Shipulski On Design

Posts Tagged ‘Lessons Learned’

It’s fine if you’re asked to do too much occasionally.  Things come up and must be addressed.  Sometimes it’s your turn and sometimes it’s others’ turn.  No one can argue with that.  And sometimes the work demands your special skills and you go the extra because the work is important and urgent.  You know how to do it and there’s no time to bring someone else up to speed.  That makes sense to everyone.  We all know sometimes is our turn to take on too much.  That’s just how it is.  But it’s not sustainable (or fair) when doing too much once in a while becomes insufficient and you’re expected to do too much all the time.  But this creates a problem.

You want to grow in your career and you want to get ahead.  That’s good.  But when “too much every day” becomes the norm, your desire to climb the ladder makes it difficult to say no to “too much every day.”  Say yes to too much and you’ll earn your stripes.  Say no and your career plateaus. What to do?

I think the only way to beat this double bind is to be happy with your current role, be satisfied with your strong efforts to make meaningful (and reasonable) contributions, and continually grow and develop. I think this recipe will lead to great work and I think doing great work is the best way to battle the double bind.

And when it comes to great work, you are responsible for doing great work and your company is responsible for how they respond.  If you hold onto that, your next steps will be clear.

When you do great work and your company doesn’t notice, their response sends a strong message.  And your next step – do more great work.  Their response will change or you will change companies.

When you do great work, your work gets noticed, and all your company gives you is more work, their response sends a strong message.  And your next step – do more great work but constrain your output to a reasonable level.  Their response will change or you will change companies.

If you do great work, your work gets noticed, and you get a raise, a promotion, a bigger team, responsibility for the most important projects, and the authority to get it all done, your company’s response makes it easy for you to do more great work for them.  And that’s just what you should do.

Keep it simple – when in doubt, do great work.

Image credit — _Veit_

Do the project right or do the right project – which would you choose?

If you improve time to market, the only thing that improves is time to market.  How do you feel about that?

Customers pay for things that make their lives easier.  Time to market doesn’t do that.

There’s no partial credit with new product development projects.  If the product isn’t 100% ready for sale, it’s 0% ready.

If you made 1/8^th progress on 8 projects, you made zero progress. But you did consume valuable resources.

If you made 100% progress on one project, you made progress.

When you have too many projects, you get too few done.

If you don’t know how many projects your company has, you have too many.

Would you rather choose the right project and run it inefficiently or choose the wrong project and run it efficiently?

When you choose the wrong project but run it efficiently, that’s called efficient ineffectiveness.

You can save several weeks making sure you choose the right project by starting the project too soon and running the wrong one for two years.

If your projects are slow, it’s likely the support functions are too highly utilized.  Add capacity to keep their peak utilization below 85%.

When shared resources are sized appropriately, they’re underutilized most of the time.  Think fire station and firefighters – when there’s a fire they respond quickly, and when there’s no fire they improve their skills so they can fight the next one better than the last.

If your projects are slow, check to see if you have resources on the critical path that work part-time.  Part-time resources support multiple projects and don’t work full-time on your project.  And you can’t control when they work on your project.  There’s no place for that on the critical path.

If you’re thinking about using part-time resources on the critical path, don’t.

Know where the novelty is and work that first.  And before you can work on the novelty you’ve got to know where it is.

You can have too little novelty, meaning the new product is so much like the old one there’s no need to launch it.  Mostly, though, projects have too much novelty.

If you are working on a clean-sheet design, there is no such thing.  There are no green-field projects.  All projects are brown-field projects. It’s just that some are browner than others.

Novelty generates problems and problems take three times longer to solve than anyone thinks.  To reduce the number of problems, declare as many as possible as annoyances.  Unlike problems, annoyances don’t have to be solved by the project.  Remember, it’s okay to save some work for the next project.

Even though you have a product development process, that process is powered by people.  People make it work and people make it not work.  If you get one thing right, get the people part right.

Image credit – claudia gabriela marques

If you try to change what you cannot, your trying will not bring about change. But it will bring about 100% frustration, 100% dissatisfaction, 100% missed expectations, 0% progress, and, maybe, 0% employment.

