minionship
NOUN
rare
Minionship in the workplace
At work I use the term minions with affection, extensively. When we’re talking about minions describing people at work, what I’d mean is the interconnectedness of our group goals and how our organizations function (or dysfunction). When you are a minion you recognize that everyone around you, below you, above you, next to you is also a minion.
We are all minions in service of some kind of goal or purpose whether it is our own or supporting someone else’s. Minions don’t work alone, they unite to achieve the goals of the group, or on occasion, an illustrious leader. This illustrious leader must then be able to ensure the minions are happy. For we all know, happy minions lead to better minionship which achieves all of our goals more easily, we’d hope. 😉
Lately, my minionship has been focused on learning to be a minion manager minion in the very traditional sense of the term in business. By nature, I am not a manager. By desire or passion, I am not a manager. I am pursuing the skills of a manager out of the need to serve my larger purpose. In service I need to learn the skills to empathise with managers and learn the way a team is formed and a culture can be built for impact. This is how I serve the larger cause of transforming and innovating upon the empathy systems in organisations. In order to serve this cause doing today’s managing is an important part of growing my minionship abilities in service of injecting empathy into strategic level decision making.
So in pursuit of that cause, I manage a minion crew. Pobrecitos. The poor minions.
To be true we’re lucky, our minion crew is super chill and fun. Just as we are forming our minion team, we go further and push the team’s culture in a new direction. We handily participate in many minion team experiments. For example, our WIP (work in progress) stand-up meeting, we’ve prototyped it a few different ways now. We’ve had the Explorer’s standup, where we take our WIP report outside and take a photo. We’ve had the mindfulness stand-up where we report everything online instead and just take 5 minutes for mindfulness meditation as a group. That one was probably interesting to watch from the outside, we might look like a cult praying to their illustrious leader. We did a buddy stand-up last week where you and your buddy role play being each other’s scribe while we report our WIP.
Most of this experimentation is possible because of the more ‘working out loud’ style we’ve adopted. A rowdy bunch of minions to be sure. This is supported by using more collaborative platforms and tools to keep all of our amazing minionship work visible. Show your work minions! No one can see our service unless we show our work and tell the story of what it takes to execute on a wonderful piece of quality crafted minionship.
One common phrase I tend to throw out very often is that we live in a world where it is “minions all the way down, and minions all the way up.” We are all someone’s minion even if you go to the very top of anything there is someone who has an accountability to someone or something. We’re in a civilization based on service and leadership is a service to those you lead, so lead well dear minions.
Once I was being interviewed for a women in leadership competition and I started waffling on about how the leader is a servant and how we’re all minions. The judges smiled politely and nodded but the whites of their eyes were showing. I think I freaked them out a bit. I was intense and passionate and likely spoke with precocious authority way beyond my years. Me, intense, never, pah!
Perhaps next time I’ll say what I really mean… our world is full of minionship. Be the best minion you can be! Find your passion and be its minion!
Leaders as servants.
Minions all the way down. Minions all the way up.
Minionship for the win!
Have a lovely day. Be the best minion you can be!
Thinking about the future & ethnography 