Are we doing things that needs to be done?

Those from you, who use Scrum in their work knows daily stand-up meetings and three famous questions to ask and answer:

• What did I accomplish yesterday?
• What will I do today?
• What obstacles are impeding my progress?

Activities without a vision leads nowhere

Recently I had great discussion with one of my friends about vision, goal, an idea or however you will call it. We talked why vision is so important, why we need to know how to verbalize it and why we need to share it.

Last "why" leads me to two questions that I asked:
"Do everyone in your team knows the vision that you want to share?"
"Well, it would be great, but... I don't think so."
"Do you know why it's like this?"
"You know, they've got their own visions, ideas and I let them to have it. Thanks to this they can feel free and I believe that helps to avoid micro-management."
"I understand, but let me ask you another question, because I think the problem may be somewhere else. How are you sharing your vision, how often are you doing it?"
"All the time! Through things I'm doing. I think that action is far more important than words."
"Yeah, that's true, but only if everyone knows where they are going."

Daily (after stand-up) presentations

In my team we are always trying something new, we like to experiment with new ideas, we looking for new ways of learning something which is worth to be learned.
After one of our's retrospection we decided to do a presentations, at least once a week. We had presentations before, but we wanted to start with someting that would be organized in better way, would be regular.
We knew that each of us reads a lot, tries many new things on daily basis and it would be great to spread this knowledge and share it with teammates. We created even a list with our propositions of subjects for those presentations.

That was good idea and we were so eager to do so... but...

After a few weeks it turns out that not so much presentations were done. We had ideas (many of them was already listed), we had knowledge (each of us already knew something about some of the subjects on the list), but in most times, we couldn't convert our knowledge into a few slides of presentation. It was just too... hard? I believe, not, it was just too time consuming.
Yeah, what can I say, we are lazy, we like to learn, but to teach is a different story, if you want to teach you need to be prepared, it requires additional work on something that you already know. That leads to simple conclusion - if I can spend my time to learn something new or on creating presentation about something that I already know, choice is easy and obvious for most of us.

That's why our "presentations plan" died... but not completely.
We talked about the idea almost on each retrospection and many times on daily meetings. On the other hand, we shared a links with each other, we had short conversations in pairs or in bigger groups.
When I noticed all those facts I started to merge them into an one idea - daily (after stand up) presentations.

What it's all about?
After our stand-up meetings we started to do a short (not longer than 10 minutes) presentations. It can be anything, summary of a great article, short introduction to a new idea or tool, it just must be short and interesting.
We agreed that no presentation (I mean document or something similar) is required. Just whiteboard, presenter and all interested people.

Whether it is revealing? I think, not, but I believe that organizing somehow our short and random discussions (with various number of participators) improved spreading a knowledge. Removing necessary of creating a real presentation (documents) decreased our laziness and we are more likely to doing such a presentations even once a day (or even more if it won't take more than 10).

I believe that most of us want to learn, want to develop their skills almost all the time. Why don't try to do it together? It will be more efficient and you will increase a chance to learn something that you could even didn't know it exists.

Sometimes it's worth to lose

I heard once, that the best end of any situation, any action or discussion is when everyone are a winners. I know that it sounds great and for most of us such a positive endings are something that we are dreaming about.
But is it always right? Should we always be focused on winning? Should we always be a winner? Maybe opposite side don't have to be a winner as well? Not because we want to lose or we want to hurt our opponent, no, that's not the reason.
Maybe sometimes win-win situation isn't the best choice? Maybe sometimes it's better to lose, even when we are focused on benefits for both sides?

Start with something easy

Most of people don't like changes, or maybe in different way - they like, but only if changes won't have any impact on their current life and doesn't require additional effort. Unfortunatelly those kind of changes happens rarely, if at all.
It doesn't matter do we talked about improvements, development or solving a problems - if we want to do something, it will always require to move people from their safe zone. Even if we plan to fix an issue, most of people will tell you something like: "yeah, we should fix it, but maybe not now, maybe it's not so important and, to be honest, I get used to it and I can live with this." or: "we shouldn't do anything, because after ... problem will solve itself."

