Evolving Web

Social Media, Lean and the CIA

At the end of March, I spoke at Social Media Breakfast, Seattle (See their recap) at the Waggener Edstrom offices in Bellevue. They were live streaming the talk, but had some technical problems – so the video is in two parts. If you want to see what the audience saw on the screen, there’s also the Prezi I spoke from here.

This talk is covering the challenges that organizations have with collaboration, both internal and external. Social Media and Lean need to be applied together to provide both a set of principles and a collaborative foundation. I also talk about being a punk rocker.  So, if you want to know how punk rock, twitter and the CIA all mean the same thing … take a look!

Part 1 Part 2

Three Podcasts for Personal Kanban

Over the last few months, I've had the good fortune to be a featured guest on three different podcasts discussing Personal Kanban. In the Yi-Tan calls, we discussed Personal Kanban and Personal Kanban for teams. In the Social Media Breakfast Seattle Podcast, we explored the relationships between Lean thinking and social media. Of course, Personal Kanban comes up there as well.

Yi-Tan Call #261 - Personal Kanban With Jerry Michalski's group, I discuss Personal Kanban, how it started, and how it works.

Yi-Tan Call #268 - Personal Kanban for Teams Again with Jerry's virtual roundtable, I discuss how Personal Kanban and other kanban applications work for teams, groups, and organizations.

For Social Media Breakfast Seattle Lean Management and the CIA Heidi Miller interviews me about lean management, social media, Personal Kanban, and what's happening in the Intelligence Community.

Later this month I'll be featured on the Business 901 podcast, talking even more about Personal Kanban, but this time interviewed by Joe Dager, who focuses on marketing and lean principles.

Celebrate Incremental Victories

Life is short. Crap is plentiful.

Thus defines the human condition.

So we have a few choices. We can focus on either the pleasant, or the unpleasant. I have worked with many people who love to focus on the unpleasant. They call themselves "realists." The thinking here is that you need to plan for and react to bad things as they come up - because bad things are bad.

To adequately plan for bad things, they - the aforementioned realists - envision all the possibly bad things that could happen and then they come up with ways to avoid those bad things, or, they simply fret that they might happen.

They call this "contingency planning."

Then after the project has happened, during which they've fretted about the bad things that might (but usually don't) happen, they go back and talk about all the things that went wrong and how they can be avoided in the future.

They call this a "retrospective."

I call this crap farming.

By focusing on the crap, they cultivate more crap. With their laser sights set on what can go wrong, they over emphasize things that don't go perfectly. Then, during the retrospective, the things that happened that are seen as bad are the only topics discussed.

I am going to go out on a limb here and posit that perhaps this isn't the best way to live or manage our teams.
There are far too many weeds in this garden of negativity. Here's a few:

Rigid Definition of Success - Given that there are limitless ways for a project to go wrong (including meteor strikes and locust plagues), in order for the negative manager to be able to function, they need to have a very precise definition of success. This creates a self-fulfilling prophesy where the definition of success becomes so precise a target as to be practically unhittable - guaranteeing failure in the attempt to avoid failure.

Success Blindness - By focusing on what might go wrong, and building systems guaranteeing the perception of failure, success is discounted as a temporary or even illusionary state. "Yeah, it's nice that success happened but...LOOK AT ALL THE FAILURE!"

Failure Worship - The worship of failure disregards that all projects have variation. Even a successful project has variation in its path from inception to completion. This variation is seen as unplanned events, and therefore failures (because we didn't see them coming). But, in reality, this variation is the measure of actual success. When you look for failure, you will find it. When you worship failure, you will not only find it, you will likewise ignore success.

The way out of this hole:

Don't do it.

Success happens every day, and building on that success is what creates more success. Avoiding failure is proving a negative. Can we learn from our mistakes? Yes. But that, in and of itself, is a success.

Replacing worshiping failure with the celebration of incremental victories means that each retrospect finds ways to do things better (as opposed to stopping doing them wrong). This, in turn, creates teams that are hell-bent of improving - rather than avoiding pain.

Celebrate incremental victories! Take credit for jobs well done, and do them even better next time.

