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Sonia P Uncategorized

It takes a village and the village is not made up of women alone. IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity

It’s a sea of social media posts today, recognising inspirational women and highlighting the gaps still to bridge.  Some posts are quite specific in celebrating colleagues, family, friends.  Some are generically pointing to an international day of acknowledgement.  Other posts are drawing attention to specific causes that are close to heart.  I love seeing how the awareness and support for International Women’s Day has exploded, even just over the past few years.

This does have been thinking though..how will this sea of social media posts translate into tangible action that actually makes a difference?  To make a difference, something must run deeper than just a hashtag and an inspirational social media post once a year.    

Each year, International Women’s Day set out a theme and this year, the theme to carry forward is #EmbraceEquity.

“The aim of the IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme is to get the world talking about Why equal opportunities aren’t enough. People start from different places, so true inclusion and belonging require equitable action.”

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Theme

I think about how to create action, where the ripple effect starts and what #EmbraceEquity means to different women and people that I know. Reflecting on two of our business values ‘stay human’ and ‘keep it real’, a couple of thoughts keep popping up:

1. There are women in my village who are bloody remarkable human beings, getting through all the ordinary things under some extraordinary circumstances; and

2. It takes a village and the village is not made up of women alone. 

So to create action, shine the light close to home.  Recognise the women around you who are bit by bit, getting on with the job to be done, despite the situation they find themselves in.

Despite the situation they find themselves in.  

Be part of their village.  Or be part of changes to the framework they must operate within; make it easier for them to get the job done.

Sonia P Youth Education

The path to employment for Australian school leavers

I’ll be putting aside some time this week to read this latest report from FYA Digital “The New Work Reality”; following 14000 young people in their study/work journey from age 15 to 25.  I’m sure there will be some interesting correlations between this report and ABCN’s 2018 Annual Report

         


Of the group surveyed for the “New Work Reality” report, only 50% of 25 year olds are employed in full-time work. There are several dimensions to this providing some interesting reading from perspective of an employer, a mentor to young people and also as a parent to a pre-teen. 

 

“Not enough work experience”.   “Lack of appropriate education”.

Feedback from the people I know in this age group (who are searching for full time employment following study) is reinforced by the findings in this report.   Young people who have completed tertiary study are struggling to find full time work in their field, in many cases because they don’t have enough work experience (despite doing unpaid internships) or because they don’t have the supplementary skills and knowledge needed despite completing full time tertiary study.   Add to this that the number of graduates applying for entry level positions far outweighs the number of positions actually available.

The solution has to come from a few different angles; supplementing secondary curriculum to develop enterprise and transferable job skills, ensuring tertiary course content is kept up to date with rapidly changing industries and creating the environment for more full-time entry level positions.

Who are ABCN and FYA?

The Australian Business and Community Network (ABCN) and the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) are two organisations making great progress in this space, helping young people through secondary school and in the transition from study to employment.

 

 

ABCN student mentoring programs


I’ve worked with ABCN over the past 6 years as a mentor and as a program facilitator and every week I see the extremely positive impact that ABCN programs have on the lives of the students we work with.

 

 

 

If you haven’t heard of them, you really should check them out.  Why?

If you have kids, nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters or grand kids heading towards (or already in!) the 15 – 25 age bracket, they are likely to be affected by the challenges that these organisations aim to alleviate.

 

Sonia P Uncategorized

Let’s talk charts and dashboards – Highcharts has landed in deskonline!

These days charts are not just lines, pies and stacked bars. To tell the story of our data, we have waterfalls, heat maps, gauges, scatter charts, tree maps, polar charts…..it’s a large list.

And it’s not just business data now; there are charts for fitness trackers, distance traveled, sports teams and player stats, finance on the evening news, Facebook page stats, twitter trends, interactive maps and charts embedded in written news stories, to track progress of a federal election…

*image source www.abc.net.au

 

Charts and dashboards are all over the place, translating all sorts of data into an exciting story to follow.

Powering a very large portion of the charts that swish past your screen each day is something called Highcharts – like this Fitbit dashboard:

You can find out more about Highcharts JS here

 

What we’re really excited about though is our recent addition to deskonline.cloud

 

We’ve been on a mission to bring a world class chart and dashboard solution into deskonline.cloud and we’ve done it.

 

Highcharts is now available as an app in your deskonline.cloud space!

 

A well curated set of charts is a great way to create a visual story of your project or business.  This shows progress across KPI’s and planned business outcomes in a quick and easy to understand format; a really valuable tool for efficient and fact based decision making forums.

 

Follow deskonline.cloud on Linked In  to see how easy it is to create your very own schmick looking dashboard of charts, populated with your own data.  You can also follow deskonline.cloud on Facebook

 

 

Sonia P succession planning

Talking about Succession Planning and IDP’s

So what happens when we intentionally blend succession plans and individual development plans across all roles in the business, not just leadership roles?  Great things happen, that’s what. 

 

Let’s look at succession plans first.

