PK Power Up 2: Learning from Completion

Your done column isn't powerful unless it is actually used. Right now, "Done" for most people is an end-state. No learning, no reflection, no improvement.

Done DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE FINISHED!

You need to learn from things that went well, things that went okay(ish), and things that were horrible.

There are different mechanisms to utilize for your DONE “column”. There are many ways to trigger learning, this video provides four of them.

As always, check out Modus Institute for the deep dives on visualizing and triggering learning.

Personal Kanban and Working from Home

Modus Institute videos about dealing with Covid are free.

A Personal Response to Covid-19 from Jim

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Hey everyone, this blog post is going to be more like a personal letter. We don’t need to be lectured to right now, but conversation is crucial.

I’ve written a few posts about Covid and the global shutdown on What’s Your Modus?, but right now I thought I’d send this letter and make a quick video.

Let me start with this.

It’s okay to be on edge.

You don’t get much more uncertainty than where we are at right now.  We are restricted in movement and action for an indefinite period of time.  Lack of certainty is threatening.

You, your family members, your co-workers are all going through this in their own way.

Give them, and yourself, a little latitude for moodiness, lack of motivation, and confusion about what the right actions are right now.

In this post, I just want to talk about two things: certainty and triggers.  They are some basic building blocks in successful work and right now they are in short supply.

Certainty

One thing that gives us certainty is … structure.  Even if the structure we have changes, understanding the rules of “right now” are important. 

I grew up in Nebraska and experienced more than a few tornadoes.  Sometimes they were cavalier nuisances, but other times they were devastating.

During a tornado warning, there is fear and uncertainty. You don’t know what the storm will do, exactly.  You don’t know where the tornado is, if it has touched down, what is in its path. You just know your expected actions.  Crack windows to normalize pressure, get to lowest point in the house, get you’re your most reinforced room, get away from windows, and wait while listening to the radio.

Not the most fun structure, but certainly a lot better than running around screaming “What do I do? What do I do?”

You and your team need to sit down, talk about what work still needs to be done, what you do and don’t know about work, what you can and cannot learn quickly, and how you can all keep each other involved and informed as you each work and learn more. 

You need to build your working structure, even though there is more uncertainty now than ever before.

Triggers

At Modus right now, we are all uncertain about what’s going to happen next. We are used to traveling and having travel equal income and stability. It was kind of a strange reassurance. If I’m in an airport things must be okay. That’s a trigger. A reassurance that things are proceeding.

When I’m on site with a client, there are always things to observe and conversations to have. When I see people overloaded without understanding the work of their peers, we generally talk about that and find ways to visualize that overload that results from lack of understanding and devise fixes. The overload, that kind of observation, is a trigger for action.

We all have those triggers and many others.  When we are remote, those triggers are likely to be absent.  We need to find some new ones. Triggers are the mechanisms we use to know when the status quo is working and when we need to react to change.

Without these triggers, we don’t know what to do next and become demoralized.

The trigger of a reassuring trip to the office or the classroom or the jobsite has been replaced with sitting in a room usually reserved for relaxation. The space isn’t designed for work, isn’t ergonomic, and is filled with non-work people.  There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes along with that.

Your Next Acts

Please, now more than ever, take care of each other. Focus on the people and their ability to work…the work will proceed apace, but only if your professionals are cared for and respected.

1. Get your team together in a video call.

2. Make sure the tech works (Do it once in a dedicated meeting).

3. Using something like Miro or Stormboard, brainstorm on what your team needs to establish their “right environment”. What does everyone need, right now, to work comfortably?

4. Focus on how people are feeling, the work hasn’t changed much, but the people have.  This is people time.

5. Visualize the work, of course.

6. Limit the WIP more than usual.  One thing per person or one thing collaboratively for every two people… do very little at first and just finish a few things so you can build and quickly refine a system.

7. Have huddles every day.

8. Talk as much as possible.

9. Don’t let anyone flap.

There are other recommendations on What’s Your Modus and certainly more in the classes on Modus Institute (70% off for this Covid situation).

Stay healthy, stay safe, take care of each other,

Jim 

Discounts on Modus Institute Subscriptions During the Covid Outbreak

Visualizing Interactions in Complicated Work

A construction team planning work openly and honestly.

When we look at a Personal Kanban, its simplicity belies its power. Visualizing our work as individuals and as teams and even as teams of teams creates trust, reliability, and understanding. When we want to co-ordinate work, these are serious prerequisites.

The image above is from a construction trailer, they are engaged in a Lean Construction exercise known as a "pull-plan". Each color is a different contractor, each diamond is a delivery or a milestone.  In this case we have five different contractors whose daily work relies on the completion of daily work done by the other contractors.To spell this out, their work directly relies on people in other companies--every day.Historically, this had led to predictable delays with different companies working at different speeds for different reasons. You might recognize this from different departments in your company or different people in your family. 

Our work often relies on other people who are often simply ignorant to our needs.Not surprisingly, when they are ignorant of our needs they don't give us what we need.