Photo by Bill d’Agostino

The Priority Filter – A Prioritization Tutorial

I finally finished the first Personal Kanban video. (There are way too many videos that never made it past the cutting room floor).  This first one is a quick tutorial about prioritization.

Prioritization is often even more difficult and daunting as the tasks that confront you. A priority filter in your Personal Kanban helps you determine what tasks are ready in your queue, and the order of importance they should assume. 

Note: This video is best viewed full screen.

Time Value of Money and The Psychological Value of Money

In a recent coffee with Jon Bach (Blog, Company), I blurted out something that I want to explore here.  In my last post I talked about the Modus Cooperandi 2010 Business Plan which is:

We want to work with people we like and respect on projects that are fulfilling.

Idealistic? Pedantic? Maybe.

Yesterday's post provides a few equations as to why this might make sense.  But in reality, it's all risk mitigation. Regardless of how much a difficult project might pay, it's usually so painful to complete as to be self-negating.

I had a project with a large client a few years back that was so painful that my wife refuses to acknowledge that I ever got paid for it at all.

Why? 

Because there's a time value of money which is well defined by economists. It looks something like this:

According to Investopedia:

What Does Time Value of Money (TVM) Mean?

The idea that money available at the present time is worth more than the same amount in the future due to its potential earning capacity. This core principle of finance holds that, provided money can earn interest, any amount of money is worth more the sooner it is received.

So,  it took soooooooooo long for me to get paid by my client that a combination of interest I was paying for a business line-of-credit and the fact that I wasn't able to invest that money when I made it, greatly reduced the actual value of what I was paid for the project.

Okay, that's all well and good, but I was still paid. Why does my wife not even recognize this as an event?

I think this is due to a psychological value of money or (PsVM).

You see, when you do a thing, your brain gets really happy when you are immediately rewarded for that thing. Beyond simply instant gratification, serotonin levels rise making you feel happier, more social, you digest your food better, just a load of good stuff. Why? Because immediate rewards, have a funny two-pronged effect. They make us calmer (not nervous) but simultaneously more excited (ready to invent, ready to take on new challenges).

So NOT getting a reward when it is expected for a job well done drastically decreases the value of the reward when it does come. The longer it takes, the more our brains disassociate it as a reward and make it an entitlement. And if someone HAS to give you something and they don't do it on time, you quickly become resentful because they are keeping you from something you are entitled to.

Getting something you are entitled to has zero psychological value because you were supposed to get it regardless.  This is why pre-calculated cash bonuses have been shown to be lousy incentives to effect change in companies. The disassociation of the reward from the individual (through having to wait and having it be a systematic equation) makes the incentive a disincentive.

It's like telling someone what to get you for Christmas, having them order it, and then having it be backordered to March. It was never really a gift to begin with because you requested it, someone else merely paid for what you wanted. But then, you don't get it in time and by the time it arrives you say "finally."

Money Money Money Money

In the end, Money is an abstraction. A really important abstraction, but one nonetheless. We need to figure out, as people, as companies, as a society, what we really value and where money fits into that equation. It's clear that, as an abstraction, the value of money is different to every individual. To some people it's a toy to play with on the stock market or in Macau. To others it's security to hold and look at and smile. To others it is power to buy and sell whatever or whomever they wish. But the psychological component is clear.

So when weighing future projects or opportunities ask yourself where that psychological value of money fits for you.

Photo by emrank

People You Like are Good Business

The Modus Cooperandi business plan for 2010 is very simple and very short. We want to work with people we like and respect on projects that are fulfilling. We've learned over the years a (sort of) simple equation:

Variables:

• PYL - People you like
• PYDL - People you dislike
• PROJ - Projects
• CT - Completion Time
• AT - Acquisition Time
• WA - Work to Acquire Project
• T$ - Time it takes to get paid
• A$ - Amount you get paid
• PP - Pain to complete the Project 
• SC - Satisfaction of Completion

Projects with People You Like

PROJ (PYL) = AT + CT + WA + T$ + PP - A$ - SC

versus

Projects with People You Don't Like

PROJ (PYDL) = ATx2 + CTx2 + WA*4 + T$*4 + PP*6 - A$*2 - SC*0

The equations balance the work of acquiring and doing and administering a project. We have found that work with people you don't like is:

• Harder to acquire
• Takes longer to complete
• Takes longer to acquire
• Takes longer to get paid, and
• Are painful to complete

but

• You get paid more

but

• By the time you get the money you have zero satisfaction in the project.

