So you want to go Agile. Where to start?

The Agile: Scrum Framework - courtesy of NeonRain Interactive

https://www.neonrain.com/agile-scrum-web-development/

Alex Jones, a Certified Scaled Agile Program Consultant with over 20 years of Agile and Lean Transformation experience at a large semiconductor manufacturer, recently presented on how companies can use Agile in non-software related applications such as product development, knowledge work, or service related businesses.  

Here are the take-aways for companies who know something about Agile and want to know where to start.

1. Make the work visual and visible

• Get a whiteboard, buy some Post-Its and Sharpies.
• Visualize the flow of work; put everything on the board.

2. Accelerate the cadence

Drop the weekly staff meeting

Instead, daily stand-up in front of the board.  15 mins max.

Everyone answers:

•What did I do yesterday?

•What am I working on now?

•What is getting in my way?

3. Managers: Change your behaviors

• “Culture = leader behaviors”
• Problems are opportunities for improvement.  Control your “crisis voice”.
• Facilitate the immediate removal of impediments.
• Read The Work of Management for more hints.

Contact AJC if you'd like to have Alex present to your company.

5 Tips to Increase Productivity from Your Existing Workforce

When employees begin to complain that they do not have enough time to get their work done on a daily basis, it can be challenging to know whether this is a true capacity problem, or if it is more of a utilization one.  Specifically:

Do we need to hire more people, or can we help the people we have to be more productive in order to complete their daily workloads?

In a tight economy, hiring is not always easy, and training new people can be a daunting task.  In a down economy (or even in general) there may not be enough funds to hire additional personnel. Regardless, it is always good practice to diagnose the problem before prescribing the solution. So how to go about evaluating whether the issue is capacity or utilization?

1. Train your workforce on Time Management Tips – yes, everyone’s “heard it before,” however continued focus on this topic will help etch the concepts into the brain, and let your employees know that you are serious.

1. AJC has a NEW 1-hour Lunch and Learn training available on this topic.  Contact us today!
   

2. Establish daily “bookends” – 5 minutes set aside for individuals to write down and Prioritize tasks for that day or the week.  If possible, do this before distractions encroach – in the car or standing in the office vestibule with a notepad/paper before getting to your desk (be sure your manager is okay with this first!)

3. Track how time is spent for a “typical” week (i.e. no conferences or vacations) – and it is OKAY to go low tech.  I had a client who was concerned about their employees’ abilities to get desk work done, so they completed this exercise. Turns out many Individual Contributors spent up to 16 hours in meetings, most of which were optional.  Their managers cut some and divided delegates to others, and everyone gained more time.

4. Hold SHORT Standing Daily Huddles to Group Prioritize – 5-to-15-minute consistent morning huddles in person or conference call with 3 topics, round robin:

1. State what was completed the previous day
2. Articulate the top 1-3 items to complete that day
3. Ask for help needed including roadblocks requiring attention                                            

If the work or project is REALLY critical or time sensitive – regroup in a huddle at the end of each day as well.

5. Get a Professional Needs Assessment to assess what is truly taking peoples’ time or holding them back.  When AJC does these, results are presented in the aggregate, and no individual is singled out by name – so interviewees are comfortable being candid.  The Assessment will uncover opportunities for improved processes, communication, redundant work that can be eliminated, or other areas where time can be found in even the “busiest” workload schedules.

By the way, did you know that AJC now offers Change Management services to complement our Project Management and Process Improvement work?

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Change Management – Fluffy or Necessary?

Yes, this is what a real live FLIP-PHONE looks like

Is Change Management really necessary, or is it just “fluff?”  What exactly is “Change Management,” anyway?  And why would one need this type of support?

Change Management, according to Prosci, is “process, tools and techniques to manage the people side of change to achieve the required business outcome…(and is used) to help individuals make successful personal transitions resulting in the adoption and realization of change.”

By comparison, Project Management, according to the Project Management Institute (PMI), is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.”

Here is a real-world example.

My mom still uses a flip phone.  My dad and I have “project managed” getting her a smartphone; researching, purchasing, coordinating logistics, and setting up the phone for use with her contacts, email, and applications that she might enjoy or need.  Essentially, in the project of “Get Mom a Smartphone” – we executed the project requirements.

This is the most important question for the project’s overall success, however: Does my mom actually *USE* the smartphone?  And unfortunately, the answer is: “No.”  

Why not? 

Turns out my mom is afraid that she won’t be able to use the phone, that her calls will be inadvertently missed, that she will accidentally provide personal information to the wrong people over email or in apps, and in general that she will get frustrated and waste time trying to use a tool to which she is not naturally inclined.

In order to successfully realize the Return on Investment (ROI) for my mom’s new smartphone, the most critical factor is that my mom actually *uses* the phone!  I’d love to Face Time her with the kids, or to send her pictures via text, or even just to group text her and my dad at the same time.