This makes it seem like they are "out to get us" because so often the work we receive is lacking. We attribute malice where the fact is those other busy people have different things to worry about every day and need to see their work in your context and vice-versa.The pull-plan concept takes this head-on by looking at the backlog of work (your options column) for the next six weeks and sees who needs to do what, when, and in what way in order for the schedule and budget to be met in a safe and quality way. 

The teams meet and on each ticket list each activity (option) they need to do to get their work done, the number of days the work requires, and then the trigger that makes that work happen (sometimes this is from another contractor, sometimes this is just their work progressing).

This allows each contractor to self-report how long they would like the work to take and then compare the total production time to the schedule and figure out what can be done the meet the customer's expectations. Often, very often in fact, this is simply having the contractors discuss with how they need the space prepared for a clean hand-off.

I've noticed almost all in-office conflicts and "culture problems" end up coming back to hand-offs, which basically means they come back to an understanding of what quality work really entails.  We need to ask some serious questions: Do I know how to provide you with work?  Do you know how to provide product to me? Are we talking to each other or past each other? Do we really understand how our individual work leads to a quality end-product?

Very simply, the image above has professionals come together, make visual what they need and when they need it, and then find the best path to mutual success. They learn quickly the challenges the other contractors have and get to inform them of their own. This makes many of those challenges lessen or outright disappear.

Consider, in your Personal Kanban or that of your team, that there might be opportunities for these kinds of conversations. Be open, be honest, and work things out.Remember: No one creates a quality product alone.   

Modus Institute

5 Ways to Focus and Finish

Focusing on our most important work (so that we can get it out the door and create value) is hard. It’s harder still when work suddenly picks up, is unfamiliar, or arrives with immediate deadlines when we are already busy.

The tyranny of the urgent often distracts us from what is truly important. We lose focus on the important and end up doing a lot of “busy-work”. By then end of the day we are frustrated. The real value wasn’t created, but the business was satisfied.

We need to understand what “most important” means. It’s not always easy to just “know” what task out of the hundreds we have on our plate is the best to jump on right now.

When we visualize our work and limit our work in progress, we can see beyond the urgent and find what’s the best use of our time. We can then sit down with our brains and have an honest chat. What do we need to do? What relies on others? What is stopping us from doing that one task that just sits there in our OPTIONS column and doesn’t move? Why do we promise we’ll get those things done today, but at the end of the day it is still just sitting there?

You’ll see that our latest newsletter is on this theme of finding focus in a world of noise. Focus isn’t a “light” topic, we all struggle with it every day. Below are five of our top ranked posts on focus.

If you have a story about how Personal Kanban has helped you find focus, please leave it in the comments and let us (and the community) know.

1) The Overhead of OverworkIn our work, we take on more and more because the task seems small and we don’t understand our actual capacity. We take on more and more because we can’t see we are already overloaded. One day, we burn out, we break down, we snap.Read more.

2) HOW TO: How to Limit WIP #3–Reducing InterruptionsThe fact is that interruptions are part of knowledge work. We seldom do it alone, which means we have colleagues. Colleagues require information. Information requires communication. Communication requires attention.Read more.

3) Finishing Feels GoodIn order to complete, we need some help. We need something to ground us, something to focus us, and something to propel us. Once we have these elements, projects at work become easier, communication becomes smoother, and motivation is easily found.Read more.

4) Time to CompletionWhat if the game of work was to continuously improve the quality and rate of delivery of your work? The game becomes ways to discover how you can work most effectively, most innovatively. The game stops being how close to an arbitrary deadline can you complete something.Read more.

5)On Focus: Conquering the Shiny SquirrelTask-switching begets more task-switching, not completion. This is often attributed to “the Zeigarnik Effect,” a phenomenon in which information and tasks left incomplete don’t leave our mind. Instead, we dwell on those incomplete tasks, and those intrusive thoughts render us vulnerable to distractions. The energy that consumes–the metabolism task-switching requires–drains our cognitive capacity, causing frustration, burnout, impeding focus and inviting error and rework, preventing us from realizing our optimal potential.Read more.

Deep Focus

What does it take to focus? When we teach or work with clients, the need to focus is always the base of any board or system we create. We are all distracted. We’ve directly addressed this in the Personal Kanban online class. Sign up today and join the hundreds of other PK students from around the world. And stay in touch.

Prioritization: How to Prioritize when there is no Priority (Video One)

Prioritization is stressful. We find ourselves prematurely making value decisions about what to pull and when (right now!)In our Gold Call* this week, one of the attendees asked "How can I prioritize my work when there is no clear priority? Everything seems equally important?"This is a deeper issue that simply being indifferent...we are constantly worried (like stressed) about what the best thing is for us to do next. If we make the wrong choice, what might the consequences be?Extreme stress might result when we simply don't know what is most important. At that point, we need to start asking other questions about the work. Is it difficult? Is it going to make me happy? Does it involve other people?This video digs into those issues. In my next post, because choice is not a simple topic, we will go into other ways to select work.  (Also, look at the links below this video for more Personal Kanban posts on prioritization.)*Every two weeks out Gold Personal Kanban class members have a one hour chat about what we're working on, how the are working with Personal Kanban, and challenges they are facing. The students, as well as Tonianne and I, work to solve those challenges. They are fun, engaging, and helpful conversations.