If you’ve got succession plans in place for your leadership team and a handful of key roles, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity to build positive employee engagement across the board.

According to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report:

94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career and Manager involvement is a critical ingredient to increase employee engagement with learning.

As an employee, how does having my own succession plan make me feel more engaged?

  1. It’s an acknowledgement that it does matter if no one is there to do my job and this makes me feel like I make an important contribution to the team;
  2. It’s a chance for me to coach someone else and share my experiences on what does and doesn’t work;
  3. Being able to take leave is less stressful because I know that someone else is able to look after my work while I’m away; and
  4. If a great internal promotion opportunity comes up I know there are options for other people to step into my role so I won’t be held back because I’m needed more where I am now.

And how do employees feel about being part of someone else’s succession plan?

  1. It feels great to be considered good enough to step into a more senior or more technically challenging role;
  2. This makes me feel like it’s worth battling through some of the tough situations because there is a real opportunity to learn and progress my career.

 

LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report

But how do we decide who needs a succession plan? 

Traditionally this effort has been focussed on “emerging leaders” and “subject matter experts”, key roles where significant loss in IP would cause impacts to business continuity.   But are these roles the only roles that fall prone to unplanned absences or that have a critical impact if left vacant for more than 4 weeks?  Are these the only roles that incur recruitment and training costs?  Is it only worth investing in career development for a subset of people?  And what’s your succession plan for the succession plan pool?

 

Having succession plans in place across all roles in the team is a useful leadership approach

  1. Minimise disruption in the business:
    • Forward planning for planned vacancies (e.g. long service leave, parental leave, annual leave, career progression); or
    • Risk mitigation for unplanned vacancies (e.g. attrition, sick leave, jury duty);
  2. Engage employees with genuine individual development plans that are backed up with coaching and mentoring opportunities. This shows that a genuine career path exists and will motivate people to stick around, helping in retention of business IP; and
  3. Reduce the costs of recruitment and training to fill vacated roles by having clarity on what roles really need to be recruited, if the ideal back-fill is contract or permanent and whether the role can be filled through internal promotion.

 

So what if we were to intentionally link individual development plans and succession plans?

An individual development plan is the start and all employees should have one.  It’s important to create clarity around what behaviours and skills are expected as someone progresses through development in that role.  This provides actionable steps for learning and development activities both on the job and through formal training.  But the individual development plan becomes truly genuine when it can be positioned as a pathway towards a role that someone else is doing now (i.e. as part of that person’s succession plan) or a role that is about to emerge (more on this in another article about building capability from within).

 

An individual development plan AND a succession plan for everyone in the business would be ludicrous!

Not if you can develop an efficient and repeatable way to do so.

By finding relationships between functions in your business and the roles within each function you can really efficiently design succession (and development plans) for all roles within the functions.  Mapping the roles that would logically progress to other roles provides a basic succession planning map across your teams.  The role specific development plans create the basis for the individual development plan, tailored as needed for each employee.

 

 Here are our tops for how to create an efficient and repeatable link between individual development plans and succession plans:

  1. Be clear on your E2E Workflow, the functions and the roles that support different activities;
  2. Create role specific development plans that define the competency levels within each role, clearly stating the criteria for each level;
  3. For each role, identify the roles across the business that are logical next steps and use these to guide the learning activities in each individual development plan; and
  4. Include in each individual development plan an individual succession plan for that person.

 

LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report

Sonia P leadership, mindfulness

Equipping our leaders to lead well

I’m so pleased to have found this article by Ezgi Tasdemir, recounting her ‘milestone’ day and sharing her interview with Michael Bunting, a globally recognised authority on mindfulness and leadership.

Last year I spent 2 days (2 very mindful, intense days!) with a wonderful group of coaches, facilitators and leaders to learn from Michael the fundamentals and science behind mindfulness, the habits that get in the way of mindfulness and then how to introduce people to the practice of mindfulness in a one day workshop setting.

It was a profound experience; thoughtful, intentional, rich with facts from research and at times, uncomfortable, but in a good way, as we learnt how to sit with the many thoughts and feelings that our minds unleash.  The small group setting, blended with expert guidance from Michael and the company of very talented people, encouraged honest and challenging conversation.  This was the start of my formal corporate mindfulness coaching practice and it was like discovering a precious gem on my development path.  That Michael has placed trust in me to present and share his research and insights is quite humbling.

Since then, I’ve found the Awakened Mind app to be a great source of learning and support.  I say this often; the amount of information in this app is phenomenal, it really has been brilliantly constructed for it’s purpose.  Every time I fire up my Awakened Mind app to watch an interview, listen to an audio book or listen to a guided meditation, it feels like I’m being re-immersed into those 2 days.  Today, reading Ezgi’s article has had the same effect (thank-you Ezgi Tasdemir!).