The discipline of Change Management faces these concerns head on.  A Change Manager would work with my mom until she was aware of the rationale for change, and determine what her particular concerns were, then support her to find solutions to these problems, as well as to help facilitate hands-on training until the new behaviors were ingrained, and would follow up to ensure that they stuck.  After all, what good is an expensive new smart phone and corresponding data coverage plan if it is not ever actually used?

By the way, did you know that AJC now offers Change Management services to complement our Project Management and Process Improvement work?

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How do you manage to get so much done?

It is said that if you want something done, ask a busy person.  Why do you think that is?  Often busy people have figured out a good “formula” for getting things done.  For good or for ill, people often ask me for my tips in this regard.  So, without further ado, below are:

AJC’s Top 5 Time Management Tips

1. Calendar It.  Live and die by your Calendar: meetings, travel time, follow-up time, and work time.  Schedule all meetings and invite all mandatory and optional participants. Include the specific location (address, room, conference # with 1-touch mobile format).  When driving, ALWAYS click on the actual address in the calendar.  I have gone to the wrong coffee shop because I *thought* it was somewhere other than the actual calendar location!  Additionally, calendar travel time, follow up time (from other meetings / email catch up), and dedicated work time.  Make it a habit to proactively calendar your time and follow your plan to the extent possible.
   
2. Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize.  Write down the “List” of things you need to get done that day first thing in the morning, and number in priority order.  Then DO THAT THING FIRST.  Do the second thing second, and so on.  If you can at least get through the top two or three things that must be done THAT DAY in the morning before your prefrontal cortex is zapped, you are more likely to complete your most important work.  This has the added benefit of giving you a sense of accomplishment that can boost your mood!  Even more effective is to write your list on a white board or notebook that is visible to you and everyone else who comes to your work space all day.  Note: The most important thing is NOT NECESSARILY the most Urgent.  Refer to Stephen Covey’s 4 Quadrants of Time Management to “Put the First Things First.”
3. Moderate (don’t eliminate) Distractions.   “I need some heads down time to get things done.”  Sound familiar?  This is very common - and very true!  If there is a prioritized task which you have added to your calendar for one hour, put up the “do not disturb” notice at your office entrance, silence your phone, and close down your email in order to complete the work.  However, *forcing* yourself to never quickly check on texts or emails can be even *more* distracting sometimes, especially if you are waiting for an important message to come in.  As long as you don’t indulge in the response immediately, my advice is to allow yourself to review incoming messages when in “heads down” time, while not over-indulging in their response; it’s kind of like letting yourself have a single piece of chocolate when on a diet – enough to take off the edge, while not detracting from the overall goal.
4. Defer and Follow Up.  Say this out loud: “I’m trying to finish something important right now, is there a time that I can follow up with you later?”  Try it while driving or in the shower, while you are exercising alone, or even to a friend or spouse.  Saying it out loud will give you confidence – just like practicing for a presentation or to learn phrase in a new language.  Then when you do say this to others, it will sound natural and authentic.  Of course, be sure to actually FOLLOW UP!  You can: 1) Calendar your follow up time, or 2) Add to your daily TO-DO list to follow up with that person at the time upon which you agreed.  If you’re not done or able to have the full conversation at that time, send them a quick text or email with an updated estimate of when you will follow up.
5. Persevere with Patience.  We are all human, and we all make mistakes.  Recognize that no one is 100% perfect at time management.  There will be a calendared follow up that is not completed.  There will be an occasional response to that distraction rather than reviewing and moving back to the calendared task.  There will be a missed follow up here and there.  I tell my kids to try hard all the time knowing that if they are successful 9 times out of 10, the 1 time they need help or make a mistake, others will understand and patiently help.  All we can do is our very best, and know that we will pick ourselves up and try again when we falter.  Hopefully most people you interact with have interacted with you for 9 successes so that the 1 time you make a mistake, they will understand.   And if someone catches you in a 1-out-of-10 mistake as their first experience with you, or you do the same with someone else, hopefully you or s/he will grant the generosity of spirit to make it right.  What was that adage again?  Oh yes, “what goes around, comes around.”

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Is there a Fractional Integrator Option That is Right For Me?

Last article, we shared a story of how an Integrator Needs Assessment led to the company realizing they already had an Integrator in-house.  This lead to a very different recommendation than the obvious – specifically that we proposed something *other* than providing a Fractional Integrator to support the business.  


Having already discussed “What the Heck is a Fractional Integrator Anyway?”, it is time to describe exactly how an Integrator service provider can bring value to your organization.

