Learning to Climb: Metacognition is Freedom

Human beings are good at placing roadblocks to success and building plans that cannot be followed. We tend to fall back on our "common sense" or "snap judgement" which often makes us feel like our cavalier decisions were actually thought-out.  Yet, time and again, we find ourselves in deadline crunches, worried about upset customers, or angry with others because we didn't get what we want or got it too late.This is because we take on too many tasks, stick to already failed plans, and don't steer around obstacles we later say "if only we ..." about.At a time in the world where we are fully engaged with snap decisions, Personal Kanban users have the opportunity to understand and show other people how we actually learn.  In learning, we can actually take control of our work.Personal Kanban is a Metacognitive system.   When we move stickies through our PK we are seeing (with our eyes) how our work … works….

• What work is important?

• What do we enjoy doing?

• How do we change how we write stickies over time?

• How do we change the columns or sections on our board?

• What do we do when the DONE column fills up? (Hopefully we’re learning what went well).

• What tasks do we work with others on?

• When do we clean tasks out of the OPTIONS column when they’ve aged out?

• What tasks did we do that we didn’t put on the board?

• What tasks did we choose not to do that were important enough to create a sticky?

• What tasks changed in their product between writing and finishing?

• What do we learn?

Which leads to:

• How does this change our ways of working or living?

As we become comfortable with these questions, we realize that life is about creating things, working together, and being proud of our work. As we see the tickets flow across we learn what is right - for us, for the person we’re delivering work to, for the people we are working with.

Work Not Chosen

“What if there’s a task in my options column that just never moves?”This question comes up in almost every class we teach.And we ask, “What if that happens?”We get answers like, “You have to make time for it” or “We need to find out why we didn’t start it.”Maybe.  Maybe that was something really important and you just happened to do 200 other stickies.  But more likely there are a few other options.

1. You don’t want to do it. You can then ask yourself, do I really need to do this?

2. The task is poorly defined. You can then ask, what needs to be better defined? Do I have the understanding to flesh it out? Do I need help?  (Hint: most tasks are poorly defined and that’s okay.)

3. It’s not really necessary. Does this task really need to be done?

4. It’s better suited for someone else. Can I delegate this or move it to someone else’s options column?

5. IT IS HUGE! Is this task so big that it would monopolize your time.

6. The task has no victory conditions. With no definite end-state, a task is a time sync.

If in doubt, just ask the questions in the box.  Assess the risk.

The point of the options column is to give you the primary option of not doing or changing the nature of the tasks.  Our understanding of our work is emergent. You don’t start out knowing what your real finished product is. Be bold, change your options column often.

What? You Say You Have Too Many Projects and Can't Limit WIP?

Tonianne and I run the Personal Kanban, Modus Institute, Modus Cooperandi Corp-o-plex pretty much duo-handed. There's a lot of work. The rules of Personal Kanban apply to us too. We are constantly experimenting with new ways to visualize our work and limit our Work-in-Process.Right now, we have five proposals out, are discussing potential work with four other organizations, are supervising another translation of Personal Kanban, have a major client with seven concurrent internal projects, are putting out a new product (coming soon!), have two other clients that require touch, a new project of Toni's, group classes for Modus Institute to track / schedule / lead, eight conferences to speak or teach at, and the usual biz dev / taxes / paperwork ... oh and we're redesigning web sites, making marketing collateral, and having interviews with the press or conversations with people.So ... how do you limit your WIP when it takes a paragraph to list just the types of work out - not even the tasks.Well, the answer is simple ... ish.I'll write about how we schedule out our weeks in a week or so, when I have more data about how our current shared board is working. But for this post, I just want to talk about this board.This is my personal In-Flight board that is keeping track of all things Modus for me.Blue column headings note client work, business operations, or speaking / open classes.Green Big Bet stickies track my big bets (work I expect to take more than a month to complete or are the entire project).Orange stickies are either the upcoming value delivery package or event (proposal, call, class video, etc).Red stickies are highlights that the Big Bet needs action.Purple are Today's WIP.  (It's Sunday, so I'm just getting two things out and writing this blog post).The columns tomorrow will be joined by our week's Big Bets - Toni and I select two or three things each week to "knock out."  Last week it was to get a prototype design of our new product to the producer. Which, I'm happy to say we did.We pick a few big bets each week that can live in the flow of the work you see here. That way we make sure that company goals and needs are both met.Actual tasks are not tracked on this board.  They are on my pretty eternal "Immediate Personal Kanban" which has been up long enough for the title stickies to be faded and the "Options" column to actually say ready.  (Let this be a testimony to super sticky post its).The two items in doing are the two items in the purple ticket.Mea Culpa - While writing this I "remembered" three other things to put on the portfolio wall and two more things on this board.So ... the important thing to remember is that Personal Kanban is always an exercise to keeping track, keeping honest, and keeping control.  We lose track, we lie to ourselves, and we surely lose control all the time. Don't lose heart, just know that this is part of being human and busy.The Exercise:

1. Take several colors of Super Stickies

2. Decide colors for title, big bet, active work (what you need to do), status (what is in flight and you don't need to act on right now), and current WIP.

3. Start writing down all your responsibilities as projects / big bets

4. Ask yourself as you go along, "Is this how I want to spend my time?"

5. Note big bets, projects, or tasks that you answer "no" to.

6. Begin to strategize how to make that work improve or go away.

7. Systematically and calmly do the rest.

My goal at the end of any day is to get those red stickies to disappear.  In essence, turning the board into active tasks I've let fly.  In this way, I'm able to keep multiple responsibilities in flight while limiting my WIP.Over time, I've asked myself that question a lot.  It's led Toni and me to select customers carefully and extract ourselves from situations in which we were personally invested, but didn't lead to a healthy company or healthy Toni and Jim.So, be busy ... but be busy right.

A Christmas Story of Care, Family, and Healing

The holidays are wonderful times, but also difficult ones.I was interviewing Deb McGee, a client, colleague, and friend about how our time spent working with her team went. At the end, she turned the interview to the fully "personal" side of Personal Kanban. During a holiday season, Deb suffered a profound personal loss, but was determined to give her family a holiday season.  She could have done this through denial or burying her feelings. She chose, instead, to meet the holiday's head-on and realistically decide what she could do and what was "too soon".I'll let her tell her own story in the interview.  I hope you find it as inspiring as I do.Happy Holidays, everyone.

Design: The Status Column

The Problem: Sometimes we are waiting to hear the status of something. That status could come at any time and from any type of communication (email, phone, mention in the hallway, etc.). But we are waiting. If we wait too long, not knowing will cause us problems - but waiting isn't a task. We lose track of time and suddenly we are under the gun.The Solution: Build the Personal Kanban to specifically track status items and let us know when they require action.The Narrative: We've all been there. That day when someone says to us, "How's that thing going?" and we realize "Oh crap! I don't know!" Then we have to scramble to find out.Someone else or some group of "someone elses" are responsible to getting something done, but it directly impacts us. We can't call them every day and say, "Are you done yet?" because that's micromanaging. But we do need to have an idea of where they are at.At Modus, we've found specifically calling out items we are waiting for status on (things outside our group and therefore not on our Personal Kanban) allows us to treat them as potential tasks. If someone reports in on time, it simply moves to DONE and never required us to act. If it sits too long, then it becomes a task.