It’s a new year and I hope you've returned to work refreshed and ready to face the joys and challenges this year will bring. I'm a big fan of rugby. Being in New Zealand, the All Blacks are my team. Something I’ve noticed about them... It's often in the last 20 minutes of the game that they pull away from their opponents. They are supremely fit and the impact of their reserves off the bench is undoubtedly a factor. Yet, what stands out for me? Pressure. The pressure created through patient and consistent execution of skills. The opposition eventually cracks and the All Blacks snatch the opportunity to score. And, more often than not, win. All the great professional sports teams understand this principle. But that’s just sport. Can we apply this principle to the workplace? It's tempting to jump at anything that looks new and shiny. Silver bullets. New methods or technologies promising a faster route to success. We lose focus and are inconsistent in our actions and communication. Forgetting about the basics. Don't get me wrong, new methods and technology are often essential. Change is good. Often the new year is the time to do that. But not at the expense of what makes us uniquely valuable to customers and colleagues. Perhaps it is this value that we should double down on. Patient and consistent execution of the skills that make us valuable creates 'value pressure'. We'll reach our desired outcome. Any required changes and new methods to adopt will become obvious and align well with who we are and what we want to achieve. So, as we dive into 2018, how do we create 'value pressure' in the workplace? Know the process. Trust the process. Understand how we deliver value to our customers or colleagues. What is the unique mix of relationships, skills and application we bring to our role? We may need to ask others for feedback to get better insight into this. Success may not arrive straight away. Timing is often out of our control. We must be patient and trust the process. Our ‘value pressure’ will lead to the right opportunity at the right time. That opportunity could be anything depending on our circumstance. A new customer, an interesting project, career advancement etc... Not sure where to start with building ‘value pressure’? Consider these five questions, linked to purpose, mastery and autonomy from Dan Pink's Drive, to kick-start the process: 1. Who am I serving? 2. What do I provide that is valuable to them? 3. Where do I feel I make my greatest contribution in the workplace? 4. What habits and actions will I put in place to consistently deliver this value? 5. Do I need any further resources (time, tools, sign-off etc) to enable me to do this? Are you a team leader and part of your ‘value pressure’ will be finding ways to enable engagement in your team? Have a look at our . This is an exercise you can run with your team to establish what optimal self-direction looks like and how you can get there.

All the best as you build ‘value pressure’ this year.

Doug Maarschalk is the Founder & Director of Sunergeo. Doug is a consultant, facilitator and coach who uses the principles of intrinsic motivation as the foundation for his work. He has worked with New Zealand businesses in the horticulture, legal, accounting, financial services, real estate and healthcare sectors. Sunergeo has the license for Daniel Pink’s Drive Workshop in New Zealand and Australia.

If you're anything like me you're experiencing the pre-Christmas crunch. Some work to wrap up this week and hanging out for a good break.

Sometime before mid-January you're likely to start thinking about goals for next year. It's easy to keep looking forward and not take time out to reflect.

The practice of reflection is crucial. Reflection helps us to capture learnings and identify areas to improve. It is the foundation for moving forward.

No need to make it complicated or time consuming. Here's what I need to do to reflect well on the year just been (or week for that matter):

Make time. I've set aside an hour on Thursday for this. I've put a reminder in my calendar. Where could you block out time?

Record thoughts. I like to write things down. I'll have a notebook that I'll write my reflections in. If writing is not your thing then you could go for a walk with friend. What works best for you?

Have the right prompts. I use the Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy framework from Dan Pink’s Drive for a lot of my work. I'll be using the following questions based on that. You could use this or any other framework you like (A simple 'highlights and lowlights' may work). It helps to bring structure to the reflection process.

Purpose - Where did I make my biggest contribution this year? What has changed for the better because of my work?

Mastery - What are three key things I have learned this year? Where did I get my biggest sense of progress?

Autonomy - In what areas of my job did I feel like I had the most freedom or control? What did I do to become more productive (tools used, work delegated, new habits etc)?

Share my learnings. Once I've identified my learnings and achievements, I'll share these with my wife and some friends. Over a cold beverage most likely. I find the discussion helps me to solidify my thoughts and teases out other things that I've done or learned. Who could you share with?

