From old ways to better ways of working

If there’s too much to do and you can’t get through it all, what do you do? A productivity app won’t magically change an entire team or organisation. There’s a bigger change needed, a fundamental shift in how we think about work.

Many of the things we do in our daily work are old ways of working. They’re leftovers from when the world - and the work - was quite different.

Some of our dated work methods are routines and habits that are hard to break.

We can consider changing the way we work to:
💫 reduce wasted activity and effort
💫 deliver greater value to customers sooner
💫 increase productivity
💫 be more effective in all we do...

Which means we get to remove some of those old ways of working:
🗑 Low value tasks and meetings
🗑 Weeks of work on a project that never gets used
🗑 Changes to documents back and forth up the chain of command
🗑 Talk-fests that don’t lead to decisions or outcomes.

As with all new habits, knowing about them is one thing, using and practically applying them is a whole other thing.

It’s good to start with some knowing, that a shift to better ways is happening.

Do you A3

Working with teams, building their sensemaking and problem-solving skills, I’ll often ask them, ‘Do you A3?’

So ... do YOU A3?

🔲 Yes

🔲 No

🔲 Kind of

If yes, you’re an A3 thinking kind of person, you’d know how powerful this way of thinking and working is. It’s great for problem solving, communicating, collaborating, presenting and working. (And hey, share more of your thinking like this. Help others understand what is gained when you can see what’s going on).

If you’re a no, you can start now. I have a task for you below.

If you’re a 'kind of', is that because you’ve heard of it but don’t use it, or something else?

A3 thinking (using A3 sized paper) is a thing. With foundations from Toyota, lean manufacturing and the lean product development process great Al Ward, A3 pages are being created, prepared and shared around the world right now to communicate and make sense of some of the most challenging and complex things.

A task for you: get 1 piece of A3 paper and write on it, some of the things you’re currently working on. Keep the page this week, add to it, make notes. Share it with others, use it to explain stuff, see how it helps yours and other people’s thinking.

The waste of misdirected effort

Imagine working on a task or project and later finding that much of what you’ve done isn’t needed, that you'd kept heading down a path that wasn't necessary.

I noticed a colleague working on a project recently, spending hours and days preparing and producing some work and ... it’s not needed. It was never needed. They estimated they'd spent a week of time, at a minimum - all of it not needed.

Time could have been better directed towards more valuable activities.

We make many decisions every day about what we’re doing; I doubt we’re truly thinking about what’s the best use of our time. We get caught up in activities and tasks that we spend way too much time on - disproportionate to their value or their return to us or others.

The 'sunk cost fallacy' drags us in and we don’t want to turn around and head back out because we wrongly believe we need to stay the course and keep on down this path. But we don’t have to.

It’s never too late to call time on something that’s not right or not valuable or not worth it. No matter how far you’re along the 'wrong' path.

Be willing to call ‘stop’ or ‘time’ or say ‘hang on a moment; can we pause here?’ and then shift to the more valuable path.

Determine the minimum effective dose

What’s the least you could do, the least that’s required?

Some people think the world is going to ruin, that quality will drop if we don’t do our bestest of the very best of the best on every single thing we work on.

Oh sure, high quality and attention to detail matters, but not on everything! Keep quality for the things that really matter.

The whole minimum viable product (MVP) strategy is an example of doing just enough of the valuable stuff for a product or service to get it ready to put it out there.

So what’s the least you need to put in? Do that and then test or validate it.

Oh, and there’s the minimum effective dose strategy too. Medicos and pharmaceuticos know about identifying what’s the minimum amount of a drug or treatment that will ‘do the job’. (There’s the ‘do no harm’ mantra in there too.)

Let's play the same game. Stop doing harm to your self, your mind (and others) thinking you need a maximum dose of something (or everything) ... or that more will make it better.

Your good enough is likely good enough. Go test and validate it sooner than you think you can, to see how good enough it really is. That’s a minimum effective strategy that will bring some mega results.

The best selling exhibition in town

In a busy workplace it can be tough to get people to listen and tune in to your change message, your key message or any of your messages!

How do you get people to listen to and understand what your team is working on? How do you get them to sign up, buy in and want to be a part of it?

Watch my short sketch video this week and you'll see how a clever project team got people to come along to their best selling 'exhibition'.

What important thing are you working on?

What will you do to make the people you work with want to tune in to it?

Download the video here