Here’s a rule: If success demands you must change what you cannot, you will be unsuccessful.

If you try to change something you cannot change but someone else can, you will be unsuccessful unless you ask them for help.  That part is clear.  But here’s the tricky part – unless you know you cannot change it and they can, you won’t know to ask them.

If you know enough to ask the higher power for help and they say no but you try to change it anyway, you will be unsuccessful.  I don’t think that needed to be said, but I thought it important to overcommunicate to keep you safe.

Here’s the money question – How do you know if you can change it?

Here’s another rule: If you want to know if you can change something, ask.

If the knowledgeable people on the project say they cannot change it, believe them.  Make a record of the assessment for future escalation, define the consequences, and rescope the project accordingly.  Next, search the organization (hint – look north) for someone with more authority and ask them if they can grant the authority to change it.  If they say no, document their decision and stick with the rescoped project plan.  If they say yes, document their decision and revert to the original project plan.

If you do one thing tomorrow, ask your project team if success demands they change something they cannot.  I surely hope their answer is no.

Image credit — zczillinger

In business, we have vision statements, mission statements, strategic plans, strategic initiatives, and operating plans. And every day there are there are countless decisions to make. But, in the end, it all comes down to one thing – how we allocate our resources.  Whether it’s hiring people, training them, buying capital, or funding projects, all strategic decisions come back to resource allocation.  Said more strongly, resource allocation is strategy.

Take a look back at last year.  Where did you allocate your capital dollars?  Which teams got it and which did not?  Your capital allocation defined your priorities.  The most important businesses got more capital.  More to the point – the allocated capital defined their importance. Which projects were fully staffed and fully budgeted? Those that were resourced more heavily were more important to your strategy, which is why they were resourced that way. Which businesses hired people and which did not?  The hiring occurred where it fulfilled the strategy. Which teams received most of the training budget?  Those teams were strategically important.  Prioritization in the form of resource allocation.

Repeat the process for this year’s operating plan.  Where is the capital allocated?  Where is the hiring allocated?  Where are the projects fully staffed and budgeted?  Regardless of the mission statements, this year’s strategy is defined by where the resources are allocated.  Full stop.

Repeat the process for your forward-looking strategic plans.  Where are the resources allocated?  Which teams get more?  Which get fewer?  Answer these questions and you’ll have an operational definition of your company’s forward-looking strategy.

To know if the new strategy is different from the old one, look at the budgets.  Do they show a change in resource allocation?  Will old projects stop so new ones can start? Do the new projects serve new customers and new value propositions?  Same old projects, same old customers, same old value propositions, same old strategy.

To determine if there’s a new strategy, look for changes in capital allocation.  If the same teams are allocated more of the same capital, it’s likely the strategy is also the same. Will one team get more capital while the others get less?  Well, it’s likely a new strategy is starting to take shape.

Look for a change in hiring.  Fewer hires like last year and more of a new flavor probably indicate a change in strategy.  And if people flow from one team to another, that’s the same as one team getting new hires and the other team losing them.  That type of change in resource allocation is an indicator of a strategic change.

If the resource allocation differs from the strategic plan, believe the resource allocation. And if the resource allocation is the same as last year, so is the strategy.  And if there is talk of changing resource allocation but no actual change, then there is no change in strategy.

Image credit – Scouse Smurf

If you didn’t get what you wanted, why not try wanting what you got?

If the timing isn’t right, what can you change so it is right?

If it could get you in trouble, might you be on to something?

If it’s impossible, don’t bother.

If it’s easy, let someone else do it.

If there’s no possibility of bad things, there’s no possibility of magic.

If you need trust but have not yet secured it, declare failure and do something else.

If there is no progress, don’t push.  Move the blocking agent out of the way.

If you don’t know where the cost is, you can’t design it out.

If the timing isn’t right, why didn’t you do it sooner?

If the project went flawlessly, you didn’t try to do anything meaningful.

If you know some people won’t like it, isn’t that reason enough to do it?