As you then look forward to next year, I'd encourage you to make regular reflection times each week. It increases our ability to make progress and learn the lessons we need to faster. Becoming more intentional rather than floating along on autopilot.

I'll also be reflecting on the people who have supported me and my business this year. That's you. Thank you! It's been a great journey with lots of learning and enjoyment.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2018.

is the Founder & Director of Sunergeo. Doug is a consultant, facilitator and coach who uses the principles of intrinsic motivation as the foundation for his work. He has worked with New Zealand businesses in the horticulture, legal, accounting, financial services, real estate and healthcare sectors. Sunergeo has the license for Daniel Pink’s in New Zealand and Australia.

Pain pulsated through every muscle in my weary legs. My family congratulated me at the finish line. The electrolyte drink had never tasted so good. I had just completed my first half marathon (Kerikeri, New Zealand) in a time of one hour and 55 minutes. Not an elite athlete performance but achieving my sub-two-hour goal. And, for those of you who know me, you'll know that my physique is not one predisposed to running!

Reflecting on my training and the race, I kept seeing links to the work environment. What motivated me? What keeps me going? How do I improve?

Here are 5 learnings and reflections from my experience and how they relate to motivation at work.

1. Make the means to the end purposeful

I had a clear goal of running 21km on a certain date in a desired time. But I had a question niggling in the back of mind. What if something happens before the race and I need to pull out? What will all the effort of training be for?

I had to make the training itself purposeful. Not just a means to an end. I decided to use it as an opportunity to explore my home town on foot. I didn’t run the same route twice and I’ve experienced places and outlooks that I hadn't seen before.

At work, it’s critically important to have clear goals to focus activity. We also need to configure the work itself to be motivating. Some options include:

- Use it to make better connections with workmates

- Build in mini competitions for yourself to gain a sense of achievement

- Keep a record of the things you are learning along the way

2. Make time for experimentation

During the training, I tried and tested different approaches to nutrition and hydration. Footwear (and blister medication). Running techniques.

This was a process of experimentation to see what would work best to reach my desired goal. I made gradual and incremental progress towards a point of confidence in my race day approach.

But we don't experiment on race day. That's time to execute all our learnings.

At work, we should take an experimental approach to any new thing we hope will deliver extra value. Four simple questions can help with experimentation:

- What are the assumptions we are making?

- How can we test some of these assumptions?

- What are useful measures when we do the test?

- How much of a certain metric will prove our assumption to be valid (or invalid)?

3. Visualise progress

On the race day, many things kept me going. The other competitors, one of which was my dad (who beat me by 90 seconds much to his satisfaction). Musicians on the side of the road.

My Polar M400 watch comes out tops. I could check my pace and distance at any time. I could see my progress in real time. I credit this immediate feedback with keeping up my pace in the last 3km. Every time I started to drop my speed I would notice and speed up.

Two aspects of this apply to work. What are the useful measures to show us progress? And, what tools are we using to calculate and display the measures?

A simple whiteboard displaying the completion of tasks in a project can increase motivation. We focus on what we can see (profound, I know!!). This is the flip side of the phrase my high school teacher used to use with regards to keeping our property safe "Out of sight, out of mind."

4. Regulate self-talk

What we say to ourselves when the challenge becomes acute is critical. It's useful to decide on the script before the race. I had run a full 21km in my training. My self-talk in the final few kilometers, when I was feeling a lot of pain, was, “You’ve done this before.” The script can be useful to pump you up but it’s more useful to have one that reminds you of the facts. "You have done this before."

At work, we have challenges that arise. Our self-talk impacts our mindset. Which, in turn, enables us to make meaningful progress. So, decide what you will tell yourself when challenges arise, you face criticism or you make a mistake. Check out my previous post on growth mindset for some ideas.

5. Keep learning

My dad passed me at the 16km mark. I realised that I had a bit to learn about pacing, patience and sticking to a plan. I want to run another race and get a better time. I must integrate the learning from the race and increase my knowledge to reach the new goal.

In my work, I try to reflect regularly on what I have been learning (part of the purpose of writing these blog posts) and what improvements I can make. What are the things that you need to learn to make you more effective in your work? How can you give more time to intentional learning? This could be through education, seeking out new tasks to complete or a simple process of reflection at the end of each day.