Well, problem won't solve itself, we need to do something to make it happen and if problem affect us somehow, solution also will. We cannot avoid it.
"Living with it" isn't a solution either. Sooner or later you need to handle the problem and if you won't, it will be someone from your team. This is not a solution, this is postponing. The later you start to handle the issue, the more difficult it will be to solve it.

So what to do if you are in situation that is worth to introduce changes/improvements/fixes and you need to convince people to follow you?

If your team already working in culture of continuous improvements then it's easy, you just need to show them reasonable arguments and they will at least try, they will put they effort to check whether the idea is good for them or not.

But what if you are far from it? What if they worked for many years without changes and they just used to this "complain and no action" state? Maybe they already talked about the problem many times and even agreed for solution, but it required lot of work and they just weren't motivated enough to finish it.
Situation like this have more negative impact, because problem still exists and additionaly team is demotivated, they felt they already made steps to solve the problem. It's not important they didn't have strength to endure to the end.

start with something small to succeed fast

When I'm start to work with new team or group of people I always do recognition, try to find the problems, bottlenecks and places for improvements. I also look at all people who would be affected because of potential change or who are affected right now because of existing problem.

When I have all those information, I'm trying to think about solutions for problems (only ideas, without details, just not-binding propositions). But not all of them at once, I'm starting with the easiest one. And the easiest doesn't mean unimportant.

After preparations I'm scheduling a meeting to talk with the team. At first time, we aren't focus on solving any issue, we just talk about them. I heard many times that is no more than waste of time, because on first meeting I don't have plan to get any conclusion, but in my opinion, this allows them to share their's problems with me, we are starting to build relationships and trust.
And this is the reason for this meeting - if I want to help them, they need to know I do care.

On next meeting I present them the list of issues and proposition for improvements. We are prioritizing them and after it's done I'm looking for the most important from the easiest. The one, which requires the lowest amount of effort and time to implement. Why?
If team have wrong experience with doing a changes, you need to prove them that is important and it will pay off. You cannot be another person who will promise everything and will leave them with nothing.
Even if they are eager to do changes, because you are the person who really know how to talk with people and know how to convince them, you still should start with something easy. The less experienced in well done changes team is, the bigger risk for failure. We want to minimize this risk, we need to give them experience, the fastest and shortest way is to start with easy problems.

The more things you will solve/improve, the most experienced team will become, the more effort and time they would dedicate to implement it. If they will see the results, they would be more open for further changes.
Each success will prove them that it's worth to invest their strenghts to achieve the goal, they will decide for longer term changes without fear and with motivation.
They will trust you, so it won't require as much effort from you as on the begining to convince them for next step.

Start with something small and you will achieve great things.

What defines a good meeting?

From today I've started to work with leader of second team in my project on introducing a few improvements in their work. Of course, it will require many changes, each change needs to be accepted by whole team, we need to show them, that is worth to try, that it make sense. We need to talk, discuss and even argue. And perferct place for such an activities are meetings.

But before we will start, I need to face with one great challenge - I need to convince them, there is value with doing meetings at all. They got many bad experiences with those kind of activities, they participated in boring meetings, in meetings, that was for them just a waste of time, they doesn't like interruptors, they want to work, work efficient and they're treating almost all meetings like a break from real work.

What can I say? It's great when people want to work and doesn't like those horrible moments when they need to do something else. But we need to make improvements to work in more efficient way, we need to remove impediements to do better all things, that we want to do as best as we can. If we want to, we need to schedule a meeting to discuss all ideas and propositions of potential solutions, we need to prepare a plan and each teammate should know and accept it.
That's why all team members should participate on the meeting.

If we want to convince people that meetings aren't just a waste of their time, each meeting needs to bring value for them, needs to show them how important it was to done it. Each meeting needs to be good. And what defines good meetings?

make evolution, not revolution

I love changes and improvements, I always looking for new ways of doing thing faster, better, in more efficient way.

I know that would sound like a cliche, but if you're not going forward, you are going backward. It doesn't matter about what we are talking, is it job, learning, personal life, relationships or hobbies - we just need to get better. To be honest, I think it's natural and this is the way how human beings works - we get excited whenever we can try or learn something new, it's like journey to the unknown land. Who cares how many people already been there, know this and saw everything. Right now it's your turn.