If it’s almost impossible, give it a go.

If it’s easy, teach someone else to do it.

If you don’t know where the waste is, you can’t get rid of it.

If you don’t need trust, it’s the perfect time to build it.

If you try the hardest thing first and it doesn’t work, at least you avoid wasting time on the easy stuff.

If you don’t know the number of parts in your product, you have too many.

If the product came out perfectly, you took too long.

If you don’t give it a go, how can you know it’s impossible?

If trust is in short supply, supply it.

If it’s easy, do something else.

If forgiveness is so much better than permission, why do we like to do things under the radar?

If bad things didn’t happen, try harder next time.

Image credit — Gabriel Caparó

Praise is powerful, but not when you don’t give it.

People learn from mistakes, but not when they don’t make them.

Wonderful solutions are wonderful, but not if there are no problems.

Novelty is good, but not if you do what you did last time.

Disagreement creates deeper understanding, but not if there’s 100% agreement.

Consensus is safe, but not when it’s time for original thought.

Progress is made through decisions, but not if you don’t make them.

It’s skillful to constrain the design space, but not if it doesn’t contain the solution.

Trust is powerful, but not before you build it.

 

A mantra: Praise people in public.

If you want people to learn, let them make mistakes.

Wonderful problems breed wonderful solutions.

If you want novelty, do new things.

There can be too little disagreement.

Consensus can be dangerous.

When it’s decision time, make one.

Make the design space as small as it can be, but no smaller.

Build trust before you need it.

Image credit – Ralf St.

With projects, there is no partial credit.  They’re done or they’re not.

Solve the toughest problems first.  When do you want to learn the problem is not solvable?

Sometimes slower is faster.

Problems aren’t problems until you realize you have them.  Before that, they’re problematic.

If you can’t put it on one page, you don’t understand it. Or, it’s complex.

Take small bites.  And if that doesn’t work, take smaller bites.

To get more projects done, do fewer of them.

Say no.

Stop starting and start finishing.

Effectiveness over efficiency. It’s no good to do the wrong thing efficiently.

Function first, no exceptions. It doesn’t matter if it’s cheaper to build if it doesn’t work.

No sizzle, no sale.

And customers are the ones who decide if the sizzle is sufficient.

Solve a customer’s problem before solving your own.

Design it, break it, and fix it until you run out of time.  Then launch it.

Make the old one better than the new one.

Test the old one to set the goal. Test the new one the same way to make sure it’s better.

Obsolete your best work before someone else does.

People grow when you create the conditions for their growth.

If you tell people what to do and how to do it, you’ll get to eat your lunch by yourself every day.

Give people the tools, time, training, and a teacher.  And get out of the way.

If you’ve done it before, teach someone else to do it.

Done right, mentoring is good for the mentor, the mentee, and the bottom line.

When in doubt, help people.

Trust is all-powerful.

Whatever business you’re in, you’re in the people business.

Image credit — Hartwig HKD

X: When will you be done with the project?

Me: This work has never been done before, so I don’t know.

 

X: But the Leadership Team just asked me when the project will be done. So, what should I say?

Me: Since nothing has changed since the last time you asked me, I still don’t know. Tell them I don’t know.

 

X: They won’t like that answer.

Me: They may not like the answer, but it’s the truth.  And I like telling the truth.

 

X: Well, what are the steps you’ll take to complete the project?

Me: All I can tell you is what we’re trying to learn right now.

 

X: So all you can tell me is the work you’re doing right now?

Me: Yes.

 

X: It seems like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Me: I know what we’re doing right now.

 

X: But you don’t know what’s next?

Me: How could I?  If this current experiment goes up in smoke, the next thing we’ll do is start a different project.  And if the experiment works, we’ll do the next right thing.

 

X: So the project could end tomorrow?

Me: That’s right.

 

X: Or it could go on for a long time?

Me: That’s right too.

 

X: Are you always like this?

Me: Yes, I am always truthful.

 

X: I don’t like your answers. Maybe we should find someone else to run the project.

