work was cool, and one of her core theses is the general idea that “community is the way.” Across all aspects of work, life and society, any problem that we have must also include a solution that includes “caring more deeply” for others.
April Rinne - April Rinne has been in a constant evolution and flux since the beginning of her career. April’s book Flux, is all about how to stay calm and thrive in a world of constant change. One of her ways to do this is through diversification, and having a portfolio approach to your career. Check out my interview with April
Eric Johnson and Nayla Bahri - Eric and Nayla host the Inside Job podcast, where each week, they use their backgrounds as coaches to tackle core issues around our relationship with work. You can check out their podcast here
Aaron Dignan - Aaron is the Founder of The Ready, an org design consultancy and the Author of Brave New Work, a book about reinventing and transforming your organization through new ways of working. He co-hosts a podcast about topics related to new ways of working, org design and create human-first workplaces called Brave New Work.
Erica Keswin - A former HR leader turned author and researcher, Erica has written a number of books on workplace and leading people and organizations. She is currently working on a book on rethinking employee retention, and writes about many of these topics.
Gorick Ng - Gorick is a former BCG Consultant turned author and speaker. His book, The Unspoken Rules is meant to help employees understand the unwritten and unspoken rules that not everyone gets taught but are critical for being effective in the workplace. Check out my interview with Gorick.
Thanks For Reading, and before you go :
If you’re company is looking for help in developing and retaining talent, or a speaker for your conference, I’d love to work with you: Here is how I might be able to assist:
Team Trainings & Professional Development
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That’s all for this week. Have a great week!
Al