So, there you have my (non-exhaustive) learnings from my first half marathon. In Daniel Pink's book ‘Drive’ he talks about mastery as a key motivational element. The race I ran was a lesson in mastery. I needed a clear goal and a meaningful training process. I needed a feedback mechanism to make progress immediately visible. I had to choose a mindset that saw the challenge as an opportunity to grow and learn.

I'm excited about the next race. I'm more excited about what these learnings will do for my work life. I hope you can use them too.

Doug Maarschalk is the Founder & Director of Sunergeo. Doug is a consultant, facilitator and coach who uses the principles of intrinsic motivation as the foundation for his work. He has worked with New Zealand businesses in the horticulture, legal, accounting, financial services, real estate and healthcare sectors. Sunergeo has the license for Daniel Pink’s Drive Workshop in New Zealand and Australia.

We love the words 'culture' and 'innovation'. To have a 'culture of innovation' must be a wonderful thing. But do we have useful, working definitions for these terms that help us to move forward? They can mean lots of things to lots of people. We end up spinning our wheels in pointless, conceptual conversations without making progress. It all gets too hard and we leave it to someone else.

A "toxic culture" becomes the scapegoat for all sorts of problems. No one takes responsibility for it as they don't know where to start. "Innovation" becomes limited to the big idea that must be the next major disruption in the industry. Again, someone else's problem.

A leadership team I've been working with has a mandate to innovate. We explored what innovation means and how to create a culture that enables it. Our goal was working definitions not perfect definitions.

Defining Innovation

Nick Skillicorn asked 15 people that work in the innovation space to define the term. Differing responses from each person. The consolidation of responses landed on:

Executing an idea which addresses a specific challenge and achieves value for both the company and customer.

We thought this was a useful way to define innovation. We could break it down to things we could focus on: 1. executing ideas 2. addressing specific challenges 3. achieving value for the organisation or customer.

Some of the group realised that they were innovating already. Doing little things that were new and adding value to the business. We all had examples of innovation taking place in the business.

Defining Culture

A working definition I use for 'culture' is how we think, speak and act together. We can observe the mindsets, language and behaviour to check the current state of our culture. We can define what we want each of these to look like in our desired culture. In 5 years time, what mindsets will be on display? How will people be talking to each other and customers? How will we act when we do well and when we make mistakes?

Why?

Ok. Stop. Why should we innovate and what is the point of culture? We must answer these questions in our specific context. Without this sense of guiding purpose, we don't know what kind of behaviour we need in our culture. We don't know what is actually valuable to our customers or company. Or how to prioritise and execute the myriad of ideas that get generated.

Is innovation to differentiate our business to be more competitive? Create new revenue streams or a sustainable business? Become more efficient in our operations? All the above? Your answers will give the direction needed for your innovative activities.

Is our focus on culture about becoming more effective as a team? Creating a great workplace that attracts talent? Driving learning and performance in our organisation?

How do we go about it?

Culture develops over time as we form habits and norms as a group. It’s a complex beast. We need a place to start...

To create a culture of innovation we need to combine the definitions to answer one question. What are the ways that we can think, speak and act together to execute ideas which address a specific challenge and achieve value for both the company and the customer?

Below are some suggestions that may help us on the journey.

Think together.

Adopting a learning and improvement mindset. I've written before about the growth mindset and Carol Dweck's great work in this area. People think of the challenges they face as opportunities to learn and improve. They encourage others to think the same.

When something take a lot of effort, we think "I get to do hard things."

When a challenge looms large in front of us, we think "This is an opportunity to grow."

When we experience setbacks, we think "Make it right then move forward."

When we face criticism, or receive feedback, we think "Take the gift and make a plan."

Speak together.

First, tell purposeful stories. Share examples of where you have seen the execution of ideas that add value to the company and the customer. Make space in group settings to tell these stories in an authentic way. Not lipservice, but a recognition of people living out the culture you desire.

Second, talk about the assumptions you're making. See this article by Anthony Boobier for a case study on the UX team at BNZ implementing this.

