You Are a Role Model

fortune

At some point, maybe at many points, it strikes me that we are all role models. We all influence each other. We are a network of emotions and actions.

When we do something, positive or negative. Kind, indifferent, or cruel. Self-centered or altruistic. Other people notice. Other people react.

This is systems thinking in the social sphere. Social media is a social system. We have seen how they can be built, enjoyed, and exploited. Work, home, friends are also social systems.

I’m not going to go into any false spiritual spiral with this, I’m just going to note that there are systems in which we operate. Personal, political, economic. At home and at work. And how we act, how we present ourselves, how we interact with others - makes a hell of a difference.

In the 90s, before New York City became mysteriously friendlier, I woke up one morning in Tribeca. I went for a walk with my friend Brian. We went into a shop to get some coffee. Brian was animated and talkative, but when the person came to get his order the exchange went like this:

Person (aggressively staring at Brian): What d’you want?

Brian: (looking away, like the other person isn’t there): Coffee.

He gets Brian his coffee.

Person: Here.

Brian: <no response, grabs coffee>

Person to me same thing: What d’you want?

Me: (Looking back at him, smiling) I’d also like a coffee, please.

Person stares at me a second, trying to figure out if I’m for real.

Goes to get coffee.

Comes back and hands it to me.

Me: Thank you.

Person walks away.  Stares at me.

Brings me a muffin.

Person: ... You have a nice day, okay?

Me: Really?

Person: Really. <Person then smiles back>

My friend Brian was one of the nicest people on earth. But in the 90s New York system, he was expected to act a certain way. On my part, I didn’t do anything hokey or over-the-top, I was just not unpleasant.

Brian said, “I’ve never seen that guy be nice to anyone.” I was a role model, just by being human. It doesn’t take much.

When we get overworked, we get stressed. When we get stressed, we get unpleasant. When we’re unpleasant, we behave unpleasantly. We we do that, we spread it around.

So, I’m not saying “be nice all the time.” What I’m saying here is that if we build our systems to avoid overwork (likely one of the largest sources of stress we have), we are improving other systems we engage in because we will be better actors in those systems.

So recognize that you are a role model. You are an active part of many social systems.

Blogged on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas

Two Goals Quickly Visualized

I realized that I had fallen off the writing wagon. I had become a non-writer.

Two Goals Quickly Visualized

That was really bothering me.I sat down several times to write blog posts and wrote portions of them or huge rambling missives that went nowhere.Soon it became clear that I needed a goal and to visualize it. It was pretty simple really. It looks like this I wanted to make sure that I wrote blog posts and participated on Twitter. So I made a quick (ugly) chart over my done column on the board by my desk. It has the days of this week with two swim lanes - one for blogging and one for entering 3 tweets per day  into Social Flow.I then mark down how I felt about them when I was done. Overall, it was pretty good. No home runs there, but it was okay. (I’d make a big mouthed smiley for one I was really happy with).What I’m doing here is quickly visualizing, rewarding, and evaluating a goal. Since they’re daily tasks, moving the stickies would be redundant and perhaps even annoying. But setting up a rapid feedback system helps immensely. 

Sharing Your Story

Everywhere we look we’re discovering people around the world - from all ages and all walks of life -  are tailoring their Personal Kanbans to some very specific needs, and in some very unique ways.

Are you one of those people?If so, we invite you to share your experiences on the Personal Kanban website, and serve as an inspiration to the global Personal Kanban community.Are you using Personal Kanban in conjunction with an online tool like Evernote or Google Keep? Have you incorporated a calendar feature into your board? Applied a particular email filter? Used it to extend your GTD practice?Is there an online Personal Kanban tool or mobile app you’re particularly fond of? Or did you opt  for a physical board instead, preferring to use a wall or window or desktop Personal Kanban?Do you use it primarily at work and/or, are you using it at home with your family? Have you used it to track an interesting project? Tell us!These are questions that when answered, have the potential to inspire others in ways they never considered.  So share your Personal Kanban story with us. It doesn’t have to be too involved or complicated - we don’t want to break your WIP limit!  We’re looking for a quick paragraph or two describing how you’ve implemented Personal Kanban. And if you want to share pictures of your board, even better.So consider sharing your story.  We look forward to hearing from you.Thanks!Jim and Tonianne

Finding Hidden WIP

Can you find the hidden WIP in this picture?