Me: That’s up to you.  But if the new person tells you they know when the project will be done, they’re the wrong person to run the project.  Any date they give you will be a guess.  And I would not want to be the one to deliver a date like that to the Leadership Team.

 

X: We planned for the project to be done by the end of the year with incremental revenue starting in the first quarter of next year.

Me: Well, the project work is not bound by the revenue plan.  It’s the other way around.

 

X: So, you don’t care about the profitability of the company?

Me: Of course I care.  That’s why we chose this project – to provide novel customer value and sell more products.

 

X: So the project is intended to deliver new value to our customers?

Me: Yes, that’s how the project was justified.  We started with an important problem that, if solved, would make them more profitable.

 

X: So you’re not just playing around in the lab.

Me: No, we’re trying to solve a customer problem as fast as we can.  It only looks like we’re playing around.

 

X: If it works, would our company be more profitable?

Me: Absolutely.

 

X: Well, how can I help?

Me: Please meet with the Leadership Team and thank them for trusting us with this important project.  And tell them we’re working as fast as we can.

Image credit – Florida Fish and Wildlife

X:  Me:  format stolen from Simon Wardley (@swardley).  Thank you, Simon.

What does it mean to have enough?

If you don’t want more, doesn’t that mean you have enough?

And if you want what you have, doesn’t that mean you don’t want more?

If you had more, would that make things better?

If you had more, what would stop you from wanting more?

What would it take to be okay with what you have?

If you can’t see what you have and then someone helps you see it, isn’t that like having more?

What do you have that you don’t realize you have?

Do you have a pet?

Do you have the ability to walk?

Do you have friends and family?

Do you have people that rely on you?

Do you have a place where people know you?

Do you have people that care about you?

Do you have a warm jacket and hat?

When you have enough you have the freedom to be yourself.

And when you have enough it’s because you decided you have enough.

Image credit — Irudayam

To have something is better than to have nothing, and to focus on everything dilutes progress and leads to nothing. In that way, something can be better than everything.

What do you have and how might you put it to good use right now?

Everything has a history. What worked last time? What did not? What has changed?

What information do you have that you can use right now? And what’s the first bit of new information you need and what can you to do get it right now?

It is always a brown-field site and never a green-field.  You never start from scratch.

What do you have that you can build on right now? How might you use it to springboard into the future?

When it’s time to make a decision, there is always some knowledge about the current situation but the knowledge is always incomplete.

What knowledge do you have right now and how might you use it to advance the cause? What’s the next bit of knowledge you need and why aren’t you trying to acquire that knowledge right now?

You always have your intuition and your best judgment.  Those are both real things. They’re not nothing.

How can you use your intuition to make progress right now? How can you use your judgment to advance things right here and right now?

There’s a singular recipe in all this.

Look for what you have (and you always have something) and build on it right now.  Then look again and repeat.

Image credit – Jeffrey

Product cost reduction is a good thing.

Too much focus on product cost reduction prevents product enhancements, blocks new customer value propositions, and stifles top-line growth.

Voice of the Customer (VOC) activities are good.

Because customers don’t know what’s possible, too much focus on VOC silences the Voice of the Technology (VOT), blocks new technologies, and prevents novel value propositions.  Just because customers aren’t asking for it doesn’t mean they won’t love it when you offer it to them.

Standard work is highly effective and highly productive.

When your whole company is focused on standard work, novelty is squelched, new ideas are scuttled, and new customer value never sees the light of day.

Best practices are highly effective and highly productive.

When your whole company defaults to best practices, novel projects are deselected, risk is radically reduced (which is super risky), people are afraid to try new things and use their judgment, new products are just like the old ones (no sizzle), and top-line growth is gifted to your competitors.

Consensus-based decision-making reduces bad decisions.

In domains of high uncertainty, consensus-based decision-making reduces projects to the lowest common denominator, outlaws the use of judgment and intuition, slows things to a crawl, and makes your most creative people leave the company.

Contrary to Mae West’s maxim, too much of a good thing isn’t always wonderful.

Image credit — Krassy Can Do It