The language of assumption enables psychological safety. Google researched what factors determined their most effective teams. Psychological safety came out as the main factor. The ability for people to be vulnerable and take risks.

When we acknowledge that we make assumptions in most of what we do, we open the door to question ideas in a safe way. It becomes less about who's idea is best but more about what is most valuable to customers. People within the team then feel like they can contribute to the conversation.

Next time you're discussing a new plan, process or piece of work ask the group what you are assuming. Write them down on post-its or a whiteboard. See if you get more participation than usual. Once you've articulated the assumptions, prioritise the most important to be tested.

Act together.

Once we've identified the assumptions, we need to test these. A simple model for experimentation (there are lots of great ones out there) will help. Assumption -> Test -> Measure -> Validate or Invalidate.

I've seen a few teams try new things. Often they take a throw-it-up-and-see-what-sticks approach. We've all done this before. The experimentation model requires us to be clear on what we're testing and measuring. The goal is to learn. Whether we validate or invalidate our assumption we've learned something. Think how many project failures we'd have avoided if we invalidated some assumptions early.

Strategyzer has a couple of useful tools to guide experiments. You can interchange "hypothesis" for "assumption" if you wish. Then work through the next three steps to work out a real plan to validate your assumption.

A successful experiment may provide a new way to execute an idea. A failed experiment provides direction in how to refine an idea or what not to waste time on. When we've tried this approach we've seen greater engagement in teams as they figure out the best approach. As they gain insights within safe boundaries. Rather than following orders on a plan that may work but may also fail.

Great leaders innovate the factory

David Burkus says "Great leaders don't innovate the product, they innovate the factory." This speaks to the executing of valuable ideas regarding how we go about our work. Not just what we produce. This is at the heart of a sustainable culture of innovation. Focusing on how we get to the place we want to be as a group.

This means we are all involved. It's not just for the designers or leadership teams. No matter where we are in the organisation we can have influence through how we think, speak and act. Are we willing to shift our mindset to looking for improvements and learnings in the way we work? Will we talk about the assumptions of how we go about our work as a group? Will we try new ways of working with a commitment to a robust experimental process?

Where to begin?

Start small. Run your own experiment on an assumption you're making in your workplace. You may need to brainstorm with the team what that could be. Find a way to test that assumption. Measure the engagement or output of the team through feedback or other data. Then decide whether the new way has merit or needs refining. Encourage others in the team to do the same.

Over time we'll see new, valuable ideas executed and teams more engaged.

Doug Maarschalk is the Founder & Director at Sunergeo. Helping teams in New Zealand move forward by maintaining alignment through times of growth and change. Creating a sustainable culture of innovation.

Not long ago I sent a post-workshop email asking participants for feedback. This is part of my usual process to find areas to improve. Sitting with my laptop the next day, the email notification popped up. I had a response to my feedback email. My feeling is always a mixture of anticipation and, let's be honest, dread. Even though I talk about the usefulness of giving and receiving feedback. And the need for it to be specific. It's never comfortable when someone gives you feedback on things you could do better. On this occasion the participant had enjoyed a lot about the workshop. Yet, there were one or two things they felt needed addressing. A whole flurry of thoughts entered my mind about how I could respond and defend myself. "How dare they?" I thought. I was having a fixed mindset attack.

Stanford Professor Carol Dweck has spent many years researching what makes people successful. Her findings: more than anything else success has to do with a person's mindset. Her work describes two types of mindset. A fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

Fixed mindset

People with a fixed mindset believe that skills are born. Hard work and effort are not necessary. You should be good enough already. They avoid challenges and see them as a threat. They get defensive and take criticism or feedback as a personal attack. They hate mistakes and get discouraged by them. I've been using the word "they". The reality is many of us will have a fixed mindset in different situations and circumstances. It's not one or the other all the time. So I should use "we".

Growth mindset

A growth mindset is the foundation for learning. When we adopt a growth mindset we believe that we can build and develop our abilities and skills. We embrace challenges as an opportunity for growth and learning. We see feedback or criticism as a gift and appreciate it. Mistakes are useful for learning. Hard work and effort are the pathway for our growth. The growth mindset is the way we achieve mastery.

This video below from Train Ugly provides a useful summary of the two mindsets.