So this incredibly unscientific equation is saying, work is balanced by income and satisfaction.  And we've found that the cost / benefit analysis of working with people we like so far and away outweighs the opportunity costs of making more money with unenjoyable people.

But it gets better. I think there’s a Time Value of Money and a Psychological Value of Money – which I’ll describe in my next post.

Photo by Rsms

Join Me for a Conversation on Personal Kanban

Personal Kanban Chat (Voice and IRC)

Monday, January 4th at 6:30 PM GMT / 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST / 

Join me on this week's Yi-Tan call. I will be discussing Personal Kanban - how visualizing your work and understanding your expectations can reduce stress and make you more productive and happy. 

Their last guest to talk about personal productivity was David Allen. So I'm in good company.

Get a leg up on those resolutions. Join Monday's @yitan call featuring @ourfounder discussing Personal Kanban http://bit.ly/5GWKMn 

Read about Personal Kanban here: http://www.personalkanban.com

There's a quick primer here: http://www.slideshare.net/ourfounder/personal-kanban-101

Collaboration and Clarity Make Us Greater than the Sum of Our Parts

A year-end retrospective.

Imagine Yo-Yo Ma performing a solo.

Now imagine him performing a duet with Hai-Ye Ni.

Now imagine him performing the duet on his own. First he’ll play his part, then he’ll play hers. Sure it’ll take twice as long … but he’ll get there.

Eventually.

I've never been more productive than I've been over the past year. This was not due to a tool. It was not due to Personal Kanban. It was not due to energy drinks or hot yoga. 

It was due to the powerful combination of collaboration and clarity. Everything that was successful about 2009 I attribute to the potency of these two forces.  

Anything that fell short, can be easily traced to a lack of it.

Tonianne first came on board with Modus to help me write my book. During the first six months of the year, we pounded out about 80% of a fairly decent manuscript. We felt really good about this, but we were just getting our sea legs.

It wasn’t until June when we raised the sails and the effortless race began.

In the latter half of the year, Tonianne and I:

• Wrote three white papers, two for a major company and one for a groundbreaking new organization
• Conceived of and launched Personal Kanban with hundreds of articles on personal and team productivity
• Created three InfoPaks that described in detailed and illustrated richness what Personal Kanban is
• Worked with the World Bank and the CGIAR to create and implement a system to teach local government officials in forested countries how to calculate and distribute carbon credits to landowners
• Worked with (and continue to work with) the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to create an eLearning module on collaboration and knowledge sharing
• Managed the process to create an iPhone app (almost done)
• Helped a client refine the concepts for - and launch a development effort to build - a system that employs social media and real estate information to better define where we actually think we live
• Helped a client who owns and operates a drug rehab agency for street kids use Personal Kanban to focus his clients and his staff

and I know I’m forgetting things.

The UN Work and the World Bank project have shown me that David Anderson and I shouldn’t have been surprised when he used Kanban at Corbis and achieved 400%+ gains in productivity.

We should have expected it.

Collaboration and clarity through the kanban dictated it.

There were only two projects that Tonianne and I worked on this year that we were less than pleased with, and that is due to a lack of collaboration and clarity. Engagements where people lacked clear understanding of their role in the project or the purpose of the project or the direction of the project led to collaboration breakdown and failure.

The World Bank/CGIAR project was a wake up call. The group we worked with was comprised of people from around the world, all dedicated professionals, all very intelligent. Previously, the project was all but paralyzed. We got them in a room and working and together they took off. Vertical take off. They went from almost nothing to a clear concept of purpose and a tremendous amount of documentation in five days.

Why? Because in that conference room they had clarity and they were able to collaborate. And they did it gleefully. Why didn’t they do this before? No clarity and no feeling of collaborative momentum. They had jobs in their isolated offices and this project (no matter how important or interesting) was just another thing begging for attention during the course of their day.