Limiting Work in Process (WIP) is not easy.Our work is largely invisible, which means it’s hard to notice. It creeps up on us. Well, heck, it’s invisible, it just walks right up - bold and unabashed. It doesn’t have to sneak - we’re simply blind to it.Then, one day, we notice it is there.Over the last three weeks, we’ve worked with several groups that are shocked when we’ve found hidden WIP. To them, we seem like ghost hunters finding inefficiencies and overload where there was previously only air.So, how can you find hidden WIP?It’s easy: always assume it’s there.When you start from a position of knowing that there’s more WIP lurking, you examine the shadows more closely. Here’s three common shadows:Big Tickets - People are always asking about ticket sizing. If your tickets are too big they have lots of room in them. Lots of room for WIP to hide. Lots of tasks that you can start and not finish. Lots of ways for the ticket to get stuck. Ultimately, the big tickets have lots of shadows for WIP to hide. Tickets get bogged down because one or more of those hidden tasks is hard to complete. (Note to some: user stories are usually pretty big tickets).Overfocus on Team Work - Time and again we see teams limit their WIP on a team board, but overlook the individuals. So the team will have a WIP limit of 5 or 6 and be meeting that limit just fine. Upon examination, however, one or two people are involved in every ticket. Since our work is completed by people, overloading them defeats the purpose of the Personal Kanban in the first place.Self Deception - We put things on the board that we want to put on the board. Everything else ... hmm. We’ve seen software teams overloaded with unboarded support tasks because they weren’t “real work”. We’ve seen researchers overloaded with unboarded administrative tasks because they weren’t “real work.” We’ve seen people with dozens of incomplete tasks that were “too small for the board.”Tonianne and I now look for these things out of habit. We immediately look for oversized expectations, individual overload, and unreported work every time we see a board.Image from Cecil Goes Wild ... which could be used to teach kids about hidden WIP.

Finishing Feels Good

Yes, finishing feels good. When we complete tasks, we feel better than when we have a pile of incompletes just lying around. Incompletion creeps up on us, overloads us, and crushes us. The more we fail to complete our work or realize our goals, the more susceptible we are to hopelessness, doubt, and fear.

So ... completion would seem to be a pretty clear winner. So, why don’t we complete? Because we have competition for our attention. E-mail, Facebook, conversations with colleagues, and the other 25 tasks we are working on simultaneously are constantly competing for our focus. (Even now, I looked up, my Facebook browser tab says there are 2 replies there. I started to move my cursor up to check on them and said, .... hey, you’re writing a blog post! Get that cursor back down there...)

Neuroscience has found that when we finish tasks, we get a dopamine rush. We actually do feel better. However, interruptions trick the brain. They can be like instant gratification that gives us little dopamine rushes. We find ourselves incurring more and more distractions that, like any indulgence, feel good at the time and leave us feeling empty later on.

The tricky bit here is we no longer have space as individuals to concentrate. Whether we are at the office or at home, our focus is impaired by these constant interruptions. We cannot focus and complete. This costs us, our companies, and our families every second of every day.In 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. The key here is not to have that help seem like the solution. The help here is to find our own ways of working.

We have discovered though, that a few simple tools have helped people and organizations craft their own ways of working.

Tool 1: Visualize Your Work - Creating a Personal Kanban immediately lets you and your colleagues know what you are doing now, what you have done, and what is coming up next. That grounds your work in a tangible system that constantly reminds you of what needs to be completed.

Tool 2: Limiting Work-in-Process - Our distractions create work overloads. We take on too much work and then have to manage all those tasks in-flight. Limiting our active tasks as individuals or as work teams is vital for completion.

Tool 3: An Eye for Improvement - In order to really improve how we work, we need to actually understand what improvement looks like and how to achieve it. In Lean, this is called “Kaizen” (Continuous small positive changes).We don’t want improvement like “Starting tomorrow I will do everything exactly right,” because large unrealistic change is unrealistic. Learning, however, to take on small improvements makes all the difference.

Potent Combination

Our goal here is to understand our work, do just enough to get quality work completed, and always be looking for ways to make work better / more enjoyable / etc.

Learning More ....

Reading: Doing a search on the Personal Kanban site for “Visualize Work”, “Limit WIP”, and “Improvement” will give you some food for thought.Workshops: In March of 2014, I’m going to be teaching a few workshops on exactly this combination with Kaizen expert Mark Graban in Phoenix (Mar 10) and San Antonio (Mar 12).  We did one class in Seattle last year that went so well that this year we’re doing two!Conversation: We’ll be hosting a 2 day conversation on this February 19 / 20in Seattle called Kaizen Camp.