Shaking 2022

At this point in the film, one thing is clear to me: after the logical turmoil of 2020 and 2021, we can say that 2022 has been a year to build to the new model and that in 2023 everything points to the fact that we will continue in the same vein. Yes, of course, the new year will be hectic, intense, chaotic, full of ups and downs and uncertainties but, let’s be honest, what year hasn’t been? We are all used to navigating in turbulent waters, and this year I have finally seen more and more organisations of all kinds taking action. Never before have I been involved in so many job crafting exercises, so much organisational architecture and so many evolutions of ways of working. Never before have I seen profiles from all fields (nursing, production, pattern making, logistics, design, innovation, architecture, communication, operations, engineering and a long etcetera) so willing to embrace the canvas business model to outline the value proposition of their roles, projects, ideas, departments or products and not fall into the trap of the 20th century model, where we automatically started to do the “what” without first thinking about the “why” (how many zombie projects, badly assembled departments and meaningless products have emerged from this style of working!) Never before have I seen so much prominence, at last, of the operations and tactical areas (I don’t know whether out of necessity or conviction, but I see more and more strategy teams willing to embrace the bottom-up leadership model and I couldn’t be happier). Never before have I had the pleasure of seeing organisations finally trust their internal customer (their coworkers) to create communities of specialists, give a voice to younger profiles to promote reverse mentoring and choose more direct, truly agile, frugal, high-impact and easy-to-implement projects. From my humble corner of the world, I am excited to see that the model is being built, that it contributes, that it convinces and that it is expanding more and more. 

As I said, 2023 will be a year in which we will continue to build a model that works, taking into account the situation in which we live. And, surely, just as the new model implies embracing other perspectives, other ways of relating and other working environments (at the level of tools, processes or structures, to mention a few elements), the new model will lead us to evolve our criteria for assessing the results of what we do through coherence. Let me explain. Until now we have been using a strictly numerical perspective to see whether results are good or bad: number of sales, number of new clients, number of closed projects, number of followers in networks … This is the legacy of the previous century’s model: giving priority to a number. However, if we consider it carefully, we will come to the conclusion that to determine whether something (project, department, product, company, …) is successful or not, it makes much more sense to analyse the degree of coherence with respect to its value proposition: Are the clients we have consistent with our purpose? What impact have the projects we have completed had? Who are the profiles that make up our community in networks? What contribution is the project/department/company making to the environment? Numbers and figures are a simple reflection of something deeper, which is the value proposition, the backbone of everything we want to create. In other words, everything that is generated without a value proposition ends up being inconsistent and requires too much resources and energy to generate a small and ephemeral impact. In today’s environment, rather than striving for numbers, determination should be directed towards being coherent and consistent with the value proposition we set out at the time and, if we achieve this, the numbers will follow as a logical consequence. I am not saying that numbers are not important, but it is impossible to get good numbers (really good numbers, not the result of financial juggling) if we have not been consistent with our value proposition.

So, for 2023, I wish you coherence and consistency with your value proposition and determination to keep it. Rome was not built in a day and building a new model takes more than a year. Go for it! 😊

Thank you so much for always being there, dearest Shaker community! Have a happy and healthy 2023!

And, in case you want to review some of the momentums of the year, here you have 4 posts and 4 MetaShakes:

Posts:

1. When an organisational culture is too cryptic we are doomed to inbreeding.
2. Performace is dead.
3. Let’s fight the corporate monologuists.
4. We are not “Business Partners”. WE ARE BUSINESS.

MetaShakes:

1. The REAL Metaverse with the great Guss Medina, alma pater of The Singular Factory.
2. Operational Agile with my dear Patricia Pérez (Casa del Libro) and Maria Alsina (Zeitreel-SONAE).
3. Rebranding HR with the one and only Mireia Martín (Founder of Iconista).
4. Operational HR with a crack in the field, Albert Riosalido (Lacoste).