The UN Project showed me that collaboration and clarity can be effortless in a distributed team as well. One of the lessons we are writing is in a module where other lessons are being written by Nancy White and John Smith. Instantly and elegantly, everyone began collaborating organically, which has made our work much easier. Our individual creativity and expertise is providing immediate quality improvements to our respective sections and the document as a whole.

So, if Tonianne and I can do all that in six months, and if David can get a 400%+ rise in team productivity, what does this mean?

That with a team that has clarity, the number of team members does not necessarily provide linear gains in productivity. I’m not saying it’s exponential. I’m just saying that 1+1 > 2. 

Imagine Yo-Yo Ma performing a solo.

Now imagine him performing a duet with Hai-Ye Ni.

Now imagine him performing the duet on his own. First he’ll play his part, then he’ll play hers. It’ll take twice as long … but he’ll get there.

Eventually.

Life cannot be a solo. Ma and Ni are two of the most accomplished cellists in history, but they can’t perform a duet on their own. Their art, their accomplishment, comes from knowing when they are soloing and when they are part of something larger than themselves.

This does not mean they lose themselves in the process. They don’t become cello-bots simply because it’s not their solo. When Yo-Yo falls back and Hai-Ye’s part is in the forefront, he’s playing his piece with the same grace and attentiveness as if he were on stage alone. Grace and attentiveness that comes from clarity is the bedrock of successful collaboration. You know your part, you know your place, you feel the whole being created because - and only because - you are playing your part perfectly.

As for 2008, I just wanted it to end. It was a year plagued by muddy thinking, half-completed projects, and soloists trying to collaborate. 2008 physically hurt.

2009’s successes have existed not only because Tonianne’s and my duet was able to operate on its own, but also because that same duet could easily shift and become part of an even larger entity, like our UN quartet and CGIAR’s 14 piece orchestra.

Beautiful music.

I want to thank Tonianne and those who truly understood Modus’ mission, helped make Personal Kanban what it has become, and prepared us for what looks to be a stunning 2010.

Thank you all for this year.

Photo of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by Jordan Fischer.

The Beauty of Getting it Wrong

Over the years I've worked with Agile programming methodologies that teach how it's better to fail fast and correct fast, than to fail and wait months to find out.

This past weekend, we were putting together some e-learning modules for the United Nations' Farm and Agriculture Organization (FAO). We were working in Google Docs, and both the client and other members of the consultant team all had access to our document before a single word was written. 

I sent the UN staff and other Subject Matter Experts this email when we began the document:

Hi all,

Thank you for wanting to look at our FAO docs in progress.  Tonianne and I will be writing 5.1, 2.1 and 2.2 over the next several days. I want this to be a collaborative writing process for all involved.

At the moment, I'm trying to build the document as quickly as possible - which means I may skip over or lightly cover some things that you think are important. Please, by all means, use the comment feature (Ctrl-M) in Google docs and insert comments where I need to go back and punch things up or where you think I've maybe gone crazy.

Remember, since you are watching the document be written from the very beginning, you will see the rough writing first. I ask that you guide, but not assume that what you are reading is final content.

Thank you!

We'd made it pretty far into one of the modules when on Sunday morning at 4 am I received an email from Italy.

After seeing just one day's worth of work, the project manager and e-Learning specialists in Rome knew we needed some re-direction.

The content we had created was fine, but the format was not going to fit the needs of that particular client. The PM emailed us immediately. Our day's worth of work took maybe 30 minutes to readjust to the new format. 

This averted what could have been a costly error, had we completed the entire lesson plan in the incorrect format.  We moved the content into a new document that met their needs.  Almost immediately I received this email from their e-Learning specialist:

YES!

this is exactly what I meant!

thank you

Every time I begin a new project and push for transparency in the creation of deliverables, people (okay, Tonianne) raise their eyebrows. They cannot fathom letting someone see something before "it's finished."

They believe in: You can't see it until it's finished.

I translate for them, that sentence really means: You can't see it until it's expensive.

Nothing is ever finished. Almost every professionally published book I read I find typos.

For the UN, we failed early and we saved both time and money as a result. Let people see you make the sausage. In the long run, what do you have to lose?

Photo by FAO Photos

Personal Kanban InfoPak3

Announcing Personal Kanban InfoPak 3InfoPak3 Personal Kanban Design Patterns

View more documents from Jim Benson.