Firstly, AJC maintains that an up-front Integrator Needs Assessment will help both the company and the service provider understand the current state around the Integrator role.  Our approach here is to interview one-on-one each member of the Leadership Team (and Executive Team, if applicable), as well as all managers or supervisors in the organization that have at one or two degrees of separation from the Integrator role.  We want to know how this role is perceived, what is happening already, where there are gaps, and how decisions and initiatives are being communicated and rolled out to the entire organization, and who people go to for questions or concerns.  We will also ask a subset of the interviewees to take the online Visionary and Integrator Assessments.  These are not perfect, though at least give an indication as to the “GWC” (Get it, Want it, Capacity to do it) around those two roles.     


Comments are recorded, aggregated, and analyzed for gaps and recommendations around the Integrator role.  The results and recommendations are then discussed in a Final Report that is delivered in person to the Leadership Team.  In our most recent Needs Assessment, we also added an Assumptions section that we confirmed in person with the Executive Team.  In many small-to-mid sized businesses, there are often some “non-negotiables” that the owner or CEO has in mind which will not change.  Rather than making recommendations in those areas, we would rather be realistic and articulate and validate those assumptions up front, focusing therefore on the areas where the most value can be realized for the organization.


After this, the opportunities could be one of the following:

1. Fractional Integrator at any subset of time during the week
2. Coaching an existing person to be strong or stronger in the Integrator role
3. Training the Leadership Team or organization further on EOS and/or how best to utilize an Integrator
4. Interim / temporary Integrator to buffer a period of time where there is no full-time employee Integrator
5. “Temp-to-hire” Integrator – possibly there is a need to evaluate an Integrator in the seat for a period of time before pulling the FTE hire trigger
   

Any of these options can be a way to move forward after an Integrator Needs Assessment, and each will benefit from the candid and objective results of this type of analysis.  Please ask us if you’d like to further discuss how this looks in “real life!”

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Do You Already Have an Integrator?

The Fractional Integrator business model presupposes that an organization does *not* have an internal Integrator.  Unlike other fractional models (CFO, Marketing, HR, even COO or President), the Integrator role is not typically titled this way, and the skillset could be paired with a specific discipline leadership role as well.

This is one reason why AJC typically recommends beginning an engagement with a Needs Assessment.  We recently completed an Integrator Needs Assessment for a great company.  The Leadership Team had been using EOS with an Implementer for about a year and had flip-flopped a couple people in and out of the Integrator seat over that time period.  Neither of them particularly cared for the role, and consequently believed there was a void in the organization for an Integrator.

When the company contacted us, the original idea was that the Integrator Needs Assessment would determine the level of effort required and specific areas to prioritized for a Fractional Integrator resource.  The results, however, turned out very differently.

Over the course of the Needs Assessment, we spoke with several individuals on the Leadership Team and in management level roles within the organization.  We observed the organization over the course of “normal” working hours, sat in a couple L10 meetings, and reviewed the Accountability chart and several documents.  We also asked four individuals at the Executive level to take both the Visionary and Integrator Assessments available online.  

Interestingly, the Needs Assessment revealed that there was a key individual *already* in the organization who “got it,” had the desire for it (“wanted it”), and through the assessment and discussions “had the capacity to do it.”  This person was doing most of it already and had earned the trust of all levels of the organization.  In other words, the person had the GWC and already was acting in the role without formally holding the title.

Now the next steps are very different than originally assumed.  The person who already behaves as an Integrator does have some gap areas for coaching, and the organization could use some business process shoring up to help set the new Integrator up for success.  However, coaching and establishing processes for others to carry on in the future are very different value propositions than filling a seat.  These opportunities will enable this organization to be self-sustaining without the churn of a changing Integrator resource in the future when the fractional role is over.  

Fractional Integrators can still be a great option for an organization who truly does not have someone internally able to fill this role.  We discussed when this may be true, and what value a Fractional Integrator could bring to the table in our recent article “What the Heck is a Fractional Integrator Anyway?”  However, just like most things in life, it is best to look before you leap – evaluate the current state before plugging in a solution.  The best way to that is with an up-front Needs Assessment.  Who knows?  You may already have an Integrator sitting in your organization today!

Stay tuned for our next monthly newsletter in which AJC further discusses how an Integrator Needs Assessment could lead to the Fractional Integrator or Coaching model that is right for your organization.

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The Right Rocks

Choosing the "Right" Rock

I was recently fortunate to sit in on a quarterly pulse meeting with an Implementer colleague.  He asked a great question after the team’s rocks were set: “If these things get done, will it have been a great quarter?”

When Rocks do not get done in a given quarter, the Leadership Team understandably may question whether they set the “right” Rocks.   What could have gone wrong for the Rocks to be left undone?

Here are some reasons and examples from our experience.


