Leaders
Welcome everyone! This post is part of my wider series on how to implement low-code not just from a technology and process perspective, but also for a people enablement and adoption perspective to truly maximise value from the platform - This post gives an overview of the structured approach I’ve defined and how I’m breaking down my blog posts
Holistic Low-Code Enablement - Blog structure and navigation — EmPOWER Your World
The first step we’re going to talk about on our Maker Movement cycle is ‘Leaders’ however this could equally be the last step on our cycle. Let me explain what I mean…
Ideally (as we spoke about in my ‘vision, Strategy & Roadmap’ post) when we’re making a change we should have senior sponsorship aligned with a clear vision of why it’s important to the organisation. From there we create our Northstar and can point people at this so we can all move in the right direction.
In the beginning that isn’t always in place at the right level to drive our change. To get there we need to demonstrate real examples of value. To demonstrate examples of the change we’re trying to drive. To show our leaders what the change is all about. Our way of demonstrating this is through the Maker Movement - That’s why it could be the last step!
Anyway… Back to ‘Leaders’… Who do we mean? The CEO? The C-Suite? A manager of people? Someone else?
In this context I look at Leaders are people with influence and that influence can be direct or indirect. Let’s have a look at some examples
Organisational Leaders
These are our formal leaders. Our managers of people, our leaders of the organisation, our owners of processes. These people have direct influence over what our organisation and people focus on, how we do things, how our people are aligned and how we measure their performance.
Our goal for these leaders is to inspire them to understand what the platform is and what it can do for people, processes, and the organisation. To show how it can support them in achieving their goals and objectives. To use this to increase sponsorship of the platform and increase the number of people who start and continue their Power Platform journey.
Influencing Leaders
These are our informal leaders. The highly connected people through our organisations whose knowledge, experience, opinion are valued by many. Those who may not have formal / direct influence but can encourage people to start, or continue, or accelerate, change. These are the catalysts of our movement! They may exist today, or we may need to create them. These may be known as heroes, superheroes, superstars, champions.
For these leaders we want them to be as successful as possible. To open up new opportunities in their career. To gain them recognition for their skills, experience, and passion, and the difference that they make. To make them famous in the organisation, and the community!
CoE or CoEn / C4E leaders
These are our Power Platform team - They may be leading and running the platform technology and configuration. They may be setting our security strategy. They may be part of a governance or compliance team. They may be part of our change team. Our Comms team. Our training group.
For these leaders our goal is to help make them as successful as possible and this equates to making the platform as successful as possible. Increasing the size of the community, the number of makers, the number of solutions, and the amount of value enabled.
3 is the magic number
These three types of leader come together to make us successful and it’s important to remember that there can also be overlap and the best of our Organisational Leaders will also be Influencing Leaders!
But how do we make this happen with limited resource? Our CoE or CoEn / C4E leaders don’t have a bottomless pit of capacity to influence every leader in the organisation - This is one of the reasons that we need to use the Maker Movement model to influence our leaders and people (in the next blog post) through story telling, and generating the ‘Motivation of Envy’, to celebrate the people who are our most valuable Organisational Leaders and Influencing Leaders to make them the famous superstars of the organisation and those who are getting the kudos that others aspire to.
To establish these superstars of the organisation we can think of this like making a star of an actor. They are the famous face that people see but there are a team of people behind the scenes who make that success possible. We call this ‘Back Stage Leadership’.
Let’s use this stunning picture to explain Back Stage Leadership a bit more…
Back stage we have a director, costumers, make up artists, lighting, sound, special effects etc. These people are essential to making our production a success. They make sure everything is prepared and in place when it’s needed. They make sure everything runs smoothly. They monitor the flow of the production, make sure it goes as plan, and react if anything isn’t. These are our CoE & CoEn / C4E leaders
Front stage we have our actors and performers. These are who the audience see and are watching. The ones who are promoted through comms and marketing. For us these are our people, our makers, our champions, our most most influential and impactful leaders, our forward thinking governance and compliance people. and our champions. These are the people we’re trying to make our superstars!
In our Audience we have the rest of the organisation and anyone who may be ‘watching’ from outside of the organisation… Our fans and perhaps our competitors! We want to make them laugh and cry at the right moments we intent. We want them to feel and react. We want to hear their feedback through laughter, or gasps, or sighs.
We want to involve as many of the audience as possible and be part of the change, and want their feedback to help us prioritise our direction and next steps as we progress…. And that many of the audience are inspired to get on stage themselves and be part of the Power Platform Show!
In a later post we’ll get more into Champions - who they are, how we find them, why they’re important! As always let me know of any other questions or ideas you have on Leaders and I’ll tackle these in follow up posts too!
