You can't do a thing if you ain't got that T.H.E.M.E.

Becoming a Multiplier in the New World of Work

With the increasingly connected and networked world of work we inhabit, it has become trite to comment on the importance of working in teams. But, please bear with me as I comment on it all the same.

Because, simply put, working in teams is incredibly important to one's success in the new world of work.

But the research is making clear that the ability to work in teams transcends the traditional notion of "plays well with others", and "colors inside the lines" --- the sort of collaborative skills we learned in kindergarten. And it is certainly more complex than the social media notion of "friending", "following", "poking" or "nudging" ---whatever the term of art might be this week regarding building out your social network. Because, in fact, the size of your social network says virtually nothing about your ability to productively and effectively perform within a network to drive results.

Some fascinating research from CEB (Corporate Executive Board, now Gartner) outlined precisely the behaviors that are at the core of the most productive, most effective workers. These are the sorts of workers who go beyond high performance in their individual job roles and instead achieve "network performance" --- the ability to draw from and contribute to a network, and in so doing improve one's own work as well as the work of others. The behaviors they exhibit are very specific --- they are better able to understand their peers' motivations and are able to more effectively coordinate their effort and performance with the work of others in order to achieve mutually desired outcomes. And they are better able to initiate change --- that is, identify business problems and opportunities for change, and implement solutions when appropriate. So they're not only open to change --- they can make it happen within a networked operating environment.

And they do all this while prioritizing for enterprise goals. CEB has coined the phrase "enterprise contributors" to describe these uniquely talented performers.

This notion of enterprise contributor has some pretty interesting implications --- regarding the nature of our work. It's never really just our work, for instance. That is, our workflows weave into and out of each other and there are numerous, myriad interdependencies between us which make the shared understanding of mutual goals critical to individual and organizational success. That made me think of the visual image I used for this post --- a group of mountain climbers in perfect alignment on opposite sides of a tower. Held in place by each other's weight, effort and commitment to not messing it up. For me this captures perfectly where we are in the networked world of work. We are so dependent upon one another to achieve results --- we must find a way to contribute to a greater undertaking, but we can only do it by first doing our work very well, and then helping others be good at what they do.

This thought triggered some additional thinking --- which led me to the great Pine and Gilmore book, The Experience Economy --- in which the authors argue we have moved into a new stage of economic development, beyond the service or information economy and into an economy where everything we offer is "experienced".

In other words, to steal their tagline, "all business is a stage." And we are performers on that stage.

Well, I may be alone in this, but from that point it was just a hop, skip and a jump to conclude that if companies must build experiences, so too must employees. To succeed in the networked world of work, to become true enterprise contributors or multipliers, we must give some thought to how we want to be experienced by those in our workflow. In other words, how do we want those climbers on the ropes with us in the visual image above to experience us as colleagues?

Pine and Gilmore give us a rubric for thinking about this, and, although their framework is for companies, I think it's potentially quite useful for us as individuals. That rubric is T.H.E.M.E.

T: ---- The T stands for THEME --- come up with some narrative about how you want to be experienced by your colleagues and let that story guide you. Do you want to be experienced as "courageous", "determined", "knowledgable" or something else? In a workshop recently I told the story of the Jessica Chastain character in Zero Dark Thirty who, in one scene with her boss, yelled at him, "I need two techs and a safe house in Peshawar, and two techs and safe house in Rawalpindi."

Now, clearly her boss "experienced" her in a particular way there ---and I had to be clear to the participants I was not telling them to yell at their bosses. But if you want to be experienced as courageous, determined, knowledgeable and goal-oriented, then your actions will have to align with that.

So whatever your desired narrative is, find that narrative and then...

H: ---- harmonize your actions to support the narrative. In other words, let the story guide your behavior so that your activities drive the plot forward, so to speak, of the theme you hope to produce. If you want to be experienced as "courageous", then that means you can't sit quietly while someone is abused in a meeting or an idea is too quickly judged and discarded. If you want to be experienced as a problem solver than you had better raise your hand when they ask for volunteers. In the workshop recently, I used the example of Garcia, the character in Criminal Minds, who often answers the phone by saying "Welcome to the font of all knowledge!" The role she plays for the profiling team is critical to their success and she clearly wants to be experienced as their "go to" font of all wisdom. But if that's the case, then she had better be there, and her actions had better be harmonized with it.

But, if you must harmonize, it stands to reason as well that you must...

E: --- eliminate any behaviors that threaten to derail the theme, and in the world of work this could perhaps be the most difficult step to take. Because it means perhaps having to say no to some things, so that you can say yes to others. It means truly understanding enterprise goals and prioritizing to achieve those goals rather than simply hitting a deadline on something that won't actually achieve a greater objective. Being able to say no diplomatically, while creating transparency into the greater good you're working toward is critical to success.

Once you've aligned your behaviors to your theme, you then have to give thought to...

M: --- memorabilia. What can you give your colleagues that will leave them with a living and enduring sense of the experience you have just created for them? In Pine and Gilmore's larger economic example the Walt Disney Company stands as a great illustration of this. You can't leave any ride at the Theme Park without exiting through the gift shop.

In our case, we are not talking about creating plushy toys or action figures for your colleagues, but instead asking yourself, "what is their takeaway?". Can you create something, a dashboard, a token, that captures the value you've provided for them in the interaction? Often, it will simply be the output of your workflow, so be sure it's as good as it can be. But at other times it could be a message, a one-page tool or template, or keepsake that harks back to your contribution and reinforces the theme of the experience. If you're a bit puzzled by this, just contemplate the power of a thank you note ---and then build from there.

E: --- the final step, the second E, is to engage your colleagues holistically. Critically, this is where your professional relationship becomes more than a transaction. To ensure your interactions with colleagues move beyond a transaction, you must find ways to be a part of their day outside the workflow --- schedule regular lunches, conduct Lunch & Learn sessions with them to ask them about their workflow, their projects and their objectives.

Ask them how you can help and what you might need to do differently to be more effective. Send them congratulatory notes and introduce them to others. Pull them into a fantasy sports league or, as one of my colleagues did for me years ago, invite me to come along to a film festival. In short, engage your colleagues as real persons ---with real interests.

So, if we are to become multipliers in the workplace ---to truly become enterprise contributors --- we must give some thought to how we are being experienced in our work. Hopefully this rubric will support an internal conversation you can have with yourself and guide your actions toward supporting enterprise objectives.