First: any given individual has too many Rocks to complete in the time s/he has to allocate in the quarter.  This is to be expected when the group first starts to set Rocks as most people think they can do more than they can in any given length of time.  It is easy to forget that “normal” work also needs to get done, and as much as we want to prioritize a lot of important things, we need to keep the train on the rails over the period as well.  In our experience, after about two quarters, the Leadership Team should be experienced and functional enough to hold each other fully accountable¹ when discussing if the quantity of Rocks is realistic and experienced enough to prioritize what is essential.  For example, if the business is seasonal and an especially busy quarter is looming; it may not be the time to set multiple Rocks per person.


Second: the Rock owner does not disclose to the Leadership Team that s/he is “Off” on a Rock until it is too late.  We worked with a Leadership Team member who came into L10s each week claiming that Rocks were “on,” but when it came down to the second to last week of the quarter, a few Rocks were “off” and there was not enough time to complete them by the quarter’s end.  This caused the rest of the Leadership Team to wonder whether Rocks were really that important.  One possible remedy for this is to allow a single sentence “update” with the Rock “On/Off” status to provide information that helps the team understand truly if the Rock is progressing or not.  Managers can set the example to hold their direct reports accountable, because others can see when someone is being let off the hook.  If the manager does not hold his/her direct report accountable, others may not feel comfortable doing so either, and may begin to mistrust the team member, the manager, and the possibly entire EOS system as well.


Third: the entire Leadership Team allows Rocks to drop mid-quarter because those are not really the most important things the company needs to do that quarter.  In this case, it is possible that Leadership Team members do not trust each other enough to question the Rocks they are setting in the Quarterly Pulse Meeting.  We have seen when Rocks are assigned to people who really do not have enough time in their normal workload to complete them, and there was no move on the company’s part to free enough time for the assignees to complete the Rocks.  The team decided midway through the quarter to cancel a few of the Rocks.  What is more, the team was actively prioritizing work on other initiatives that were not called out as Rocks at all.  Did the team set the “right” Rocks? Unlikely.


All of these issues need to be discussed openly and regularly by the team.  If team members do not trust each other and/or fear retribution for bringing up uncomfortable concerns, that is the most fundamental problem of all¹.  Team leaders – the Visionary and the Integrator especially – must encourage and themselves demonstrate open and honest dialogue every time the team meets.  When that happens consistently, the team can move forward with confidence that they will consistently set the “right” Rocks and it will be a great quarter!

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1. For more on developing functional Teams, we recommend reading (or listening to) Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Great Project Managers Make the Best Integrators

In our February Newsletter, AJC announced that we are offering the NEW service of “Fractional Integrator,” and last month in our March Newsletter, we described what a Fractional Integrator is.

In this article, we discuss how you know if someone could be a terrific Integrator (Fractional or otherwise).

Have you ever been part of a great project team?  Everyone knew their responsibilities, and what their particular scope was.  Team members communicated regularly and collaborated on solutions.  Everyone got their action items done on time, and felt comfortable asking for help when they were stuck or behind.  People helped each other and the final product, solution, or implementation was delivered on time, right the first time, and with enthusiasm by all team members that they had accomplished something great, and were each a valued member of the team.

Think back to how this was possible.  Who was at the helm of this type of project?  Who kept the ball rolling, kept people focused, and paid attention to the details? Was there someone who made sure that what people said they would do was documented, discussed both in team meetings and offline, cleared roadblocks, and followed up until work was complete?

Probably that person was the main Project Manager.  

Great Project Managers know how to facilitate, delegate, discuss the “elephant in the room,” and have an experience-based instinct for knowing what it takes to get work done.  These selfless people know that the real heavy lifting is done by “Subject Matter Experts,” and they dedicate themselves to serving those people for the sake of the greater cause.

This is the mark of a terrific Integrator.  I like to tell people that EOS is like “Project Management, on steroids, for a business.”  Just as at the helm of most successful projects is a good Project Manager, at the helm of a successful business will be a good Integrator whose characteristics, behaviors, and methods parallel that of a good Project Manager.

Integrators will tend to be Servant Leaders; they will find a way for amazing work to be accomplished and lift others up who do it.  This will be deceiving if the Visionary or Leadership Team is looking for a strictly charismatic leader.  That may happen, and it may not, to me it is not the essential ingredient in an Integrator.  Look instead for the person who brings people together, who listens to all sides of any discussion or debate, who finds a way to help others clarify their responsibilities and complete them in a timely manner, and who others say they enjoy working with.  So often that is a terrific Project Manager, who has the potential of being a truly great Integrator.

If this makes sense to you, and you would like some help evaluating current personnel for their skillsets as an Integrator, finding a full time Integrator, or working with a Fractional Integrator in any way, the first step I would recommend is to discuss with your EOS Implementer.  He or she will be able to best advise you on this course.  If you do not have an EOS Implementer, be sure to check out the online resources for Integrator searches, and if you are in the Portland, OR area, please feel free to reach out to AJC.