A couple of quotes from the interview in Ezgi’s article:

“Mindfulness teaches leaders to still the mind and stay focused. People want the presence and attention of their leaders. Our research from 4000 observers and about 500 leaders has shown that being calm, clear, grounded and focused (especially under pressure) are the top 5 qualities people want from their boss, out of 83 leadership qualities.” – Michael Bunting

“You can be having tough conversations with someone, or even firing someone. But it is always done from a place of kindness, care and compassion.“– Michael Bunting

It makes so much sense; this is so relevant now and will continue to be given the rapid pace at which our business and social landscapes are changing.  That same research by WorkSmart across 4000 people also showed that:

38% of a person’s engagement at work can be explained by how their boss models 8 distinctive mindful leadership behaviours

and

33% of a person’s mental health can also be explained by how their boss models these same 8 behaviours

This is why we are dedicated to the cause of leaders being equipped to lead well.  Because the way in which one leader chooses to lead has a profound impact on the well-being of many.

I would love to help you and your teams to get started with mindfulness practice.  Find out how here: https://partlettconsulting.com.au/index.php/workshops-and-courses/introduction-to-mindfulness/

Awakened Mind is the mindfulness solution designed for the corporate world.  If you’d like to purchase an annual subscription or discuss options for company/group trial subscriptions, please reach out: info@partlettconsulting.com.au

 

Sonia P deskonline.cloud

Using the Deck for brainstorming

There is something slightly therapeutic about removing post-it notes from the block and re-sticking them elsewhere. But I can say I’ve been won over by the ability to seamlessly create, categorise and task manage stacks of notes online; no paper required!  My stacks of notes are then accessible from my mobile, tablet/laptop or desktop and can be shared with others for review or real-time update via a secure link.

First though, let’s recognise and acknowledge the old school method that has served us well for many years.  This is how you’re probably doing brainstorming in your team workshops now:

  • Grab a few ‘decks’ of post-it notes;
  • Get your team in a room;
  • Realise some people you need are in a different office, organise to dial them in because there are no VC rooms available;
  • Find a wall;
  •  Group brainstorm and write ideas on each post-it note;
  •  Remember that you forgot to dial the other guys in;
  •  Bring the guys on the phone up to speed, decide it’s easier to take a  photo of the wall of post-it notes and send it;
  • Resume brainstorming and shout at the speaker phone over your shoulder as you as you stick post-its on the wall;
  • Decide the mass of post-it notes on the wall needs grouping and owners assigned;
  • Pull them off the wall and put them back onto the wall in new groups;
  • Watch the moved post-it notes fall off the wall;
  • Put them back on the wall again.  Yell into the speaker phone to keep the off-site guys in the loop;
  • More fall off, repeat last step; then
  • Discuss who will own which actions.  Take a photo of the whole wall, collect all the post-it notes and assign someone to convert the picture into an action plan.

 

As exciting as this sounds, there is a now a far more efficient and collaborative way to get the job done:

  • Create a shared ‘Deck’ and send the link to everyone;
  • Do you want to chat too?  Open up  ‘Talk’ in Deskonline.cloud for chat or video conferencing;
  • Group brainstorm and start filling up the stacks with notes;
  • Realise the decks need grouping, create some categories or new stacks;
  • Drag and drop notes to the right stack and update categories;
  • Assign owners and due dates to notes along the way;
  • Chitty-chitty-chat-chat.  Repeat last two steps; then
  • Everyone kicks back with a cheeky beverage to admire the glorious looking set of ideas and actions on  your shared deck, knowing that an alert notification will tell them when there’s an upcoming task due

 

This is the Deck on Nextcloud and it’s live now in deskonline.cloud your Australian based NextCloud provider.

Sonia P leadership, mindfulness

Why is mindfulness important for leaders?

 

 

Key in a search for ‘why is mindfulness good for leaders’ and you’ll get pages of results.

I like to describe it like this.   Of all the jobs that a leader has, I believe there are two that are core to all the others:

The capacity to look after yourself and therefore others

Mindfulness practice teaches us how to recognise the emotional and physical changes that thoughts and feelings create. Becoming familiar with these changes is helping us to practice dealing with our thoughts and feelings. This creates headspace to be at ease and to recognise quickly when unrest starts creeping in.

The ability to quickly bring yourself back to a place from which to make wise decisions

A leader spends a lot of time making decisions – the impacts of bad decisions can be far reaching. In high pressure situations it can be very hard to make decisions with an unbiased, level and practical view. Mindfulness practice teaches us how to quickly come back to the facts, what’s here, what’s not and what the best path forward is.

Informal mindfulness practice will help you develop the capacity and ability to get these jobs done.  Your development will intensify with regular formal mindfulness practice.

 

Sonia P Uncategorized

Developing Leadership Skills in Young Women

In my role as a Program Facilitator for ABCN (Australian Business and Community Network) I have just completed my first FOCUS Program for 2018.  The FOCUS program is aimed at developing leadership skills in young women, the students in my recent program are currently studying in year 10.

Our final session was aptly held on International Women’s Day, my thoughts after wrapping up this program are in this article.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/developing-leadership-skills-young-women-sonia-partlett/